TITLE: Quiet the Past
RATING: G
WARNING: Not DH-Epilogue Compliant
WORD COUNT: 296

Prompt: Must include the phrase: "I wish you hadn't said that."

Harry popped his head into the infirmary, and approached its only patient quietly, as if he believed Snape would fly or disappear away.

"I suppose this is a time to offer my congratulations Potter."

Snape opened his eyes, slightly smirking after Harry jumped in surprise.

Harry sat down and opened his mouth to say that he was sincerely glad Snape survived, but the words would not appear. Despite everything, Harry couldn't talk of his gratefulness to this man. Not this soon.

Instead Harry said, "I wish you hadn't said that."

"Ungratefulness abounds, I see. Well then-"

"Not about your congratulations but-"

"Don't interrupt me, Potter," Snape's eyes narrowed, "not that then? What about when I called you your father? That's something the other's expect you to be proud of. But we both know what a coward he was."

He wants me to call him the coward again, Harry realized. It would make this easier for him.

"Not that," Harry spoke calmly and slowly. "I wish you hadn't said you'd give Dumbledore anything, anything in return."

Snape, Harry could see, prolonged the silence on purpose. When he finally spoke, the sound of his voice actually shocked Harry a little.

"Is this some kind of ultimate revenge Potter? You bring up a memory in which I tried to make the Headmaster swear that would never reach your ears? And it hadn't, not by his lips, but forced from my own."

"No. That's not it Professor. I wish it hadn't come to that at all," Harry spoke more quickly and easily now. "But thank you. For everything."

Harry continued to sit in the silence that followed. This wasn't the beginning; this was an epilogue to kill the soul of Voldemort's reign.

They had time to make a beginning now.