TURKEY AND CHIPOLATA

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.

A/N: Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste, Cecelle and Lady Memory.

Potter interrupted the feast just after Severus finished his first bite of turkey and chipolata.

"You want to speak to me? Now?" He glanced meaningly at the spread table, but pushed back his chair on a nod from Dumbledore. "I'll walk you to the gates."

"I didn't expect you to come this easily," the boy – man – said, as they walked down the front steps and into the wind.

"I assume it's about Hermione?" Severus said.

"No, I've heard her lecture about butting out, thanks; I left her giving it to the Weasleys. But, well, I said something about you holding grudges against dead people for twenty years, and she said it's not that simple."

Severus thought of all the years he'd kept his secrets inside, like pus in a boil. He pulled his cloak more tightly around him and strode on.

"I remember your Sorting feast," he said, when the lake was behind them. "Those eyes in that face, hating me, as she learnt to. Your father and Petunia loathed me on sight, but your mother was my best friend once. For years."

"But you called her a Mudblood!"

"My father always said all women were lying whores, and when I saw her flirting with yours while I lay choking, for one insane moment I let myself agree. I thought – that word – would be less offensive. Everyone said it, in Slytherin."

He glanced at the boy, but those green eyes were turned downward.

"After that she wanted nothing to do with me. I persuaded myself that joining the Dark Lord was my only hope of protecting her. If he won, he'd owe me, I hoped; if not, she'd be safe from him, and what did it matter if I was dead or in Azkaban? And then, one day, I heard a prophecy..." He swallowed.

Lily Potter's son stopped. He stopped too and stared at the path, blindly, waiting.

"Then it was you?"

"It was. Now do you see?" If he looked past the blaze in those eyes, he could see the big beech tree he'd once been ambushed from. He couldn't look past those eyes. "I can't see you without remembering that I killed her. That I earned your hatred; that I deserve it. And you were so like your reckless arrogant father that I was sure I'd fail again and lose you too, the last of Lily that exists in this world."

He waited.

"Well? Have you nothing to say?"

"Only one insane moment?" Lily's son said irrelevantly. "Ron would say you're a complete fruitcake."

"Potter!"

"If you're wanting to know whether I hate you more or less or about the same, you'll have to wait. I need to think about it." He kicked at a loose pebble. "Was it really all for my mum? What about everyone else?"

Severus lifted his chin. "Everyone else could rot; I hoped they would." Then.

"Then why did you work so hard to save us?" Harry asked.

Severus sighed. "I grew up."

A/N Turkey and chipolata sausages were two of the foods served at Harry's first year Xmas feast.