TWENTY-FOUR.
The sun hung high and stubborn in the sky, as though hammered in place with a nail. It had melted much of the snow around the castle to reveal fresh green grass and yellow-budded flowers, but on the peaks of mountains and in distant ravines the snow remained, like glazing over the breaching summer.
There was no escaping it. Even deep within the castle walls, even with all the windows boarded up and all the thick quilts tossed over your head, the sun found its way to you. Severus did not need to see it for his body to know it was there; his eyes would flutter open, his brain would itch, his legs would not take on the heaviness usual for sleep. It would be midnight soon and yet Severus knew he would not sleep for hours. He had never before realised to what extent the tides of light were his master.
Days of the same had taught him to give in. Instead of tossing and turning in bed with increasing agitation, he was sitting today in the narrow strip of shade cast by an arch in the courtyard, watching idly as the last of the students spun around on the summer ice rink. It was technically past everyone's curfew, but much of the staff refused to care now that exams were over, and since Severus's days of employment at Durmstrang were fast drawing to a merciful end, he did not feel the need to maintain any standards whatsoever.
Harry sat next to him, glum and quiet. It had been weeks of glumness and of quiet. Severus couldn't help the selfish thought that Harkusha's flight had soured something important for them—this first stretch of time as a patchy, legally-grey family unit—but he had the good sense not to mention it to anyone. It was hardly the most unfortunate consequence of the event. It wasn't about him. He knew that.
A new group of students came stumbling out of the castle, narrowing their eyes in the onslaught of light. When he spotted them, Harry leaned back to cover his face in shadow, and whispered furiously to Severus,
'We have to go!'
'We do not have to go,' Severus said, working to keep the acid from bleeding into his voice. He did not quite succeed. He had been angelically patient with the boy's nonsensical avoidance strategies, he thought, but he could not be expected to remain so on two hours of broken sleep. 'You have done nothing wrong. If these little idiots have an issue with you, then they are perfectly allowed to go back inside the castle.'
They did not go back to the castle. They settled on the opposite side of the ice rink instead, laying out their pelts to protect their bodies from the cool stone. Krum glanced in their direction only briefly, his face impassive, then proceeded to ignore them. But Bogdanova stared: red-eyed, shallow-cheeked, washed-out and militant. Though the stare was aimed clearly at Harry and not at Severus, he caught a fraction of it. The weight of that alone made him briefly reconsider Harry's motion for escape.
He wondered at times like this if he'd been right in telling the boy where he thought Harkusha had gone. When Harry had come to Severus to tell him Bogdanova feared Harkusha had taken his cloak and gone to find the Dark Lord, Severus could have told him he was being ridiculous. Harkusha had been ostracised and Harkusha had been about to graduate into a world that he no longer belonged in—he might well have struck out to get piss-drunk, or to make a life for himself in a different part of the world, or backpack across Asia or whatever else teenagers going through life crises liked to do.
But then Harry would have asked, and why would he take my wand, then?
Why had he taken it? As proof he'd met the great Harry Potter? As a gift? As an offer of loyalty?
The boy, the old servant, the werewolf. Harkusha, Severus and Lupin, out in the snow by the doghouse, blabbering on about things that should have remained secret. This was what Severus got for sharing the burden, for trusting the old enemy, for playing at storybook endings.
'I just don't understand why he'd do that,' Harry had said to him the other day. 'I mean, I knew that I didn't really know him that well, but I thought I knew—that I knew him, you know? And this doesn't even make any sense, and I'm just so angry that I don't understand and now that he's gone no one can explain it to me.'
'Wounded pride,' Severus had suggested, though he honestly did not care. 'Personal ambition. An inferiority complex. Deep-buried resentment. Sheer teenage stupidity. Prestige. Adventure. I can go on.'
'But it doesn't—it doesn't even—'
It was the lesson Severus had long believed the boy would eventually need to learn. With Harkusha gone and the rest of Krum's gang turned on Harry in the aftermath, it would seem he had learnt it.
It kept Severus up at night.
'I hate him,' Harry muttered now. He was careful to avoid looking anywhere in the traitors' direction.
'Like the rest of them, Viktor Krum is a moral amoeba,' Severus seethed. 'Expending your energy on hating invertebrates is a waste of your resources.'
'Not Krum. He's only not talking to me because he's Inna's friend.'
'And she dictates who he is allowed to speak with? Does he not have his own mouth and tongue?'
The boy shrugged. 'She's just upset. They were supposed to graduate together and now—now it's all ruined and complicated. They weren't supposed to have to think about things like this.'
Harry struggled to put the crux of the matter into words, but Severus thought perhaps the boy did understand it. Bogdanova and her friends had happily led their own lives that required little consideration and few political choices, and now they had been thrust suddenly into a polarised reality. Whatever they did or failed to do, each decision they made now would in some way constitute choosing a side. Severus had lived within that system for so long he had forgotten there were alternatives—but even he understood that this was a change that was forced onto you, always, and not one you made for yourself.
'You are not to blame for that,' he told the boy gruffly.
'Yeah, but that doesn't mean she can't blame me, does it? That's just how it works.' He tapped the blades of his skates on the stone floor. 'When I was little and thought my parents died in a car crash, I blamed myself, too, even though it didn't make any sense.'
Severus never knew what to say when the boy spoke like this. He pursed his lips. He could think of no words, neither right nor wrong.
'Alright, you have stalled enough,' he said eventually, swerving into a new subject with all the subtlety of a troll. 'I am not going to mend broken bones after midnight, so if you want to skate, go now.'
'I can't skate with her watching me!'
Severus reminded himself to breathe. He counted to five.
'In that case, you are going to sit here and pretend you don't exist for how long? I would like to know the schedule for tonight.'
'No,' the boy whined. 'I don't know. Maybe I should go over and—do something. It's almost the end of the year, and—'
'Oh no, Potter. Your fist-fighting days are over. You may think it does not matter if you get expelled this late into the year, but I assure you that you will not have a pleasant summer if—'
'I didn't mean go over and punch someone!' Harry exclaimed, brilliant with offense. 'God! I don't even know how your brain works.'
Severus cleared his throat. 'Well. Good.'
'I think I'm going to look back at her. What do you think?'
Severus was thirty-four years old.
'A daring measure. Perhaps a little too bold for an opening play?'
The boy ignored him. He had flicked his eyes up and now stared back at Bogdanova, matching the intensity of her gaze, until he wavered and grimaced in what Severus suspected had been meant to convey a smile.
Bogdanova stood up.
'Oh no—oh no, no, is she coming here?'
Severus reminded himself he was thirty-four years old and did not feel threatened by the sight of an adolescent girl storming toward him across a busy ice-rink.
She drew to standing before them, chapped lips tight and elbows locked. Her nose was all strips of raw and dead skin, and all around her eyes there were pink protrusions: the tell-tale effects of crying in a climate unkind to human faces.
'Hi?' offered Harry.
For a beat, there was silence. Then, Bogdanova sniffled, sighed, and declared,
'He's a fucking asshole. Fuck him. Alright?'
'You have not graduated yet and I am a professor sitting right here, Bogdanova,' Severus reminded.
Her eyes shot to him. 'Do you disagree?'
Harry spared him from answering. 'I'm sorry,' he said.
Anger rose in Severus, hot and urgent. He was going to make him sorry if he continued to plaster himself to the floor before this spoiled, sulking girl who had never had to make a hard choice in her life—
Bogdanova asked, 'Do you want to skate with us?'
'I don't really know how to skate.'
'We'll teach you. You can't leave Durmstrang and not know how to skate.'
'Okay.'
He went, clutching Bogdanova's arm for balance as he navigated the skates. Severus could not have said what it was, this thing in his chest, only that it was unpleasantly warm and sprawling.
He had privately vowed them all eternal hatred, but this was difficult to hold onto when he watched them on the ice, Harry's hands being grasped and pulled, his legs redirected and his face opening.
Severus would not forgive their lapse. It was not his way. He found he could see himself taking assurance in Harry forgiving it, though.
A shadow fell over him. He resisted the instinct to look up. He preferred to keep others unaware of his curiosity when they approached.
'I'm supposed to be watching the rink,' said Vernyhora from above him. 'I wouldn't have bothered if I'd known you were here. Did Karkaroff forget he's assigned you?'
'I am off duty. If someone breaks their neck, it won't be my problem.'
With a sigh, she lowered herself to sit next to him. Like everyone else, she looked both healthier than she had in winter and more tired. She was holding a thermos that, when unscrewed, released a sharp tang of alcohol.
'What?' she asked at his look, defensive. 'It's Saturday night. Life is hard.'
Severus would have bet that her back didn't start aching from poring over poorly-written essays for more than a couple hours at a time. Her life was fine.
'Rather than sigh, how about you send them to bed and be done with it?' he snapped. 'Then you can go drink yourself to stupor in peace.'
'Karkaroff saw Krum was here. No way are we shutting the ice rink for the night if dear Viktor wants to skate. Not with how down he's been lately. I am so sick of this place.'
'You will be in Ireland in a fortnight. It is a little difficult to muster compassion.'
She laughed. 'I wouldn't expect compassion from you, Professor Snape.'
'No, but you are taking for granted my patience to listen to you go on.'
Vernyhora huffed her annoyance, but she did shut up. For a while, they watched the moving shapes of the students together. Physical exertion had warmed them up, and most had removed their furs to reveal the rich red of the Durmstrang uniform. In motion, they were red ribbons, brilliant in the high sun.
Harry was holding fast onto a squib girl Severus had seen orbiting around Bogdanova. They were both pushed again and over into continuous spinning by Krum and Blom. When the dizziness inevitably overcame them, they fell away. The girl smacked herself right onto the ice, but Harry was caught mid-flight by a force no one could see and set back on his skates, immediately stumbling forward to reach for his splayed partner. The others let him make a fool of himself trying to help her up for a little too long for Severus's liking, both of them so unsure of space and depth that they failed to get their hands to meet, before at last Bogdanova proffered a more stable hand and lifted the squib girl to precarious standing. Bogdanova held onto her for a beat too long, face set, before shaking off whatever intention had taken hold of her and letting go.
'He's incredibly powerful, you know,' Vernyhora spoke suddenly. 'I don't think you even realise—I don't think anyone even realises. I don't think any of us understands just what he could do.'
Severus was aware. With the recent loss of his wand, Harry had been forced to rely on his natural magic more and more in his everyday activities, to violently mixed results. One thing was very clear, however: Severus did not know what the boy could do. Neither did the boy, really.
It was another thing to keep him up at night. He was now responsible for an emotionally unstable teenager who would fast realise he could harness in one minute more power than Severus would be able to in a month. He had woken once with the insane idea to seek out something to the point of a parenting book, only to remind himself overpowered adolescents were not a thing frequently covered in literature, and also that he would die of embarrassment should anyone stumble upon a tome like it in his collection.
Some time later, Nutt appeared at the entrance to the castle and proceeded to dispel the crowd. She had Ludvig at her back. His purpose became clear when she cast a melting charm on the rink, and he began to fish students out of the resulting puddle. They were none of them happy about it. The complaints rose high, hurting Severus's ears. This was precisely why he hadn't bothered.
'You could help, you know,' Nutt barked at Severus and Vernyhora.
'We're off duty,' Vernyhora said. 'Apologies.'
Harry arrived wet and squelching. His teeth were chattering. Severus did not comment, though he made sure his disapproval translated in his glare.
'Ludvig splashed me,' the boy said.
'Ludvig was walking toward you while you sat in water,' Severus corrected. 'Don't you have a charm that stops you sprawling yourself on the ground?'
'There are no charms in wild magic. Right, Lisa? And you didn't see—he pulled his leg up and kicked the water at me. Like that's funny.'
Severus cast a drying charm over him before the boy shivered himself into a fever. 'Bed,' he ordered.
'No! It's my last weekend here—we were supposed to go on a walk!'
Severus would have to learn not to nod along at the various promises he was manipulated into when he wasn't paying attention. 'A brief walk,' he agreed. Perhaps if he got himself moving, his body would capitulate eventually and force his brain to shut off.
It was not merely to avoid the inevitable tantrum that denial would bring about that he'd agreed, Severus thought as he watched Harry use his magic to draw open the castle gates. This was Severus's last weekend at Durmstrang, too. He should not have thought he would care, but the relief that reared its head in him whenever he contemplated leaving the place seemed to always provoke a coinciding rise of strangeness. He would not have been able to tell what this strangeness comprised of, exactly, because he would hardly miss Durmstrang and he would hardly wish to return. He knew only it was located somewhere to the right of his chest, twined perhaps around the lung, and that it grew when he gazed at the open space stretched before them, new green among snow-drawn rock and white tufts of cotton grass, and at the silver reindeer grazing in the distance.
The sun brought everything out sharp and bright. Severus cast a protective spell over their eyes, but it did little against the flare off the lingering snow. The lake drawn on the horizon glittered. As they approached, Severus saw it had partway melted, though crystals of ice still bobbed on the calm waters along the line of shore.
He did not know how to ask the boy about Bogdanova. Instead, they spoke of practicalities: when to venture to Diagon Alley to procure him a new wand, when Harry would go to the Burrow, whether or not he needed a tutor in Ancient Runes, what to buy Sirius Black for his homecoming present when he arrived in Britain.
'Oh, I forgot—do I need to bring things? To your house?'
'I imagine you would find it useful to bring your clothes and personal possessions with you. Or were you going to burn them all before embarking on this new chapter?'
'No, I mean, do I need anything specific?' Harry explained. It clarified nothing. 'You know, like, uhm—like slippers. Do I wear slippers or just my shoes or can I walk around barefoot? Or flip-flops for the shower. Do I need them? Things like that.'
Severus had not realised quite how much there was to decide on. 'I hope you remain clear-minded enough to realise that you are wildly overthinking this.'
'I'm not overthinking it,' Harry huffed. 'It's just that different houses have different rules. You might not think about them because you live there all the time, but I don't want you to suddenly turn around and ask me why I'm not wearing flip-flops when I go shower, and then get mad at me for not bringing any. See?'
'I see that in this hypothetical scenario, I care deeply about flip-flops.'
Harry kicked at the ground in frustration. 'You're not very helpful,' he complained.
Severus thought about it. 'No shoes indoors,' he decided. 'Flip-flops in the shower are optional.'
The boy looked like he was going to say something to the end of, was that so hard? before mercifully thinking better of it.
A wooden bench had been built by the side of the lake. It had half-sunk into the earth with the recent thaw, but despite drawing their knees a little closer to their chins than was strictly preferable, it was a serviceable seat. Strangely, it had been constructed facing away from the lake and the mountain range behind it. Instead, it revealed a view of the long walk back to the castle, the skies around it heavy with light, the horizon infinite.
Something scuttered behind a rock, splashing water and then flashing white.
'An arctic fox!' Harry showed him.
'Yes.'
'Arctic foxes are amazing. Oh—can I ask you something? Do you think Danila will find him? Voldemort?'
The boy had planted his chin on his knee, arms hugging his legs close to his chest. Though the position should have made him look smaller, he seemed instead somehow mature this way, more thoughtful and grown than he struck Severus on any given day.
Still, Severus did not want to tell him about the prophecy. He would not lie, but he would not supply him with certainties where he did not believe any existed. He had been mistaken in his original interpretation of the peatland witch's words, and he could be wrong again.
'He might,' he allowed. 'He only has a vague idea of where to travel, and the Headmaster has already sent someone after him. Still, with the help of your cloak Harkusha may well avoid detection. We know that even at his weakest, the Dark Lord has managed to draw a man to himself before. It is entirely possible he will do so again. But we do not know either of their minds. It is futile to try and guess at what will happen.'
Harry nodded slowly. 'Why don't you yell at me anymore when I call him Voldemort?'
'I have never yelled at you—'
'Talk at me extra loud, whatever.'
Severus would not die on this hill. He sighed. 'I decided it was futile,' he said.
He did not tell him he had once heard Harry slip up and accidentally echo Severus's own moniker. Hearing the words the Dark Lord leaving the boy's mouth had left a sour taste on Severus's tongue for hours, and he had decided then and there he would never correct him again.
A half-truth. He had many of these to offer, it seemed: the Dark Lord might come back, no one except Severus and Black would have charge of Harry's life from now on, living together in Spinner's End should pose no issues. You have a power the Dark Lord knows not, but not a word on the purpose of this power; not a word on what it could be used for. Severus had been very careful about that one.
But even if Harry never knew, Severus did. He would always know.
When he looked over at Harry and saw him as he was now, too young and too old all at once, he was struck with a fear that nearly doubled him over.
'If the Dark Lord should ever return,' he found himself saying, 'we will leave.'
Harry turned to stare at him. 'What?'
'We are well-versed in living among muggles. We will go somewhere far away and wait out the storm if necessary. I am sure Black would agree with me on this, and if he does not, I am sure I can think of several enjoyable ways of convincing him.'
'Are you serious?'
Was he? Severus could not tell anymore.
'Yes,' he said. Admitting it felt like letting something in him die.
Harry bit his lip. He looked ahead, toward the castle and the sky. 'I don't think that would be good,' he said finally. 'I mean—we'd have to leave behind all of our friends. And all of this—the whole of this world. And I don't think that's right. Because, well—I know I'm just a kid, but I have access to all this power. I probably can't be of that much use now, but maybe by the time he comes back I'll be older. I don't know how much I could help, but I feel like I could help. I think I want to, as much as I can.'
The wind blew over their faces. It shifted the hair that had fallen over the boy's forehead, revealing the whole of his face, the expression in it set and sure. And Severus thought, this is when it happens. The time had come and there had been a choice, just as the peatland witch had said, and it was never going to be his to make.
Why so soon? Could he not get a few years more? A year? Even a month?
His throat was dry. A week. A day. Any time at all—but there was none. It was now.
'Yes,' he said. 'You're right.'
Harry wrapped his arms tighter around his frame. 'Do you really think he'll come back someday?'
Severus closed his eyes. 'Yes.' The words of the two prophecies echoed dully in his head. How he wished either of them had mentioned what role he was supposed to play in all this. 'Some evils cannot be stopped,' he repeated the half-remembered warning. 'They must be borne. All we can do is choose how we shall bear them.'
'I guess,' Harry said. Then, his gaze came unstuck finally from the distance, and he glanced over at Severus. He frowned. 'Don't be sad.'
Severus snorted. He was working rather hard on not breaking into hysterics. He thought he should be allowed a little sadness as compensation for his efforts.
'I'll show you something.' Harry brightened. 'You'll like it.'
Severus doubted it would do anything to help his state, but it would shift the boy's attention away from his face. He nodded.
'You need context, though.' Harry straightened where he sat, arms and legs unwinding. 'Remember how I tried to cast the Patronus at the match? When it sort of worked because it killed the Dementors, but also it definitely didn't work? I know why now. It's because I didn't really cast the Patronus, see. The Patronus spell isn't supposed to kill Dementors. The whole thing is about bringing light into dark, and about hope, and things like that. And I tried to cast with the wild magic from the storm, which makes no sense because a storm is about power and death and breaking. The intention doesn't match at all.'
'As per Vernyhora's folk tales,' Severus agreed.
'Right. So, I've been practising again. At first, I tried to do it with the sun, now that it's out all the time, or with the ground now that it's showing flowers, but it didn't really work. Then I understood that's because it doesn't match, either. Those things are all about light. But the Patronus spell needs the dark. Otherwise, it's not really hope, is it? But now—look.'
The boy had closed his eyes, tuning in to whatever magic he was drawing into his body, and at first it was not obvious at all where Severus should be looking. Then, he saw the first tendrils of what appeared to be steam lifting off the ground. It was all around them, as far as the eye could see, as though the earth itself was expelling a contented sigh, long and only a shade off mournful.
Then Severus looked closer and recognised the steam for light.
It was golden, this light, its effect lost in the blare from the skies. If it had been night, it would have been a sight to behold. Only the feeling was not diminished by the strength of the polar day: the light emanating from the earth tasted like the sun after a long winter, like the first glimmer of joy after months spent in darkness.
'Arctic winter,' Harry said. He'd opened his eyes to regard the view with Severus, clearly satisfied with what he was seeing. 'That's what I draw on now. Because it's so dark and so miserable, so every little bit of light you can find, every little bit of happiness, it feels amplified. This way, it's not even a difficult spell. It doesn't need a lot of magic at all, because of the way it's done.'
Severus could not take his eyes off it. 'Say the incantation.'
'Why? Incantations don't do anything for wild magic—'
'Do as you're told.'
Harry huffed in annoyance, then said, 'Expecto Patronum, I guess.'
An animal split away from the distant herd. Severus thought it a reindeer, before it drew closer and revealed itself immaterial, drawn from the same light that bled now from the soil.
'Wait, is that my—my Patronus is a reindeer?' Harry sounded confused. 'I mean, that's cool, I guess—'
'For Merlin's sake, Harry. It's a deer.' It was, and a beautiful one at that. 'Your father's Animagus form.'
'Oh.' The boy immediately sounded pleased. 'You're right. That makes more sense. And hey—we match!'
Severus peered down at him. Harry grinned, the sun reflecting off his glasses. It was blinding. Severus took him by the shoulder and drew him into the crook of his arm to protect his eyes from the flare.
The peatland witch had been right. It was done. It would have always been so. There had been no choices for Severus to make which would have changed anything at all that mattered.
The warm glow of Harry's Patronus must have been affecting Severus in some way, because as he sat there thinking of choices he would never have, he felt nevertheless that he had made the right one.
THE END.
That's it, folks!
Thank you to everyone reading and commenting on the story. It's been a great joy to share it with you.
I currently have no plans to write future instalments in the series, but this does not mean there won't ever be any. I'm in the middle of a fairly busy period work-wise and haven't been writing much lately, so I expect things may well change once I get the space to write creatively again in a couple of months. Updates tend to come to my AO3 first before they trickle down to , so I would recommend watching that space (same username) or my tumblr at gzdacz-writes-fic!
