Anything and Everything
Death, he has learned, brings a perspective that life often lacks. In the utter timelessness of the Veil, one has a chance to contemplate much that the obligations of life might overshadow. Indeed, such is the case for him, and he finds himself often contemplating things with a new clarity that no Pensieve induced forgetfulness can match.
He can, of course, watch the world of the living. Though opaque to those who still draw breath, the Veil is hardly more than a gossamer curtain, to be parted at will by those on the other side. It's only tangibility lies in its impermeability from the side of the dead.
It is one of those ironies, perhaps cruel, perhaps wiser than he can fathom, that he has far too much time to contemplate, following his passing from one realm to the next. To the living, who desire so much to hear the reassurances that their departed are well, the barrier is invisible, opaque, and sound-proof. And to the dead, who desire nothing more than to reassure, to pass on last bits of advice and comfort, is denied passage across the curtain, unless they are willing to remain trapped in a half-life as ghosts.
It is an irony he can appreciate. He who has discovered many cruel ironies in his life, some of them he has forged from bonds as invisible and immutable as the Veil itself. And it is only in death, the pressures of war and strife and planning passed from his shoulders, that he has come to appreciate the mixture of wisdom and cruelty he himself has wrought, as punishing and binding as the Veil, and perhaps just as invisible and yet tangible as man's mortality.
There are two in particular he watches, two fates that he has meddled with more than any others, and perhaps more cruelly than can be imagined. Though one, he fancies, has imagined it quite well. One of his two victims is quite aware of the chains that he has forged, and their consequences. It is saddening, grievous to know that he would be perhaps happier and yet far more damned if he were unaware.
It is with that thought in mind that he exerts his will, and turns his attention to the elder of the two men. Severus Snape.
With the peculiar illumination of the dead, he sees not just the present but also the past. Perhaps it is a function of death, to see thus, or perhaps it is his own ruminations which have set before him the images of a life lived.
He sees a lonely boy, raised in a house that is not a home, raised with no affection, no consideration. There is little of love in the child's life, but much of neglect, and cruelty, and casual violence in both words and deeds. It is bitter soil for a life to grow on, and no place for a child to thrive.
He sees a boy who loves a red-haired girl, perhaps the first tender emotion he has ever known or experienced. A boy who seeks to describe a world, to take pride in himself, though there is little positive reinforcement in his life. A boy who comes to believe, in a fragile sort of way, that one can be anything one dreams, that blood does not matter, and that life may possess hope and joy.
He sees a boy, sorted into a House that is rival to his dearest friend's. A boy who is bereft of his only anchor, tormented by his peers for circumstances beyond his control and for ambitions that, in any other, might be described as worthy and laudable. It is in this boy, this bitter young man, that he sees the shadow the light has cast, not only in what some of it's younger members have done, but what it's elders, himself included, have failed to do.
The shadow that borders the light is dark indeed, and he sees as it strips away the boy's protection, and sends him into the arms of darker shadows still, snuffing out the faint flame of light that once resided in his soul. He mourns this boy, the lost opportunity that he was too foolish, too preoccupied, to protect.
He sees the ember, faint as a whisper, still buried deep within the young man. An ember of honor, and of love. No true shield against the darkness he has fallen into, seeking solace and safety in a twisted web of shadows, but there. Strong enough that when his mistake is revealed, when the red-haired woman who was his childhood friend is threatened, the young man turns to the ember's light, and seeks a brighter light again.
He remembers a conversation. Of all his failings and all his mistakes, that conversation was perhaps one of the greatest.
"Hide her...them. Keep them all safe."
"And what will you give me in return?"
"In...return? Anything."
Anything was what Severus promised him, and looking back, he sees the price that he demanded. Sees too, the coldness, the callousness. Not only to Severus, who came to him genuinely remorseful, willing to save even his most hated enemy for the sake of a broken friendship, but to the Potters. Truly, in this moment, he bargained their lives and safety like a stack of Galleons, a privilege to be bought. And though it gained him immeasurable returns, still it was not the kind of man he should have been. He was once hailed as the 'Leader of the Light', but that is not how he would characterize the man on that windy hilltop, that man who bargain's his friends and followers lives.
Anything, Severus promised him, and he takes the first payment in the turning of the young man's loyalty, from a Death Eater to a spy. A dangerous position to be in, but one that Severus takes up without a flicker of hesitation.
He takes his second payment on the night of the Potter's deaths, and looking back, this payment makes him cringe.
For that night he took a young man's grief, his anguish and his agony, and made of it a shield and a weapon for Lily Potter's son. No comfort does he give Severus that night, only goads and ultimatums. Respect Lily's memory, do penance, by protecting her son from Voldemort's return.
In this, he thinks he has matched the Dark Lord's cruelty, to turn even Severus's genuine mourning against him, without even a day or two to seek the solace of tears and the healing that his grief might have brought him. And truly, this is a plan that might have waited until Harry was older.
He takes his third payment in his direction of Severus's life. Keeping him close seemed admirable, but he knows that Severus never had the disposition for teaching. Never possessed the innate character and personality for it, much less the natural social skills. It is true that Severus is capable of commanding attention and is well versed in the art and science of potion-making. And he is conscientious of his duties, and far more careful than Slughorn.
But it is a greater truth that Severus's skills, his heart and his mind, are not made for routine and drudgery and endless instruction. His is not a heart that delights in guiding others. As his student textbooks show, his is a mind for invention, innovation, creation. His is the passion of the creator, the crafter, the maker of new wonders. And if the Darkness drove Severus to create horrendous curses, he has also created remarkable potions, astounding leaps in technical theory, and a healing spell that is second to none, at least where slashes and cutting curses are concerned.
And yet, all of that has been stifled, forced into the humdrum of being the Hogwarts Potions Professor and Head of Slytherin House. These duties leave little time for experimentation, and a castle full of children for the majority of the year leaves even less room. And though it seemed at the time a stroke of brilliance to claim Severus as his Professor, to keep him close and perhaps encourage him to help guide the next generation away from the Dark, how bitter must it have been for the man to stifle and give up all his aspirations, to leave his true talents lying untouched in dusty notebooks, only glanced at and worked on in the brief months of summer or the rare dark nights when he has nothing to do?
Even he, who spent nearly a century in working towards the greater good in penance for his inexcusable lapse in judgment regarding Grindelwald...even he was permitted to pursue his passions in Transfiguration and Alchemy before he became a Professor. And this is true of all the Professors save Severus, which must have made an already bitter draught taste of wormwood and bile.
It is only now, watching from the Veil, that he sees how he could have arranged matters otherwise, given Severus some more time of his own, time to pursue his own goals and dreams. He sees how he missed another opportunity to nurture the growth of the young man's talents and his spirit, content to stifle it instead, that he might be assured of having his tool ready when it was needed.
His fourth payment he takes when Harry Potter comes to Hogwarts, and he places upon Severus the burden of being the boy's protector. And this in spite of his own tendency to reward Harry's 'heroic' ventures, even at the cost of Severus's attempts at discipline, or Slytherin's well earned standing.
His fifth payment he claims the night Voldemort returns, when he sends Severus back into the ranks of the Death Eaters as a spy. He knew, when Harry told his story, that Severus was already suspected, already at risk, and he did not hesitate.
Only now does he see the true depth of that price. The lies that Severus was forced to tell. The knife-edge of danger he walked. The tortures and indignities he was forced to submit to, the atrocities he was forced to witness and participate in. For Severus has indeed grown, and though bitter and angry, his path is one of light and redemption. To be forced to murder, to torture and be tortured...what a burden on a spirit so precariously balanced between darkness and light.
And then came his time of dying, and his final demand. His final, and his cruelest.
It was, he can now admit, for his own sake that he demanded Severus take his life. He did not wish to be responsible for the corruption of an innocent, did not wish to be murdered by a child. And so he demanded the duty of Severus. And it was only in his last moments that he realized how terrible, how cruel, the final payment was.
It was no accident that Severus hesitated, as he begged, or that their eyes met that night on the tower. And remembering what he saw, as Severus let him through those perfect diamond-hard Occlumency shields for the first and last time, is a knife to the soul.
The bitter self-loathing, that he could commit this murder, even knowing the truth of its mercy. The anguish of knowledge, that from the instant of this final fulfillment he is a man damned and alone, cursed by all who once respected and trusted him, despised by all those he fought to prove himself to. No longer able to return to the Darkness, yet suspected by all as a monster. And the horrible, terrible knowledge of the final secret, the final bitter truth that, when it ends, he will fail in the only vow he has ever dared to defend, and the only duty that has kept him going. He will fail to protect Lily's son from the final battle, and the final price, and in doing so will fail the only hope of redemption he has ever known.
And unless a miracle occurs, no one shall ever know the truth of it. He will die, damned and utterly alone, forsaken even by hope and certainly by mercy.
Anything, Severus once promised him, and he sees now how he has taken everything from the man. His safety, his grief, his healing. His hopes and his dreams. His honor and his reputation, and even the hope that he might achieve some measure of peace by protecting his dearest friend and love's son.
Anything has become a high price indeed, and he mourns it now. Mourns the man that he and Voldemort have so utterly destroyed between them, and even more that his hand was the one to strike the first and last blows of Severus's downfall.
***AaE***
His regrets lead him invariably to thinking of the other young man whose fate he has twisted and claimed. The other young man who, unlike Severus, is yet unaware of the price that has been claimed, and that must be paid to end the Darkness.
The Veil parts again, in it's translucent response to his thoughts, to reveal the second man who features so prominently in his thoughts, and in his regrets.
Harry Potter.
Harry. Young Harry, who has only just become a man, and who, in many ways, has never truly been a child.
The Boy-Who-Lived. And it is only now that he can see how bitterly ironic that title is, and how it has shaped Harry's life.
He sees the friendless child of Privet Drive, who grew up knowing no love, no comfort, no solace, only endless drudgery and punishment. The boy who did not even know of the legacy that slumbered in his veins, the power that was his birthright. Who did not even know of magic, or of wizards, until his eleventh birthday.
He made that choice, on a long ago night sixteen years before. The choice to leave Harry far away from the Wizarding world, to leave him with his aunt and uncle. It seemed then a matter of safety, and of prudence.
But the cost, he sees more clearly now, in a young savior who has no idea of his own worth, no idea when to trust and when to turn away, who seeks help from children because he has no faith in adults.
He sees the boy who grew up friendless and alone, and even now relies on himself, for he has never learned to truly rely on anyone else. And why should he? They have all failed him, either in their too-high expectations, or in their too-little faith. Or, as he did, in his impossible demands, that Harry be a savior and yet still a boy.
He sees now the might-have-been, what could have happened if he had permitted Harry to be raised in the Wizarding world. True, the boy might have been at risk from the Malfoys and their ilk, but he would not have been raised ignorant, thrust from painful anonymity and solitude into a world where everyone knows his name. Raised a Wizard, Harry could have learned more of trust, and of tolerance, and of subtlety. More of magic, the little magics that would make life easier, and the greater ones that might preserve it.
Too, had he not been gone for so many years, the legend of the Boy-Who-Lived might not have swelled to such mythic proportions. Had it been that Harry had been raised a wizard, he might have grown into, or out of, his notoriety before he came to Hogwarts, before he was thrust sharply before the Wizarding public.
He made his decision that fateful Halloween in the fear that Harry might grow up like Draco Malfoy or his own father, spoiled and conceited and without the compassion that a Savior needs. Now he realizes that Harry might have grown up instead like Susan Bones, loyal and true despite her aunt's position in the Ministry. Or like Neville Longbottom, the other child to whom prophecy might have applied, with a sleeping strength like a hibernating oak, waiting only for the proper season to burst into flower and growth, a might force to be reckoned with, unbending and unbroken.
He might have given Harry a true childhood, rather than the pale imitation of one he provided at Hogwarts, with his indulgence and rewarding of rule-breaking, with his cheerfully blind eye to the myriad scrapes Harry and his friends got into.
And what a message he sent, in those days. Enforcing the idea that doing the wrong thing for the right reasons was acceptable. Rewarding school rules broken right and left, because it had been done for 'the greater good' and the 'right cause'. How he made Severus, who only punished to enforce limits and protect Harry (sometimes, at least) into Harry's enemy. How he reinforced Harry's determined reliance on himself and his friends to manage things that, in any other time, would have been the province of adults to handle, not children.
For all his claims of wanting Harry to have a childhood, he made of Harry's school-days the training of a Savior.
A child should trust adults. A child should have boundaries. A child should not risk his life without second thought, and with no regard for the consequences. A child should think of school-work and homework and classes, rather than enemies and Dark Lords.
He sees now the terrible dichotomy, the terrible strain he placed upon Harry, in his insistence on treating him like a boy, and yet rewarding him for taking on things that only an adult should have dealt with.
A practice that he continued even after Fifth Year, even after he professedly gave Harry the truth, the prophecy and all it's consequences. For he had already guessed at Horcruxes, and he had already guessed the truth of Harry's scar, and what it might mean. And yet, he did not tell the boy. For all the information he gave Harry regarding the Horcruxes and the past of Tom Riddle who became Voldemort, he did not reveal the final truth.
He did not tell Harry that he is a sacrifice. That for true victory, he must be willing to give it all up. Sacrificial magic is powerful, but unpredictable. And he has never told Harry that his mother's sacrifice spared his life, but also Voldemorts, preserving a soul fragment within his scar. And so a second sacrifice is required, to truly end the Dark Lord, and it is to be Harry's sacrifice.
Harry, who has given his childhood, his schooling, and the best years of his youth to this endless struggle with the man who killed his parents, and who does not know that his only hope for defeating him lies in his willingness to become the man's victim one final time.
He mourns this. For Harry has not even truly had a chance to live yet, and yet he must die to defeat his nemesis.
A bitter irony that he struggles through the Horcrux hunt with the hope of a future after Voldemort is gone, never knowing that he must be willing to give up that hope if he is to achieve victory.
Harry may learn the truth from Severus, before the end. But even that is a cruel twist of fate.
He never asked anything of Harry. No promises such as those he claimed from Severus. And yet, like Severus, his plans will take everything from the young man. Harry too has given up his childhood, and frequently had his reputation and his honor called into question. And he too will be required to give up his dreams, his hopes, his future, for the final defeat of the Dark Lord Voldemort.
***AaE***
He watches his two young men through the Veil, both going about their quests, fighting impossible odds. One hopeful, one hopeless. And he knows the price will be high, the very highest, for both of them.
He watches, and he mourns. Mourns lost chances, lost dreams, lost opportunities. Mourns the final victory of the Darkness, that it will extinguish these two most precious lights in it's final throes of death.
He mourns, and he wishes he could go back, give them everything they deserve, hope and life and joy and innocence. Childhoods worth having, and dreams fulfilled, to bring pride and wonder and a true acceptance of self-worth to their hearts.
He wishes he could give them everything in the world. But it is too late, and he is trapped beyond the Veil, a silent witness to all they have lost and have yet to lose in the struggle. And in the end...in the end, he cannot give them anything.
Author's Note: Reading the books, especially the 7th one...this just sort of popped into my mind. I like to think that Dumbledore took the time to think about the mistakes he made.