Title: Revenge from the grave.
Author: Black blade
Chapter tile: Driving Snape crazy.
Disclaimer: umm - looks up innocently - not mine.
Summary: Slash, One year has passed since the day Harry Potter was killed by Voldemort in a desperate effort to save Snape from certain death. Harry is back from the grave to finish the job he was born to do. Kill the murderer of his parents. Will he succeed or will he fall? For there is no coming back from the dead if he fails again.
Author's note: I've added a thank you to all the people who reviewed to the last chapter if anyone is interested. Also thank you to those that reviewed after the posting of last chapter if I haven't mentioned you at the end of the last chap.
Betta'd: Websuffer, thanks mate.
xXx
Harry was broken out of his memories as the door behind him banged open. Looking around the lounge, he watched as Severus storming into the room. As soon as Severus saw Harry he stalked over to him like a black storm cloud moving in for the strike.
"Where have you been and why does it smell like burnt dog in here?" Severus questioned his nostrils flaring. "And what the hell did you do to my room!"
"I believe that smell would be me," Harry said tiredly. "And I didn't do anything to your rooms. I'm also hesitant to ask how you know what a burnt dog to smell like."
"What do you mean that smell is you? And I know you did something to my rooms everything was rearranged in my kitchen!" Severus snapped, ignoring Harry's last statement.
"Yes me, had a close encounter with a fire, and I didn't touch a thing in your kitchen maybe you just misplaced your tea!"
Severus shook his head. "Same as always getting yourself into trouble just like your father, did you lead anyone else to their deaths this time," Severus spat.
Harry flinched at the words and tried to shrink back in the lounge. "What's your problem! You were acting normal before! Now you're like an enraged bull with a thorn stuck up its butt!"
Severus looked down at the boy in distaste, "You are marking my couch move, and you rearranged everything in my kitchen!"
"What?"
"Move, go some where else. Leave!"
Harry looked up at Severus then down at the couch. He shrugged and pulled himself up, swaying slightly as the blood rushed to his head. He looked around the room with uncertain eyes.
"Where am I meant to go?" Harry asked in a small voice, as Severus looked down at the man shaped black soot mark on his already black lounge.
"Go to your friends, stay in the Gryffindor tower, I don't care!"
"All this over a smell, a mark on your lounge, that I might add can be fixed with a spell, and that you've misplaced something in your kitchen?" Harry asked incredulously. Harry then stared hard at Severus with a calculating glaze. "Or is there something else to this?" He added.
Severus wouldn't meet his eyes as the two stood there in silence for a few minutes. Harry sighed and with a wave of his hand cleaned the other man's lounge. With another wave the soot and ash disappeared from Harry's clothes. Severus didn't even blink at Harry's display of wandless magic as he stared at him with hard black eyes. Harry just rolled his own as he laid back on the lounge.
"I like it here, it's cozy. Plus we have a problem." Harry told the other man.
Severus sneered, "I assumed so, you are always finding trouble."
Harry rolled his eyes again and pulled out the coin around his neck and held the cord out to Severus.
Severus eyed the piece of cord. "What, pray tell, am I meant to do with a piece of string?"
"Severus just take the damn thing," Harry snapped tiredly.
His body was still aching from the spells that had been thrown at him. He closed his eyes and waited for the other man to take the coin. The weight lifted from his hand and he let gravity bring his hand back to his side. He waited for Severus to look it over. He was almost lulled into sleep when the man spoke startling him awake.
"There's writing on the back but I've never seen anything like it before," Severus said quietly. The lounge moved slightly to indicate the man had sat down.
Harry dragged his eyes open and looked at Severus perched at the end of the couch.
"Maybe I can read it," Harry said softly holding out his hand.
Severus snorted in disbelief but handed the coin over. The coin felt warm to Harry, he didn't know if it had something to do with magic or if Severus had warmed it up in his hands.
The coin looked to be made out of a black stone with engravings on each side. On one side was an etching of a feather curled around the coin, done in great detail. With two words written next to it. A hole was punched through the stone much like those good luck Chinese coins.
He flipped it over to the other side. A bird featured on this side, much like the feather, it was also curled around the coin's center. More writing was engraved next to the bird. Harry ran his thumb over the symbols and pictures it felt smooth under his fingers. He guessed that the coin must have been made by magic for there was no rough texture to the surface. If it had been made the muggle way it would have held a rough texture made by craftsman who carved it.
He flicked his wrist making a small ball of light appeared next to him. He appreciated his new magic knowledge he'd gained he no longer had to fumble around for his wand.
He used the light to look closely at the picture and writings. The writing didn't make sense to him. He passed his thumb over it again. The stone suddenly heated under his thumb making him almost drop it. He stared down at it, as the writing seemed to wiggle and squirm like angry snakes. The two words next to the feather slowly settled from their dance into readable words.
"Severus is it just me or are the words changing," Harry said without looking away from the coin.
He felt Severus move around behind him. "What are you on about the words are the same," Severus growled.
"Crow ghost," Harry read.
"What are you talking about?"
"It says 'Crow ghost'."
Harry flipped the coin over. "'Pain fly from the great crow of the dead. To save us from his fate.' What is that meant to mean?"
Harry looked up to see Severus looking at him strangely.
"Harry the writing looks the same to my eyes," Severus said evenly as his eyes bored into Harry's. Harry got the feeling that seeing changing writing in the magical world was much like hearing voices no one else could hear, even if that time it had been a snake in the walls.
"I don't know, the writing didn't make sense before. I passed my thumb over it and it changed. Do you think this has something to do with me being here?" Harry asked hopefully.
Severus looked at Harry then the coin then back to Harry.
Finally he answered, "I don't know Harry."
xXx
A week later
"Come on get up! Get up, get up…get up now! Damn it's not working, you would think having a life of a spy would make you a light sleeper, but nnnnnoooooooo you sleep like a bloody log…" Harry trailed off as he lay across Severus's bed with a frown.
He'd been trying to get the other man up for the last TEN minutes and still he lay there looking so…
Harry's head shot up as Severus turned slightly, but then frowned again as Severus gave a loud snort in his sleep.
Harry shrugged and settled for poking the man in the side, which seemed to have more effect than the yelling from before. At least Severus was moving much to the amusement of Harry.
Severus moaned, trying to roll away from Harry. Harry would have none of that and continued to poke the older man.
After another FIVE minutes Severus rolled to face Harry with a death glare. It took Harry a few seconds to even notice Severus was awake and half a second to leap across the room to safer territory.
"Is there a logical reason why I find you, not only in my room, but also on my bed, poking my side?" Severus asked menacingly. The look would have been pulled off to, that's if Severus didn't rub the sleep out of his eyes in a very cute way.
"What?" Harry stuttered. "Oh yeah I want to go shopping and it's already eleven in the morning."
Severus stared back at him blankly, "And you decide to annoy me, why?"
"I need your help," Harry sheepishly looking everywhere but at Severus. "You see, I kind of died and when a person passes away they are not expected to come back to life and well my will would have been read and ah…I don't have any money." Harry finished throwing his arms up, before glaring at the floor
Severus smirked, "The spoiled Potter brat without money and he is asking a lowly Slytherin for help?"
Harry shot Severus death glare, "What else am I going to do! I need clothes! Unless you want me walking around here naked!"
For some unexplainable reason Harry couldn't fathom, Severus's eyes glazed over slightly before they became unreadable obsidian again.
"Fine! If I be nice and buy you clothes will you shut up and stay out of my room?" Severus said, spitting the word nice as if it was a foul curse word.
"Yep, I'll stay out of your room." Harry smiled then whined, "Can we please go now I'm down to my last pair of underwear! Even Dobby couldn't find any more of my old clothes around this castle."
"Harry?"
"Yeah, Severus?"
"Shut up."
xXx
Severus was beginning to regret letting Harry buy his clothes so far he was Seventy galleons down and by the looks of things that amount would be more by the end of their shopping trip.
As Harry pulled out a dark green shirt for Severus to look at when the older man noticed something that he should have noticed along time ago.
"Harry, Where are your glasses?" Severus asked between the boy's ramblings.
"What?" Harry looked up questionably.
"Your glasses, where are they?" Severus repeated to his annoyance.
Harry reached up as if expecting to feel the metal of his thick rimed glasses when he only encountered skin he pulled his hand away as if he'd been burned.
"I don't know maybe my eyes changed while I was dead or something," Harry said with a shrug before pulling out some black jeans from the rack and holding them up. "What do you think?"
Another two hours later Severus finally gave up and pulled Harry away from the shops and into the three broomsticks. So far Harry's wardrobe consisted of five pairs of jeans, (That to Severus opinion had already been worn, stabbed and beaten before being placed back on the hanger to be resold) and a few shirts in dark colours. He'd also brought a few other odds 'n' ends, including an long black coat that came down to the boy's mid-calf and which could easily pass as a robe from a distance.
Severus looked at the shopping bags with detested, he may not be a hard core muggle hater but Harry's new clothes were already giving him the shivers in a way that he should not be thinking of the person wearing them.
"Do you think I need anything from Diagon Alley?" Harry asked around a chunk of food in his mouth.
"Sallow the food first, didn't those relatives of yours teach you manners, boy?" Severus snapped.
Harry swallowed his food in one go, almost choking, before smiling innocently up at Severus. "I think I should go to Gringotts incase there is any loophole in the whole dying-and-coming-back-to-life-will-thing," Harry commented ignoring Severus pervious snapping.
Severus frowned, "As hard as it is to believe you may be correct in that assumption. I know for a fact that some old families keep a sum of money within family, in case a lost family member reappears and all other relatives are dead. If the Potter's had such a safety fall back is another thing, however."
It was then that something dawned on Severus, he turned furious eyes onto Harry, "And you didn't think to check that out before you used my money!"
"It may have crossed my mind. HEY!"
Harry yelped as a spell arched towards him as he dashed out the door.
xXx
Harry cautiously approached the bench on which a goblin sat writing away on some form or page Harry couldn't see.
"Excuse me I wish to speak to the manager," Harry commanded.
The goblin looked up from his work giving Harry a nasty sneer and a good eyeballing before it tapped its bench three times.
"The manager is expecting you head to that door over there," The goblin snapped pointing out a door to the left of the lobby. "Have a good day." It said in a tone that suggested that it couldn't care less if Harry's day was good or hellish.
"Yeah you too," Harry mumbled as he stepped away.
When he reached the door he knocked loudly on the heavy wooden door.
"Enter,"
Harry gave the door a shove and it opened smoothly before him, he walked into the room closing it after him. The office he walked into was tastefully furnished in dark wooden furniture. A goblin, in a dark muggle style suit, sat behind a large polished wooden desk neatly covered in papers and other items.
The creature gestured to a chair in front of the desk with a wave of his hand.
"My name is Mickey. How can I help you today, sir?" the goblin said in the most polite tone Harry had ever heard from a goblin.
"My name is Harry Potter and I had the unfortunate chance of dying over a year ago. I'm inquiring about what happened to my vaults and processions." Harry said, copying what he believed Severus would have said but with less sneer and smirk.
"Very well, sir. I'll just bring up your file," Mickey muttered.
Harry watched, in well-hidden fascination, as the goblin pulled out a wooden box the size of a muggle shoebox. He placed it on top of the table and picked up his quill and wrote something on a piece of paper.
"All I need is a drop of your blood on this parchment," Mickey told him holding out a pin and the parchment.
Harry carefully pricked his finger and let a single drop land on the paper before it was pulled out of his hand and placed in the box. The box made a noise that sounded to Harry a lot like a microwave. After a few minutes a soft 'ping' rang through the room and the goblin lifted the lid on the box.
Harry had a sudden flash image of the goblin pulling out a microwave slice of pizza. Instead inside lay a normal muggle folder, 'By the looks of things the goblins must have believed that muggles had it right in the accounting department by the amount of muggle items they use,' Harry thought in amusement.
"Here we are, Mr. Potter. It seems that even though you had passed away, for a time, you still have the Potter family vault. The simple reason being that no one, claiming the Potter name, has stepped forward to claim it. Your other vaults while alive however have been passed over to those mentioned in your will you drew up before your third year, including the changes you made every year after that," Mickey formally informed the teen. "Would you like for me to put the Potter family vault back into your name, sir?"
"Y-yes put it back into my name," Harry stuttered in shock. He still had money then the realization hit him, 'how long am I going to be here? I should be dead!' he though to himself.
As Mickey filled out the correct paper work Harry's thoughts turned morbid, 'How long am I here for? Will I have to go back to the grave once Voldemort is dead?'
xXx
Red, red rivers, red lakes, red pools. Everywhere red, everything else came second to that colour. He could see it, a deep red making tracks toward him, in a way that made his stomach roll with nausea. Everything else was dull as if seen through a foggy glass window, except the red. A dipping sound penetrated in his mind as if the colour was paint dripping to the floor. Loud cackling laughter filled the air drowning out the dripping. He didn't know what sound he would rather hear. Screams picked up in the background as the rivers of red turned darker.
xXx
Harry woke with a scream.