Disclaimer: All rights belong to the inimitable J.K. Rowling.

Too Deep for the Healing

Chapter 38

The Unknown Potion

"Perhaps it is still a memory that you need from me, Professor," Potter murmured. "It's worth a try."

Snape stared at the emerging image. He saw a dark place faintly lit by a glow of greenish light, a place with a sinister atmosphere, a place bearing the hallmark of the Dark Lord's touch, which sent a shudder down his spine. The sensation told him, whatever Potter was going to show, he was not going to like it. Slowly, the picture zoomed in to focus on two people standing by a stone basin, the source of the greenish light. Dumbledore's wand was moving in complicated shapes over the basin, and when it was withdrawn, Snape heard Potter's voice.

"You think the Horcrux is in there, sir?"

So it was Dumbledore hunting for a Horcrux – with Potter. Was he teaching the boy, training him for his future task – or did he really need the boy's company, his assistance? The Horcrux was guarded by a potion … and what had Potter ever known about potions?

"I can only conclude that this potion is supposed to be drunk."

Naturally. All potions were supposed to be drunk, but there were still other things you could do with a potion. If the potion came from the Dark Lord, you might want to take a sample of it and have it analysed to see how it had been made, to see whether there was a way to neutralize its harmful effect before giving it to someone to drink.

Snape did not expect an analysis to take place. If Dumbledore had wanted to have a dark potion analysed, he would certainly have turned to him. But Dumbledore had never brought him that sample…

In the Pensive image, Dumbledore was explaining the situation as thoroughly as though he had counted, from the beginning, on a future audience that would need explanation.

"It might paralyse me, cause me to forget what I am here for, create so much pain I am distracted, or render me incapable in some other way. This being the case, Harry, it will be your job to make sure I keep drinking, even if you have to tip the potion into my protesting mouth. You understand?"

Snape, in any case, understood. He was watching Potter in the Pensieve image, and knew why this particular memory was being shown to him. He had no idea how the verdict might be influenced by a piece of memory that was exclusively about Potter and Dumbledore, but he understood what Potter was trying to communicate to him.

Potter hesitated, Potter tried to object, but it was not so simple to say 'no' to Dumbledore. If anyone, Snape could tell that. Apparently, the boy had even been sworn to complete obedience, a precaution Dumbledore had never found necessary in his case.

Snape thought he had seen enough, but the memory scene continued, and the chains kept him tied to the chair…

Dumbledore downed gobletful after gobletful of the potion; then he staggered and fell forwards. Snape watched as Potter, revulsion and hatred etched in his face, took the goblet from Dumbledore's shaking hand and poured the rest of its contents down the old man's throat, exactly as Snape had poured a goblet of golden medicine down the same throat before. Then Potter refilled the goblet and – ostensibly pleading and coaxing, but in reality taking advantage of Dumbledore's helplessness – made him drink again and again.

Every pair of eyes in the room was fixed on the scene, where Dumbledore was now moaning and screaming and begging in pain, and the goblet kept approaching mercilessly.

"Stop it, Potter."

The boy did not seem to hear him.

"Stop it," Snape repeated, more loudly. "You have no right to expose him like this!"

This time Potter looked at Snape and shook his head without a word. The scene continued. Snape had seen Dumbledore, the real Dumbledore, half-dead, dying and dead, but this was something completely different. He had never, not even in that last moment, seen Dumbledore driven to despair, broken and afraid, pleading violently with an invisible foe, blaming himself for a mysterious crime.

"… I know I did wrong, oh, please make it stop …"

Involuntarily, Snape gave a shiver.

"Please, please, please, no … not that, not that, I'll do anything …"

Snape had long stopped watching, but he could not help hearing. The word Dumbledore had just used triggered an influx of memories of his own, which blended with the image of Dumbledore shaking and screaming in pain, while Harry Potter was giving him more and more of the Dark Lord's potion … poison.

Snape was very close to begging and screaming himself. It was as though Potter had just exposed Dumbledore naked and with horrible open wounds to an audience excited by the sensational spectacle and revelling in Dumbledore's pain and humiliation. Pain and humiliation – the very things Snape had been supposed to save Dumbledore from, and now he seemed to be sharing them with the old man as no one else in the room could. What did Potter think he was doing? The indignation on Dumbledore's behalf was growing in him until he felt he would explode, breaking the chains and everything else that was there to restrict him, and while Dumbledore, in the Pensieve image, was desperately demanding death, Snape could not bear it any longer.

"ENOUGH!"

His effort to keep his cool had been wasted. So that was the story Dumbledore had never had a chance to tell. That was why Dumbledore had been so weak and helpless in the tower and that was how Dumbledore had known with absolute certainty that it was time to go. His job had only been to finish what Potter had started… But it was nobody's business, it should have remained forever between Potter and himself how Dumbledore had chosen to die in the hands of his two closest allies, jealous rivals for his attention, recognition and love, and what it was like to watch him die then go on living and remember…

"It is all right, Professor Snape, it is all right…"

Jones, his former student, was standing by him, shielding him, to some extent, from craning onlookers. It was the guard's job to step in when a defendant became violent, but instead of directing a wand at him, Jones was handing him a goblet of water to drink. The water was from a jug on a table near the seats of the Wizengamot. But the goblet – that was not from the Ministry. It was a goblet that Snape recognized. If he had not, he would have pushed goblet and hand away rather ungraciously. This goblet was usually kept in a cupboard in the camp hospital, and Snape had seen it in Irene's hands countless times.

"Healer Burbage instructed me to give you some water if you should be thirsty, upset or exhausted during the trial…"

The goblet in Potter's hand with the Dark Lord's poison in it… Irene's goblet handed to him with pure, clear water in it… He thought of the shock Irene had been through, of Charity Burbage and the snake… Irene had been able to anticipate, from so far away, that he would need her, and she had found a way to remind him, in a critical moment, why he was doing it all. He accepted the proffered goblet and slowly took a gulp. The water was to him what earth had been to Antaeus, the Greek half-giant; it gave him back his strength, just as the Dark Lord's potion had taken away Dumbledore's. He shot a glance of loathing at Potter before turning to the council.

"I apologise," he said with cold composure.

By then, the Pensieve image had disappeared.

"After that," Potter said, addressing the Wizengamot, "I took Professor Dumbledore and the object we had found in the cave back to Hogwarts. We did not know that the castle had been invaded by Death Eaters. Professor Dumbledore, who had become extremely weak after drinking the potion, wanted to see Professor Snape."

Potter put another memory into the Pensieve, and Snape watched himself cast the Unforgivable Curse. He was silently holding on to the goblet. At least Dumbledore did not suffer more, he died quickly and painlessly, just as he had wanted, at the end of a long life of which Snape, despite nearly two decades of close acquaintanceship, hardly knew anything.

"By sharing these memories," Potter continued, "I wanted to show you what it was like to work with Professor Dumbledore. As you have seen, just before his death, Professor Dumbledore gave me orders that in essence were not very different from the orders he had given to Professor Snape. We both obeyed, and we both believed that we had chosen the lesser of two evils, however painful those choices were. Professor Dumbledore had given us further tasks, tasks of vital importance, and he chose his own manner of dying to serve those purposes. On the one hand, it was his hope to track down and obtain one more Horcrux before leaving the rest of the hunt to me. On the other hand, he wanted to place Professor Snape in a strategic position to wield the greatest possible influence over Riddle and his gang."

Potter paused, and Snape had the impression that the boy, too, had to gather some more strength to be able to go on.

"I had friends to help me. Professor Snape's mission had to be kept secret from everyone. His only advisor was a painting on a wall – Dumbledore's portrait. In an extremely dangerous and stressful situation, Professor Snape fulfilled his duties to perfection. If obeying Dumbledore's orders was his only crime, then I declare myself an accomplice and demand to be judged by the same standards as Professor Snape!"

There was a wave of murmur behind Snape's back – then all of a sudden, a thundering round of applause filled the large courtroom.

Obviously, Potter could do no wrong.

"The Wizengamot," Shacklebolt said, "will retire to discuss the case."

Snape was led to a small, adjoining room, where, as Jones put it, he could 'stretch a bit'. Potter accompanied them, and as soon as the door was locked behind the guard, Snape rounded on him.

"How dare you –"

"I only did what Dumbledore ordered me to do," Potter snapped. "Do I have to explain?"

"Dumbledore never ordered you to expose his most vulnerable moments at a courtroom viewing!

"You mean that." Potter frowned. "I've done it for you."

"I didn't ask you to do it!"

"Dumbledore is dead -"

"SO WHAT?" Snape shouted. "Do you suppose it doesn't matter now? That's exactly what you did to me when you thought I was dead! What makes you think discretion ends with death?"

"It matters to you," Potter replied, "because you are alive. The living must live. Dumbledore would forgive me for choosing your interest instead of his."

"Forgive you? Forgive you for letting this crowd watch his pain, his humiliation, for letting such a genie out of the bottle? I can already see how the Prophet will jump at this chance… What will they make of all that begging and self-accusation? Never mind that he was under the influence of lethal Dark Magic that must have affected his mind!"

"There is a true story behind that, which has already been published. You can read about it in Rita Skeeter's book."

"That woman is an asp!"

"Granted, but this time the truth is juicier than lies. You can ask Aberforth!"

"Ask Aberforth! Of course! Shall I tell you what I will do if I ever get out of here?"

Snape broke off suddenly, glared at Potter, then, with a gesture of resignation, turned round. Not even in his fury was he prepared to utter what he would do if he were free, and he did not want Potter to see the despair in his eyes. Potter sighed.

"My purpose is to clear your name so you can be free and do what you wish to do," he said to Snape's back. "Now that it has been proved that you weren't a Death Eater, I don't want you to be sentenced as a simple murderer, as Dumbledore's ally who has overreached himself! I loved Dumbledore as much as you did and I wouldn't have shown this memory to anyone without good reason. Do you think it is easy for me to remember? You finished him off, all right, and it was the work of a second, but do you realize what I did? Do you realize how many minutes it took?"

There was a period of silence, during which Snape slowly turned back.

"Dumbledore was doomed by the injury on his hand," he said quietly. There was no more anger or loathing in his voice. "He wouldn't have lived much longer."

"That was never the point, was it?"

Snape shook his head.

"You must have been tormented by the memory of it," he muttered.

Potter ruffled his hair.

"In the beginning – not very much. I had convinced myself that Dumbledore could have lived if things had happened otherwise in the castle. I had convinced myself that Madam Pomfrey and even you could have cured him. I had little time to think about what had taken place in the cave, and I hated you so much for killing him that I had no room for my own guilt at all… It had been the same when Sirius died."

"I did not kill your godfather."

"I know you didn't. Later, my mind was full of other things. But recently, it has come back. I have understood… Didn't I tell you I had understood something important about Dumbledore and you and myself? You see… in the end, there was no difference. He left us the same legacy. He treated us the same way."

"Almost the same way," Snape corrected gruffly, and Potter conceded with a nod.

Snape's thoughts were so occupied with what he had found out about Dumbledore that he nearly forgot about what he was waiting for. He could not ignore it any more, however, when he had to go back to the courtroom.

How could he worry about Dumbledore's posthumous reputation when his own life, his own future, was at stake again, and not only his but Irene's as well? He wondered whether he would hear the verdict right away or he would have to endure some more of the proceedings. Was there, could there be, any more to say on either side?

Though a mere minute seemed like an hour, in reality he did not need to wait long to find out. The members of the council were ready to return a verdict. Not guilty… Not guilty...

Not guilty.