A/N: And so ends "Regards, Harry." I planned the format of this chapter a long time ago. I hope it ends the story in a fitting way, with at least a glimmer of hope. Harry is steeling himself in these three days, and finally understanding. As for the closing song, I first envisioned it for Albus, but I think now that it's just as fitting for Severus. I'm leaving for a week and a half of vacation on Thursday and will start the sequel to this story, tentatively titled "One Man's Island," when I return. -SS
Chapter 44
June 12-June 14
-Harry-
12 June, 1997
Thursday
Dear Severus:
I found a place to be by myself. The castle is in chaos. Classes are canceled; they're sending us all home on Saturday after the Headmaster's funeral. Bill was mauled by Greyback—his face is a mess but he'll recover. His family—and Fleur—are rallying around him. I couldn't stand seeing him like that but he called me in this morning and made everyone leave so he could talk to me in private. He told me that I was his responsibility now, at least until my birthday, and that he's taking me away with him as soon as the funeral is over. I was never so grateful for anything in my entire life…except for you.
Everyone is tiptoeing around me except for Ginny. Minerva pulled me into her office to ask me how Albus died. Not that I needed to—they interrogated some of the captured Death Eaters with Veritaserum. It's just that she needed to know. She needed to know that he didn't suffer but she already knew more than I did before last night. She knew why you did it, Severus. She sat me in a chair right in front of her and gave me tea with a splash of firewhiskey and pulled her own chair so close to me that our knees were nearly touching. And she said that I was never ever to doubt you, Severus. She said you are brave, and honorable and that delivering that curse to the Headmaster and leaving me behind were the hardest things you ever had to do in your life and that that's saying something, because you've had to do some really hard things. I can tell she's afraid, Severus. She tries not to show it but she's lost some of her heart. She reached out and took my chin and pulled it up so I would look her in the eyes. Then she asked me the hardest thing ever.
She told me that people were going to call you Dumbledore's murderer, a Death Eater, Voldemort's most loyal supporter, even people in the Order, people I trust and love. She told me to let them. That it was important for your safety that everyone think you're a traitor and a double agent and completely loyal to the Dark Lord.
"If you love Severus, Harry, if you truly love him, you must trust him with this."
I stared at her a long time before I nodded my head. I wanted to see it in her eyes, too, that she loved you and believed in you. At first I saw only sadness and defeat. I had to look a long time to see the spark but it was there. I think Minerva thinks she's lost a good friend, Severus. I hope that if your paths cross again this next year—if all that you think is going to happen really does happen—that you figure out how to remind her that you're one of the good guys.
I acted like a child, Severus, when I ran after you. I had some wild thing inside me and it wanted out. I didn't feel like Harry Potter at all. I ignored nearly everything that was going on around me and slid on blood on the floor and jumped over people that were petrified. I have no idea what I planned on doing if I caught up with you, though in the end I had a stupefy on my lips when you disarmed me. I didn't think, Severus. I put you in danger and all I could think was that you were leaving me and that I had to stop you.
Do you even know what happened? When we got back to the tower from Hogsmeade, Dumbledore sent me off to find you. He wanted you…only you. But I couldn't even get out the door before Malfoy barged in. Dumbledore petrified me…under my invisibility cloak. I was there for the whole thing—Draco's confession about what he was doing this past semester and how he was responsible for the cursed necklace and the poisoned wine and the Dark Mark and the Death Eaters in the castle… And I was there when he couldn't kill the Headmaster—or wouldn't—even when the other Death Eaters taunted him. And I was there when you came. And I heard what Dumbledore was really saying, Severus, what he was asking you with his eyes and his mind and I understood. I hated Draco and I hated Dumbledore and I even hated you then.
I'm tired of watching people die.
When you got away, I pulled myself out of the dirt and went back to him. He was on the ground and I touched him and cleaned his face and straightened his glasses. I took the locket, too—the horcrux we found. But it wasn't even a horcrux after all. Bloody waste of time and energy and life. We didn't have to be gone at all that night, did we? To get a locket from a booby-trapped island with Inferi grabbing at my ankles and force the Headmaster to drink that potion when someone had already gotten there before we did and took the real horcrux and left a fake in its place. Someone who put a note inside it for the Dark Lord and signed it R.A.B.
There are still four of them out there to find and destroy.
I need you Severus. How can I do this without you?
Regards,
Harry
/
13 June, 1997
Friday
Dear Severus:
The funeral is tomorrow. Everything is somber and black here, except for the weather which remains brilliant and clear, and most of the students are milling around outside, sitting and talking quietly. No one's making much noise or playing Quidditch. They're setting up for the funeral down by the lake, close to where I like to skip my rocks, not far from the trail that Ron and I used to run.
Ron and Hermione understand, and Ginny does too, though she doesn't know everything they do. They're letting me have my space. Minerva invited me for tea today and I went even though I didn't want to. I think she needs me now, because you're gone, and Albus is gone, and I'm to be gone soon too. But after we had tea and some biscuits, she took me outside and we walked together to the Forbidden Forest, just like that, in front of anyone who happened to be outside. She walked with her hands clasped behind her back, right beside me, and nodded to anyone who greeted her, like it wasn't unusual at all for Minerva McGonagall to escort Harry Potter into the Forbidden Forest. She took me only a little ways in and then held out her hand for my wand. She told me then to transform into Lightfoot and to run it off.
I smiled for the first time since you left me.
I didn't wait for a second invitation. I transformed and was off, but I wasn't alone. Her patronus ran with me, keeping me company, I think, making sure I ran true and straight. It never felt better to run in my entire life. It never felt better to leave my human mind behind me and to get away from Hogwarts. I never thought I could possibly want to run in that direction—away from here—but today I did.
Because you're out there somewhere.
I wish it were your patronus running ahead of me so I'd have something to follow other than my instinct and some goal other than to run until I'm too weak and tired to go any farther.
I don't know how far I ran, or how long, but I knew when I was finished. I ran until I couldn't run another step, and then I ran some more.
I'm in my bed now, and lights are out. Ginny is sleeping next to me. No one seems to care at all where anyone sleeps. Propriety goes right out the window when hearts are crushed. Hermione is lying curled up on the end of Ron's bed, reading. He's sleeping but she's watching me over the top of her book. I know she's worried about me, but for a change she's letting it be.
We talked today—me and Hermione and Ron—while Ginny was sitting with Bill in the infirmary. We're going to go our separate ways and lie low until my birthday. Once I'm seventeen and don't have the trace anymore, we're going to set off. Ron's not planning on telling his mum and dad just yet and Hermione will spend July figuring out how to protect her family and keep them safe if she becomes, as I suspect she will, as much of a target as I am.
I don't know what's going to happen between now and then any more than I know what's going to happen once we start our quest. I just know that it's time to move on. There's nothing here for me anymore. I've given what I could and taken what was on offer.
I'm going to break it off with Ginny tomorrow. I think she'll understand. But for tonight, just this one time, I'm going to hold her close and wrap my arms around her and fall asleep with my nose buried in her hair and worry about tomorrow… tomorrow.
Love,
Harry
/
14 June, 1997
Saturday
Dear Severus:
It's over. The Headmaster is mourned, eulogized and buried. The Hogwarts Express is gone, with Ron and Ginny and Hermione and everyone else. The mourners have left, including the Minister of Magic. Bill is up in the infirmary getting his orders from Madam Pomfrey. She took me aside this afternoon and went over everything with me, too, since I'll be staying with him. His face is such a mess but she says it will get better, though he'll always have scars. I could tell him about scars, if he wanted to know… We're leaving in an hour or so. He wouldn't tell me where we're going but I think I know. When we get there, I'm going to lie on my hammock and close my eyes and not open them for days.
So now I've been to a wizarding funeral. The merpeople came to the surface of the lake, and the centaurs from the forest, and all sorts of other people. It was a blur, really, and I didn't even hear the eulogy, not really. But if I had had to give it, Severus, I'd have made sure everyone heard what I had to say. That Albus Dumbledore was a great man, and a selfless one. He may not have cared about me more than he did the greater good, but in the end, in the end he cared about saving one kid's soul. He thought it was worth saving. That kid wasn't me. It wasn't the Chosen One. That kid was Draco Malfoy. As much as I hate the prat, I think I understand what Dumbledore was doing. I'm sure Dumbledore made mistakes—everyone does—but he tried to make the world a better place. And if he needs my help in the end to do it then I'm with him.
Like I told Scrimgeour today, I'm Dumbledore's man, through and through.
I went up to the owlery one last time to see Hedwig and McKenzie and the babies. She let me get a bit closer this time. They're the most adorable little things. (I sound like a girl, don't I?) I've named the oldest one Dumbles. Well, Ginny came up with the name and it kind of resonated with me. I think it's going to be a snowy like Hedwig—it's not speckled like the other two, anyway. I wish you could see it, Severus.
I already miss you. I wonder where you are, and who you're with, and what you're doing. I wonder if you're thinking about me or just busy trying to play the role you got stuck with. That's not really fair, is it? I think that you chose that role, didn't you? Not that you had a lot of choices, but you could have walked away.
But you didn't.
Because you were Dumbledore's man too, weren't you?
What does that make us together? A pair of fools? I hope not. I can't go ahead on this quest with the idea that it will be hopeless. I have to think we'll prevail and find these damn things and destroy them. Because there's no one standing in between me and Voldemort anymore. I realized that during the funeral. First it was my mum and dad. Then he took Cedric instead of me. Then Sirius fell, and finally Dumbledore.
Now it's me and him.
And you're not really standing between us, Severus, are you? Because a few nights ago you had to choose. And you left me here on this side of the gates while you went back to his side. I can say it—write it—now without choking or crying or crumbling up the paper or punching the wall. I only feel like I'm alone and abandoned. I'm not really.
You might be standing next to him these days, and babysitting Malfoy, and climbing on an ever higher Death Easter pedestal because of what you did on that tower, but there's a piece of you lodged in my heart, a piece of you that Voldemort will never be able to understand, so he won't even notice it's gone. I think I stole that piece from you while you weren't paying attention, when you were lying in the sand on the beach or sitting at your desk by the fire grading papers over Easter Break or lying in Ron's bed with that damn Chudley Cannons comforter pulled up to your chin. It doesn't mean that you're not whole anymore, because you've got a piece of me inside you too, and it's the exact same size as the piece you're missing that I took away. I dropped it into your hands one night while you were sleeping. I knew you'd keep it safe for me.
The sun is starting to go down and I'm supposed to meet Bill outside in a few minutes.
I just wanted you to know that I understand what you did and why you did it and even why you couldn't tell me. Because you didn't know, did you? If you'd have to do it in the end. You were hoping you wouldn't have to—that he'd just slip away in his sleep one night. But he wasn't ready—he had something to do, still. He had to point me in the right direction so I could finish the job.
And now I've got a job to do, and so do you.
Stay safe, Dad.
I love you.
Harry
/
He called an ordinary barn owl down from the rafters and tied the letter to its leg. He carried it to the window.
"Take this to Severus Snape," he said.
He tossed the owl into the air and it took off in a rush of wings. He watched it soar over the grounds, gaining altitude, disappearing over the Forbidden Forest just as the two previous owls had. Neither had returned with an answer.
He was sitting on the top step of the stairs in front of the great entrance doors ten minutes later when Bill came out. He was gazing out over the lake, at the white tomb beside it.
"Looks like the deer are keeping guard," he said quietly as Bill dropped carefully down beside him.
A dozen deer, does and fawns, grazed quietly in the grass where the white chairs had stood that morning. They both watched them for several minutes. Harry felt more at peace in this moment then he had in a month, more so than when he had woken up that morning with Ginny in his arms. Finally, Bill stood.
"Let's get going then, Harry." He held his hand out and Harry took it, letting Bill pull him to his feet. He turned to look once more at the tomb beside the lake.
"I…" His voice faltered.
A doe, ethereal, seemingly formed of woven rays of moonlight, moved among the deer near the tomb. It seemed to be grazing with the others, if such a creature of light and shadow could graze, but it lifted its head and stood, alert and watchful, regarding the white marble that was nearly as resplendent as the doe herself, turning then to fix her gaze on the castle. She disappeared a moment later, folding in on herself and dissipating like smoke on the water.
"Came to say goodbye, I suppose," said Bill hoarsely. "The only way he could."
Harry didn't argue with Bill, but he knew the truth. At that moment, he felt so old, so wise, and so very, very sad. Old enough to have played gobstones with Albus Dumbledore in his youth. Wise enough to understand the message of the whispering wind. Sad enough to christen the marble slab below with loss-laden tears.
The doe had not come to say goodbye to Albus. It had come for him, to bid him farewell.
Harry smiled through his tears and left Hogwarts behind him, disappearing into the twilight shadows with Bill by his side.
Old and Wise
The Alan Parsons Project
As far as my eyes can see And oh when I'm old and wise As far as my eyes can see And oh, when I'm old and wise As far as my eyes can see…
There are shadows approaching me
And to those I left behind
I wanted you to know
You've always shared my deepest thoughts
You follow where I go
Bitter words mean little to me
Autumn winds will blow right through me
And some day in the mist of time
When they asked me if I knew you
I'd smile and say you were a friend of mine
And the sadness would be lifted from my eyes
Oh when I'm old and wise
There are shadows surrounding me
And to those I leave behind
I want you all to know
You've always shared my darkest hours
I'll miss you when I go
Heavy words that tossed and blew me
Like Autumn winds will blow right through me
And someday in the mist of time
When they ask you if you knew me
Remember that you were a friend of mine
As the final curtain falls before my eyes
Oh when I'm old and wise
