Disclaimer: Umm…if you haven't caught on by now, then I'm surprised that you know how to even read. I don't own Harry Potter and co.
A/N1: All right, this is the last chapter of this story. Wow, taken me long enough. Anyway, this is a trilogy, and I'm currently trying to finish up the third story, meaning I will (eventually) be posting the sequel here, along with the sequel to that. Kinda a mushy ending to this one – not what I was expecting, but the characters upped and ran off with the plot, so… Anyway, read on.
Chapter 5
Snape looked down into Harry's face as he got up, not quite sure that he had heard him right. He was sure that the boy hadn't told anyone else this yet, and was surprised that he wanted to tell him. But Harry's eyes were again filled with determination, so he sat back down across from him.
Harry, like always when he was about to go into something personal, sat there for a few minutes, thinking about what he was going to say. Snape sat in the chair, waiting patiently for him to go on.
"Well, I haven't told this to anyone yet, so I'm not sure how to begin," he started, and Snape was only mildly surprised when he said he hadn't told anyone yet, since it was what he had just assumed.
"Start wherever you feel comfortable," Snape told him, and Harry gave one nod.
"Well, I suppose it starts with Sirius dying," he said quietly, and Snape felt a pang of guilt ring inside of him.
"Harry," he said suddenly. "You don't have to talk about this."
"But I want to," Harry told him. "I know that this has been inside of me for too long already, and I know that if I don't tell someone, I may end up hurting myself again."
Snape backed down, and again just rested in the chair, looking at Harry.
"Anyway," Harry said. "Like I said, it all started when Sirius died. After I – I watched him go through the v-veil, I felt like I was going to die. I felt so lost and alone and confused. And then I felt angry and mad. I felt so much hatred towards Bellatrix, who had done that to him, that I chased her out of the Death Chamber and all the way up into the lobby, where I used the Cruciatus Curse on her."
Again, Snape saw that Harry's eyes had clouded over, and he was suddenly a bit scared of him again. To hear someone who was fifteen and didn't work for Voldemort say that they used the Cruciatus Curse willingly, and speak about it with such hatred was slightly alarming.
"After I used the Curse, and I found out that it didn't do hardly anything to her, I was pissed. I felt like I wanted to do it again, but I was slightly scared of her, since she had just tried to use it on me. And believe me, I had been hit with it enough times to know not to mess around too long with someone who wanted to use it on you."
Snape again felt sympathy for the boy, considering that again, he was so young, and he had been hit by the Cruciatus Curse numerous times already.
"Anyway, then Voldemort showed up-" Snape shuddered at the name, but Harry didn't seem to notice, "-and so did Dumbledore, and they dueled and whatever, and then I went back to Dumbledore's office. There he told me everything that he had been denying me since my first year at Hogwarts, and I got really angry again. I didn't see how he could have just told me all of that, and still could have been so calm, when he knew how bad it was hurting me. He didn't seem to understand how I was feeling that night, and I fell even deeper into the hole of despair I had dug for myself."
"Then, I had to go back to the Dursley's, and they just made my life even worse. While they didn't talk to me much, since they were afraid that someone from the Order would come and kill them all, they still gave me horrible looks and gestures every time that they saw me. But without talking to anyone, I was becoming not only more distant with everyone else, but also myself. I didn't sleep for days after Sirius died, and even after I did start to sleep, my dreams were flooded with pictures of him falling through the veil. During the night, I longed for the day when I wouldn't see Sirius, and during the day, I longed for the night when I could just sleep everything off."
"Finally, when Lupin came and picked me up, I was happy. I would finally be going someplace where people loved me. But the thing was, nobody seemed to want to act in the right way. The only thing I ever heard was, 'Harry, are you okay?', and 'I know what you're going through'. But they never did know what I was going through. I was tired of all the pointless questions and statements, so I locked myself in my room all the time, and just sat and stared at the floor, or the wall, or the window, or whatever seemed pleasing that day."
Snape continued to stare at Harry, whose eyes now filled with soft tears. He sat there for another minute before continuing on. "Then, finally, this morning when I was talking to you, I think everything just sort of went haywire. Everything that I had been feeling for the past few weeks since Sirius died, and all of the pain leftover from the last school year, just came flooding out. Everything had been bottled up for so long that it just boiled over, and I felt like screaming, and letting it all out. So that was when I blew up at you."
Harry smiled slightly sheepishly up at Snape, and again continued. "But that wasn't enough. No, if at all possible, it made it worse. Since I hadn't gotten everything out, everything that was leftover just seemed to grow twice the size that it was, and I suddenly felt so helpless, so alone, that I felt like someone had once again been taken from me. The only thing that I could think of doing was hurting myself; causing pain upon myself to make sure that I was still alive, to make sure that I could still get rid of the anger."
"So, I found a piece of glass from the broken mirror that Sirius had given me, and doing the only thing that seemed logical at the time, I placed it over my wrist, and cut. In that short amount of time, I felt just like how you described yourself feeling; in pain, but pleased all the same. I felt like I had just opened up this trunk that was holding in all of my bad memories, and as each drop of blood flew out from the wound, I felt like another one of my sorrows was leaving the trunk and floating away."
Snape couldn't believe that Harry was saying these things. It was all exactly the same feelings that he had when he had been cutting himself, and to hear Harry say them made it seem like he wasn't alone, wasn't the only one feeling the pain. But something was still racking his brain, and he didn't think that it would stop until he asked the question.
"But Harry," he said slowly and quietly. "Why did you use the Cruciatus Curse on yourself?"
Harry's tear-filled eyes grew slightly wide as he looked at Snape, and when he spoke, it was with a choking voice that made Snape further sympathize him.
"I didn't want anyone to know what I was doing to myself. It was a private matter only to be known by me. But when everyone found out, I suddenly got that same feeling again. The one where everyone said they were sorry for me, but that they only said that because they thought it was appropriate for the situation and because they thought I wouldn't do it again. So then I cut myself in front of everyone. But then Lupin took the blade, and threw it away, and I knew that it was really wrong, and I knew – or I thought I knew – that I wanted to stop."
"But then when you said you were going to get Dumbledore, I didn't want to stop. I couldn't stop. Dumbledore, at that time, was the last person that I wanted to know about what I had done. The thought of him being so calm the night Sirius had died and all of the things he had said to me were still fresh in my mind, and I didn't want him to be here, in fear that he would lecture me and tell me something else that he's been hiding from me all these past years. So, again, to prove my point, I wanted to hurt myself. But since I didn't have a knife this time, I just used the Pain Curse on myself instead. Not that that was any better of an idea, but..."
Slowly, Harry trailed off, and he was just left there, sitting with the tears still in his eyes.
"Harry," Snape said carefully. "Thank-you for telling me your story. You don't know how much that means to me, to know that you trust me enough to tell me this; in fact, to be the first one you tell."
Harry quietly nodded his head, before the tears started to spill over his cheeks. Snape didn't know what to do at first, but as soon as Harry let out one sob, he was next to him, kneeling on the floor with one arm around his shoulder.
Merlin, he thought to himself. This is one position I never thought I'd be in.
"It's all right, Harry," he said softly. "It's all right."
"I just miss him so much," Harry said through a loud, guttural sob, and Snape's heart seemed to tear in two. He couldn't stand hearing the pain in Harry's voice, and it pained him to hear him crying like this.
In the name of King Arthur himself, I never thought that I would be feeling this bad for Harry Potter, he thought. But he couldn't help it. He knew exactly what Harry was going through, since he had seen so many of the things that Harry had seen. He himself knew what it was like to be in Voldemort's presence; he knew what it was like to loose someone so close to you; he knew what it was like to have the Cruciatus Curse placed on you so many times; he knew what it was like to feel rejected and alone; he knew what it was like to be an outcast; but, most of all, he knew what it was like to hate the world so much that you would inflict pain upon yourself.
He pulled back from Harry, and looked up at him. "Harry, I don't think that you'll ever know how much it means to me that you've told me this. I think that right now, for the very first time, I understand exactly how you feel. I know that you always say that people don't understand," he added quickly. "And I agree that I can't know everything that you're feeling. But I at least can relate to a lot of the things that you have gone through."
Harry looked up into Snape's face, his royal emerald eyes staring into Snape's deep, onyx black ones. "I know," he said quietly through the tears. "I think that you're the person who can come the closest to knowing exactly what I've been through, because I know that you've been through most of that and more."
Snape felt his own eyes fog up slightly, and he put his other arm around Harry and pulled him into a light hug. He could still feel Harry shaking slightly under his arms, but his sobs seemed to have lessened greatly. And then, he heard Harry whisper, "Thank-you," very quietly in his ear. Snape smiled, and knew that, for at least a while, things would be all right between himself and Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived.
A/N2: Yeah, like I said, kinda mushy. But w/e. Hope you liked the story. I will (probably) be posting the sequel, titled 'A New Strength' on here sometime soon. Hope to have you back for that one – lots more action in it, though still Friendly!Snape and Cutting!Harry! w00t! Anyway, thanks for all of the reviews throughout this story. They were much appreciated!
Love Always,
SiriusBlack4Ever
