Their Mingled Tears
by lakemonster (perseusevans11@hotmail.com)
The first thing Severus Snape noticed when he Apparated to the edge of the graveyard was a thick acrid smoke rising up into the blackened sky. The silence was stifling. With trepidation, he started toward the source of the smoke, toward the grave of Tom Riddle, just over the next rise.
His breath caught in his throat. Utter devastation. There were bodies strewn everywhere, some broken and bloodied, others simply snuffed out, their eyes staring blankly. Shattered remnants of tombstones---what could possibly have blown them apart with such force?---lay scattered among the dead.
Perhaps the smoke had cleared, or maybe his eyes had just adjusted to its sting, but he suddenly became aware of a figure up ahead. The young man, his back to Severus, clutched a wand in his right hand. His left was balled into a fist. Snape quickened his pace, pressing forward into the epicenter of the destruction, where the figure stood.
Suddenly the boy gave an anguished cry and dropped heavily onto his knees, his right arm wrapped around his middle, the hand still gripping the wand tightly. His left hand went to his face, covering his eyes. There was a sputtering gasp and then he dry-heaved, finally letting his wand drop onto the earth.
"Potter," Snape stepped towards him. The boy dry-heaved again, choking. Snape reached for his trembling shoulder. "Harry…" He stopped. "Mr. Potter…"
Harry had gone very still. "It's alright." His voice sounded disembodied. Snape shivered slightly. "You should call me Harry. We're not at school." Snape looked around again at the bodies littering the graveyard and felt a wave of nausea sweep over him. But then the boy continued, "He's gone, you know." Snape felt his lungs get tight. "It's done."
Snape clawed at his robes, exposing his left forearm. Where the Dark Mark had burned black only hours before, the skull with the snake protruding from its grinning mouth now seemed just to be formed of scar tissue, pale, pink, and tough. He looked back up at the Boy Who Lived.
Harry stumbled to his feet, swaying unsteadily, and turned to face Severus. Those eyes. In Harry's eyes, where Snape had always seen defiance---where he expected now to see triumph---was only defeat. He couldn't help but wince at the memory of holding Lily's limp body in his arms, her eyes staring blankly back at him, their brilliant green gone dull and lifeless. It had given him such a jolt that day at the Sorting when his eyes had met Harry's for the first time. He had never expected to see those eyes that haunted him bright and alive again. He had hated the boy for ten years, hated him for his mother's sacrifice, for his father's overconfidence, but once he saw those eyes…those eyes could never trigger anything in him but love.
"Harry," he reached out with one hand to brush the hair off the younger man's face, and felt the lightning-bolt scar beneath his fingertips, rough with dried blood, just as it had been that night so long ago.
"Perseus." There was a pause. Harry looked straight into his eyes.
"Harry," he murmured, then pulled the boy against his chest.
"Uncle," Harry cried, clutching at him and burying his face in the flowing black robes. As he held the sobbing boy, Snape felt his own face contort with grief. But for the first time since Lily---his beloved sister, the only one who understood him---had been killed, he could see the end of the grief, the joy behind the mourning, the light at the end of the long dark tunnel that had been his life for almost as long as he could remember.
A/N: This story is based on the anagram SEVERUS SNAPE = PERSEUS EVANS. I took it and ran with it. Hope you enjoyed it. I don't own Harry Potter.