Brancaster
He always seems to remember Snape as an uneasy black shape against the white of snow at Hogwarts. He doesn't seem to have any memories of him outdoors in spring, with the new green of leaves and the Quidditch pitch reviving from the winter's games. Nor does he remember Snape against the blue skies and browned grass of summer. It's either shades of grey from the dungeons and cold stone of the interior of Hogwarts, or the black and white of winter.
That, he thinks, is why the memory of Snape on the dusty grey floor of the Shrieking Shack is so vivid. True, the room in the shack is almost monochrome grey, with Snape's black clothes and white face, but that sharp, disturbing gout of red, the pool of blood on the greyed old floorboards, the gaping gash in Snape's white throat seem almost indecently colourful.
The image sits behind his eyelids, and he goes back to the Shack, to the room, as soon as he has a moment.
There is nothing there.
No body, stiffened in death or writhing in agony.
No blood on the floorboards.
Not even a disturbance of the dust to show that anything has happened in this room.
He looks in the other rooms, even though he knows, knows it was this room.
Nothing. No sign, no trace.
Everyone is too busy, too preoccupied, in those first few Voldemort-free days, to take any notice of his questions.
And then, there isn't anyone to ask.
Kingsley and the other Ministry people go back to London, the teachers go back to teaching, the students go back to studying. No one wants to listen to him worrying about the missing body of a Death Eater.
He remembers he left the pensieve out in Dumbledore's office with Snape's memories in it, races up there, but there is no pensieve.
He asks Dumbledore's portrait, "Where did the pensieve go?"
"Oh, it's in safe hands, dear boy," Dumbledore answers.
"But the memories - I didn't mean to leave them here."
Dumbledore's portrait just smiles at Harry.
He feels angry, but then, he feels angry such a lot of the time, these days.
Either that, or dead inside.
No one else seems to feel as he does.
They're all happy, rejoicing.
He thinks he should feel happy that they're happy, but somehow, that's not happy enough.
Ron and Hermione are spending most of their time together now. They were the closest to it all, but they didn't know everything, they didn't experience all he did.
Ginny doesn't know.
Yes, she had her run-in with Tom Riddle, but she doesn't remember much of it, or so she claims.
She certainly doesn't want to talk about it with Harry, after the second time he steers the conversation around to it.
He feels like he's in a sort of limbo.
He'd sort of hoped, after Voldemort was gone, that he'd become normal, whatever that might be. Or that he would have no need to worry about it. But he's still alive, no one else is interested, and he doesn't know what to do.
Kingsley talks him into joining the Aurors, and it seems a good idea at of the action and adrenaline he's gotten used to. It doesn't really work out like that, but he suspects it's better than anything else he might try. He's seeing Ginny, and everything is moving along. He spends several nights a week in London, though, on his own. He insists on this, even though Ginny would like to make it all official and permanent and full-time. Those nights, where he doesn't sleep much, but sits staring at the blank wall in a small impersonal room, where his thoughts churn round, where sometimes he gets drunk alone on firewhisky; those nights sometimes feel like the only real time in a life that feels out of his control.
He sometimes feels as though someone else is living his life.
Sometimes, it's as though he's completely disconnected with reality, that no one around him is real.
He remembers Snape, those nights.
He shouts, throws things against the wall.
Sometimes he cries.
After his probationary year as an Auror, he starts using the job and his contacts. He puts out feelers, asks questions. He looks in the records, pretending he's doing research on Death Eaters who escaped justice. Everyone just lets him get on with it. He does his job, but he suspects that even if he didn't, even if he just sat at his desk every day, or didn't even turn up to the office, he'd still get paid, he'd still be an Auror. He does his job, but he rarely partners with anyone. He prefers to work alone, and he's good at what he does. Gradually, though, there are fewer supporters of Voldemort out there to round up, less instances of Unforgiveables, more mundane, small-time lawbreaking. He marries Ginny, in a big wedding reported at length in the Daily Prophet and the Quibbler. Ginny and Molly make all the arrangements, and Harry just invites one or two people from the office. He feels unreality wash over him throughout the day, which feels pastel and glockenspiel and spiderweb. When he and Ginny disapparate to Paris, he can't hold his focus and she has to get him there.
Without her, he'd be splinched, parts of him raining down in a swathe from Ottery St. Catchpole across the channel to the French capital.
He's not sure that that might not have been a better fate for him, but Ginny doesn't deserve his inattention, and he struggles, and succeeds in being more or less there for her. She knows it's not right, but pretends; they both agree to pretend. Sharing the bed, sharing their bodies is soft and insubstantial as gossamer. It does calm him, and he is grateful that she allows him time and the patience to find some way they can be together without him flying apart. She holds him at night, until he has to rise and stare out of the window, or pace the streets. She lets him go, and does not question him too closely when he comes back. He is grateful to her for being calm and whole enough that he doesn't have to be.
He visits the French Aurors, making the connection through a friend of Fleur's, and looks through their records. Ginny does not complain that he seems to be working on their honeymoon. He thinks she's relieved he doesn't spend his whole time there. He finds some old-school Aurors who are more receptive to his questions than the young ones, Aurors that remind him of Moody. They promise to alert him if any information comes their way. He convinces Ginny to take a detour to Bulgaria on the way home, and meets with Krum in Sofia while Ginny is happily shopping. This, too, is a successful meeting, and he now feels he has spread his net as wide as he can.
He's still not sure why he is doing this, or what he'd do with any information he might receive.
He's not even sure if he wants, or expects any information.
It's almost as if Snape is a maggot who has burrowed into his brain, and is eating it from the inside out.
He thinks that might not be more painful.
He and Ginny settle into life after war as well as can be expected. He continues to spend one or two nights a week in London, staring at blank walls. The one time Ginny tries to stop him, he spends the night pacing the house, moving furniture, casting defensive spells. The house is in chaos the next morning, they have a blazing row, and Ginny sends him off to London to work off his – energy away from her. Soon after that, she discovers she is pregnant, and most assuredly doesn't want him around when he is in one of his moods. So he resumes his London sojourns.
Ginny spends more time at the Burrow the closer the baby is to its due date; Harry goes, too, but needs to leave if too many people gather. Ron and Hermione spend lots of time there, too, along with George.
Occasionally, he and George go for long walks, but they make each other sad. After the boy is born, Ginny depends on her mother more. Harry loves James, and feels more connected, but Ginny doesn't leave them alone for too long after the time she finds him telling James in great detail about Voldemort's horcruxes.
She tells him, "He may only be a baby, but no one knows how much babies remember. He doesn't need to know such things."
The information comes by owl one evening after one of their non-rows. Ginny has been telling him, in no uncertain terms, exactly where he is failing, as a father and a husband. He has never known how to respond, so he either goes quiet or agrees. He knows he's not good at sharing his feelings, he knows he's not warm or easy to be with.
The owl drops the message in his hand and flies off, not waiting for a treat.
Harry opens the note, and is out of the door in a minute, barely pausing to tell Ginny,"Don't wait up, I may be a couple of days on this one."
Outside, he looks at the note more closely.
From one of his Ministry contacts, it merely states, "Target may be Brancaster area".
He apparates to the coast, not even thinking of his next move.
He certainly doesn't consider why he doesn't wait till the morning.
The wind is coming in off the North Sea, a solid presence in the landscape. The rest is a vast mudflat, silvery grey under a silvery grey sky. There is the silvery grey edge of a sea somewhere far out under the wind and sky, but this is more a suspicion than the evidence of his eyes. He casts a warming charm on himself and stands, breathing in the wild air. His ears adjust, and he distinguishes the calls of thousands of seabirds, the creak of wood being forced to yield to the will of the wind, the susurration of grasses bent double by the weight of air, the sound of water riffling through the sand and mud.
He begins to walk. It doesn't seem to matter which way, and he allows the wind and land to dictate his steps.
As the light slowly rises, he thinks he sees a shape, a darker area in the night. He hopes for the dawn, having had a fill of this raw border between land and sea, but after a while, sees the edge of the moon rising to swim the waves of clouds in the sky. He forges his way through the marsh towards the smudge of darkness in the light. In this wide, flat, empty wind-scoured plain, he realises there is a tower rising, pointing skywards. This must be his goal, there can be nothing else so unearthly, so unbending in this land.
The black finger of stone cuts the rising moon in half.
To either side, silvergold reflections cast a broad field; he follows the straight black path to the tower. As he nears, he senses, more than sees, someone watching him from close on the structure. Under the lee of the stones, the darkness becomes inky; he loses sight of the moonlight, of the curve of the earth and sea, of the constant batter of water and wind. He sees the man move and his wand goes up, a moment too late. He's held against the wall, the bone of an arm pressed against his windpipe, the other arm holding a wand under his chin.
The sneer on the face thrust into his is unmistakeable.
His eyes widen, breath cut off, heart stopping.
He finds himself on his hands and knees on the damp ground, wandless.
"Go away. You are not welcome," the voice grinds out, harsh, rasping.
"No."
He looks up, up the long thin legs, up the long emaciated body, to the face, all harsh angles and darkness beneath the long whipping strings of hair.
He stays on his knees.
He thinks the eyes narrow, but he can't see.
"No."
There is nothing else he can think of to say.
"Why?"
He considers the question, knowing his life hangs on this moment.
"You want me. I want you."
"You do not know what I want. You do not know what you want. You do not know what you ask for."
"I know better than I did when I was twelve. I know better than I did at fifteen."
He is suddenly lifted, and his back ground against the sharp stones as the long dark body presses him to the wall.
"You want this again? Are you really so self-destructive?"
"Yes."
His mind going black and thoughtless, directionless, he grasps the long flailing hair in his fists and pulls the face to his mouth. The man jerks away, then attacks his mouth with lips and teeth and tongue, bruising his lips, raising fire in his belly.
"You are a fool to come here."
"Yes."
The tower is dank and dark, like a dungeon in the sky. The moon scud lights the room at the top fitfully with silver. This is so far away from making love that he has no guilt for Ginny. This isn't even anything that might be called sex.
Snape doesn't speak, looks half-mad. Harry supposes living here, on the edge of the world, he may very well be mad. His eyes absorb the angular figure as he's bound to a stone buttress. The man hardly looks at him as he sweeps aside his robe, slashes his wand to tear Harry's jeans and boxers.
Straight in, no preparation.
The man is rock hard, an iron projection from the cold groin pressed against his flinching buttocks. He is driven against the rough rock by the gristly, gnarled cock, his own cock finding altogether too much friction on the stone. He comes anyways, feeling most of the skin has been left behind as sacrifice to the keeper of this tower. His ass is leaking come, his hands, thighs, prick bloody. Snape releases him from the buttress and squints at him in the half-darkness.
"What did you come here for?"
"I came for what you give me."
"You are a fool."
The man turns away, goes to lay himself on a cot by the wall.
"But then, you always were a fool."
Harry stands, staggers over to the cot, slumps down beside it. After some minutes, he feels the bony fingers move through his hair to scrape at his scalp.
"Don't be a complete fool, Potter. Get up here," the voice growls.
And Harry joins the man in the narrow bed, both of them still in their damp clothes beneath a damp, salt-rough blanket.
It is one of the most restful nights Harry has known since Voldemort's fall.