Specter's Judgement: Death's Vengeance

Writer's Block: I WON! (is hit with Blood Wound) I WON! (is hit with Storm of the Century) I WON! (has a satallite dropped on it!) NEER! NEER! (is flung into a black hole) NEEEEEER!

Me: (panting) I wonder if University is giving it power...I must be much more nervous about it than I thought I was at first...post secondary education...whew. Thought I'd never get there to be honest.

Harry: (peering at script) So, am I going to blame your new Dragon Age obsession with why my speech patterns are suddenly mimicking Cole's?

Me: (winces) Maybe?

Ginny: Hey! Why are we only talking to Snape in this chapter?

Me: (frustrated) Because I want to find a way of confronting Dumbledore that isn't cut and paste from every other manipulative fic I've planned. I still think he's a tool using berk, but maybe there's more to it than that...a human weakness. Something I can't put my finger on.

Writer's Block: NEEEEER!

Harry: Ah for fuck's sake-!

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Chapter 4: Discussions 1: Snape

"Hello, Professor Snape."

Severus Snape had hallucinated a few times. Not often enough to seek muggle medication (outside of mind healers, the wizard world – due to its stubborn medieval aesthetics – knew woefully little about the illnesses of the mind) but when his nightmares were at their worst, or when he was under torture, sometimes he imagined voices. But they were always distant. Quiet.

This one was calm, pitched to a normal room conversation, and directly behind him. Moreover, it belonged to a dead teenager he was swore to protect. For years he had dedicated his life to just that. But in the end, he couldn't protect the boy from his own instincts.

Severus slowly turned around. Harry Potter was leaning back against the desk, a scowling Ginny Weasley on his right. The paleness of his skin was perfectly characteristic of a corpse; he was wrapped in a black cloak with a hood. Snape recognized it. He'd seen many people die in the Ministry at the hands of someone wearing just that coat. He hadn't seen the person's face. Now he was rather glad he hadn't. He definitely would have been given away. Those green eyes were staring a hole in his head; contrary to the boy's over emotional states in life, here his expression was cool, contemplative...and rather secretive. It was no longer easy to read his face, and his mind was completely silent – not even ambient noise was available to the master mind reader. Harry Potter stood still, examining him with something that seemed like curiosity.

He hadn't heard them entering. It was like they had materialized from the ether, between one moment and the next.

His throat was dry. He tried to speak a few times but no sound came out...then... "Professor?" He said faintly. Potter had only called him that because he was required to.

"Well, that was better than an attempted AK to the face," Potter mused, running his hands through his endlessly messy hair. For some reason, instead of reminding Snape of James, his brain darted back to how Lily would irritably tug at her bangs whenever they fell in her eyes as she peered over a book. "I mean, it wouldn't have worked, but still..."

Weasley snorted and turned towards him. "You're certain about this?" She asked softly. "You don't have to acknowledge anything."

That seemed to get Snape's jaw unstuck. "How?" He croaked.

Potter waved a hand dismissively. "It's a long story...a little on the melodramatic side, but then again, that was my entire life." He tilted his head. "You've taken good care of the kids here, before I killed the Carrows. There are a dozen who would have died from injuries or suicide if you hadn't been looking out for them."

"Suicide?" Here he was, Severus Snape, potions prodigy, genius, life long spy...reduced to one word questions, hoping it wasn't too obvious his damned hands were shaking at the sight of his dead charge. Lily's green eyes were dimmed; there was energy in them still, but it was different, raw, glowing like a ghost's.

"Eleanor Branstone," Potter responded simply. One of the school's muggleborns, Snape remembered. "She was so close to despair when you rerouted her punishment to Hagrid." The boy smiled fondly. "The man is the best friend one could have at your lowest moments."

"Why don't we visit him instead?" Weasley asked, faintly exasperated but clearly wondering more on Potter's motivations. "I understand things were more complicated than they seemed, but still..."

"More complicated?" Oh good, two words. Panic crept up on Snape. The boy knew everything.

Potter didn't get up. He lounged against the desk, his expression damnably unreadable. "My mother said that if you had left Avery's company, she would have accepted your apology." He said plainly.

There it was. "I was never a strong man."

"If you weren't a strong man, you wouldn't still be here." Potter said pointedly.

"That's our world for you, Potter. The good die young and the evil grow to be old and wretched, spreading poison through their children with their dying breaths." Snape drove his nails into his palms to stop the shaking from getting worse. "You saw that much for yourself."

Potter shook his head. "That belief is more harmful than any evil," He said, like father scolding his child. Once that would have enraged him. But now there was a cantor and knowledge in Potter's voice that stuck his feet to the ground. "When people passively accept evil as part of their lives instead of fighting against it, Umbridge and her ilk gain power. Even Voldemort cannot fight the whole world, but the world will not stand united against him because they believe that somehow, he is 'just part of life'."

Weasley gave a loud snort at that.

"My father is sorry you weren't at graduation." Potter remarked, before Snape could make any comments about humans lacking the ability to uphold ideals. "He knows you probably wouldn't have accepted it, but he wishes he'd had a chance to say it anyway...he really did mean it."

"Say what?"

"...'I'm sorry. For everything.'." Potter quoted.

Snape stood stock still for a moment. Then he stumbled over to a chair and collapsed on it, not sure whether to laugh helplessly or wheeze as he struggled to get his breathing under control. The whole world seemed to be sitting cockeyed. "How?" he asked.

Potter shook his head slightly. "People can change." He said. "You did."

"I am no knight in shining armour."

"Of course not." Weasley snorted. "You're an awful, closed off bat who's past controlled his entire life." She paused, then looked away. "...And you were also our protector. So thanks. For that much." The words were bitten off, like part of her didn't want to speak them, but they came out anyway.

It made the Weasley girl stronger than him.

"Then you killed most of Voldemort's inner circle." Snape finally managed to get out a coherent thought. "All those inexplicable deaths, they were you."

"Of course." Potter said simply. "And all the horcruxes are gone too."

"All of them?" It seemed almost anti-climatic. But then again, here was Potter, returned from the dead, in whatever form this was. No one had anticipated putting something like that in the cards! Not even Voldemort, who was obsessed with avoiding that fate himself...

Potter nodded again.

"So what now?" Idly Snape wondered if he was about to get smited himself – the final person on a long list. He suddenly found himself lacking a desire to escape such a decision. Potter knew everything. Lily and even the older Potter vocalized their pity through him. What was any of that supposed to mean, if not a final acknowledgement before he was sent off to meet his punishment?

"You say at Hogwarts," Potter said, making no move to summon the scythe the former potions professor knew he possessed. The older man blinked twice; the spectre waited, when he apparently saw some sign of that sinking in, he went on, "A good chunk of the Order will be here soon, along with Sirius and Remus – do try to be cordial with them, its all almost over. Children and civilians will be headed this way; your job will be to wrangle them."

"Civilians?" Snape echoed, baffled. "From where?"

"From downtown." Weasley said, as if she thought it was really obvious. "From London. It's about to get messy down there; they're going to get a feeling – like a big storm's coming – so they'll show up at the door hoping to batten down the hatches." She waved all around her.

"I won't destroy too much on purpose," Potter said, looking vaguely chagrined, "but I can't really promise anything. This way, the most precious will be safe."

Snape paused uncertainly. "What...about me? Why aren't you...including me on that list you so clearly had?"

"Good does not wash out all the bad...or bad, all the good. Live with it. Live with everything. Keep trying to be good now." Potter responded. Those eyes bored holes in him, in that moment, they were somehow even more invasive than Dumbledore's damn twinkling blue orbs. "Can I hold you to that? Repenting?"

Snape didn't say anything. He just nodded.

Potter held out his hand to Weasley. The redhead raised an eyebrow at him, before taking it...and both teenagers disappeared, leaving his office empty.

Slowly, Snape stood up. Somehow, he wished that Potter had killed him. But, he supposed, that would have been the easy way out. He stared at the wall for a very long time, before deciding to go out and make some sort of announcement. He had no idea when everyone would be here.

End Chapter

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