Story Title: The Echo
Rated: PG for epilogue compliance
Status: Complete / 300+
Summary: [Severus/Harry] Harry tells his son about the importance of choice.
Steve's Notes: Written for the third round of the snarry_ldws challenge community. The prompt was "the hat wanted to sort me into Slytherin" and the cliché was Possessive!Severus and Protective!Harry. I really stretched on the cliché, but it's there if you squint. (Hint: Harry's protectiveness isn't being applied to Severus.) D:
Disclaimer: Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling
He is crouched before his second son, a small eleven-year-old that looks as scared as Harry once was. Harry wants to say so many things, impart what lessons thirty-seven years of life have taught him, but he cannot cram a lifetime of bad decisions, mistakes, regrets, and triumphs into the sparse moments before the train departs.
What is he supposed to say, anyway? He could begin, "The hat wanted to sort me into Slytherin," but that isn't something he wants to share. He could parrot, "Sometimes, I think we sort too soon," but that isn't the right thing to say. He settles on a touch to Albus Severus' temple and reminds his son of Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape, the first a great man and the second the bravest man Harry has ever known.
(Harry's chest constricts here, as he remembers Snape dying on the dirty floor of the Shrieking Shack. He remembers Snape's fingers, vices in his shirt, and how he rasped "Look—at—me—" as his final request. He remembers the nightmares and the hollow wishes that followed, the rage of indignity and injustice, the absolute and bottomless longing. He remembers how Snape looked at him in those last moments, as though he could spend the rest of a longer life staring into the green of Harry's eyes and never look away. He remembers how he wished and wished and wished that Snape had survived so Harry could give him all he wanted and deserved, all his love—)
So Harry tells his son about the importance of choice, because that's the best advice he can offer. He tells him that the hat will listen to that choice and wonder suffuses Albus Severus' green eyes.
"Really?" he whispers reverently.
"It did for me," Harry replies.
end.