Remembrance and Renewalby Nigel Tatsuya and Avatar Arkmage
Chapter Eighteen:Remembrance...
The Pharmacology text fell heavily into the pale Slytherin youth's lap.
Try as he might, Draco could not force his steely grey eyes to focus properly. He felt horrible, almost as though Crabbe and/or Goyle had misjudged their aims at an adversary, and had inadvertently hammered him instead. Strike that, that was not at all how Draco felt. Perhaps it would have been better to say that Draco's head throbbed as though Crabbe and Goyle had cloned themselves, and their fathers, and the lot of them had taken a false crack at him within a span of a few seconds.
"Mudblood...? Well, look who it is! Bouncing Ferret boy!" Hermione said haughtily when she saw Draco, tossing her unruly sennit-coloured locks back as she knelt to gather her books. "It's your own fault for running in a hospital." She paused as just as she was about to pick up a book on Medical Anthropology. "What are you doing here anyway?"
"None of your business, you nosey parker!" Draco said, still unable to gain his bearings enough to rise from the floor. "If you'd only do something about that overgrown brown gillyweed patch on your head that you euphemistically call hair, you'd be able to see where you were going!"
Draco wanted Hermione to be in his proximity about as much as he would have enjoyed five consecutive life sentences in Azkaban, and that would be if he were held in a cell next to a torture chamber staffed by very bored inquisitors. In other words, he wanted Hermione to be anywhere but right before him at the moment, and actively facilitated her departure by helping' her pick up her heavy tomes.
"Malfoy!" Hermione screeched as Draco flung a particularly heavy Physician's Desk Reference into her arms. "If you throw another book at me..."
"What's this one about?" Draco sneered, picking up a book with a particularly attractive leather bound cover. In gold letters were stamped the words Full Colour Atlas of Gynecological Physiology and Morphology.'
"MALFOY! Give that back!" Hermione's urgency to retrieve that particular book, only piqued Draco's interest further.
Before Hermione could stop him, Draco opened the large volume to a random page. His eyes appeared to nearly pop out of his head, and his cheeks relinquished what little colour they possessed as he perused the subsequent pages.
"Ferret-Boy, I want that back immediately!"
Draco's initial reaction of extreme shock quickly transformed into one of acute interest. Although the pictures in the book were completely motionless and silent, the true to life coloured photographs were more than adequate compensation. Draco found it all too easy to ignore Hermione's querulous voice as he continued turning the pages.
Hermione finally yanked the book from Draco's hands. The pale boy lunged after it, but his battered and fatigued body was no match for the Gryffindor's otherwise healthy one.
"Well! I hope you've enjoyed yourself..!" Hermione said with a scowl.
"I always thought you were an odd one, Granger!" Malfoy said, smoothing the lower part of his hospital gowns as he stood with the assistance of a handrail along the wall.
"What are you talking about!" Hermione's cheeks coloured.
"I've wondered why you don't seem to have any close female friends, Granger! No one's ever seen you about with other girls. Must be why you're always following Potthead and Weasel about like a stinking hound!" Draco moved closer to better appreciate the rutilus tones, now extending all the way to Hermione's ears. "Gonna share those dirty mudblood women books with them? Bet the three of you get your excitement from looking at girls from afar, since no real girls would find any of you remotely interesting..."
Hermione silenced Draco by swatting him in the head with the book in question, before grumpily storming off. Draco, who was once more on the cold, tiled floor, sat up and sneered after her.
A few moments later, the footfalls of several individuals echoed throughout the hall. "Draco!" Dr. Payne called, sighing heavily in relief. "There you are! You're in no condition of be out of your room yet. Where on Earth have you been?"
"How did you find me, Dr. Pain?" Draco asked, attempting to keep the apprehension out of his voice.
"One of your school mates came and alerted us to where you were, Dr. and Dr. Granger's daughter, she was, I believe." Dr. Payne replied, looking sympathetic as a couple of orderlies gently helped Draco into a wheelchair.
Draco longed to explain that he would prefer a cobra to Hermione for a mate, but decided to not risk angering these muggles. Any of them might be close friends with Hermione or her family, after all.
"Oh my!" Dr. Payne gasped as he gingerly examined the darkening bruise just under Draco's eye. "How did this happen?"
Being so taken aback, Draco could not conjure a better explanation. He certainly did not want to admit to being struck by Hermione for looking at a book with such graphic pictures in them. "Er... I must have run into something..."
"Into someone's fist by the look of it." Dr. Payne supplied, before alerting security to the possibility of hooligans infiltrating the hospital itself. "Let's get you safely back to your room."
Draco sighed to himself. What started out as an interesting excursion into a world he hadn't experienced before, was turning out to be as unpleasant as his pureblooded wizard friends said being among savage muggles would be.
The images continued to play above the semi-liquid surface of the Pensieve as Severus, Albus and Harry looked on. Harry sat in the comfortable armchair next to Severus, watching his own memories of the previous night play like the scenes from some macabre movie.
Harry was still surprised at just how liberating it was to place a memory, he would otherwise have had difficulty talking about, into the Pensieve. Whereas he would have been both ashamed and seething with anger if he were to tell about his latest confrontation with Lord Voldemort, sharing the events in this fashion lent Harry a feeling of both excitement and freedom, as though the memories were not his at all.
Severus' eyes widened when both the living and ghostly images of his mother slowly revolved out of the semi-liquid surface. He had not heard his mother's voice in nearly seventeen years... not since the night she had begged him to refuse the Dark Mark. Not since the night she was tortured into insanity.
He fumed at what the Dark Lord had attempted to do to his mother and was glad that Harry had been there to prevent it. The Dark Lord often used what he knew would hurt one the most, and if he could not find a weakness to exploit, he would harm one's loved ones or family. A method of attack which unfortunately would still work on Severus...and Harry.
No matter the means, Severus could not find it in himself to punish Harry for stealing his arm and the Polyjuice IV, and attacking the Dark Lord. At least he could think of nothing suitable to do to Harry at this moment. Could he punish the boy for saving his Grandmother from one of the most evil wizards in alive today? Sure the boy stole, he lied, and he risked his life...
...But he did it for the only surviving family members the poor boy had...
How could Severus fault him for it? And if the situations had been reversed, even he in his youthful foolishness might have attempted something similar.
Severus only half-listened to the remainder of the conversation between the boy and his grandmother. He paid about the same amount of attention to the subsequent conversation between the shape-changed Harry and Draco Malfoy, who seemed very apprehensive at the prospect of spending any length of time among the muggles.
His own inner voice fought for the wounded wizard's attentions. "Lucien Snape was not your only parent." the inner voice stated repeatedly, in varying intonations and phraseologies. "You've learned other ways to nurture..."
The pain from his injuries throbbing dully now, Severus lowered his head and studied his remaining hand as it lay almost forlorn, as though looking for its partner in his lap.
"What if you're not a parent like Lucien Snape?" the voice asked Severus again.
The images over the Pensieve finally ceased, like a film frozen on a single frame. Evidently, Harry had been longing after his Grandmother for quite some time after returning to Hogwarts, for over the Pensieve, the image of the ghostly Mervidith Snape remained. Her transparent form faced Severus directly.
Her night-sky coloured eyes seemed to be fixed on the identically coloured eyes of her son. "What if you are not at all like Lucien as a parent..." Severus' inner voice asked for the final time, "...but like Mervidith?"
Severus' musings were halted by the sound of Harry's returning to the Pensieve and placing another silvery strand into the bowl. After a tap of Harry's wand, Mervidith's gentle face vanished and was replaced by the incensed face of Vernon Dursley.
If the neckless man had spoken loudly to Harry in the past, the Pensieve amplified his voice until it was deafening now. "You and your parents are freaks!" Vernon's voice bounced off the many walls of the room and fell hard on the souls of Albus and Severus. "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MAGIC!"
When the image of Vernon began to drag a much younger Harry Potter to the door of what appeared to be a cupboard, Severus' eyes widened in horror. He had seen bits and pieces of the visions like these in Harry's mind during the Occlumency lessons he had been ordered to give to Harry in the previous school year. Severus had in fact been shocked by what little he had been able to see during that time, and though he hadn't let Harry know his true reaction, he had in fact informed the other members in the Order of the Phoenix that they needed to intervene on the boy's behalf. Severus was dismayed to watch the scene in its entirety now.
"Noooooo!" screamed the young, painfully malnourished child. "Please no no no! Uncle Vernon, don't lock me in there again!"
"What's the matter?" mocked a much better fed boy around the same age. "Scared of the dark, cousin?"
"Yes!" little Harry wailed, tears coursing from his green eyes. "The light won't go on!"
"We'll give you a new light globe when you learn to follow rules!" Aunt Petunia put her head out of the kitchen and shouted.
The portly man lobbed the young boy into the cupboard and locked the door, almost seeming to take pleasure in the terrified child's shrieks, and his own son's laughter.
Severus rose out of his chair and hobbled to the Pensieve with a look of the purest loathing on his face. Harry watched as his father reached toward the image of the cupboard door, as if to tear it from its hinges. His arm returned to his side when he realized that these were only memories and that there was nothing he could do to intervene on his angel's behalf.
Although Harry had never been one to share many details about his life with anyone, he found that he was almost powerless to stop himself now. He wanted to do this... No, he had to do this. For one, he wanted to show Headmaster Albus Dumbledore exactly what his good intentions had wrought. Harry's life had been only a little preferable to the proverbial Hell of some people's beliefs. Just as Dumbledore had earned Harry's ire in the previous school year by choosing to keep Harry in the dark and hidden, rather than informing him of the true dangers ahead, so he would learn why he earned it again this time...for depriving him of a happier life. A life he might have been able to spend with his only living relatives. And this was all because Dumbledore didn't want Harry to grow up being famous'? If the Headmaster had only investigated sooner, perhaps protective wards could be set up using his father's blood.
Harry also wanted Severus to see these memories fully, rather than only in flashes. No doubt it was because of Dumbledore's reasoning that Severus initially seemed to think that Harry was a celebrity' even the muggle world and had mistreated him in the start. He also wanted Severus to know more about his own past since he had silently witnessed chunks of Severus' past during his journey outside of time.
As he removed each subsequent strand from his mind, Harry felt as though a heavy burden were being removed from his back, and his heart as well.
Albus paled as he watched the image of a toddler being forced to carry a basket full of dirty laundry down the steep stairwell to the laundry room in the Dursley's house. The toddler could hardly sustain the weight of the filled basket, which in all likelihood weighed about as much as the boy, if not more.
When the youth finally fell, he received no assistance, or even an ice pack for his resultant bruises. All he received was a harsh word and a threat of receiving no supper that night if he was caught slacking again.
The next memory showed Harry as an older boy, meticulously dusting furniture in the Dursley's living room while the Dursleys were outside teaching Dudley to ride his new bicycle. Harry put the dusting rag on the table and gazed in wonder at Dudley's Nintendo on the floor in front of the telly. He had watched Dudley play it time and again before, but Harry had never been allowed to play it even once.
After looking out the window and seeing Uncle Vernon giving Dudley another push on the bicycle, Harry crept over to the console and turned it and the telly on. He understood immediately why his cousin found the entertainment system so amusing, and lost track of time as he directed Luigi through the Mushroom Kingdom. When he directed Luigi to play the magic flute, he heard the door to the living area open and a shrill screech issued from Petunia Dursley.
At this point, the nearly adult Harry turned away from the Pensieve, and the reason was apparent to both Albus and Severus right away. Uncle Vernon, who they had quickly come to learn believed fully in the expiation of rule breaking, especially Harry's, spanked, or more accurately, caned Harry as Petunia and Dudley looked on. When Harry later asked Aunt Petunia for some bandages for his open cuts, she turned away from him in disgust. Before the six year-old Harry's tears even had a chance to dry, Dudley had his friends over and they all engaged in several rounds of Harry hunting.
Severus had still not returned to his seat. His legs were frozen to the spot on the floor directly in front of Dumbledore's desk. Each time a new image appeared, Severus' remaining hand rose, as though yearning to rescue the boy from the horrid ordeal which was apparently his early childhood.
Harry placed several more strands into the Pensieve, and felt better and better as each thought left his mind. He chose to equate sharing these memories with vomiting. They were like putrefying matter in his gut, which had to either be expelled or allowed to rot further until it resulted in his illness or death. Harry chose the former option.
Severus found that he could not turn away from the images the Pensieve projected above it, no matter how awful. When the image of a toddler Harry rocking back and forth in the darkened cupboard materialized, Severus dropped to his knees. The baby wore a nappy that evidently hadn't been changed for days, and when Aunt Petunia finally decided to change him, both Albus and Severus nearly wretched when they saw how bad the child's diaper rash was. The entire area was reddened, and the child's foreskin was badly inflamed.
Severus lost every vestige of colour in his face when he realized that this was probably one of Harry's first memories. The boy apparently had little to no memories of Lily and James, therefore, he in all likelihood had no memory of a parent's love.
Not even Severus had been entirely deprived of that.
The potion master made to go to Harry's side, but stopped abruptly when the boy, who still looked like the distorted reflection of Severus, curled up in a ball and started to scream.
"Harry!" Albus Dumbledore came out from behind his desk and joined Severus at Harry's side. The teen writhed on the floor, and screamed as though he were being gored from the inside outward.
Initially, the two older men feared that Harry had gone insane. Having memories, particularly traumatic ones, suppressed for years suddenly brought to the forefront could very well be more than a youth could bear.
Severus noticed that Harry's sallow skin was beginning to colour again. "The Polyjuice IV...it's wearing off at last."
Harry continued to flail and cry out in the same manner as one who had been subjected to the cruciatus curse.
"Severus, does the Polyjuice IV potion normally cause its drinker this much distress when it wears off?"
"I cannot answer with any degree of certainty," Severus said, desperately wanting to do anything to help his son. "I've been developing the potion for months, and it hasn't been tested on humans yet."
Harry screamed shrilly.
Severus went on in an unruffled demeanor. "Because of the body's rapid metabolization of the Antipodean Citrine-eyed dragon albumin, it makes the potion somewhat unstable. Tissues like a person's irises would still change back within an hour, as with the original Polyjuice. " He turned toward Harry. "I wasn't even sure it was ready for testing yet, you... you... BOY!"
"How does the Polyjuice IV differ from the original?" Albus said, cradling Harry's head in his arms.
"Aside from it requiring the addition of the desired person's blood, instead of just a hair, the Polyjuice IV is a compound action potion. The potion first causes the initial change, then uses the drinker's own magical essence to uphold that change for many hours on end. The more endurance the wizard or witch has, the longer the potion will last. In theory, this would allow one to remain in another person's form for several days, even a week if the person's will is strong enough." Severus wanted to touch the boy to better examine the effects of the potion, but the Interventio Interferous potion in his own blood prevented it. "Because it saps such a great quantity of the person's magical essence, it could cause the drinker who uses the potion too much or too often to age prematurely, so the second stage, a mild de-aging potion, releases when the first potion's effects wear off."
Albus looked at Harry gravely.
"Yes, I never intended for the Polyjuice IV to be utilized by people who weren't fully grown!" Severus chided Harry. "I added no extra ingredients to quell the pain of actually SHRINKING tissues."
"How potent is the de-aging potion, Severus?"
"It is very mild, theoretically it would only take a year or two off the drinker, depending on how long the drinker held onto the changed form." Severus said, starting to panic when he saw Harry, who no longer resembled Severus, begin to shrink to his original size. "Naturally, one would not use the Polyjuice IV if it was that person's first experience with the Polyjuice type of potion."
"This...is... agh!" Harry moaned, his bones and tissues hurting badly. "...is not... my first experience with the Polyjuice Potions.."
"WHAT!" Severus shouted.
"Had...the original...in my second year." Harry winced as he continued to shrink.
"Still... even if you wanted to try Polyjuice potions even now, I would not have allowed it, and I certainly would not give you the Polyjuice IV!" Severus said, more gently than he normally would have in the situation. Harry was evidently in so much pain that Severus could not find it in himself to add to it by chewing the boy out as well. "I don't know what this will do to you, and I am unable brew anything for you that could help..."
Severus was interrupted by another shrill scream from Harry; a scream that could only have come from a boy whose voice had not yet dropped.
"The effects can be reversed?" Albus asked, as he watched Harry rapidly grow too tiny for both Severus' robes and for his own glasses.
"Of course!" Severus replied. "A simple adjusted dose of an aging potion would restore him to his original self..."
"No! You can't use your magic!" Harry cried in a distinct child's voice now.
"I KNOW that you infernal... boy!" Severus shouted. He could have kicked himself for not keeping any aging potions on hand, and frowned when he realized that no apothecary would carry such a potion in their stocks, after all, how well would an aging potion sell? "Besides, I'd have to brew the potion precisely for him since he is an adolescent."
"YOU CAN'T!" Harry said, his voice much higher now.
"I am aware of that!" Severus yelled back.
"So we will have to wait until the Interventio Interferous works its way out of your system then?" Albus said.
Severus nodded gravely, wondering if Harry would stop shrinking before he reached the stature of a toddler. Fortunately, he did.
"Hey!" Harry, who now was about the size of a six year old, said with a big smile spreading across his face.
Both Severus and Albus gave him their undivided attention.
"It doesn't hurt anymore! I'm not sore!" Harry replied, his grin even wider now.
"Well ACCOLADES to you!" Severus said sarcastically, still obviously rankled by his son's actions, but secretly relieved that Harry hadn't shrunk into an atom.
Harry rose slowly to his now tiny feet, Severus' greatly oversized clothes making the task more difficult. The boy could barely look over the top of Headmaster Dumbledore's desk now, and he had to stand on his toes to look at Fawkes who was trilling with apparent amusement from his perch on the edge of the desk.
Albus quickly set to the task of adjusting the size of the boy's clothing. When he finished, Harry looked like a miniature Severus Snape.
"Oh my!" Harry gasped, looking at the size of his hands then feeling his face. "I'm a little kid again."
"Yes Harry, you are indeed." The Headmaster said, patting the top of Harry's head.
Harry undid his trousers and looked inside his underwear. He gasped in horror at the meagre contents within.
Severus rolled his eyes. "No, I don't imagine you've gone through puberty yet. You should not expect...much."
Albus looked on with amusement. "Severus, how changed is he truly?"
"Not much unfortunately." Severus said, standing next to his now tiny son. "He's still the same mischief-maker he was a few minutes ago, he only possesses a smaller body now."
"So does that mean he has all of the memories his older self had?"
"Yes," Severus replied, watching as the boy began playing with one of the shiny trinkets on the Headmaster's desk. "But now he has a child's brain with which to process his memories and new experiences."
The Headmaster nodded knowingly, and gently placed the Pensieve back into its cupboard with Harry's memories still swirling in it. Knowing that the boy would remember everything he placed in there anyway, there was no immediate need to return the feelings attached to those memories as well. The boy would have a hard enough time adjusting to being a child again without the burden of memories he could not adequately process.
The boy paused and looked at two older men again. "You're mad at me, right?"
Albus and Severus simultaneously answered in the negative and the affirmative respectively.
At the sight of tears appearing in his bright green eyes, which reminded Severus even more of Lily's at the moment, Severus knelt beside his son. Harry jumped back as though expecting to be struck. "I'm sorry, father! I'm sorry for stealing Polyjuice IV and fighting with Moldyshorts, I was bad." Harry started whimpering so much that he had to pause before he continued. "You want me to go into my cupboard now?"
"No!" Severus said, shocked that the boy would even think that.
"You're going to spank me?" little Harry said, trembling so much that he looked as though he would lose his balance at any moment.
The image of Lucien appeared in the forefront of Severus' mind once more, but he willingly pushed it aside, the image of Mervidith appearing in its wake. He shook his head, "No Harry, I have no intention of spanking you."
"You want to scold me then?" Harry asked, putting both hands on his father's shoulders and moving to within inches of his face. "You're going to make me do extra hard chores around the labs?"
Severus didn't answer initially, but nodded when he realized the boy wouldn't remove his green gaze from him until he did. "Yes, I'll give you a lecture, and then I'll give you chores to do if that's what you think you deserve."
"Oh father, I love you so much!" The child Harry threw his arms around Severus' neck and hugged him with surprising strength for one so small. He momentarily covered his mouth, as though he were surprised at what he had just said. Then he sighed, and gave in to these unfamiliar emotions. Children had less control over their actions after all. "I'm so happy you're my father, father. You're the best father in the whole world..."
"Wha-what?" Severus stammered out, looking thoroughly stunned.
Albus returned to his desk and watched the scene before him unfold with amusement. Harry held onto Severus for a long time, and seemed impervious to the older man's struggles to free himself from the boy's grip after a few minutes had elapsed.
It wasn't until Harry's hands started to glow faintly that Albus ran out from behind his desk. "Harry! No...!"
Caught completely off guard, Severus cried out as shards of undiluted agony suddenly cut through his flesh and lodged deep within his bones. His internal organs were not spared the ferocity of this latest onslaught, and even his heart struggled to continue its task normally, compensating for the new, uncontrolled spasms afflicting it.
In normal circumstances, Severus could usually endure insurmountable measures of pain without allowing many vocalizations betraying that agony to escape him. Today, in full view of Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter, he lost every fragment of that control.
"Father!" The child Harry screamed. "What's happening? Why is it hurting?" The child instinctively tightened his grip on his suffering father, his added concentration causing his hands to glow even brighter.
Severus tried begging to be released, but only managed an incomprehensible aggregate of alternating shrieks and screams. He thrashed within his son's surprisingly powerful hold, his long, ebony hair flailing about his shoulders. The soreness so thoroughly traversed his body, that even Severus' hair follicles stung and seared.
"Harry!" Headmaster Dumbledore shouted. "Release your father immediately!"
But between Harry's anguished wailing, and Severus's cries, neither of them could hear. "I'm so sorry, father! I'm so sorry!" Harry repeated over and over, watching in horror as Severus' screams weakened, becoming a sickening, laboured gurgling.
Blood bubbled at the corners of Severus's mouth, and from his nose, and increased in volume each time the wizard exhaled. His lungs, along with much of his other vital organs, had been compromised. He gagged and choked, and his breathing became more and more raspy. Soon, Severus exhaled equal quantities of blood and carbon dioxide with every laboured breath.
Harry and Albus watched helplessly as Severus grew inexorably more sallow in the eternity which spanned only a few minutes. His voice gave out even as the excruciating pain continued unabated. Deep, scarlet stains began to appear through the fabric of Severus' light coloured hospital gowns, only hinting at the grievous wounds concealed beneath. Tears streamed from his obsidian eyes. The fear within them deepened exponentially.
Albus approached the father and son, but could offer little if any assistance. Theoretically, any magic he might attempt to disengage Harry, could potentially be the little required to effectively kill Severus. If he were to physically pull Harry away, that could cause the boy to panic and send even more potentially fatal magic into his father's body.
That left only one option: "HARRY!"" Albus yelled right next to the boy's face. "Take your hands off of your father NOW!"
But it was too late. When little Harry reluctantly loosened his grip on Severus, the dark haired man pitched backwards and hit the floor lifelessly. Harry backed away from his motionless father wailing in a cadence that indicated that he was suffering immense pain, but whether it was of the emotional or of the physical variety, or a combination of both, not even Albus could tell for sure.
The aged Headmaster sprinted to the fireplace and called Madam Pomfrey.
"Father?" the little boy crawled to Severus's side and removed his child-sized frock coat and white shirt, revealing dark bruising on virtually every area of exposed skin. Harry had not come away from the evening's bizarre events unharmed. He placed the discarded garments on his father's shivering body. "You okay?"
Tears still streamed from Severus' eyes, and his breathing grew even more shallow and grating. Harry gasped when he saw how extremely unfocused the man's dark eyes were, and the pupils were dilated to the point that virtually none of the iris remained. "I think...so..."
"Father!" Harry whimpered, frantically running his hands over his sire's face and neck. "Your skin is so hot!"
"Where is... Lils-Lily?" Severus panted, his eyes so unfocused now, Harry guessed his father might no longer be able to see.
"You mean Mummy?" Harry whimpered, stroking his father's silky hair. "She... died a long time ago."
Severus squeezed his eyes closed and sobbed, more tears coursing from beneath his lids. "Oh no! Not Lils too! No! First I all but kill our little child's chance at life... and now Lils is... is!"
Little Harry steeled his face. He had to be strong for father now, even if father didn't seem to understand much about where they were or what was really happening. "Don't cry, Daddy. I'm here."
Severus' eyes opened wide, his gazed focussed once more. "Preborn Angel? GREAT MERLIN! But... but how?"
"Father's remembering some other place isn't he?" Harry asked Albus, who nodded gravely, knowing that Severus' body would soon be joining his mind in that other place.'
"Angel..." Severus wheezed, his voice almost non-existent. "Thank you for coming back. You've come..." Severus' eyes became unfocused once more. "...to take me with you... To the place I've condemned you...father will join you now.."
Harry finally understood. "NOOOOOOOOOO! You can't die! I won't let you die!" Young Harry slapped his father across his bloodstained face when his eyes closed again. Severus appeared to have experienced no pain from it, but if he did, he did not react. "Don't go to sleep, because you'll never wake up again. You're not allowed to die! YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED! Do you hear me? You don't have Headmaster Dumbledore's permission!" Harry paused to sniffle. "AND YOU DON'T HAVE MINE!"
"It's...Morning..." Severus opened his eyes and tried to focus once more. The ambient luminosity in the room had, in fact, steadily decreased since the sun had set. "Look at that, my angel son... it's a clear morning...full, bright sunlight..."
Harry threw his arms over his father's chest and sobbed. It was night, not morning. The sun had already set, how could it be up in the sky again so soon? What was father talking about? He was looking at the ceiling, not the sky. And the sky was dark besides.
"But we will cause... irreparable damage to our eyes...if we continue staring at the sun. Look away...boy." Severus said, his voice weaker, yet more fatherly than either Harry or Albus had ever heard it before. "It is...too bright..." Severus' eyes slipped closed. Strangely, the glimmering sunlight remained. In fact, it grew steadily brighter.
"FATHER!" the boy screamed, shaking the potions master frenetically. "FATHER! DON'T YOU DARE DIE! DON'T YOU DARE!" Harry emphasized his last syllable with an openhanded strike to his father's bloodstained left cheek. "YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED!"
Severus found that he was unable to comply with his son's command. The boy's overwrought shouting morphed into something resembling the beautiful trills of a phoenix. The slap to his face hurt about as much as a feather lightly brushing his ashen cheek would. His head gently lulled to the side. Severus exhaled one final time, just as the faint smile that had appeared when he first saw his angel again faded from his face.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed Harry, shaking his sire frantically. "I wanted to help make you better! NOT MAKE YOU DIE!"
Albus put his fingers over the younger man's heart and found it still. Tears rolled down the elderly headmaster's face when he placed a hand under the potions master's nose and felt not even the faintest sign of expiration.
Severus Snape, Potions Master of Hogwarts, Former Death Eater turned Spy for the Light, Member of the Order of the Phoenix, beloved pseudo-son and father had died.
End Part Eighteen
