For this chapter, by the way, the same warning as for the last: It directly continues the story of the last two chapters. Go and read them again if you want the ‚real thing'.
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"The prophecy?" Snape asked, but then understanding dawned in him. "Do you mean… He dragged you into his office and told you about the prophecy after this? After you had just been possessed by Voldemort?"
Potter just shrugged, not voicing the obvious fact that Dumbledore probably had wanted to drive the point home before Potter escaped into the safety of the infirmary.
"No time like the present," He said, but his face mirrored for a moment the exhaustion his younger self must be feeling. "The portkey should take me there any second now."
And as if his words had been the signal, their surroundings were swallowed by mist and darkness, only to be replaced after a second by the familiar, relaxing atmosphere of the Headmaster's office.
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The Human Condition
"Sit down immediately, Potter," Snape ordered sharply. "You do not want another seizure just because you overexerted yourself."
Potter grinned, but it was a weak grin, full of shadows. "Yes, sir," He agreed docilely and chose an out of the way armchair. "Perhaps you should sit down, too. It will be some time before Dumbledore arrives."
"He let you wait?"
"Events needed time to sink in. I don't think I would have been coherent if we had started immediately. Not to mention that retarding elements always keep up the tension."
Snape had to silently agree as his eyes once more fell on the younger Potter, who was still standing in the middle of the office, his back ramrod straight and his shoulders thrown backward forcefully in a way that had to hurt.
Realizing that there was nothing he could do or prepare at the moment, Snape selected a straight-backed chair and sank onto it with the tiniest of sighs, suddenly feeling exhausted to the bones.
It was as if only now he remembered to breathe, as if the mad chaos of events he had witnessed over the past hour had taken away his ability to reflect, mentally organise his surroundings, or even think.
Only now, sitting in a chair that had become familiar to him during his years as a teacher, sitting in this room he had always associated with safety, did he notice how tired he was.
How tired, and how utterly shell shocked.
I've been a spy for longer than I care to remember, he thought. I survived battles, torture and Death Eater parties. And still I'm shocked by that little Ministry incident.
But it weren't just the things he had seen that had shocked him; he knew that although he'd preferred to ignore it. It was as if the knowledge of Potter's past, the closeness they had – albeit involuntarily on his part – shared over the last weeks had somehow opened windows and doors he had never known existed.
He understood Potter now, or at least the younger Potter that wasn't as devilishly sphinxish as the mature one. He knew his fears, his pain, and, to a certain degree, could share them.
From his own perspective, the death of Black had been a slight, perhaps lightly amusing, inconvenience. From Potter's perspective – and he couldn't ignore a point of view as powerful as that once he had taken it – it was a devastating loss that rocked through Snape's body even now.
But he also knew Potter's behavioural patterns at that age, and standing frozen like a silent statue wasn't his normal reaction to pain. Losing his temper he would understand, denial, or shouting.
But not silent resignation. Potter didn't do resignation. He didn't do defeat. He kept on going even if there was nowhere to go.
Potter had always reminded Snape of one of these little metal toys muggles loved so much, a toy that you could wind up and it would move forward. Only that now the mechanism seemed broken.
"Why does he do this to me?" Potter suddenly shouted, waking the portraits from their doze and making Snape nod with silent relief. This was more like it. "Why won't he talk to me?"
"Ah," Potter-the-man remarked calmly without bothering to open his eyes. "Melodramatic ranting ahead, Professor. I'm very sorry."
"What is this 'rant' about, Potter?" Snape asked, not bothering to hide how tired he felt.
"About my fifth year in general, not to mention the unfairness of life as a whole I'd think," Potter answered lazily, his face relaxing into the serene expression Snape had come to know so well.
"I don't know if you noticed it back then, but Dumbledore kept avoiding me during the whole year, not even talking to me at that Hearing in the Ministry," Potter continued. "I'm still not entirely sure whether he believed that I would channel Voldemort, or whether he preferred to let me simmer a bit."
"He was very busy that year," Snape remarked, but it was more a perfunctory comment. He had wondered the same thing himself, more than once.
"He tells me that he's there for me, but he never is! He tells me that I must trust him, and yet he's keeping things from me! Why must everyone I love die? Why can't he stop it?" The memory-Potter continued, his voice bitter and hard, but laced with just a hint of the pain he must be feeling.
Snape suddenly remembered Potter's christmas in the cupboard that he had witnessed what seemed like an eternity ago. Potter had talked to himself back then, too, had asked questions in the same desperate, half angry half pained voice, questions that no one would ever answer.
Even Snape, master in the art of berating cauldrons, usually refrained from asking questions into the thin air. But then he had never believed in the therapeutic value of talking the way Gryffindors usually did.
"But he did try, didn't he?" Potter suddenly asked, in a tone of voice so completely different that Snape's head shot around to him. "They all did. Telling me to practice Occlumency. Telling me not to want the visions. Telling me not to rush off."
Had there been pain and despair in his face before, it was now replaced by panic, utter, bone-shaking fear.
"I killed him!" He whispered, his body shaking with the horror of this realization. "Hermione was right. Snape was right! I lost my temper and I got Sirius killed!
"I killed him! It's all my fault!"
As if he wanted to flee from this sudden realization, Potter rushed to the door and turned the knob, only to find it locked.
Just as he would so many years later, or, in Snape's own timeline, a few days ago, and the understanding of what situation Dumbledore had been mirroring in his office made Snape's anger rise again.
How could Dumbledore lock Potter in when it had to remind him of this day, of this night?
Still fighting futilely with the door knob, Potter gave a sudden grunt, a primitive sound of pain and anger, and for a moment, Snape expected him to raise his palm against the door and force it open with his will.
But whether his will was not strong enough tonight or his magic exhausted, Potter didn't even try. His arms fell down to his side as if he had no strength left to keep them raised, and he stumbled to a chair, falling onto it and hiding his face in his hand.
A soft trembling ran through the line of his shoulders, then he sat completely still.
Silence reigned, only interrupted by two of the irritating portraits Albus insisted of keeping around. Probably because they informed him about everything that went on in the castle.
Then, the empty fireplace burst into green flames and Dumbledore stepped from the fire, to the enthusiastic applause of said irritating portraits.
It was the entrance of a hero, and it couldn't have been better executed had there been a script.
"Well Harry. You will be pleased to hear that none of your fellow students are going to suffer lasting damage from the night's events".
Oh Albus, Snape thought in tired disbelief. You always were the best manipulator of consciences. What an elegant way to remind him of his mistakes. What an elegant way of making him feel guilty.
"I know how you're feeling, Harry," Dumbledore now said very quietly, in a smooth transition from cheerful to compassionate. Snape couldn't help but admire the man's talent, misused as it was.
"No, you don't," Potter answered, sudden anger in his voice, and Snape found to his own surprise that he was actually hoping Potter would withstand, would cut through all this sentimental nonsense and find the cold, hard truth underneath.
"Don't confuse anger with understanding, Professor," Potter-the-man suddenly said, his eyes now open and very awake. "I realized nothing. I only hurt so much that I somehow had to get rid of the feeling."
"Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man!" Dumbledore continued, and the sickly sweet, understanding tone in his voice disgusted Snape. "This pain is part of being human-"
"THEN – I DON'T – WANT – TO – BE – HUMAN!" Potter roared, seizing one of Dumbledore's beloved magical instruments and flinging it against the wall with a power Snape hadn't known he possessed.
Involuntarily, Snape's eyes wandered over to Potter-the-man.
I'm only checking on his medical state, He told himself, refusing to admit that he wanted to see the confidence of the grown man, needed a living proof that the boy had crossed this vale and survived.
Somehow.
"I DON'T CARE! I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE!"
It was, perhaps, the truest thing he had ever heard Harry Potter say, Snape reflected while he watched the boy methodically destroy Dumbledore's office.
There were no lies left in the blazing fire of his desperation, no I'm fines or other such false assurances, no Gryffindor bravery.
Only the bleak, ugly truth of his suffering and his need for it to end, no matter how.
This is more than just a teenage rant, Snape thought, his eyes on Dumbledore's face that was merciless in its calm, accepting pity. Potter was so far gone by now that it seemed a miracle he was still moving, was still speaking.
To reach the end of a reservoir of strength that was as large as Potter's, to see the last drops of what had carried him through years of abuse and terror trickle through the Headmaster's hands was beyond painful.
And Dumbledore didn't even care. He just sat there, quietly, a soft, mild twinkling in his eyes, waiting until even this last rebellion against fate, this last expression of will would fade. Until Potter would have nothing left with what to fight.
And then to drive the point home. The terrible, terrible point of Potter's life.
Once more it seemed that mere aggression wasn't enough for Potter, that he couldn't bear stay in the presence of his guilt. Once more he rushed towards the office door and tried the door knob.
"Let me out!" Potter demanded when the door, unsurprisingly, didn't open.
"No."
Dumbledore's voice was quiet and his eyes soft, but there was the same determination in his eyes that Snape would see so many years later, the determination to do the best for Potter no matter if he crushed the boy in the process.
"Not until I have had my say,"
"I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'VE GOT TO SAY! I don't want to hear anything you've got to say.
"You will," Said Dumbledore steadily, and something in his voice made Snape sit more upright and turn towards him with a feeling of dreaded expectation. "Because you are not nearly as angry with me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it."
"And here we go," Potter-the-man said softly, rising from his chair and walking over to the window, as if he wanted to turn his back on what was going on.
Snape thought about reprimanding him, after all he had told Potter to sit down and relax. But then he realized how stupid the thought was that Potter could ever relax in the presence of so much of his old pain and sorrow.
"It is my fault that Sirius died-" Dumbledore now began, and as if he had planned every single part of it, the sun chose this moment to tint the office with a soft, red glow.
Silently, Snape watched and listened as Dumbledore unfolded his great speech. It was masterfully done, he had to admit, but to a listener as experienced as he was with propaganda, the flaws were rather obvious.
It was all too coherent, too smooth, creating a causality of motif and reason that had never existed in its clear obviousness. Even Dumbledore, wise, omniscient Dumbledore, had never seen the world in the way he described it now, spread before him in a grand tableau of action and reaction, a tapestry of lives on which Potter's angry or pained comments were nothing more than a thin layer of dust and tears.
Even with the knowledge of just how much Dumbledore hadn't told him in his mind, Snape was all too aware that many unplanned things had happened over the years, many things no one could have taken into account, many things even Dumbledore didn't know.
But, of course, that wasn't the world the Headmaster and general of the Order wanted to show Potter.
What he wanted to show the boy, in this moment of utter loss and disorientation, was control. Logic. What he wanted to give to him was the realization that all this made sense, that his fate, terrible as it may be, had a leading point, and that all had happened for a reason.
That nothing would have been in vain, not even Sirius' death, as long as Potter accepted his destiny.
And followed Dumbledore's orders, of course.
"Do you see, Harry? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now?" Dumbledore said softly, his eyes resting with something akin to tenderness on the boy sitting in front of him with glazed eyes. "I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."
"I don't-"
"I cared about you too much. I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act."
Despite his will, Snape took a sharp breath and stared at Dumbledore in disbelief. In all his years as a Slytherin and spy, he had never twisted the truth in such an ugly, deceptive way.
Cared too much about Potter? About his peace of mind? About his life? Where had that line of thought been during all those near death experiences Dumbledore had caused Potter to go through? Behind the door?
Only someone with even less brain than a Gryffindor could have considered Potter's life the result of a careful protection. Only a total dimwit could interpret Dumbledore's influence in the boy's life as love.
And still… still… from the way Potter-the-boy's face lit up and contracted painfully at these words, he believed all of it.
Or at least he wanted to. For what else was there to believe in, now that he had lost all orientation, all his hold in this world, what else was there to believe in but that it had – at least – been done for his own best, and that it would all turn out good in the end, now that he had understood.
And now to the last act, Snape thought bitterly, not able to admire the building of half truths and careful manipulations Dumbledore had erected for its beauty. You have beaten him down to the ground, you have explained his life to him, you have taken away the right to interpret the horrors he went through. And now you're going to hand him the meaning of all this, the hidden well from whence all this sprang. Brilliant, Headmaster.
Dumbledore took his time to present the prophecy, adding a nice touch to its interpretation with the sad little story of Neville, the Boy Who Didn't Quite Make It. Just an underhanded way to tell Potter that not he alone had suffered, that, special as he was, he was not unique.
It was quite dramatic how he told the story, but Snape could tell from the pale, slightly dazed way Potter-the-boy looked that the thing was wasted on him.
Obviously, Potter had not yet learned to appreciate the irony of fate. Snape was not surprised.
"So," Said Potter finally, dredging up the words from a deep well of despair inside him. "So does that mean that… that one of us has got to kill the other one… in the end?"
"Yes," Said Dumbledore.
Only this word.
But it was enough to shape the future of the world.
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A/N: Quotes are – as usual – from J.K. Rowling's work, in this case the infamous office scene at the end of book Five. I took my liberty with it, however, by adding Harry's short monologue – this is invented by me and doesn't appear in the book, although I do believe it is very true to what Harry might have felt at that moment.
Keep tuned for the next chapter! And many thanks for your comments and reviews!