Disclaimer: All this belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.
24. Eye for an Eye
Potter stood in the house's threshold, hearing movement upstairs. He called the man again; his voice died down in the darkened room. Dim steps climbed down the stairs; the grieving man seemed as if he were in a funeral, pale, mute, consumed by an evident night of insomnia and anguish.
"How are you?"
"That doesn't concern you. Let's go."
They didn't speak at all during the journey. Potter's words travelled in the silent spaces between them, scattered uselessly.
They entered the Ministry, in the underground turmoil, in the titanic, colossal architecture's bright light. The hearing room didn't have any empty seat, many people had come motivated by curiosity and morbidity for the final trial of Severus Snape. The half-blood was separated from Potter and put inside a sharp cage in the middle of the room, where everyone could see him. Snape raised his old stone's face, of cold indifference and apathy; he didn't care what they might do with him, and he grimaced his thin lips. His face looked like a mask of disdain and disgust to each person present in the audience. There wasn't a trace of the vulnerability that could be perceived in him at the last hearing.
In the highest part of the jury's seats was Kingsley, the new minister, accompanied by the registrar that directed the hearing like the last occasions. A general murmur filled the room. By the high windows, they let some dementors in that stood in the roof, held back by the warden's Patronus. The apparition of those creatures caused some unease on the public.
"I hereby start the last session of the accused Severus Snape's trial," the Minister's voice was strong and clear.
Many former Death Eaters that were captured testified against him; most of them confirmed he had been Voldemort's right hand and that Snape constantly took pleasure in misleading Dumbledore and spying under his nose. One even mentioned he had told Tom Riddle the prophecy that had led him to the Potters.
Harry paled in his seat slowly as those battered men appeared on the stand one by one, with their reddened eyes, with the same ashen shade of their skin, with the same dirty, messy hair every Azkaban prisoners wore. The registrar frowned, slightly defiant.
"Do you have anything to say in your defence, Mr Snape, presumed innocent?"
The alluded man bared his teeth like a rabid dog, and with poisonous, irate voice he mumbled he didn't have any intentions of defending himself against that 'presumed judge' and their jury-wannabe. Harry hid his head in his hands for a few moments.
"Well, I think we have enough motives to give Severus Snape a long stay in Azkaban. Your past declarations, Mr Potter, had lacked any meaning. For the man you're trying to defend I hope this time you have something more solid."
The Potion Master looked at some point in the seats where he had discovered Minerva and Lovegood next to Hermione. He hadn't expected to see her there, he was startled for a moment. He didn't like the idea of her seeing him stuck in that cage.
Potter walked to the middle of the room, in the lowest part, where Snape was. He took out a small vial from his jacket and faced the crowd, with darkened face and dim eyes.
"I had retained this respecting the professor's intimacy, but I won't allow you to incarcerate him if he isn't guilty."
He poured the murky liquid in the rich, marble pensive and the audience could see the big images of the jailed man's mind; they could hear the vagabond voices from the past, hovering in his head.
Two girls in a park, one redhead, with big eyes of an unnatural shade of green. McGonagall shifted in her seat. Hogwarts' kids coming and going from the Hat's scrutiny, the Houses' names yelled in the middle of the Great Hall, Dumbledore's image. The crowd seemed to freeze, the dementors moved in the roof like dark winds underwater. A kid named James Potter pushed Severus in a hallway, he had arrogant eyes. The time in the memories changed, Lily kissed a guy with messy hair next to a fountain, they hold each other's hands. Harry felt as if someone had squeezed his throat. Minerva had put a hand over her mouth, in her firm eyes, something is coming undone. The secretary tilted his head, drowsy. Don't kill me. Again, the eternal shape of Dumbledore, his big frame, his sharp eyes. That was not my intention. Snape begged, kneeled; Snape looked at himself, almost without recognizing himself, without recognizing that younger, supplicant version of his past. He searched for her, for Granger, between the crowd; the multiple heads stuck together didn't let him see her. Lily yelled, the half-blood shivered against the bars, Harry lost the last tips of colour from his face. The dementors shifted again, getting a bit closer to the barrier that held them, and then went back up, blinded. A part of Voldemort lives inside him. The registrar supported his head against one of his hand, half-closing his eyes; a small frown had appeared between his eyebrows. You must be the one who kills me, Severus. Snape experienced again the same anger from that day, boiling from his stomach. Minerva closed her eyes tightly, shaking her head, her hands where rigid over her cloak. Only that way you will achieve Voldemort's full trust. A wave started in the human streams, a movement of hands, of pale faces and lost gazes and some whispers; his voice extended, his rotten hand moved the air. The caged man looked up to the crowd, some watched him and shivered, but he wasn't looking for them, there was something else, something that seemed to shine in his face. And my soul? What will happen to my soul? Minerva lowered her lids in the climax, an invisible hand had taken the air away from her. You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment? The registrar looked elsewhere, anywhere else that wouldn't involve watching that infamous scene. Hagrid, gigantic Hagrid, who sat one way and then another without finding peace. Always, Snape's voice whispered like a sentence to himself, like an undeniable, permanent noise, like the silent talk of those who had no voice, of a mountain, of colossal stones. Always. Snape, the one that seemed to have so few qualities, the driest, coldest, who ended up having that candle inside him, that small, sunny particle that lightened up everything, that had consumed him completely in his love's rush. The registrar shook his head disapprovingly, rubbing his face with his hand. People shifted, waved their hands, turned elsewhere, sinking their eyes in the blue, dense image. It was cold; the dementors drew their shapes against the contained air of the room. The grieving man fell when he faced Lily's death, those green eyes were still opened, Harry was brushed with the memory's raw hand, he still trembled after so many years. The stoic, snake wizard was a storm's scream, a crude, marsh's yell, a pathetic wandering like souls astray. Minerva raised her gaze and looked at him. Lightning shone behind him and lit his face, his face contracted by frenetic stupor, in an astonishing loss. The whole room watched as boy and man meld in front of them, in human waters. And Snape's yell, it was like that lightning, like a hot gap of light that painted his memories. McGonagall's hands seemed to have left her will and flapped everywhere. The exhibited man, the naked man in the cage looked at them as if they were a sad bunch of stuffed animals in a locker. Their faces were white, some wet, and he told himself he didn't care, that no amount of tears mattered. He was disgusted, of them and of himself, and he wanted to disappear. But there was something that despite his shame, made him uneasy. He looked for her again in between the withered faces; there she was, next to McGonagall, her hair was pulled back in a braid and she was as pale as everyone else. He was repulsed, because his memories weren't a plea of help, and yet he waited with shame, with misery, for her to deign herself to look at him after watching the memories. She was crying, her face was wet, she took her hands to it and cleaned them with sadness, as if she was doing something indecent. He could only aspire to their eyes' meeting; of all that people, she was the only one that truly knew how to look at him.
"Silence," the registrar ordered, voice helpless. "Silence," he was forced to repeat.
There were no more images; the audience watched each other, hiding their faces, quieting down.
"Anything else to show us, Mr Potter?"
Harry felt suddenly weak, as if he were to crumble in the middle of the room.
"Do you think there's a need for anything else?"
The registrar seemed uncomfortable.
"It was emotive, Mr Potter, too much I'd say, but still not enough."
Bastard! Someone yelled from some lost point in the audience.
"Silence," he ordered drily. "Is there anything else, Mr Potter?"
"One thing," the boy whispered, travelling to his original position where he took a big frame he had hidden there. He carried with effort the heavy object to the middle of the room and supported it against a chair, moving clumsily.
"Albus Dumbledore wants to testify for Severus Snape. Professor, please," Harry bent in front of the empty frame as if he was peeking through a window. A very familiar face emerged from the dark.
"Good evening," the painted blue eyes seemed almost alive.
The registrar squinted, sitting back on his chair, mistrustful.
"Albus Dumbledore, what a surprise. What do you have to tell us?"
The painted man looked around, serene, immutable as he had always been.
"Where's Severus?"
"Behind you, behind your painting I mean."
"Good," his blue gaze fixed on the registrar. "I ordered Severus to kill me, he didn't do it on his own accord. I also ordered him many other things, very dangerous, possibly lethal, and he fulfilled each one of them to please me and to serve the Order as he has been doing for the past seventeen years."
"Then the matter at hand here is that this man turned into a killer by your orders and then, he's not guilty? Isn't he a murderer anyway?"
"He is not a traitor, Mr. registrar. What he did was an act of mercy, because I begged him to kill me, my hand was rotting."
"This is absurd," Harry interrupted, but Dumbledore's head nodded, asking him to stay away from the discussion.
"And what should we do according to you, Mr Dumbledore?"
"Let him go. While Severus did take my life, he paid his when Voldemort's snake bit his throat, don't you think? An eye for an eye."
The registrar closed his eyes for a moment; he felt the crowd's eyes on him.
"If you were alive, perhaps I would call you in a trial session for every crime he committed and hasn't paid for. But you are right. Severus Snape is absolved from his charges of treason and homicide. He will have to come to court to report twice a year for the next three years. This trial is finished, you may leave."
The cage opened and Snape walked for the first time without any debts, his first steps as a free man.
Many of the juries stopped to look at him as he left the bars. A good part of the room followed him with their eyes. Harry was waiting for him in the middle of the place. He extended a hand, offering a truce, but Snape didn't take it.
"To exhibit me like that, Potter, is unworthy even for you. I guess you're quite satisfied now."
The boy wanted to speak, but nothing came out of his tight throat.
"Son, Harry didn't have any other option to free you."
"Everything is excusable to you when it comes to Potter; I see death has been kind to you, you're just like always. Now if you excuse me, I have to hide before the press devours the crumbs of intimacy Potter left me."
Rita Skeeter ran downstairs, her green quill shaking behind her like a fencing sword, and a photographer tried to focus them despite the distance separating them.
The grieving figure seemed to turn into smoke, pushing his way between the crowd that watched him speechless; some tried to stop him, one man even spit on his shoes, it was clear someone was always going to doubt him. Most of them looked at him with an exasperating mixture of admiration and fear.
In his fight to reach the exit, he looked for her again; he didn't see her between the wizard groups, not even Minerva. But the human boiling and Skeeter's heels following him forced him to leave the place quickly.
Severus Snape, that name flutters in my head every day and I still see him kneeling on the floor with Harry's mum. I can't stand it. I see his clutched eyes, full of tears, I hear his screams from the day he was tortured. I don't know what to do, I can't stop crying, for him and me, for what he did to me.
Why? Why did he hurt me? Professor Snape, I want to forgive you, but I shouldn't.
Why did I let myself be dragged into the painful dilemma of his life? My strange, stormy Professor Snape. Why do I call him mine, if a splintered part of me hates him? You never even felt for me a piece of genuine regard, if you had, you wouldn't have betrayed me. Why, professor Snape? I'm just asking why.