Chapter 11 Memories of Pain
Snape leaned the old harp back against his left shoulder. His fingers moved gently over the strings and the Unicorn Chamber was again filled with music. But this time the tune was his and not the harp's chosing. His black eyes fixed Harry:" Well, young man! You wanted to talk to me! Speak!"
Harry took a long sip from his hot chocolate. Then he placed the mug back on the table and crossed his arms over his chest:"Will you tell me what is going on? I want to know, why Voldemort managed to come back by simply taking some bones of his father, the hand of that lousy Wormtail and my blood!"
Severus smiled sadly:"That was a very basic black magic trick he did. Most backwoods witches of the middle ages would have found it far beyond their professional ethics to do such a thing.......It is a kind of Satanist Ritual, Voldemort performed on that cemetry....as far as I can judge, because all I know about this day, is what you have told us in the Hospital Wing, after you'd recovered your senses!"
When Severus pronounced the word ,satanist' , the harp gave a sharp whin. Harry looked startled, first at the player then at the instrument.
„Indeed Harry, their kind is not terribly fond of magic so black!", the Potions Master stated."Harps are instruments of light!"
The boy let the explanations and also the harps reaction sink in. Another long sip of chocolate helped him.
„So this was not a potion, but a strange ritual? Why does Voldemort relies on stuff, even ...how did you call them, „middle ages backwoods witches" would not do?"
„I have asked myself the same question over and over again and….I came to a conclusion that at first sight may seem funny to you.....", Severus replied. The ,Old One'- Merlin- had asked him to explain this issue in detail to young Potter and the boy's need to know came handy to break terrible news a bit more gently. „He's a squib!"
„What!", Harry almost jumped from his seat. The Dark Lord, the most powerful black wizard of their times......a squib. That gitty old bat must have gone completely nuts.
„Shhh, calm young man! Not a squib in the sense that he could not do spells or curse and hex, but in the sense that there are thousand other ways to get your body back....., cleaner ways, I dare say...........it just needs some in-depth knowledge in the fields of alchemy or potions making or so-called high white magic.........there are very efficient prayers in this field, although few are instructed to a level of being able to use them! Harry it has been done before.......it is not very common, as it is against nature, but well......if you pretend to be the greatest black ,wizard' of your times, you should know. If not, you'r.......well …..a powerful and mean squib, but nevertheless a squib!" Severus had tried to make a difficult subject digestible for a fifteen-years old boy with the corresponding knowledge of magic and hoped that Harry would take his simplification.
The boy nodded condescendingly. What Severus tried to explain, was that Voldemort could not rise to the very heights of his own expectations, when it came to magic skills and advanced knowledge, either by lack of understanding or by lack of learning. Although the young Potions Master did not doubt the fact that Voldemort was powerful.
„In fact,"Snape continued, while his fingers moved gently over the harp's strings" all is depending on what really happened, the night your parents...died!" This was a dangerous terrain to walk on, a true minefield. It would need a great amount of tact and diplomacy of his to go through this touchy subject. Pachebel's Canon soothingly floated over the conversation.
But obviously Harry needed less comfort to speak about that fateful night then Severus himself. The boy simply met Snape's black eyes with his green ones in a straight look:"You may speak about that, Severus! I wanted to ask you a couple of questions related to this anyhow."
Snape nodded, although he was not covinced that he would be terribly willing to give Harry a detailed account of the night from his own point of view: „Well, you were the only person present, who survived .....but you were just two years old and I am not sure that you have any memories left....and if, could you speak about it?", the Potions Master gave the conversation a twist in a direction he wanted to explore. It was worth the try. Potentially a manifesto of courage from Harry and a suppressed early-childhood memory would allow him to finally endorse the ,Demon Theory'.
For a while Harry sat silent, sipping his hot chocolate and listening to the beautiful harp music. It was very comforting! He'd never thought that tunes could have this effect on him! A tiny, little devil inside his head nagged that Severus continued to play on purpose, knowing exactly how enthralling that old instrument was - charmed or not - and how easily physical and mental comfort made a person lower its guards……….especially when sitting at hardly 1 meter distance from another person, he habitually dreaded and was suspicious off. Already at the start-of-term banket in his first year, Harry had gotten the idea that the Potions master disliked him. By the end of his very first lesson in Snape's class, he knew he'd been wrong. The man did not dislike him - he hated him! After Quirell's destruction and Voldemort's temporary dismiss, Dumbledore had told him that Snape had tried the whole year to do all that was in his power only to get even with Harry's dead father who once had saved Severus' life, an act the obviously terribly proud man could never forgive. Was his actual behaviour, his ‚kindness', his willingness to answer only another attempt to get even with James Potter, so that Snape simply could go back to his ways of hating Harry's father in peace?The boy's mind wandered away from the little devil inside. What use now to mistrust Severus? He had not pressed Harry on this conversation! It was Harry who had come to speak with Snape. The boy gave a small sigh, then concentrated on carefully recollecting each and every piece of memory of the night his parents died.
Although Severus did not refrain from playing a rather complicat baroque composition of Corelli, his mind was fully concentrated on Harry's recollections of the night, when Voldemort killed his parents. The musical complication instead of distracting him, helped him to focus on the other issue. It had always been a habit of his to take refugee with the harp, when he needed to go through huge intellectual efforts. Now the effort was to filter the sole and unique clue for the Voldemort mistery from a diffuse recollection of memories thirteen years old and buried in a childs head for much too long. Harry related with a voice devoid of emotions. To protect himself the boy spoke, as if he was a bookkeeper who reported end-of-the-year business results for an enterprise: Everything was phrased in short sentences. He employed a very basic vocabulary. It was in a sense frightening! But when Harry had finished his eerie trip to the past, he did not collapse or break in tears, he straightened up on his seat.
„Now, what can you make of this, Severus?", he challenged the elder man's intellectual capacities,"I told you everything I remember, everything.....each and every detail!"
The Unicorn Chamber went silent. Snape stood up and paced the room for long minutes. Then, his back turned to Harry he started to speak. The green flash of light, fired on Harry and then immediately fired back against Voldemort! Harry's memory of a feeling inside himself, as if he'd burst. It made sense. Dumbledore had been wrong all those years. He wondered, if with some training that kid could not be brought to do magic without a wand!
„You were terrified that night! You were filled with the very strongest emotions a human being can have to a point that you'd almost burst! Voldemort threw the Death Spell ‚Aveda Kedavra' to destroy you! The very moment he went for his kill, you went -without even being conscious of what you wer doing - for yours! He had all his wards down, while yours where building up at that very moment, like a terrible impregnable medieval fortress. His spell bounced off from your defense and fired back against Voldemort, though killing him and not you!. But instead of simply dying, his body went to pieces, leaving the concentrate evil of his soul floating free! He's become that very night the most terrible manifestation of evil.........he's turned into a demon! The problem is, that nobody can kill a demon. All that may be done is to find that particular evil manifestation's weakness and rope him.....so to say, contain him. And if thoroughly contained, he'll not get out of bounds any longer, although part of his ‚evil' will continue to persist! But this part is no longer a deadly menace, just a nuisance....................."
Harry had listened to Severus carefully, absorbing each and every word the young Potions Master said. Only at the end, when he'd come up with his weak spot, roping, containing etc. the boy could not follow any more. He stood up from the bank and went over to Snape.
„Severus, can you explain so I may understand?"
The Potions Master laid his hand on the boy's shoulder and shrug his head. His eyes were sad:"As far as I got it, Harry -Voldemort has turned into ........well.......kind of super-boggart, collective nightmare.......revelling all our deepest, darkest desires and throwing them back on us thousandfold. It's somehow like.........", he thought for a while in silence. Only a muggle thing came on to his mind to further explanations; billions of particles of light bundled and then powered by energy and canalyzed to be released in the form of a laser beam, that would blow any target dressed in front of it to pieces.......
„So what can be done?"
„I have no clue, Harry! I do not know!" Snape pushed the boy gently towards the main entrance of the Unicorn Chamber. It was late and he had given all answers he knew. There was nothing else he could do that very night to explain more.......or better. He'd bring the kid to bed and then take a nap himself. That whole discussion had brought too many memories of pain. For Harry, but also for himself!