Small Things
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
"Incendio," he said, and the wand obeyed its new master like a faithful dog.
Snape expected lights, sounds, the spirit of Voldemort rising from the fire, something. Anything.
But nothing happened. Nothing but a stick-thin boy, standing over the burning body of his tormentor, and a bleeding girl, watching him as she hung chained to a pole.
It was appallingly anticlimactic.
"You did it, Harry," Granger croaked, and here was the triumph Snape had been waiting for. "You did it! I knew you could!"
"No," Potter-the-boy whispered, his eyes still fixed to the fire. "You did it, Hermione. If you hadn't known that spell…"
He looked back at her, and finally seemed to remember their situation, that they were in danger, that his friend was still in chains, because something in his face cleared.
"Right," he said. "Right. Let's get out of here."
He aimed another healing spell at himself, then an energy-enhancing one, both regularly used by his torturers to keep him alive, and Snape found a hollow kind of amusement in the fact that Potter was using the spells he'd learned from Death Eaters during his imprisonment to flee this place. His magic was weak though, and while his legs were steadier as he walked towards Granger, he was obviously still in pain.
But walk he did, and he flicked his new wand at her chains without hesitation, and caught her in his arms when she fell, collapsing to the ground with her, shielding her from the harsh, cold stone.
For a long moment, they clung to each other silently, not moving, barely breathing.
Then, Granger began to cry. Deep, heaving sobs of pain and exhaustion, and Potter's face twisted at the sound, but his eyes remained dry, and the strength in his arms around her seemed to grow.
"It's alright, Hermione," he whispered, softly cradling her head in his hands, and for the first time since fourth year, Snape saw hope in his eyes, a soft, flickering light that opened a path into the future. "We can go home now. He is dead. The prophecy is fulfilled. We can go home."
"But Ron…" she whimpered, and Potter closed his eyes in utter exhaustion.
"I know," he said, and Granger nodded, realizing perhaps that there was nothing else to say, nothing to take the pain away and make the world alright again.
They lingered for a moment longer, half-lying, half-sitting, Potter supporting Granger and she holding onto him for dear life.
Then the girl pulled herself together visibly, sat up, and even ran her hands through her hair as if to restore some order to the bloody, frizzy locks.
"We have to go," she said urgently. "They might come any minute, Harry. Ron has an emergency portkey sown into his robes. We can take that. I…"
"You had a portkey?" Potter interrupted her, disbelieving. "You had a bloody portkey, and you stayed here?"
"They separated us, and he wouldn't leave me alone," she said simply, although her eyes once more filled with tears. She wiped them away impatiently. "And anyway, we wouldn't have left without you. We knew this would be our one chance of finding you, after all."
Potter opened his mouth, but then seemed to recognize that this was neither the time nor place to argue with her. He just shook his head, and Snape found that he was unconsciously mirroring his gesture. Such devotion, paired with such stupidity. Gryffindors were truly marvellous creatures.
"Never mind," Potter said. "Ron is… his body is a the other end of the room. Can you walk?"
"I think so." Granger didn't sound entirely sure. But somehow she got to her feet, even if she was swaying wildly.
"That's it," Potter said encouragingly. "It's not far, and then we're safe. We can do this, Hermione. You can do this."
Potter rose, too, carefully supporting Granger, and Snape wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, wanted to smile, to celebrate the Dark Lord's demise and the wondrous survival of these two.
Except for one thing: The memory of this same girl, wearing these same clothes, bearing these same wounds. Her body stretched out on the carpet of the Headmaster's office. Hand slack. Eyes sightless. Skin long-cold.
Snape knew that despite their triumph now, despite the careful hope beginning to mingle with the grief in their eyes, this wasn't going to turn into a miraculous escape. Hope was in vain.
He knew that Granger hadn't made it out alive.
He turned his eyes towards Potter-the-man, propped against a column of the dark throne room, and saw tears streaming down his face, saw a raw, bleeding grief so deep that it cut.
And understood, although he knew it was madness, that the worst was yet to come. This Harry Potter in front of him, this bloodied, tortured martyr, this victor over the greatest darkness they had ever known, was not yet broken.
The worst had not yet happened.
"This is the way the world ends," he whispered as he watched the pair of teenagers make their way through the desert of dark marble, the words of an old muggle poem springing unbidden to his lips.
This is the way the world ends.
He didn't see the Death Eater that had crouched behind one of the fallen marble columns, wouldn't have seen him at all except for the gasp that escaped Potter-the-man's lips. No, not a gasp, rather a soft whimper, a sound of resignation and hurt, but sufficient to direct Snape's attention to the man. And his wand.
"Avada Kedavra", The Death Eater hissed, and Snape's breath hitched. As he watched the green light speed towards Potter and Granger, he realized that he was waiting, waiting for the inevitable death that he knew would happen, had to happen, because he had seen it.
This is the way the world ends.
But he was mistaken once again. With a strength he couldn't humanly still possess, Potter grabbed the Granger girl and shoved her towards a column, then dove down behind another block of marble.
The curse missed.
"This is stupid," Potter-the-boy called out to the Death Eater, and Snape had to suppress an irritated groan. Gryffindor to the last. "Your Lord is dead! There's nothing left to fight for! We only want to leave in peace!"
Another Killing Curse illuminated the marble, giving Potter the answer to his offer.
"Harry," Granger whispered, her eyes wide in a face smeared with blood and tears, "I think I should be able to get in his back, then we can attack him from both sides…"
Potter looked worried by the concept of letting her leave his side, that much was obvious, but after a moment of hesitation he nodded and she started to crawl away from him, barely making a sound.
Potter began trading curses with the Death Eater again to distract him from his friend's progress, and while green and red lights sizzled through the air, three pairs of eyes traced Granger's way through the dark throne room avidly – two pairs Potter, one pair Snape.
Astonishingly, Granger actually managed to avoid the Death Eater's attention until she'd taken position behind him (too close, Snape thought, decades of fighting experience snapping to the front of his mind, much too close to him to be safe).
Her first spell caught him in the shoulder and the man cried out, half-slumping to the ground.
But he was still conscious, and he was angry now. There was nothing more dangerous than a desperate or angry opponent, and Granger was close enough to be reached in just a few steps.
The Death Eater cast a shield charm. He rose to his feet, turning towards the new threat, and Potter-the-boy cried out in alarm. He was too far away to punch through the shield charm and Granger, not used to duelling in earnest, perhaps still dazed from her ordeal, froze.
"No!" Potter-the-boy shouted. "Stay away from her. Hermione, get back!"
Granger tried another stunner that bounced off the Death Eater's shield charm. He kept advancing on her, she scrambling away from him, her spells useless. The masked man had not even raised his wand at her. Clearly, he was enjoying this.
And Potter helpless, his face full of panic, his hands shaking with weakness and adrenaline, Potter did the one thing he could think of to save his friend.
"Reducto!" he cried, but whether his aim had been off or the foreign wand refused to cooperate, he missed his target and the spell, instead of hitting the stray Death Eater, ricocheted off the wall and towards the ceiling, where it struck an already cracking stone panel.
The wall exploded, stones and mortar raining down onto an enemy that would never move again. Potter-the-boy looked triumphant, but Granger was screaming, screaming for Potter and for help, because the destruction was racing towards her, and the cracks in the ceiling built faster than she could flee.
"Harry!" She screamed. "Harry, run! I can't…"
One of the rocks, torn lose from the explosion, caught her right in the back.
This is the way the world ends.
Snape didn't have to hear the dull thud with which her body connected to the ground. He didn't have to see the unnatural angle of her neck and arm. He knew what had happened from the way Potter-the-man went utterly still, his head cradled in his hands as if to hide.
Hermione Granger was dead.
And it hadn't been the Dark Lord's doing.
Silence. For a long, interminable moment, there was only the echo of falling rocks and screams dancing through the dusty air, and when that had faded all too quickly, its memory still ghosted through their heads.
"No," Potter-the-boy whispered, and his voice was very quiet, but the world was silent as the grave. "No."
His way across the room was a wild, heedless scramble, and if any other enemies had been hidden in the shadows, they would have taken him out with ease. But he was all alone in the grand darkness of Voldemort's throne room.
Three times he fell, and every time Snape doubted whether he would get to his feet again, but some unknown well of strength kept him going, as if his legs were driven by the sheer power of his fear.
And then he'd reached her side, and one look at Granger's twisted body and sightless eyes was enough to tell even Potter the truth, and he stumbled to his knees, his head falling forward, resting on his chest, as all breath went out of him in one huge, sobbing sigh.
"Hermione…"
One hand reached out, but before he could touch her hair, his fingers curled back into a fist, like a flower blooming in reverse. Like light sucked into a black hole.
"Don't… But I promised Ron. I promised!"
His body became still, as still as hers, as if one careless move, even a harsh breath, could break the spell of his denial and drag him into this reality for good.
Snape had witnessed this moment of stillness so many times now – in front of a towering uncle, a magic mirror, the dying Ginny Weasley, in Dumbledore's office after Black had fallen and in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place after the death of Lupin. But somehow this seemed like the culmination of all those moments, those pinpricks in time when Potter hunched in on himself, faced with a pain too great to bear, and even destiny's breath seemed to hitch.
Potter-the-boy stayed quiet for a long time.
Snape couldn't imagine the nature of his thoughts.
Then he leaned forward, narrow shoulders drawn tight, and softly touched her small, white hand.
"There is blood in your hair," he told the corpse in front of him calmly, his eyes darting across her body and face. "You should wash it in cold water, or it'll never come off. Or is that just for clothes? I'm not sure…"
The doors to the throne room burst open, not far to the right of where Potter sat besides Granger.
"My Lord…" a Death Eater began to shout, panic in his voice.
Potter killed him almost absently, just a flick of the Dark Lord's wand and his head exploded in a shower of blood.
"You always told me to be more precise with my wandwork," he told Granger's body. "But, see, it's just a question of aiming right."
He giggled, a short, awful sound that sank back into the silence as abruptly as it had begun. His fingers were entwined with hers, and his knees rested in a pool of blood that spread from her wounds.
Almost reflexively, Snape aimed a diagnostic spell behind him, taking in the readings without moving his eyes from the memory-Potter once – not sure whether because he didn't want to leave the boy alone in the face of his pain, or because he couldn't bear facing the man he would become.
"You look cold," Potter-the-boy whispered, his one hand still clutching Voldemort's wand, his other Granger's hand. "Are you cold?"
Again he flicked his wand, and a rock rose into the air, transfigured into a blanket in mid-flight, then settled over Granger's body.
Was it the new wand? Some part of Snape wondered at this casual display of power from a boy that should have been all but drained. And what did it say about Potter that the Dark Lord's own wand should be fitted to him so well? Or had the past months unlocked something in him? A resource of power he'd not been able to access before? There were accounts of such cases, Snape remembered, wizards who had been through traumatizing events and come out of them much stronger than they had been, where others had burnt out and ended up as squibs.
But another, much larger part of himself was very aware that he was scrambling for scientific distance, desperately searching for something that could disconnect him from this broken boy and the broken body of his friend.
"You must be so tired," Potter told Granger's body soothingly. "It's good that you get some sleep now. You need to sleep, and then you'll be fine, you'll be just fine, Hermione, just…"
Then, finally, Potter began to weep.
His chest heaved with dry, hacking sobs, his upper body swaying back and forth, too weak to contain the force of his grief, and it seemed to Snape that Potter was crying not only for Granger, not only for this last, devastating loss, but for all that had been taken from him.
"This makes no sense," Potter whispered, gasped, his voice soft and cloyed with tears. "I fulfilled the prophecy. This was my destiny. I did the right thing. I did as I was told, so why should you… Where is the sense in this?"
His sorrow seemed to wash out of him, filling the air around him, sinking into the marble floor, bleeding into the darkness. And Snape was transfixed, overwhelmed with such unexpected sympathy that he couldn't think, couldn't free himself from this grief, the heavy cloud of magic descending on them.
Not until Potter's face in its terrible mourning became strangely clear to see, shone white in the gloom of Voldemort's throne room, illuminated by pearly light. Not until the Fading was already upon him.
Snape's wand seemed to slide into his hand of its own volition. He froze the memory, froze the boy into an endless still life of grief, froze the girl's body as the warmth of life slowly seeped from her. Only in the sudden absence of Potter-the-boy's crying and the echoes that ghosted through the large room could he hear his Potter's breathing again, and if Snape heaved a sigh of relief at that sound, his back was to his patient and Potter would never know.
For one moment, he bowed his head to the tableau in front of him.
It felt as if, even while Potter's grief had descended on him with its crushing pain, a heavy weight was lifting from his shoulders.
They had found the moment they'd been searching for. They knew when the illness had begun. They could treat it. And Potter was still alive.
A week ago, he would have marvelled over the fact that after all Potter had done and survived, after three months in the Dark Lord's hands, it was a rock hitting the spine of a school girl that could do this to Potter.
But not now. Now he knew the man, he knew his past, and he understood that there was an evil sort of symmetry to this.
Only a small thing could ever break a man like Potter.
One last moment he gave the boy that would grow into the man behind him. Then Snape forced his eyes away, forced himself to turn his back on Potter-the-boy and Granger, and hurry over to his patient.
"Potter," he barked, hiding his weakness as much from himself as from the other man. "Get up, Potter. We need to commence the treatment. There isn't much time left."
Potter's eyes were closed. One of his hands had risen to his face as if he could shield himself from the events around him. His face was white with exhaustion and grief.
"Potter!"
The man stirred, but he did not open his eyes.
"Did you see?" he asked, his voice like the wind rustling through empty branches. "How brave she was. How quickly she died."
He hesitated, and Snape could see his throat work, as if he was desperately trying to swallow a bite that would not go down.
"Did you see how I killed her?"
The question, the shame and resignation packed into such few words, hit Snape like a punch.
"You did not kill her," he said roughly. "It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone. Get up now, Potter."
"She saved my life," Potter continued in that same, awful voice. It seemed as if he hadn't even heard Snape. "She trusted me. She came here of her free will, and she trusted me even after I got Ron killed. And then she outsmarted Tom, and destroyed his soul. And I killed her with a rock."
"You did not kill her," Snape repeated, though he was well aware it was useless. But he was worried about the way Potter seemed to ignore him, about the dead look in his eyes. "Now get up, Potter, I'm telling you the last time. We need to get you treated now."
Finally, Potter looked up at him. His cheeks were tear-stained, his eyes red, but they were surprisingly clear, and when he spoke, there was no sign of indecision in his face.
"No," he said quietly. "No, Professor. No treatment for me."