A/N: I update yet again! What IS the matter with me? I shouldn't spoil you expecially since I have been given no reward!
Anyhow... Severus says he wants this over and done with so he can go back to JK's caring hands...
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I don't know how I got to the quidditch pitch, but this is where I realise I am walking. It is snowing and I have no cape or anything to protect me from the cold. However, I barely acknowledge the cold. I know I should have expected nothing else than a reproach. After all, Black had been the closest thing to a father, and I had been the embodiment of evil to the boy. Why should now be any different?
And yet I so ached for it to be different. I have allowed myself to drop guards. I have seen the new attitude people have towards me and I believed it. I am a fool. Of the worst kind. I sit at the lowest bench with my head in my hands. I was a fool to believe that I could have a different place in the hearts of those that know me. I was a fool to believe that things could be different now that Voldemort is dead. I still have the dark mark, and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I don't know how long I have been there, but someone pulls a warm blankety thing over my shoulders.
"You'll catch your death of cold out here, Severus. I expected better of you." Minerva sits beside me in the bench.
"Everyone does, don't they? I am always found wanting in all kinds of measurements." I hear myself say. This is definately not like me. But Minerva has somehow turned into my old teacher, and I am her student now, not her colleague, in this wide, empty and peacful quidditch pitch that is white and pure.
Minerva sighs near me.
"The truth is, Severus, that you never do anything anyone would expect. Which makes you very interesting."
"I thought the right word for that was 'annoying'" I sigh as I look over the pitch.
"That too, sometimes."
Silence ensues for a while, until emotions well up in me.
"Why are you here, Minerva? Have you come to fetch me from my crazy flight to hell or something?" I ask her rather harshly. She looks nonplussed which makes me even more angry.
"I have come to fetch you from the snow, true enough. And I have come to tell you something that I would like to stay between the two of us."
The way she says it attracts my attention. She looks rather embarrassed or reluctant. I stop to listen to her. In other times, I wouldn't have bothered or I would even have turned her down is a rude way just because, but I feel so tired of keeping up a facade at all times. I realise how true the statement is. I am tired. In fact, my life has exhausted me.
Minerva fidgets and then decides to say it all out in one breath if possible.
"Severus, I believe that you are a very worthy person that has done a great deal and has never shied away from concequences. You have cleaned up your own mess whenever you could and you still atone for things that anyone would believe repaid. It's not right to feel like this because a hurt boy lashed out at you with words he did not mean. He is wounded at the soul, Severus, and he doesn't know how to handle that. You should--"
"I know what I should be feeling and doing Minerva. But that doesn't make it all better."
I get up to go. The cold has finally started to get to me. Minerva stares at me as I walk away so intensely that I stop and turn.
"But thank you, nonetheless." I tell her and then walk out of the quidditch pitch and don't turn back.
I return to the castle but I don't go back to the infirmary. I don't want to see Harry Potter, or his condenscending look, or his wistful eyes when he looks at me and sees me instead of Black, as if I somehow stole his life to save my skin. Perhaps I should have killed him and pretend I found him that way. Perhaps.
But then my debt to James, and my debt to Dumbledore would not be repaid and I would be worse than Voldemort or the lowest, bases assassin. No. It's better that the boy is alive and kicking -or slapping as the case might be- and that I am getting what I deserve. After all I was a bastard of a teacher, if nothing else.
"Professor?"
I turn around. Weasley.
"Yes, Weasley? What have you botched now?"
He blushes but seems steadfast.
"You said to come to you whenever I needed."
"Correct." I stay my tongue. A promice is a promice, even if I cannot handle Weasley's grief at the moment. I push my feelings aside to cater to the boy. He sighs.
"I feel I can't remember her."
"I see. And you are afraid that you will forget her." it's a statement-- I have been through the same things. After all, I loved Lily, even from afar, even when she had never realised it. She loved James, and that was enough. I could live if she was happy. After her death, the first year was torture, and all the agony I went through is something that I wouldn't wish on anyone. Not even my worst enemy. Weasley nods and bends his head, but I see a couple of tears dropping down to the floor. My mind races. I am glad he came to me with a problem. I am good at problem solving. I need anything that would take my mind off my former ruminations.
And yes, an idea comes to me.
"Follow me." I say and start towards the dungeons. I stands there for a while, uncertain.
"Now Weasley." I say scathingly and he trails behind me. We go down to the dungeons, in the Potions class and right into my office. I leaf through some papers and pick a thick roll. I hand it to him and he looks at me oddly for a while, but then unrolls it.
"It is not much, Weasley, but you will find solance in having something she spent hours preparing and has filled with her writing. There is a spell I can teach you that you can use on this parchment. It will reproduce the feel and smell of a person based on an object they handled. There is no way you will ever forget her, Weasley, but for the times you are in doubt, I dare say this can help."
After the boy stomachs the spell, it is nighttime, and I decide to dare another night. So I lie down and sleep in my bed, and thankfully my sleep is still dreamless. Until the morning, when a nightmare assaults me...
...the infirmary is quiet, but a bed is filled with blood, and the blood fills the floors until there is no room left uncovered, until all the castle drowns in it--
I wake up with a start. Potter.
I ran all the way up to the infirmary. All is quiet, like in my dream, but a gleam of something metallic catches my eye. It comes from Potter's bed and I run there like a lunatic. The boy is trying to cut his carotid. It is my turn to slap him, and I do, hard enough so that the knife skids under the nearby cot and Potter is thrown back against the mattress.
"What do you think you are doing, idiot boy?"
Potter is looking at me with surprise through his teary eyes. I do not stop there. I grab his arm and raise his flannel pajama top. I put his fingers on the scar from the stab wound to the lungs that saved his life.
"Do you feel this? Can you actually think with that pea brain you have got, Boy-Who-Lived?"
Potter is still looking at me with surprise. I cannot understand what other feelings are there, but I do not stop my tirade.
"Do you think you have a right to take your own life? You are mistaken. You have no right to kill yourself, Potter, and you know why? Because far too many people believed in you and paid with their lives for you! Your life does not belong to you, and you cannot touch it, do you understand me?"
He starts crying. Bawling, to be exact. He covers his face with those thin, trembling hands and he starts crying in despair. I look around and there is no-one. What do I do? Do I risk another slap or do I call Lupin and risk the boy retrieving the knife?
I prefer the former and with due hesitation, I let my hand rest on his shoulder as gently as I possibly can. Potter surprises me yet again. Instead of slapping my hand away, he leans against my chest and proceeds to cry there, clutching my robes tightly with his fists. I swallow and glance about again. Still nobody is in sight and I am stuck here not knowing what to do. What would Albus do?
I embrace the boy and let him cry, and say nothing. By the time he has somehow subsided, I feel myself close enough to him to tell him
"Harry.... you have held one of the heaviest burdens and not broken. The trust everyone put in you was worth it. You truly are a great wizard, and for that you should cherish your life, so that those that died in the name of the faith they put in you will be also honoured, and their sacrifice be meaningful."
Harry swallows and looks up at me with his mother's eyes. I feel my heart ache, but I smile. For the first time, there is no contempt in the boy's eyes. There might even be-- acceptance?
"Do you really mean that, Professor?" he asks me in a voice that is so young and so pained in the same time. I maintain my smile, however faint.
"Harry... if the teacher that has given you the hardest time tells you this, it probably is true. But if you look into your heart, I believe that you will feel it yourself and not need me to assure you."
He tries to mirror the smile and fails. I do not care. The boy doesn't loathe me and that is enough. Lily... after all these years, your son does not hate me anymore.
The damn potion finds this point in time to wear off. Timing has always been against me, in all important moments of my time. My heart feels stabbed, and I turn to the side as I feel the coughing fit and the blood that accompanies it. My head swims and I feel as if I am under crucio. Then the infirmary goes into a spin, and I land on something hard before I lose consciousness.
Damn.
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*silence*..... what? You didn't think I'd let it without drama, did you?