Disclaimer: Nothing you see here actually belongs to me. All credits to J. K. Rowling for the universe and Gato Azul for the great plot.
1
Prologue
Floating sheets, silent hands hanging from stretchers, rocks raised until they formed, in their union, a piece of demolished wall.
Filch swept uselessly; the huge pieces of stone that had been walls would not budge under the weak movements of his broom.
Harry looked around; hurt ones, dead ones, people running and talking lively, agitated, a strange mix of optimism and pain penetrated in the remains of the castle. The war was over, but now they had to walk through the unprecedented grief of friends, teachers, family…
Ron and Hermione sitting in the floor, looking at each other in the middle of the coming and going of others, of those others who run from door to door with arms full of bandages and bottles, of those others who entered the Great Hall without making any noise, faces stained and blurred, crying, some strangely smiling, looking around.
A bunch of glass was scattered around the young survivor's feet. He looked at them as if they were beetle's eyes, blue, green, red, shining on the floor; he made them float around himself, uniting them again in the stained glass they once were, the stained glass that was rebuilt thanks to him.
Harry could barely breathe under the staggering feeling he experienced as he watched death and life mixed in such way.
The castle almost destroyed, the old friends hugging each other. Madam Pomfrey went around covering one by one the lifeless faces; then they were a path of white sheets in the middle of the hall.
Abeforth was drinking coffee, his old eyes floating in the light that was beginning to take dominion over the place. Dawn broke; the wizards seemed to be unable to choose between relief or pain. They didn't celebrate, for the fallen hadn't even gotten cold yet; nonetheless, they smiled in silence, a bit happy and a bit ashamed of having survived.
An abandoned body flashed in his mind. Remembering Snape created a pressure in his throat, as if someone had suddenly pulled all the air from him. He could picture him, he could picture blurrily the cape lying on the floor, like a devil's wings that were spreading for the teacher, that was swallowing him.
Harry walked to the front of the hall and stood there, like Dumbledore, like Snape himself, and thought about what they could've seen while they were standing there, in that same spot. Would they see the same things as him? Responsibility, an overwhelming responsibility for the people in front of him, for Hogwarts' students, their faces lightened up by the candles in the first day of class, the darkened faces Snape may have seen. Harry had in his mind a curious blending of both scenes, a bizarre merger of smiles and dirt in those faces, of calm stares and bloody foreheads.
He looked at the grey crowd, buzzing like a gigantic cloud of dusty feet and hands, coming and going.
Potter raised his voice and the crowd's eyes travelled to him, anxious, hungry for his words; they wanted to hear good news, they wanted encouragement. Harry seemed divided by an invisible sword; he looked at the ground, then he searched for any familiar face in the middle of the multitude of faces turned towards him. He started to talk, words stumbling as they left his mouth.
"Excuse me, there's something I want to make clear about Severus Snape, who died a few hours ago," some stopped their actions to focus all their attention on him, intrigued, without understanding what could be said about that traitor. He could make out confusion in some faces; in a lost part of the hall, someone made noises with some vials. "Before dying, professor Snape let me see some of his memories."
He stopped for a moment, watching the gestures of surprise of the wizards and witches, the raised eyebrow of Ron, who had opened his mouth.
"He wasn't who we thought he was. During many years he worked as a spy for the Order; Snape murdered Dumbledore following the instructions he gave him. The director asked him to kill him."
The surrounding noises ceased; every single eye of the castle was opened towards him. So many expressions in so many faces scared him for a second: scepticism, horror, incredulity.
A murmur started around the whole place, wild, agitated.
"Is this a joke?" he heard someone said.
"I promise you I'm not joking," he hurried to tell the crowd, to the hundreds of fixed gazes. A sharp silence was shifting in the hall, dense, big until Harry's voice broke it. His green eyes looked like they were on fire.
"I know many of you won't believe it, but it's true and I'm going to bury him here like the rest, I hope nobody refuses." No one moved as he walked through the crowd, nor as he crossed the threshold. They looked around each other, finding frowns, tight lips, fear in their shiny eyes. Minerva McGonagall went out a few seconds after the young man, followed by Granger and Weasley. The gigantic frame of Hagrid made his way through the multitude, apologizing to the ones he pushed in his hurry to reach the door.
When the last of his steps faded away as he walked, the whispers began in the hall, so many of them that it felt like they came from the walls, blooming from the ground itself. The murmur remained for a long time in the air, like fumes slow to dissolve.
"What the hell was that?" a redhead revolved around; Ron had almost reached him. Hermione chased him too.
"Mr Potter!" McGonagall's voice raised in the air like a small spark. "Mr Potter, please explain what you just said."
Four pairs of eyes were fixed on him.
"I already told you in the Hall: Severus Snape was always in our side and I'm gonna bury him here, with dignity."
The Head of Gryffindor shook her head with force, her tight hair slipping from its hold, running down her temples.
"Listen to me, Mr Potter," she raised her hand to her forehead; her thoughts were like a knot, pounding painfully.
"If anyone wants to come with me, feel free to do it. If you don't agree, I'll do it on my own."
Harry resumed his strides, with Granger walking hurriedly behind him, talking non-stop.
"But Harry, why Dumbledore would ask him something like that?"
The young man's back was facing her, and he answered firmly and drily.
"To save Malfoy, to achieve the absolute trust of…"
Rubeus' eyes couldn't open any more. McGonagall's shoes trumpeted forcefully against the floor; the woman's rigid hands seized Potter's and Granger's shoulder.
"I'll go with you, Mr Potter. Miss Granger, stay here. Hagrid and I will take on from here."
The girl may have thought of refuting, but the blunt, serious voice of the professor dampened her voice in her throat.
The weak sun of the dawn didn't manage to reduce the cold. The heaviness of the battle was jostling in Harry's eyelids, but he tried to keep in his body a firm, energetic pace. McGonagall's steps were like whispers in the grass. The light made its way like a rug of incandescent flowers on the turf, over the Whomping Willow. The day was like any other; if the destroyed castle wasn't visibly at their backs, they could've thought nothing had ever happened. The world's and time's order, the dawn was still the same, no matter how many dead or violence.
He ran under the Willow's branches that lashed through the air and saw Minerva run for the first time, muddling her shoes and raising her skirts with her hands. Hagrid walked clumsily; his enormous frame didn't lend him quickness and a twig had scratched his face.
He didn't even want to think how they would make out alive of that storm of flying branches and rough wind if they had to carry a body. Maybe someone would end up hurt.
The Shrieking Shack seemed to complain when they got inside; wood moaned under their steps, a scent of rotten humidity crouched in corners. The three of them went up the stairs without looking at each other, without speaking. They'd have found hard to bear the hardness of each other's eyes. Soaked in silence, they reached the room where the body laid.
A curtain of light entered shamelessly, strengthening the scene Harry had only perceived the night before. He could see each detail that had gone missing before: the shade almost black of the blood, the sweet and metallic smell it sent off, the stains on the wall, painted like red screams, Snape's limbs, extended and stiff. Rubeus had hidden part of his face between his big hands, Harry could only see his swollen, wet eyes. McGonagall looked around for a few seconds, with a scream stuck in her mouth; her gaze dashed over and over against the body, almost as if she couldn't believe the scene in front of her.
Harry walked slowly through the crimson island, staining his shoes of blood. He had hated Snape, and yet he would've never felt glad by knowing he'd walk on his blood.
The young man knelt over the body without daring to see him fully, as if so much stillness, so much of that red mess, was too much for him. The woman conjured a blanket and a stretcher, overcoming the howl of her inner forces.
Harry focused back on Snape's face, his stagnant and half-closed eyes that wouldn't look at him anymore. Useless, inappropriate compassion conquered his chest. The man's blank face reminded him he had lost something without even knowing, and he regretted every occasion when an encounter with the potion's master ended in a hostile verbal match, when it may have been something different.
Resigning himself, he tried to put the body in the stretcher. Hagrid went to help, but when he touched the body Rubeus let out a surprised wail; his small eyes started to leak over the clothes. Harry found this gesture so sweet for a man so big and rough like Hagrid, who cried in silence as he'd cry for one of his creatures. McGonagall stared at the wall, jaw tight, hardening her expression until making it almost raw; a halo of terrible emptiness shifted over her, but the wet shine of her eyes betrayed her.
"Well," Potter's voice smashed against the silence. "I guess we can go."
Minerva's eyes skidded over the stains of blood on the walls.
"Did he suffer much?" the woman's voice was tight, it almost died out.
Harry looked at her condescendingly, almost with pity.
"I wouldn't say it was painless, but he died quickly enough."
With a swirl of her wand, McGonagall started to vanish the blood from the walls, arm raised and stiff, with the gesture of firm self-control she had always displayed, but her eyes were still wet, betraying the spark of guilt she couldn't extinguish.
The man and the half-giant extended the sheet over the air, but Hagrid's thick fingers didn't help much. The white sheet descended like a vapour, pristine and light, but it was soon stained, red eyes blooming in her, creating a trail of blood. That brown colour soon extended like cancer, tainting everything. Harry felt, for the first time, the uncontrollable urge to cry.
Wasn't suddenly his life like that stained sheet? Like his childhood, dirty of tears and death. He thought of Sirius, of Remus and the inability to recover the whiteness and cover his memories with a white sheet of oblivion.
He squeezed his eyelids, getting rid of the wetness behind them.
"Let's go, Potter," Minerva ordered.
The young man positioned himself in the side where Severus' feet laid, to raise his side of the stretcher.
"Cover his face, please."
Hagrid looked at the fallen soldier's face as if he was watching at an old town. He was having a hard time letting go.
"I don' know, Harry; it's like he was breathin'," he mumbled with swollen and reddened eyes.
"He isn't breathing, Hagrid. It's your imagination," the youth told him, implying he was ready to go.
The semi-giant took the sheet to cover him and extended it with a bit of difficulty, but when it was time to cover the man's face, he stayed still, watching downwards.
"Harry, I know it sounds like… it's just, I think he's breathin'."
McGonagall avoided looking at her companions; she was scared she wouldn't be able to contain herself if she saw Hagrid's expression, and then she'd start to behave as irrationally as him at that moment; he was so agitated he said Snape was still breathing. She heard Potter's patient voice, trying to calm him down.
"No, Hagrid. It's normal you're feeling this way, but you have to calm down…"
Minerva walked to the door; how dark, what a lonely place to die. Snape's death had been just like his life. She rudely destroyed a tear in the corner of her eye.
"To make you feel better, I'll prove you he isn't…"
When would she stop feeling this way? She couldn't see the moment of forgiveness; remorse would be a beast in her memory that'd eat her slowly and from her insides.
Aphonia; not even Potter's voice carried on in that infamous corner.
She turned her head to see what was happening. Hagrid and the youth were watching her, as if they expected something from her. McGonagall had the annoying feeling they'd been sneakily inspecting her for a while.
"What's wrong, Potter?"
The lad's eyes refused to meet hers; his hands moved in the air many times, as if they were lost, like big, blind butterflies. A green spark ignited in his eyes.
"He's breathing."
Something was clouding in her brain, a wall of water between her and Potter. Sudden dizziness forced her to hold on the wall.
Author's Note: Thanks to Gato Azul again for letting me translate this wonderful story; I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. If you want the original story, just send me a PM, because FF is a bitch with links.
Side note: My first language is not English, so I apologise in advance for every mistake and odd-wording :) I'll update every Monday, as I have every chapter ready.
Reviews and comments are always appreciated.