The Houses Competition (or THC)
House: Gryffindor
Class: Herbology
Category: standard
Prompt(s) chosen: autumn (fall), theme travel
Word Count: 1602
Beta(s): Copper's Mama, secretfanficlover
Disclaimers/triggers: mentions of canon character death
Harry turned to face the sharp thump that he heard behind him. A boy in Slytherin robes sat there in a tangle of limbs hissing like a stray cat. "Get away from me, Potter!" The boy's pale face was ashen, but his cheeks were a bright red. "And don't touch me! I have never done anything to you that you didn't deserve!"
"Snape?" Harry asked. "What in the world? Are you? How?"
"Use your words, Potter, you sound no better than a bloody ape." Snape stood up, grumbling about something that Harry couldn't hear.
They stood together in the Forbidden Forest, fall leaves crunched under their feet whenever they shifted. Harry had returned to Hogwarts for his eighth year and had taken to walking in the woods to clear his mind. It brought comfort to him, grounding him the here and now, unlike Hermione's other suggestions to deal with what had happened. He had seen many strange things in these woods, but this was by far the oddest, and that was saying something.
Harry was eighteen though sometimes he felt far older than that. It felt as if he had lived a thousand different lifetimes, and each one had been harder than the last. No one else understood that, not even Ginny, though she tried to. Though there were other reasons for the distance between them, and he was to blame for that.
"Which Potter do you think I am?" Harry asked, stepping closer to the other boy. "And what year do you think it is?"
"1978 and Potter, there is only one of you at Hogwarts, but you should know that since you are quite bloody proud of the fact!"
Harry crossed his arms over his chest, fighting the urge to laugh at the sheer absurdity of the whole situation. He was arguing with his dead professor, who was his age at the moment somehow and just happened to think that he was his father, who Harry happened to look nearly exactly like him, well besides the eyes, of course. The same man who had made said professor's life miserable during his school days. If this was anywhere but Hogwarts? He would have called it some sort of nightmare, but this was Hogwarts and stranger things had happened to him there before.
"I am sorry to inform you, but the year is 1998 and my name is Harry James Potter, not James Charles Potter."
"So she married him then and had you?" Severus asked, his skin turning even more ashen if that was possible. "Lily, I mean? Harrison is her dad's name and even Potter isn't likely to be that horrible to name his son after someone else's father."
The boy's too-long hair fell into his face as if he was trying to shield himself and his faded and patched uniform hung off his narrow frame. He looked so different from the snarling professor that he would become.
"I…shouldn't tell you that stuff, should I? With the whole time travel thing and all?"
Snape gave him a wicked smile, his black eyes shining through the dim light that streamed through the trees. It was then that Harry remembered sharply that the other boy was a marked Death Eater or soon would be. He was not yet Professor Snape, the man who bled out onto the floor of the Shrieking Shack to make sure that Harry could win the war. No, he was Severus Snape, the boy who due to his hatred and bitterness due to the life that he had ruined his friendship with Lily Evans by calling her a Mudblood and kept company with the likes of Avery, Lucius Malfoy, and Regulus Black. He would later give the information that would lead to the death of Potters to Voldemort. That was the only thing that would change him; knowing what he had done would cause him to switch sides. He might look like any other Hogwarts student at that moment, but he was far from that.
This boy was not his friend. He was a Slytherin to his very core, and if Harry knew anything about them? He knew they would do anything for information or to save their own necks. Narcissa Malfoy came to mind.
Maybe I can change his path? Help him turn to the light? Show him that there is another way?
"Time travel and all, Merlin's beard, you know how that sounds, right?" Snape laughed, his tone slightly bitter. "One moment I am standing there in Lucius Malfoy's study touching some strange orb he got in India and the next I am standing here staring at you. And you're telling me it's been twenty years…."
"I guess that brought you here?" Harry asked, "that orb?"
"Are you dense, or do you just not listen to people?"
"Why don't you just go back to where you came from then since you seem to have all the answers?"
Harry turned on a heel and began to walk away. To leave Snape to whatever fate the forest may serve up for him, which would be precisely what he deserved.
The sound of crunching leaves filled Harry's ears as Snape called out, "Hey, wait up, would you? Dangerous things live in these woods."
Well, maybe he was more student than big scary Death Eater, no different than Malfoy had been two years ago.
"Are you scared?" Harry asked, turning back to face his companion. "I thought you were the big bad future Death Eater?"
"Don't you dare make fun of me. You know what roams these woods: centaurs, fairies, werewolves and all other sorts of things. Things that would confuse you, eat you, or do even worse to you."
"I have seen things far scarier than centaurs; I will have you know."
"I bet that you haven't," Severus snapped, shoving past Harry only to turn and face him. "I bet you don't know what being truly afraid feels like."
Thoughts of Snape's childhood slammed into Harry, but he was too far gone to think about such things beyond the very surface. So he continued, "are you a child or just impressively stupid?"
"Don't you, of all people, call me stupid! You of all people! The spoiled little brat who surely grew up in a manor getting all he ever wanted! Did mummy and daddy not buy you enough toys when you were growing up? Did they not praise your piss poor potions enough? You don't know a damn thing about a hard life, Potter, just like the rest of your bloody family!"
"I am spoiled, Snape?" Harry growled, grabbing the other boy by his shoulders, fighting the urge to shake him. "Do you call sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs being spoiled? Do you think doing all the chores is being spoiled? Do you think your aunt, who thinks you are no better than a dog grabbing you by your ear, is spoiled? Do you think watching your friends die is being spoiled? Being an orphan? Losing my godfather? You don't know who I am, Snape, and I know this might be hard for you ever to understand, but I am not my father, just as you are not yours! You don't have to be him. You don't have to be like him."
Severus' dark eyes became the size of saucers, and he whispered, "I am sorry," and with that, the other boy was gone leaving nothing behind as if he had never been there at all.
Firenze trotted over, his palomino bright under the light of the setting sun.
"Harry Potter, one should not spend much time in the Forbidden Forest, at least not humans. There are strange things happening among the trees."
"And yet you do."
"Centaurs are not humans and experience things quite differently… Among the trees the space between the living and the dead crosses over, more so if their death was a painful one like that of Professor Snape… It would be best that you get going, Harry or you might find something far worse than the old professor."
Harry nodded and asked softly, "do you think it was him? Truly him?"
"Possibly, in some way and some form, but it would be best that you do not dwell on it… I bid you well and remind you that it would be best that you would be gone. To leave the dead to their peace."
Harry walked out of the woods, leaving the ghosts of the past behind him as much as he could. But it was then in that moment that he realised that Severus Snape had been just as human as the rest of them. For the better and sometimes the worst. It was then that he decided he would do his best to make sure there were no more angry and sullen boys walking the halls of Hogwarts in robes that did not fit them. There would be no more children begging not to go home to their caregivers each summer. There would be no more students so desperate for their needs to be met that they would do just about anything.
Harry knew just what to do with all that money his parents had left him that he did not need. He decided that he would make the world just a tiny bit better in the only way that he could. He would make a safe place for all the magical or not so magical children who needed it. It was the least he could do, wasn't it?
Sometimes you just had to do your best to make a difference.
