The Houses Competition (or THC) Round 9

Story Type: Drabble (up to 1,000 words)

House: Gryffindor

Class: DADA

Prompt: [theme] Death, [prompt] Alternative Outcome (Event/Chapter rewrite)*

Word Count: 998

Disclaimers/triggers: Canon Character Death

Beta: Big thank you to Copper's Mama, DeepShadows2 & Aurora_Borealis3406 for beta-ing.


Terminal

A beat.

One thunderous heartbeat that feels like it carries on forever.

It is all he can hear, all-encompassing—it feels real.

He must be dead.

A sound disrupts his musings as he opens his eyes, and they burn from how bright everything is. There is a white mist disappearing rapidly as he sits up. Upright, he blinks, and gazes around. A train station: King's Cross Station. This is not exactly what he was expecting.

Outside of the thundering in his ears, Harry hears a rough, desperate wheezing. It's like a death rattle, though he doesn't know why he immediately thinks this. He realises he is unclothed and his glasses aren't there, but even as his cheeks heat from the blood that immediately rushes to them, clothes appear beside him. He pulls on the robe roughly and stands, looking around for whatever it is making that noise.

He spots it then; what appears like a small child with flayed skin pulled so taut over the bone, it was an impossibility there would be any muscle. He feels a pang of guilt over how repulsed he is by the injured and dying creature.

"There's nothing you can do for it, boy."

That voice. It is so familiar, and yet he knows it shouldn't be possible he's hearing it. He turns and gazes at the source, eyes going wide as his suspicions are confirmed.

"Professor Snape." His voice is husky. Has he been screaming? he wonders.

"Mr Potter." Snape is courteous, though hardly warm.

Snape looks the same as ever; tall, brooding, ornery. Harry wonders if the man has ever smiled a day in his life, but he knows that Snape has—he had seen the memories after all.

"Am I dead, then?" Harry asks him.

"It depends on your definition of death, Potter," he answers with a smirk.

Harry turns back to look at the creature huddled on the ground a short distance from them. He is still repulsed by it, but there is a note of sympathy underlying it. "I think, Professor, now might not be the time for being cryptic."

Beside him, Snape huffs a heavy sigh and Harry catches the roll of his eyes as he turns back to look up at him. "You are a little dead, but mostly alive it seems,' he answers. "By the look of things, you have completed the task Dumbledore wrongly set for you. It appears, as a result, you have been given a choice."

Silently, Harry contemplates his former professor's words. A choice? He cannot remember the last time he'd decided anything. Perhaps in his first year when he chose Gryffindor over Slytherin. But had that been his own choice? He blinks and looks back at the writhing thing on the ground. The piece of Voldemort's soul. Acknowledging what it is doesn't help him to decide. Instead, he rounds on Snape, other questions floating to the forefront.

"You loved my mother," he says quietly.

Snape's face freezes, but he nods. "Yes."

"I'm really glad," Harry says, a smile curving his mouth. "She was lucky to have such a loyal friend—someone so loyal that he would sacrifice himself to try and save her son."

A curious expression crosses Snape's features; something Harry has never once before seen on the dour face of the cantankerous former Potions Master. The near-silence is uncomfortable, but Harry is determined to have this conversation while he still has the chance.

"Lily was a good person; kind, warm, loving. We were very good friends for a long time," Snape says after a moment of thought. "It is my deepest regret that I was even remotely responsible for her death."

As Snape speaks, all of the years of distrust melt away. Before him is a man who gave almost twenty years of his life to fighting for a cause—for Lily. Harry knows Snape has received virtually no credit for how hard he has laboured and that he was sometimes even responsible for that, and for obstructing his important work. A pang of guilt fills him.

"I'm sorry, Professor, for the times I disrespected you, and all the times I did my very best to be a thorn in your side," he says as earnestly as he possibly can.

Snape blinks at him in surprise. "I apologise too, Mr Potter. Though you and your father are very alike in many ways, you are not James, and it was wrong of me to treat you as such," he responds. "You didn't just inherit your mother's eyes."

Harry smiles, his chest feeling lighter than it has in a long time. "If I am not exactly dead, does that mean you also have a choice to make, sir?"

For the first time in the seven years Harry has known him, Snape smiles. "I made my choice a long time ago," he replies gruffly.

Harry experiences a twist in his gut at this reply. "But—"

"Mr Potter, while I thank you for your understanding, it is not necessary," Snape cuts him off.

As Harry opens his mouth to reply, the familiar sound of a train pulling into the station silences him as it rolls up to the platform. He stares at it before turning his eyes back to the late Headmaster.

"Where does the train go?" he asks.

"Onwards," Snape answers, moving towards it. "It is time for me to board. Have you made your decision?"

Harry mulls over in his head everything that has occurred over the past seven years; all of the ups and downs, his friends, the Deathly Hallows. Dumbledore gave him what he needed to complete his task, and he did everything short of killing the last two pieces of Voldemort's soul. His friends, he knows, would easily be able to fulfil this task. But there is something that holds him back, a niggling in the back of his mind.

"Yes."

"Yes?"

"I'm going to stay."

"Then it is time for you to open your eyes."

And so he does.