Chapter 45

RETROSPECTION

Wudang Shen. Cho would be proud of how far Harry could fly. Holding his mind in the state of restful concentration she'd taught him, he bounded from oak to birch to sycamore until he was breathless. Sighting a mighty pine in the distance, he drove himself to one final leap. For one brief moment, he feared he'd miscalculated. Pumping his legs like pistons, he propelled himself the final inches needed to grab a branch. He hauled himself up and crawled toward the trunk.

But when he'd settled himself in a nice niche, his distressing questions returned. What if Lily and James had never kissed and made up? What if they had never married? What if little Harry Potter had never been born?

Perched all alone in the massive pine with nobody and nothing to distract him, Harry groaned. If only he knew a self-erase or, at least, a delaying spell for unsettling thoughts. He was in no state to sort out the jumble of secrets he'd learned in the last few days. But until he gathered the energy needed for more flying, he was stuck here with his mind racing.

Or was he? Reaching up under the waistband of his oversized Weasley pullover, he felt for his Lockit Pocket. He pulled out the cold, hard Djinn ball and the crinkled wrapping paper. Smoothing it out on his knee, Harry's edginess faded when he heard the familiar, throat-clearing cough. A diversion.

"Only 39 hours since your last lesson. I commend you. And I approve your choice of instructional location."

Harry paused to give his martinet mentor's words a chance to sink in. They still didn't make any sense. "What are you talking about?"

"Lesson Four, of course: Retrospection of Personally Significant Events."

Huh? Harry stared at the paper, hoping for a hint. Reluctantly, he admitted, "You've lost me."

The squeaky voice took on its cross tone. "Retrospection: To see into the past. To form images in a Djinn ball of personally significant events of the past, locational proximity is facilitating. Places vibrate with prior events long after the individuals who produced them have gone. So again, I applaud you on initiating Lesson Four here."

"Here? You mean, in this tree?"

"Indeed, the Confessing Conifer. Must you be so dense? This is where your mother sketched her brother lying in the grass so many years ago."

Harry stared in surprise at the twisted branches and tangles of frost-encrusted pine needles and cones that surrounded him.

The wrapping paper tsked. "I don't mean here, I mean down there. Don't you see those drifts of crackly leaves, just beneath the snow?"

Harry leaned over his branch. Below him he saw nothing except yesterday's snow, but he could see his mother's sketch in his mind. That animated drawing had caused him so much anxiety, he wished he could just forget it.

"Quit shirking. Position your Djinn ball. Ready, set, see."

Harry did as he was told. In a moment, he found the scene in the mists of his crystal ball instead of his memory—but this time, the lounging figure of teenaged Severus Snape appeared to be flesh and blood.

Faintly, he heard his uncle say, "There's no one I can relax with except you."

Harry's heart began to pound.

"Careful," the paper advised in its gentlest tone so far. "Brace your spine against the tree. Steady your respiration. Recall your lessons to date. And above all—" the voice paused for emphasis "—remember that what you are about to witness is merely an echo of the past."

Harry lined his back up against the tree trunk. For good measure, he hooked his leg through a narrow space between two branches. Staring again into the glowing Djinn ball, he took three deep breaths. Then he employed a skill he'd learned in Lesson One: he thought his point-of-view into a new position, lowered it to the ground, and slowly revolved until he was gazing at his mother. At the sight of the sweet-faced, sparkling-eyed, red-haired girl, his chest tightened with such intense longing that he'd have fallen from his perch if the paper hadn't prepared him.

At her brother's words, Lily grinned. "So, you're going to relax, for once. Is that a promise? No outrageous arguments about why I should give my boyfriend the elbow?"

Harry heard a growl. He willed his point-of-view to back up to a wide angle that embraced both his mother and her brother.

Young Snape sat up straight, clutched his knees, and thrust out his pointed chin. "You think that because Trelawney is such a fool, this is just a joke. But in this case, even the headmaster takes her seriously. You should, too. You have to—you must put this silly crush behind you."

"Crush?" Lily smiled and resumed sketching. "It's a bit more than that."

Snape's grip tightened until his knuckles looked white. "Only your life."

Lily glanced up, her green eyes suddenly grave. "If I allowed fortune-telling to rule my heart, what kind of life would I have then?"

Snape flopped to his side, apparently too upset to look at his sister. "What you call your heart is just happenstance. If you two hadn't been sorted into the same house—hadn't been thrown together every class, every meal, every evening—you'd never have started up with Potter. Admit it. Your I-love-him-forever devotion wouldn't even exist."

Lily cocked her head. "Rather like my sisterly love for you if Professor Dumbledore had never told us we're related?"

Snape's cheek twitched and he darted her a backward glance. Then quickly, he turned away. "Exactly."

"Sev," she said softly. "Don't you know I've felt a kinship with you since our first month at Hogwarts?"

Snape stirred but didn't look at her.

"Truly," Lily said with a smile. "Remember that flying class, a few weeks into our first year, when Pete Pettigrew's broom went bonkers? You took off after him and saved him from dashing his brains out against the astronomy tower—at the risk of getting slammed into it yourself. Your heroics caused quite a bit of discussion in the Gryffindor common room. Everyone wondered how a boy with such a nasty tongue could do something so decent."

"Decent? I earned thirty points for Slytherin. End of story."

Lily laughed. "Well, some of my friends thought so, but Minerva took a different view."

Snape rolled over to stare at his sister. "Who on earth is Minerva?"

Lily raised an eyebrow. "Surely, you remember Minerva McGonagall—head girl our first year? I'd have thought she was unforgettable."

"Ah, Minerva McGonna-get-all-you-Slytherins." Snape groaned. "She was the bane of my house that year, docking points for everything. I'll bet she had quite a lot to say about why I bailed out that little milksop—none of it favorable, I'm sure."

Lily returned to her drawing, but her smile was full of affection. "When my pal Sirius pointed out how utterly insulting you always were as proof that your motives couldn't have been noble, Minerva set him straight. She said you were of a rare breed: you weren't nice, but you were good."

The sneer dropped from Snape's face. Clearly, her answer had disconcerted him. When he spoke, his tone was tentative. "She said that?"

"Yes. And I've never forgotten it."

Harry, gazing into the Djinn ball, released his breath slowly. A personally significant event. The wrapping paper hadn't been joking. What if his father had never trusted Peter Pettigrew enough to make him his secrets keeper? What if Snape had never recklessly suggested him? What if he'd never saved the dirty rat's life?

From his chilly post atop the snow-hung conifer, Harry continued to gaze at the spring day—the spring of his mother's too-short life. With a funny story Hagrid had told her about sasquatches, Lily jollied her brother out of his brooding. He groaned over the mess of newt livers some first-years had left for him to clean up in the Potions storeroom. She teased him for making eyes at Florence.

Echoes of the past. Harry lost himself in them.

When a loud Psst broke Harry's reverie, he nearly toppled off his branch. His eyesight blurred—as if he were viewing two disparate pictures in a stereopticon. For a moment, he continued to see silhouettes of Snape lounging and his mother sitting cross-legged sketching. At the same time, the ground below began fading in—drifts of white marred by dirty patches where leafless brambles and dead thistles poked through the snow.

"Quick! You've got company," the wrapping paper hissed.

The Djinn ball images faded out as his eyes focused past them to the couple standing at the base of his pine tree. As usual, Severus Snape was cloaked in black. Ariel Daine wore a blue mantle as light as an August sky. She'd pushed back the hood, revealing her fluffy blonde hair.

Quickly, Harry jammed the Djinn ball and instruction paper into his Lockit Pocket. Then he pulled his arms to his sides. He wanted to make himself as narrow as possible should his unexpected visitors chance to look up. After all, he didn't want two professors docking points from Gryffindor for catching him in the Forbidden Forest. Thank goodness, he'd been leaping from tree to tree instead of on the snow. Apparently, they'd been floating. They hadn't left any footprints, either.

Glancing down past the side of his cheek, Harry saw Professor Daine reach out to pat the bark. "So, this is the Confessing Conifer you've told me so much about." Her voice was light and airy—as if she were still trying to coax her companion out of his gloom.

"Yes."

"And being under these branches can really sway people to confess their secrets? I bet it's not a favorite spot for young men to bring their sweethearts."

Snape shrugged stiffly. "When I was at school, I never met a girl here—except my sister. She was the only one with whom I could let down my guard."

So Professor Daine was told before I was, Harry thought.

She laid her fingers lightly on Snape's shoulder. "Then I'm honored."

Harry rolled his eyes, wishing the two would continue their walk. Now that he was no longer gazing at May time, the December air felt nippy. The sky had clouded over, as well. The possibility of wheedling some hot apple cider from the house elves was enticing. But he couldn't leave until the professors did.

Snape reached out to grasp Daine's hand. A moment later, he dropped it and turned to stare at the tree. "I brought you here because, today, it's time for me to . . . be candid."

Dane folded her hands under her chin. "You've told me so much about yourself, it's hard to believe you've been hiding something."

"It's a truth I've been hiding from myself."

"You can tell me anything. You know that." Her voice was calm, but Harry caught a hint of uneasiness in the way she hugged her arms to her chest.

Snape rocked his head, as if trying to loosen some unbearable tension. "I—I have a tendency to try to control things. Things that shouldn't be—can't be controlled."

Harry saw Daine brush her hair out of her eyes, visibly relieved. "You have a tendency to try to be controlling? You know, honey, that's not exactly a secret. So long as you don't try to control me, I can accept it's an attitude you're working on. That you're aware—"

A sharp groan from Snape cut her off.

She reached out, then stopped—her fingertips inches from his back. When he whirled to face her, she slipped her hands inside her cape.

"That's just it. I have tried to control you—have controlled you, and you don't even realize it. It was wrong. I did it because—because I couldn't control myself."

"Darling, sugar—"

Snape pressed his fingers to her lips. "Please, let me speak. Admitting my faults is difficult. If you question me, I won't be able to go on."

Harry grimaced. Forbidden Forest or not, why hadn't he revealed his presence the moment the couple had arrived? Then he could have left them to share in private. Now it was too late. He should stick his fingers in his ears—block out the declarations Snape would despise him for hearing. But he didn't. Instead, he strained to hear more.

Until Monday...

P.S. Yeah, in canon McGonagall is more than just seven years older than Snape; but not in "AU" land.