Disclaimer: None of those associated with Hogwarts and its environs are my property (beyond paying for the books, of course). I am merely playing with JKR's toys and promise to return them unharmed. Well, maybe a little singed, but that can't be helped.
Warning: This story contains gigantic, humungous spoilers of HBP. If you haven't read it, what are you waiting for? Go and read something by a real author.
Oh, and this particular plot device isn't that original, either. I haven't seen it in fanfiction, though… see the final A/Ns for details.
This chapter gets extremely dark, and not just because it's night.
ooOOoo
This time the darkness didn't clear. Harry realised it wasn't because he was blind (as he'd feared), but because the light globe Snape had set had gone out.
Harry raised himself so that he was kneeling, fished his wand out of his robes (and that was something else in Snape's favour – he'd left Harry his wand) and re-lit the globe.
And immediately wished he'd left it dark.
Sprawled over the dolmen in front of him was Snape.
Up close, Harry could see the cruelty dealt out by the elements. They'd been told a thousand times by Flitwick and whatever DADA teacher they had at the time: don't mess with raw Nature.
Now he could see why.
He reached out and laid a hand on Snape's shoulder to see if the man was still alive, but pulled it back when something brittle crunched under the smouldering robe. Harry nearly threw up on the spot when he realised it was Snape's shoulder. The man was twitching a little, and Harry thought he might slide off the stone and hurt himself.
More.
Harry decided up was better than down, and lifted Snape's legs to let the man lie on the dolmen. It didn't seem to make anything better (and Harry strongly suspected one leg was broken), but Harry needed to do something. He had absolutely no idea what he could do when Snape began to fit, though. One arm curled up towards the chest; the right arm, the one that could still move.
"Snape. Snape. Damn you… what do I do now? You must have a potion or something for… channelling a zillion volts…" Probably it had already been used up. How could anyone do a spell like that and expect to live?
Backtracking in his thoughts, Harry answered that for himself.
Harry heard a faint moan and took that as encouragement.
"Snape?" he whispered after several deep breaths. "You have to tell me how to help you… And you have to tell me the truth…"
Nothing.
"I deserve the truth, Snape. So, perhaps, do you."
It was probably the height of stupidity, and he'd never heard of it being performed without eye contact (an impossibility when the eyes were burned out), but Harry lifted his wand and ignored his conscience, which told him he was being a vulture. Human considerations be damned – there was a war on and his friends were dying and this bastard was going to die on him without ever letting him know the real story: was this some trap by Voldemort or – less likely as Voldemort wasn't too nice when it came to sacrificing his followers when he felt he needed to – or was this self-sacrifice the truth? Because if so… if so… Because…
He needed to know.
"Legilimens."
There were no eyes left. It shouldn't have worked. But Harry slipped through the remains of Snape's mental shields like they were shattered eggshell and found a mind bewildered and lost in the agony and confusion left by the lightning.
Some instinct Harry had never touched before told him which nerve cluster to reach out to, and the spinning storm inside Snape's mind stopped revolving quite so violently. Hopefully it had stopped Snape's fit.
Harry moved deeper, looking for… he didn't know what he was looking for, he admitted to himself. But the search was important. And then he was swimming in Snape's mind.
Some thoughts moved sluggishly and without logical coherence. Others skittered in a swirl of random silvery memories like a shoal of fish frightened by the lunge of a shark. There was no coherence: no sanity. It seemed to have nothing in common with the man he'd known at Hogwarts; even though Snape had been borderline psychopathic on a good day and firmly psychopathic on the more usual bad ones, he'd never appeared scattered beyond insanity.
Harry paused, appalled. Surely this was a mistake? This was someone else. Some other Death Eater disguised as Snape.
It was like swimming through glycerine, but he kept going, gritting his teeth against what he found.
There was pain, a great deal of pain from the thighbone that had snapped when the muscles spasmed as well as the burns that mostly went through the body, but that was swiftly fading into the chilly darkness that was tugging away faster and faster at the edges of the mind. Harry had the nasty thought that if he spent too long here, it would be him, too, that the darkness took. Thick tentacles of unattached memory dragged at him. Through it all was regret, a dissatisfaction that lay on the back of Harry's tongue like bile; nagging anxiety; and the feeling of bone-deep cold that made the body shudder… Harry couldn't pinpoint its source.
"Snape. Severus…"
The use of the given name stirred some response. Slow and sluggish, the mind turned to focus on him. Someone replied, "Wha'…?"
"It's me – Harry."
Pause. Mild consternation. Then the strands coalesced for the moment it took to say, "Don' know Harry."
Harry made the mistake of triggering a memory of a face. Unfortunately that face could have been that of James just as easily as it could have been of Harry.
That bitterness boiled up, thick as tar, hot with hate, splattering Harry. It burned as if it had been made physical and Harry gasped as he struggled against it. He yanked at another memory, then another, then another and another and another…
None stopped this hate. Broken though his body was, Snape clung to his hate like it was the only strength in the world and, bewildered and confused by the transformation he was undergoing, he tried to drag Harry down to drown in it with him.
Harry finally found a memory of a summer sky and dived into it. The hate dissipated with the next breath of wind that rippled the long grass. But Harry could still feel it around the edges, struggling to get to him. Somewhere, he knew his body was struggling to get its breath back.
He paused here, considering and reassessing. It was easy to forget when you saw someone burned and broken that, even in the last heartbeats of their life, they wouldn't change. They'd still be full of hate and hateful.
The blue sky filled most of the world now, luckily. And Harry leaped up to swim in it, noticing that even here (especially here, perhaps, given how strong Snape had grasped those old memories of bitterness and anger), the darkness was tearing holes. There had been yellow flowers when he'd arrived, and the smell of freesias. Now there were only a few bluebells under a tree… and then, in the blink of the mind's eye, the tree was gone.
Was it possible to die in another person's mind? He somersaulted in mid-air, reached out and touched a filament of willow bark that was floating in a zephyr, finding what remained of Snape's consciousness within it. "How do I defeat Voldemort?"
"You… Ah!"
The bark flared up in Harry's hand and dissolved into smoke, which rose to form the Dark Mark.
There was a moment's blurring. Harry cursed himself and had to calm down the mind. Unfortunately by the time Snape was relatively calm again the edges of his mind were dissolving faster. The darkness was moving swifter now. The horizon of the blue sky was almost in arm-reach but there was nothing beyond it. The sky itself had darkened to bruised purple. The mind that Harry could still sense was aware of the approaching darkness, but in a dull, hopeful sort of way that made Harry's skin crawl with the urge to get out and get back to the light. He tried to grasp what was left in his hands and found that what was left was tarnished blue threading through the black tar of hate and bitterness. "What happened with Dumbledore?"
Blue sky and black tar swirled up and around Harry. And then there was something almost coherent in the dissolving mind. It crystallised around a memory. Harry dived onto it. Horrified, he watched a greasy-haired, hook-nosed figure running up to the top of Astronomy Tower. Albus was there – he heard him say the key words, the words that, to the Death Eaters surrounding Harry, would sound like he was begging for his life when in fact…
…when in fact it was quite the opposite.
And Harry knew, by the way death had stripped deception and cunning from the once-complex mind, leaving it bare of all but the truth, that the truth was that Albus had engineered this whole situation after he and Severus had paused the curse triggered by the ring-Horcrux that was eating more of Dumbledore than his hand. Albus had known he was going to die. He hadn't accepted "no" as an answer from Severus, even though they both knew the consequences.
Harry knew, but he didn't want to believe. It was easier to hate. Easier, like Snape had spent his life learning -
Jolted by the realisation of how easy it would be to turn into Snape, Harry punished himself by diving back for more memories.
Albus (or so the memories implied) had known Severus couldn't kill him with pure intention – and Harry, digging through memories burning and curling up at the edges as fast as he could to find something, anything, that proved Snape had always been the hateful traitor rather than… rather than…
Harry couldn't believe (didn't want to believe, because why would Dumbledore be so kind to Harry all that year without have the guts to tell him he was going to die… and that Harry needed to brace himself for yet another loss?) Albus had ordered Snape to cast the Killing Curse, even if it had inveigled Snape so far into Voldemort's Good Books that Snape had been able to nick the bone Horcrux and -
(what the fuck was LSD? Harry wondered, finding the reason for Nagini's weird behaviour… and finding Snape had doctored a rat with drops of LSD on its fur… but then the memory crisped and floated away and Harry didn't find out how Snape had managed to feed the rat to Nagini, let alone what it was)
- and arrange it (though these details, too, were gone, eaten by the darkness) so that Harry would be captured with two Horcruxes on him… but led Voldemort to suspect Harry had stashed them somewhere else before he was captured (God, what else had the man done?) and fed plans secretly to Kingsley Shacklebolt and…
… The memories fluttered past like confetti, too fast for Harry to catch before they were whirled away. Amongst the snow-storm he thought he saw Shacklebolt's face then Draco's screwed up in pique and Harry's glowering at him with that same sullen hatred he'd seen in his own mirror; Albus offering another of those ghastly lemon drops when he knew what it did to his teeth; a younger McGonagall handing him back a Transfiguration essay marked insufficient background research; his mother cooking over the stove while his father sat at the table smoking cigarette after endless cigarette and the smoke hung under the grey ceiling and no-one broke the silence; Narcissa laughing at something amusing he'd said; Death Eaters standing in a semicircle while Voldemort spoke; Two boys, Sirius and Peter, with their faces twisted with loathing; Remus as a boy as a man with the same passive sadness at his own pathetic weakness in standing by and allowing injustice; Peter's face older but still with that loathing as Snape took pleasure in ordering him around like a servant; a list of the pros and cons of strangling that silly bitch Trelawney; a parcel that opened into a book without a title but which gave pleasure at the sight; selecting newt tails; Lucius showing some sort of voodoo poppet he'd bought as a souvenir in Haiti – the poppet looked a lot like Wormtail and Lucius grinned and said he'd been unable to resist buying it; a baby with almost-white hair wrapped fingers like tiny Wurtle-yams around the tip of one of his; Voldemort again, smiling; Dumbledore again, frowning; a young Draco and Narcissa together, heads together as Narcissa taught Draco to write his name; McGonagall again, tapping one finger on her cheek as she considered her next argument; Sprout; Flitwick over checkers; students Harry didn't know and neither did Snape now; more faces with no names; faces without features; blobs running into each other as the memories flew faster and with increasing randomness.
Harry, feeling like he was being smothered in meaningless information, nearly took himself out of Snape's mind. But when, in a final effort, he called for the key to them all – the one Snape wanted him to take away – one small wafer of silver dropped into his hand.
And when Harry closed his hand over it and understood it, it wounded him.
Because, showed the memory that twanged with resentment, Dumbledore had known the price that was paid by anyone who didn't cast the Killing Curse with pure intention. It was a memory of Dumbledore stroking Fawkes' scarlet head, not looking at Severus as he said, I'm sorry, Severus. But I'm sure there will be a way out for you.
No there isn't and you bloody well know it.
Have faith, my boy. As I have faith in you. You know your duty.
They'll call me the murderer and you the murdered… and who will know the truth? The room vibrated around Snape's fury. Dumbledore was unfazed.
You will know. And the truth can be the last gift any of us ever have in this life.
Yes, and I'm sure it will comfort me on my fast-approaching death-bed… should I be fortunate enough to get one.
A miscast Killing Curse ate away at the caster. Gradually and recognisably – but Snape had managed to disguise it as a reaction to one of the potions Voldemort had him working on and kept going.
Harry's world, which had been swaying since the first lightning bolt, turned upside-down.
They'll call me
the murderer and you the murdered… and who will know the
truth?
The shock threw him out of Snape's mind and he
landed, gasping from a bodiless pain, back behind his own eyes. They
stared down at the ruined man on the dolmen.
He touched the one part of the face that wasn't scorched and found it was colder than his finger and slick with icy sweat. And Snape was still shaking, although the tremors had become random and shallow. A little like the heartbeat, as Harry discovered by pressing two fingers into the hollow under Snape's jaw. Thankfully it was one part that hadn't been burned, but the guttering heartbeat did nothing to reassure. Harry had only done a little mediwizardry, but in the last few months he had been field-tested in the diagnosis of shock. Snape was so far gone into it that his shivers were easing off.
Even though he knew it was futile, Harry tried casting a spell to stabilise Snape's life signs. The spell was sucked into the charred flesh like a drop of water on a bed-sized sponge.
Knowing there wasn't much time left and more chilled by his own callousness rather than the cold wind on his sweating face, Harry lifted his wand and plunged back into Snape's mind.
There was very little of it left.
This time it was calmer. The fragments of memory – good, bad or indifferent – floated around and sieved through Harry without real emotion. Harry drifted dangerously close to the edges, seduced by the darkness that made giving up and dissolving into oblivion so seductive. What shocked him most was how calmly Snape was taking dying. Possibly Snape didn't realise what was happening, or did not now that so much was gone from him. Harry searched for a spark of self-awareness but came up short.
He reached out and called for memories.
"What you want me to see?" he asked.
And there it was. It wasn't a picture of Dumbledore forcing Snape into the promise to kill Dumbledore, thus proving Snape's innocence.
No. Thank Merlin. (Because Harry didn't want to be told yet again of how Dumbledore had effectively and knowingly sentenced Snape to death.)
It was specific information on Voldemort. For a moment Harry didn't realise what he was seeing and he nearly lost seeing the moment of Snape's decision. Then, as the darkness came swirling in Harry ducked out, feeling the last of Snape – his mind, possibly his soul – finish like a sigh that ruffled Harry's hair as he tumbled back into his own body just in time. Maybe it was just that it had been such a horrible day, but he fancied he could feel the last flutters of the heart as it stilled.
It wasn't until he felt the coldness on his cheeks that Harry realised he'd been crying. There were Death Eaters around, and he'd behaved foolishly taking all this time trying to find out the truth from Snape. He should have taken the chance to get past the anti-Apparition barrier and… He wiped at his eyes – if crying was needed, it would have to wait. Snape had tried to give him something and Harry wouldn't be so ungrateful as to throw this last gift away.
Gingerly, knowing logically that there was no way he could hurt the man now, Harry pulled the left arm around. It crackled as the elbow bent and little bits like burnt bark on charcoal flaked away.
There, hovering over the inside of the forearm, was the Dark Mark. It stayed in its position where the flesh had burned away from it, tethered by almost invisible filaments. It was fading fast now, following its wearer into death, perhaps.
Harry's face twisted with rage. He wouldn't let it. From that last trip through Snape's mind Harry had understood that Snape – what had been left of Snape – had wanted him (anyone, really) to take it and use it against Voldemort.
He grabbed it and tugged. It writhed and came away with small twangs as the threads snapped. Part of him expected it to dissolve into the air like the soul-stuff Voldemort had taken from Harry's scar when the Dark Lord had lost his concentration on it in Nagini's attack. That was one last Horcrux he needed to worry about… But as soon as he lifted the Dark Mark away, though, it became oddly inert. The fading stopped at the point where it was becoming a little misty, but Harry could feel the magic in it waiting.
It could wait a little longer.
Harry had a small leather bag in his pocket where the Horcruxes had been. Snape must have left it when he took them from Harry. It was too big for the Mark, but when Harry pulled the drawstring tight he knew it wouldn't seep out and escape. And, as the bag was specially charmed to hold magical objects without any magical signature escaping, Harry was reasonably sure he wouldn't need to worry about Voldemort tracking him through Snape's Dark Mark. He put it in a pocket and shuddered at the feel of it: how Snape had stood carrying it around all those years on his arm was…
Snape.
Harry leaned over the body, unsure of what to do with it. He straightened one of the folds of the soft black cloth to cover a foot. Merlin, even the boots were scorched. Harry looked up. He considered pulling the hood of the robe up to cover the face; it would be kinder to cover it, but that would leave Snape looking like a Death Eater. Harry smoothed the hood over the shoulder instead.
Probably he should just leave the body. But if Voldemort found it, he'd know by the lightning-burns that Snape had been the one to destroy the Horcruxes, wouldn't he? Harry had suspicions left from the ghostly, echoing memories Snape had given him that there were quite a few things left behind by Snape to make things a little less easy for Voldemort's forces… if Voldemort suspected Snape was less loyal than he'd thought, he might sniff them out and neutralise them.
Harry wished he could remember: amongst all the memories that had fluttered over him were images of a clear potion brewing over blue flames and some powder and three books and a double of Ravenclaw's hairpin…
All useless if Voldemort knew to be suspicious of anything Snape had been involved in.
The first fat drops of rain were spinning out of the sky. The wind howled overhead but, apart from the sound and the changing air pressure that made Harry's ears pop again and again. The sky itself was deepest purple and Harry shuddered at the memory of Snape's dying mind. A raindrop hit his glasses with a splot. He blinked reflexively and looked down again.
Barty Crouch had transfigured the body of his father into a stick or a bone or something and buried it. Harry didn't think he could do that.
Maybe he should throw it over the cliff. Or burn it.
Both options left him queasy.
Then one note of a bright, crystalline song fell from the sky like a star. It shivered down his spine, drowning out the wildness of the storm winds and thunder with a cool, crystalline perfection, and turned the leaden horror of this evening into something new and pure and brimming with light.
He looked up.
Perched on the rock closest to the dolmen, looking shabbier than Harry could ever remember seeing him, was -
"Fawkes…" Harry breathed.
The phoenix cocked its head, peering down at Harry with eyes that were weary and dull.
OoOOoo
A/N: Cheers to reviewers: Enahma (thanks, and I hope I'm not about to move too far into the territory of one of your stories – not saying which one, as that's a giveaway! – in the next chapters), Neotoma (hope this answered your question to your satisfaction), Oya (I would have labelled it a deathfic, and can you imagine me killing off Snape? Ha! Percy, maybe, hee hee), Stocktonwood (ta!), Persephone Lupin (here's that phoenix!), excessivelyperky (yes, roll on that third side. And I still see Harry as a bit of a hero… which means facing up to facts he doesn't like. Think maybe one day he'll grow up and get over that whole 'Slytherin Menace' thing? Well, maybe he's not that much of a hero, heh. Are you writing again yet? Need to check your site…this isn't the place to harangue other writers to do more writing… it's meant to be about ME! Otherwise this A/N would be a heck of a lot longer, I can tell you), LM (poor Harry, poor Sev, poor readers!), Silverthreads (ta – I hope this chapter wasn't too wishy-washy), duj (not quite – the title source is coming up in the next chapter), SirJimmy7 (many thanks, kind Sir), illicitgrace (I'd love to know what they were as this needs a re-write, but I'm not arguing with wet nails at 1 am).
Thanks, people. I'll try to get this finished ASAP. I've got most of it done but it keeps getting longer as unexpected people come charging in from stage right. You'll see in the next chapter what I mean. I mean, honestly, who does that woman think she is, wandering into my story and turning herself into a major player?
