Salvation in Surrender

"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."

For a moment, Snape just stared at him in disbelief, the words refusing to make sense in his mind.

"You can't be serious," he then said. "This is it, Potter. We spent weeks to get you here and now I can finally heal you. So don't be ridiculous. Here, let me help you get up, we just need you to…"

Snape stretched out a hand, but Potter ignored it. His eyes were fixed on the frozen image of his memory instead, his spine pressed against the column behind him, even his head tilted back, as if he was trying to put as much distance between him and that other Potter as he could.

"I made my choice," he whispered.

"And what kind of choice is that supposed to be?" A part of Snape was still thinking that he might fix this with quick words and decisive actions, that he could sway Potter by sheer force of personality. It was a small part, but he had to try. "Cease this nonsense. Get up."

"No."

There was no room for discussion in that word. But Snape didn't care.

"Yes, damn you. If you won't get up willingly, I'll just float you over there. You've been through too much to simply give up like this, like a whimp, like a coward. You'll face this, and you'll heal. This will not break you, Potter."

"This is my friend," Potter said. It sounded as if he wanted to shout, but simply lacked the strength to do it. "Dead. After she saved my life. After she saved the world from Voldemort. Dead. By my hand."

"I'm telling you, you idiot, this wasn't your fault…"

"Just look at him, Professor," Potter, his eyes fixed on his younger counterpart, hadn't raised his voice, but he was yelling all the same. "Look at his face. It's all unravelling, his faith, the coordinates of his world, everything he believed about himself. He's broken, he's done, he won't be himself again until he's nearly snuffed out his life a dozen times, and there are parts of him that will never recover, anyway, and I cannot go there again, I cannot!"

Yes, Snape thought tiredly, remembering a younger Potter's guilt at the death of Black and Lupin, his shame in past and presence at the killing of Bellatrix. This was what had lain behind it all, behind the easy acceptance, the friendly generosity, all the hiding.

Potter could forgive anyone. But not himself.

"I cannot do this," Potter whisper-yelled, and there was a fear in his eyes that had nothing to do with dying and everything with living. "I cannot be him. Anything else I could have… perhaps… But not this."

How to answer this? How to convince him?

But even as Snape sorted through his options, weighing the best approach, he saw Potter pull himself together, put on a face that, for a man who knew him less well, would have looked rational, calm, convincing.

"Besides," Potter said, "it doesn't matter. Voldemort is dead. He died before this happened. There's no need for me to go through with this again. You won't have to destroy my soul after all, and so what's the bother? Let's just leave, let's just…"

"That's not what this is about," Snape said harshly, and it wasn't, it hadn't been for a long time, not since Potter had invited him into his house and introduced him to his friends. Perhaps, if he was honest with himself, not ever.

But Potter for once refused to acknowledge the words Snape couldn't speak – he was fixed on his course and nothing could divert his attention.

"Yes, I get that things will be more difficult for Shadow if I don't let him out of the dungeons, and for the centaurs, but they'll manage…"

"A bunch of centaurs and vampires are not the reason why I'm trying to heal you, Potter," Snape ground out, aiming for calm, for sensitive, for persuasive, but aware that he was failing badly.

He felt out of control, on the verge of something he could neither name nor fully understand. But he also felt, perhaps more strongly than ever before in his life, that control wouldn't get him anywhere right now. His only choice was to let this happen, whatever it was.

Potter tried to wave his words away.

"I am aware that the Order will have a harder time with the remaining Death Eaters, and Chairon will have to find another Eques, but I'm sure it'll be fine. There are a number of capable druids who would do just as well. And perhaps Ayda and Shadow will come to blows, but there have been conflicts in the past, and the druids have always resolved them peacefully, so…"

Snape felt something burst within him. Perhaps it were the last vestiges of his patience. Or his professional distance.

"And what about all those other things people want from you, you idiot?" he shouted, not caring that his voice was anything but smooth. "Do you think all you have to offer your friends is rescue from Voldemort, or leading the druids, or riding on Chairon to battle? Don't you think we all want more from you than that sacrificial nonsense?"

Potter stopped.

He looked up at Snape, and for the first time since this memory had begun playing, he seemed to truly meet his eyes. Snape wasn't sure what the other man saw – he was uncomfortably aware that his masks had slipped a long time ago.

He refused to look away, though. He would not join Potter in his fear to confront himself.

And something in his face, whatever it was, achieved what his words had failed to do. It reached out to Potter. It made him understand.

His thin, parchment-dry lips widened to a smile. It was only the shadow of that old grin Snape had hated so much in the beginning, gentle, accepting and slightly mocking, like a lopsided embrace that you couldn't refuse no matter how hard you tried. But it was a smile, and Snape had nearly given up on seeing that again.

"Why, Professor, I didn't know you cared," Potter whispered.

Snape swallowed. Suddenly, his throat was dry and his feet itched to carry him out of the room.

He didn't let them.

"Neither did I," he whispered back, and the smile widened until it was the old, Potterish, reckless one again, ablaze with optimism and belief.

"You do realize that you're blackmailing me, unashamedly," Potter croaked. "It's a very Slytherin thing, to use my helping-people thing to trick me into doing this."

Somewhere in his tense body, Snape found the strength to shrug his shoulders coldly, arrogantly, like the old Snape would have done.

"As long as it works," he said.

Potter's eyes half closed. He seemed to listen in on himself as he sat there, searching inside his body and mind for the strength that would be needed, for the will to keep on going.

Snape didn't dare breathe. More than Potter's life was hinging on this decision, he knew it instinctively, more than even his soul. As Snape stood in the remembered echo of Voldemort's throne room, intangible dust swirling around him, as he watched one Potter's breaking and another's hesitation on the threshold between healing and death up, he knew that his Potter might not choose life.

Snape knew that he would accept that decision. Too much had happened between them to refuse the man that wish. Too much had changed not to honour his promise.

But he also knew that, should Potter die and leave them all in this castle full of memories, something precious would be gone from the world, some fleeting, ephemeral thing that could never be regained.

And Snape knew that he would grieve for that thing, lost forever, would grieve in the halls of his past with a truth and abandon he'd thought impossible.

He wouldn't come out of this unchanged. He didn't want to, anymore.

Time passed. It was impossible to measure how much, and he was very aware of the strange contrast this frozen memory and his frenzied thoughts made. More time passed.

Then Potter lifted his head, and once again met his eyes.

And nodded.

"What do I have to do?" he asked.

Snape had explained the procedure to Potter in the very beginning, when he had not yet been sure whether the man possessed the mental capacities of even a flubberworm. Therefore, the explanation had been long and redundant, and very condescending, simple enough to make absolutely sure that even Potter would understand.

So Snape knew that Potter didn't really need an answer to that question. He gave one, anyway.

"Get as close to your counterpart as possible. We will use a spell to merge you two together, join your consciousnesses to connect the outset of your illness with its advanced stage. I will give you a potion now. If it works, as it by all accounts should, it will knit together the newly split parts of your past self's core and heal you. It should only take a few minutes."

Potter nodded again. He took the potion and swallowed it without expression. Then he reached up to the marble column he'd been leaning against all this time. He disregarded Snape's hand, stretched out to help him rise, ignored all assistance. Instead, he hoisted himself up, slowly, his breath laboured and shallow. It was difficult not to step in and help.

Potter stood, or rather he did not fall again, then stumbled towards his memory counterpart, his pace wobbly and unsure, but Snape instinctively understood that he couldn't help in this, not without taking this choice from Potter.

It was strange to see the two Potters so close together, one frozen on the ground, hands clenched in Granger's hair, one leaning over him, almost against him. Both so tired.

Snape could see his Potter's eyes dart over the dead body of his friend, over the twisted expression of grief on his younger self's face. He could see the older man's face twist, too, in the mirror expression of that sorrow. Then Potter placed a hand on his memory's shoulder and got down on his knees, his chest pressed against his younger self's back. The three bodies seemed to melt into each other.

Potter did not look up, but his hand clutched the memory's skin tightly, and his back was stiff with pain and fear.

"Do it," he said tonelessly.

Snape did not allow himself to doubt the outcome of this. He did not allow himself to consider what he would do if this treatment failed, if, after all they'd been through, the healing did not take.

He steeled himself into belief and cast the spell.

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then the two Potter's began to shimmer, their contours twisting, this new magic mixing with the pale light of the Fading. Like a blurry photograph, their frames began to coalesce, overlapping inch by inch, until the boy and the man had merged.

As he watched two Potters become one, all the memories, all the pasts and futures Snape had seen pass by these last weeks seemed to rise before his eyes, all the things he'd learned, the decisions he'd made. They fit like the pieces of a puzzle, dancing, eluding his grasp and still coming together to form a picture that was too large for him to see, too grand to be understood just now.

Finally, there was only one pair of arms wrapped around Granger, only one pair of eyes looking down at her. This was neither Potter-the-man nor Potter-the-boy. It was an amalgamation of both, a face old and young at the same time, new lines crossing old scars, illuminated by the pearly light of the Fading. It was someone Snape didn't know, and at the same time, knew all too well.

Potter looked up at him, thin arms cradling the body of his long dead friend, and his face was pale except for the blood that coated it, his hair was matted with dirt. His lightning bolt scar shone red against the sickly-white skin.

His eyes were like black holes, like tunnels into the dark.

"I kill everyone I love," he said.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Robert Frost, The Gift Outright