Um... I need to apologise here, 1) for updating quite late, and 2) for the end of the chapter... it worked out like that becauise I sliced up the chapters without paying much attention to the ending. I'm really, really sorry...
Oh, and oo-oo-oo, I got my first flame!!! Ever!!! Everyone check out my review pages for it! Should be the second page, but might be further back.
Harry made breakfast a quick one, intending to spend most of the day by himself. He headed back to the Common room, packed some of his stuff away, sat down in the armchair at nine am and woke at about one thirty by the sounds of Snape coming in through the portrait hole.
He had been asleep, insofar as that deep dark haze that covered the vision and partially the ears; the strange sensation of being aware of the surroundings but unresponsive - almost sleeping. A period in time where the brain is a little disjointed, and what appears to be ten minutes is a little longer than an hour.
Snape's footsteps jerked Harry out of this catatonia, and he visibly jumped, swivelling around to see who had disturbed his sleep. Snape gave him a funny look in passing.
"Tired, Mr Potter?" he sneered.
"I only sat down for ten minutes," was the response.
"You sat down for ten minutes at about nine o'clock, correct?" Some snideness had infused Snape's tone.
Harry nodded.
"It is now half past one."
Harry looked out of the window. The sun had taken on a faintly heavy, yellow quality, marking early afternoon. Harry rubbed his face as Snape sat down in an armchair.
"Potter. The staff, and indeed myself, are not stupid. The fact you do not appear to be getting much sleep has become apparent in your silence, your face and your downright obedience."
Harry stared at him in shock. Snape chose to reply to this.
"Yes, Potter. The fact that the bags under your eyes have practically turned into valleys and are harbouring their own plant life has not gone amiss. Professor McGonagall talks about forcing the Headmaster to hospitalise you."
"I appreciate your frankness," said Harry distantly, staring into the fire. "What confuses me, however, is that you appear to care."
He felt Snape's eyes boring into the side of his face, and turned to meet the man's gaze.
"What?"
Snape merely shook his head in a parody of a bored student. "Potter," he drawled, "The fact that you refuse to recognise your own problem is costing your health, both physical and mental."
"What are you suggesting I do - see a therapist?"
The question was meant to be sarcastic.
"Yes."
Harry stared back into the fire, trying to order his thoughts. They were slow, sluggish and misbehaving. He had trouble aligning his next sentence.
"Why bother?"
"It could help."
"Oh well. Chances are I won't live out the War, so I may as well not waste time and money talking to some stethescoped, self-acclamied, patronising -" Harry spat this word out as if it were poison, "- so-called Doctor who thinks they can solve all my problems by telling me to envisage myself in a field of flowers." Harry stared fiercely into the fire, knuckles clenched in his lap.
"You're quite an angry person." Snide.
"Give the professor a medal."
"Moving into the offensive, as well."
"You're doing quite well, keeping your hands off of my neck."
"I do try, Potter." Sarcasm.
"I daresay. Having the Golden Boy-Who-Lived in your class must crank up your stress-o-meter."
"Indeed."
This conversation had passed very quickly, words exchanged with the speed, brutality and sharpness of rifle fire. Harry began to wonder what the point of it was. Snape was not a caring-sharing person. Snape was not a person. Snape was being extremely un-snapelike in his behaviour, but strangely himself in his words. This mixture of body language and words confused Harry, his sluggish brain trying desperately to cope with this confusing barrage of signals he was getting from the other man.
"What are you getting at?" he snapped, intending to be sharp and to the point.
"What I'm getting at, Potter," said Snape silkily, staring at Harry with liquid obsidian eyes, "Is that you are travelling a road that will eventually lead to your death."
"I'm not going to take a swan dive off of the Astronomy tower, if that's what you're worried about -"
Snape shook his head impatiently.
"No, no, no! You have a battle to fight. Fighting is all about the mentality of the warrior in question. If he thinks he cannot win, ultimately he will not."
"Will has nothing to do with it. Determination, on the other hand..."
Snape rolled his eyes and heaved a somewhat theatrical sigh.
"Potter, they are one and the same."
"No, they are not. Will is something that's vague. You have the will to live. Determination applies to something specific; I am determined to try to live through this war."
Snape eyed Harry, his expression unpleasant.
"'Chances are I won't live out the War,' he says," said Snape snarkily. "So why do you have the... determination?"
"Determination is one thing. A horde of angry Death Eaters and an evil warlord descending on my neck is another kettle of beans entirely! Spot the difference, Professor: one teen, one wand versus God knows how many Death Eaters and the most evil wizard the world has seen for over a century."
Snape had gone silent, and Harry could sense the anger bubbling up inside him. Harry fell silent and waited for Snape either to control himself or to let rip.
"There are other people behind you, Potter," he said at last. "Professor Dumbledore, the Order."
"That's exactly it. They're behind me. When it comes to the crunch, I will be on my own. So will Voldemort, too, but he's had a lot more experience killing people. And maybe this time, Priori Incantatem won't be there to save my neck."
Harry was screaming in his head ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit. He really had not meant to give Snape such an insight into the Prophesy, and into his first real battle with Voldemort -
His first real battle. The pain.
Through the pain... listening...
"One, who I believe has left me for ever... he will be killed, of course..."
A high-pitched evil voice... Harry had no choice but to listen...
Harry shook his head to clear the memories, but basic emotion, underlying feelings still remained... his link with Voldemort.
Since Snape returned to him he has suspected... never doubted, because that implies weakness, but suspected...
"Voldemort thinks you're a spy," said Harry quietly. He rubbed his eyes -
- as if Potter were tired. Snape's senses were heightened, every nerve ending rocketed to peak performance, his skin tingling and his heart doing triple-time. Every shadow was clear, every flare of the fire casting sweet light into the darkness, and his fingers were clenched upon the armrests of the chair. And that was the most important thing. His fingers.
He tried to force himself to relax, tried to unclench his muscles, but it wouldn't happen. He wanted to be a long, long way away.
Slowly, his deathgrip on the arm of the chair calmed. and he forced his heartrate down slowly and surely.
Harry looked into his professor's eyes and saw something there that he never expected to see: wild panic.
Suddenly, instead of being predictable, and dependable, in that sense, Snape had become unfortellable.
Harry decided to snap the man out of it.
"Snape, get a grip on yourself."
Snape blinked, but he did not bother to correct Harry.
"Your cover is not entirely blown yet."
Harry saw assurance returning to Snape with every second. Keep him talking.
"And he's unsure."
Snape returned to normal, and there was even a snide gleam in his eyes.
"Voldemort suspects you, but he still has a little faith left. Please him whatever way you can, and his faith will be restored... insofar as Voldemort trusts."
Snape looked at Harry very strangely, and Harry stared right back.
"What?" he asked in genuine puzzlement.
"Since when have you been intimate with the Dark Lord's thoughts? Since he tried to possess you?"
"Since he tried to kill me."
"Which time?"
If dark sarcasm were taught in Hogwarts...
"The first time. Just as well we're staring Occlumency again tomorrow."
A sour look passed over Snape's face.
"It's not all joy and rainbows for me, either," retorted Harry, and he could sense Snape getting angrier.
Good...
llllllllll
Harry sat on the Astronomy Tower with his face in his hands.
He tried. He really did. He tried to be nice to Snape, and as Ron would have told him, this is where it got him. Into another row with Snape, which cranked up his stress a few notches and his anger a few million. He felt ready to explode.
'Angry' doesn't cover it. The feeling inside his head is a maelstrom of red, black, twisting and turning, until he sees for one clear second that only the anger is red and black. Pure rage is not a bright, pretty, warning colour. Rage is deep, deepest blue, the kind of blue you find at the very bottom of the ocean. And it is heavy like water. But it is as swift as air, and as evolusive. It was deep blue. It was the kind of blue you see just above the sunset, but coated in shadows. Rage was not red; it was twilight.
The bubble surrounding Harry's consciousness broke. The walls fell. The ghosts ran.
Harry lowered his hands, and stared into the sky as realisation poured into him. He gave the evening sky quiet contemplation for a moment, then stood up, and smiled.
It was the brilliant smile of a boy who has just been given the gift he'd always wanted. He had, in a sense; he'd just been granted what he'd wanted for so long. He'd just been granted insanity.
jellybean03: 'Most people don't want to take an hour to read a story on the Internet'? A) My story is not finished and b) have you read anything by GreenGecko? Her story is, chapter-wise, into the sixties.
fhippogriff: You gotta love that name.
Anyway: Yes well, Mrs. Weasley is a lovely caring-sharing person, I have to say. And she seems to respect everyone, even if she doesn't actually like them. I based Snape's cloak on my own full-length leather coat.
Hate the Dursley's. Hate 'em.
I'm not depressed, but I, too, gravitate to angst fics. Strange, isn't it?
Erinamation-limited2-nothing: Er... quite?
Shelly101: Interesting, because I considered this one of my weaker chapters.
HPbabe143: You certaintly do like to review, don't you.
I'm flattered you've reviewed just about every chapter I've posted, that's for sure. I'l answer as many questions as I can.
1) The creativity for this fic came from seeing another person through their own eyes and not liking it one little bit. I had to try to get comfortable within Harry's body, but it wasn't easy - a few touches of my own kept coming across. I just thought: what would it be like if I was suicidally depressed... and led from there.
2) Harry stands his pain because he has a little hope. I'm crushing that in later chapters, you'll see what happens. He doesn't do drugs because he realises that'll just screw him up even more (look at Kurt Cobain). He's 16, but in cynicism about 156.
3) Anger is fun. I like messing about with it. Not as fun as depression, though.
4) Some of my chapters were a little dull, I'll admit that, but they needed to be written. Some of them contain important info for later on, even if I didn't like them.
5) Voldy isn't Harry's dad. It's a whatsitsname, metaphor. I think. It gets explained later.
6) Is Harry going to hurt Snape... looking back at as-yet unposted chapters, I have to laugh. Yes, he will.
7) Harry doesn't need a father, but a brother.
8) Fred and George are evil when you look at them from Snape's point of view... they're optimistic, cheerful... dear God, Snape must hate them.
KrazeyForever: I guess you hate me even more for the cliffhanger, huh.
pureinsanity: Sorry about that. I'm trying to skirt the issue. It won't be a slash relationship, but when they emerge from this... it will be more like brothership. Sort of. It's hard to explain. I figure Harry's seen to much to need a father; mentally, he's too old.
Barbara Chow Chang: Everybody needs romance. And do I detect a hidden compliment? I'm idealistic? Gee, thanks!Oh, and by the way... if you want idealism, try 'Life In Chaos' by 'agentgrrrl'. That's pretty cool. I got a lot of inspiration from that. Review/flame again! p.s. I had a good laugh at your review page. It brightened up my day. Better check your grammar, spelling and punctuation, by the way.
Ooooh, it seems your page got taken down. Whaaat a shame.
EireVerde: Hey! I loooove Lego. For my fourteenth birthday I asked for one of those huge tubs of lego blocks. I still like using the stuff, God knows why. Although I have to say, I REALLY hated the HP lego stuff.
Child-Of-Darkness1988: Birthday, by any chance? That would put you a year older than me. Thanks for your comments.
Princess Fictoria: I have to reply just because I love that name so much.
Forty-two dreams: I think chopped your review up, because it didn't make much sense to me. If you can, e-mail it to me.
sakurasaisaka: Thanks. You probably would need food as well, though. : )
starinthedark11: I'm not going into animagus right now. IF I do a sequel, I'll look into it.
chip: Quite.
one small instrument: I've emailed my response to you... it would otherwise have taken up just too much space.