author: wishfinger

Soft Yellow Rain

Soft yellow rain and soft yellow light washing the ancient stones.

He was roused out of his reverie by movement across the chamber.

'Charlie sends this,' said Pomfrey, holding out a piece of parchment. She looked haggard, her eyes bloodshot in the fading light.

Four decrypting spells later he found himself reading a few terse lines in Charles Weasley's hurried hand.

Incendio.

Pomfrey was still looking at him.

'I have an hour yet, Poppy. Rest assured I am not wasting my time. Or anyone else's.'

A corner of her lips twitched, a fragment of a humourless smile. 'I have to feed him.'

He rose to his feet then, but before he could turn away from that grey room, her voice stopped him.

'I did not say you could not stay, Severus.'

Harry's pale face stared up at him, weak green eyes blinking, blinking, staring, blinking. Severus half-wondered if there was a message there, a message he could learn to decrypt, Arithmancy for the worse than dead. Only for a moment.

Hair was plastered to his forehead. Pomfrey wiped it away with a soaked cloth. Severus sat by his other side and watched without a word.

The scent of herbs mingled was wholesome ... and futile. Pomfrey held a spoon to the boy's lips and spoke his name gently once, twice. After what seemed like an eternity, his Adam's apple bobbed painfully. Warm thin soup and saliva bubbled at the edge of his mouth. 'There. Good, Harry,' said Pomfrey and picked up the cloth again.

Severus could not remember clearly how it had happened, and no matter how he tried to set his thoughts in order, the truth was that his mind did not want to remember. Parts of it, yes: they played behind his troubled eyes in what passed for sleep these days.

There was Harry, bright, bright and oh so rash, running, running ahead, and there was a great darkness, cold such as he had never known before. Severus trembled, voice torn by the wind, his words broken.

And Expecto Patronum, Expecto Patronum, Expecto Patronum, but it was no use. They fell upon him like birds of prey, a great black swarm blotting out the moon.

Harry's Patronus had been a stag, Severus had later learnt from Remus. Remus, who was now not much more than the husk Harry had been reduced to. A husk of a man whose violence outdid the Death Eaters'.

'I have to go and see to Kingsley and the others.'

Severus nodded, and she left him with Harry.

Severus took one of Harry's hands in his own. He had still half an hour left. And then… who knew if he would ever return to Hogwarts again?

Harry's lips moved. Severus bent forward, close enough to see the pores on his face, close enough to... It was almost a parody of those brief, sweet moments he had locked away in his heart, an obscene parody. He felt sickened, withdrew.

Afternoon melted away in a haze of soft yellow rain, and Harry's lips were moving, Harry whose luck had run out, outrun him, who had to be bathed and changed and fed every day, as if he were a baby, every day as the war waged on, relentlessly on,. But it was Severus who cursed him, cursed him for a fool, a fool of a boy, arrogant, stupid, a fool, a fool.

And himself, knowing he could not weep.