Our Land of Living

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

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.

The words hit Snape like a punch. Not because they were an echo of other memories, other instances of loss and overwhelming grief, but because they were spoken in Potter-the-man's calm, composed voice, in that tone that left no room for doubt or insecurity. They were spoken in a voice that made them real.

"That isn't true," Snape said helplessly. He was aware that this was not part of the treatment, strictly speaking. The potion would work or not. Potter would heal or not, and then turn back into his older, saner self, to die or recover, and nothing he said or heard in-between would make a difference. This wasn't psychology, it was proper magic.

But he couldn't ignore those words. He couldn't ignore those eyes.

Potter's face was calm as he met his gaze. It wasn't the acceptance the man used to deal with pain, nor the serenity of Saint Potter. It was the peace of resignation, the quiescence of a man who returned to find his house burnt down with his family still in it, everything gone in a moment and nothing left to fight for.

"Who are you to tell me that?" he asked. He didn't sound as if he cared at all, neither about Snape nor about his own question, and even as the hurt of that sliced into Snape, he realized that Potter couldn't possibly care, that this monstrous hybrid of two Potters at their worst did not have the capacity for it. "What do you know about me, Professor Snape?"

Out of all the possibilities to answer that question, Snape chose one that involved him least. He wasn't sure whether it was cowardice, or whether he didn't trust the bond they'd formed over the past weeks. It seemed safer this way.

"The mere fact that people care enough about you to invade Hogwarts on your behalf should tell you that this isn't your life anymore," he therefore answered, trying for controlled and reasonable. "Think of Ayda, and Shadow and Chairon. They can protect themselves. What you are feeling right now isn't the truth. That loss is old. You have friends now, and things to live for."

Potter's face twisted in a smirk, such a cold and bitter expression that even Snape at his worst would have been hard-pressed to match it. Snape felt something twist within himself in response, and only the way Potter's hands were still clutching Granger's hair reminded him that this coldness wasn't real.

"Why, Professor, how very sentimental of you."

Snape had the supremely unpleasant experience of finding himself tongue-tied in front of this stranger with eyes the green of the Killing Curse. He wasn't sure how to react to this. He wasn't even sure what was happening to Potter, right in front of his eyes – he had never actually gone through the process of treating the illness, and all his knowledge was theoretical - only that there was nothing he could do but wait. It was painful to realize.

Potter nevertheless appeared to expect an answer. He even cocked his head sideways in a parody of expectation. Then, abruptly, he seemed to tire of this game. His eyes swept the room, then returned to the body in his arms. His lips tightened for a moment. His features were still surreally visible in the grey light of his illness, but even that illumination wasn't enough for Snape to follow the thoughts and expressions darting across his face.

Snape was reminded of the Potter he had seen in Ayda's memory, full of pain and volatile emotion, so overwhelmed by the momentum of his own feelings that he couldn't pull himself out of them. He found that he wanted to reach out and offer help, to soothe the breaking man in front of him.

"Only a few more minutes, Potter," he tried, but even as he said it, he was desperately aware how short his words fell of the situation and the man's need.

Potter chuckled tiredly. It was a sound of ruin and broken glass.

"This will never be over," he said. His hands reached out as if to clasp Granger's ears, to stop her from hearing. He sounded so very tired. "This is life, and I finally understand. After all those years of them lying to me, after all those tales and reasonings and prophecies I believed in, I can see it now. I see the truth. And it's so ugly."

He paused. His eyes closed.

But before Snape could react, before he could scrape together an answer that would hold back the flood of that pain, Potter was gone again, lost in his own realization. Perhaps he wouldn't have heard Snape, anyway.

"This is it. The truth about life. The thing they never ever tell you because most never understand it, and those that do, well they just hope for you that you'll never have to figure it out. It's not a philosophy they'd teach you at school, where you learn that when you're good and do your homework and follow the rules…"

For a moment, his fingers tightened in Granger's matted, blood clotted hair and his face twisted in grief.

Just for a moment. Then the feeling was gone again, nothing against the great void that rose and rose, swallowing his soul up whole.

„That when you play their game and say yes and please, that your life will be good, then. The nice children will get a prize, and grow up, and have more nice children, and everyone will be happy. They teach you that this is something you can earn, because there's a meaning to life, justice, order, and the good ones will win, and the bad ones will be punished."

He laughed, bitterly.

„But it's all a lie. There is no meaning. There is no justice. There's no future stretching out into a golden arc. There's only life, and life's a bloody mess of coincidences where everyone scrambles for the first place and no one looks back to the losers.

"Life's this: everyone I love killed and I survive. And there's no reason for it. Just an old man in his castle and a stupid boy that can't die. There's nothing else. And if you think there is, then you're just lying to yourself. Making up sacrifices because you can't bear that there's no one looking out for you, no one that gives a damn if you live or die. No God, no destiny, no prophecy. Just a joke gone wrong."

The words echoed with emptiness. The potion was doing its work, Snape was vaguely aware of that, but the healing it could bring was nothing against the destruction Potter was causing within himself, nothing against the flood within him, breaking all dams, destroying all reason.

„There's more than that, Potter," Snape said, not sure what he was doing, but knowing that he had to try. He couldn't bear just standing by, watching this.

Potter looked up at him. His face was hard and cold, cynical. Dead. But his eyes were pleading.

„Then tell me what," he whispered.

Three weeks ago, Snape couldn't have answered that plea. His life had never had a meaning of its own, a value beyond what he could achieve and of what use he'd been for others. He knew this, had known it for a long time, and he wasn't ashamed of it. He'd always thought it was that way because he could see clearer than other people, because he was strong enough not to bother with the illusions weak people clothed their desires in.

But since then, his world had changed. He had changed.

He'd seen so much. Potter had ripped away the illusions Snape thought he'd never had, but he'd given in return, had shown Snape a life so rich despite its hardships, so full despite its shortness. For the first time since Lily Potter had died, others had knocked on his door, offering more than redemption or services paid. For the first time in more years than he could count, people had demanded to be heard, to be acknowledged, to play a part in his life. And he'd opened his door to them.

Snape was aware that he couldn't find the answer to Potter's question on his own. But he wasn't on his own anymore. He was changed.

He'd let this new self do the talking, then.

"There's kindness," he said, in a voice so different from his usual one and at the same time so much Snape that he wondered why he'd never dared use it before. "There are poppy-seed muffins and cranky old women and vampires that read too much Dickens. There's courage. And regret. And perhaps there is no meaning to it all, but that doesn't stop us from making it mean something every day."

Potter nodded, a tired, jerky gesture.

"We tell lies," he said. "Because we cannot bear the truth."

"No," Snape contradicted, decisively. He felt understanding rise within him, a clarity of thought that wasn't clinical distance, wasn't the cold disinterest of one that viewed life from a distance. It was a clarity of involvement, an understanding founded on the parts he'd played in Potter's life, good and bad, and for one moment he wondered if this had been Potter's aim in making Snape his healer all the time – to hand him this power, this knowledge, because it was the only thing that could save Potter now.

The pieces of the puzzle clicked together.

"No," he repeated. "Not lies. Stories. And maybe they twist and shape the facts, sometimes, but they are truth. And they matter. They determine how we see the world, and they determine whether it is a world we want to live in."

He paused. Potter's eyes were still on him. He could see the hunger in them, the need, but he also saw that Potter didn't understand him. And how could he, when even Snape was only beginning to understand his own meaning?

That girl," he pointed to Granger's body in Potter's arms, "came in here as a victim. But she took the situation and made it her own, she turned herself into a fighter, and that made her free. That's not a lie, even though it is a version of the events, an interpretation. It's a truth that goes beyond facts, and it's what you did, too. You stopped subscribing to prophecies, to Dumbledore's twists and manipulations, to all those stories others told about you. You made your story your own, and you didn't care that we thought you were a coward or a fool or a full-time tourist. You freed yourself of that. You told your own story instead. And you can do it again."

Snape fell silent.

Potter was still staring at him, his expression unreadable. Suddenly, Snape was painfully aware of the way he stood above the other man, holding forth on the merits of stories, one hand raised to underline a point.

This was ridiculous. Who was he to lecture Potter on anything? What right did he have to preach to anyone, least of all this man?

But even as he questioned himself and his words, a change began in Potter.

The grey light faded from his skin, trickling back into his pores, and with the return to the room's shadowed twilight, Potter's features seemed to change, too. They strengthened. His bruises faded. His face matured.

But the hunger in his eyes was still there.

"I can't," he said, perhaps not noticing that the healing was taking effect, perhaps not caring. His need seemed less raw to Snape, the despair of the boy now mixed more evenly with the resignation of the man. But it was no less urgent for the coat of age it had acquired. "I tried for so long, I tried so hard, and for some time I could tell myself that I was content. And perhaps I was."

He smiled a sad, lopsided smile, amused perhaps by his own naivety.

"But after all I've been through, after all I've done, I've ended up here again. Perhaps I never left. Perhaps this is all my life boils down to. The cupboard, this moment, all those people who died, and me running as fast as I can to hide from them. Perhaps that's all there is."

Potter's voice was hoarse, half the seventeen-year-old's scratchy potential, half the tone of a grown man, sure of himself. His fingers were still entwined with Granger's hair, and the tears on his face were still the boy's, not the man's. But his eyes were aware again, and they were looking at Snape, truly looking at him. Not at the cruel teacher he'd been, nor at the dictatorial trainer, but at the Snape who had stayed at his house, and complained over his cooking, and bickered with his friends. At the Snape who had witnessed his memories.

And with a strange breathlessness, Snape realized that Potter still wanted an answer, and he wanted it from him.

Fool that the man was. Trusting fool.

"It is not," he said, and he didn't let his own doubts invade his tone. Potter needed certainty now, not a Slytherin's careful manoeuvring. "I know that it is not because I saw it. I witnessed what you have become. A man who is far too forgiving by choice, who enjoys bribing his friends with food, who works at a bookshop and spars with vampires, two of the most ludicrous hobbies I've ever heard of. A man who delights in driving his friends to distraction. A content man. One that doesn't have to prove anything to anyone."

Potter laughed, but it was half a sob, and his head sank down on his chest again, his eyes resting on Granger.

"Content," he whispered.

"Yes," Snape answered. "Content. Remember, Potter. Remember. This is real, and this pain is real, but that's not the only thing that is. You'll go on from this. You'll go beyond this. You have a home, and friends, and things to live for. You have worth, irritating as though you might be most of the time. You grow from this. This is not all that is to your story. Remember."

There was no blood on Potter's face anymore, and no grey light shone in his eyes. His clothes were the well made shirt and trouser of the man, and the only bruises his skin showed were the dark circles under his eyes, the shadows that painted his too-thin frame.

The healing had taken. The Fading was gone.

Potter would live.

"I remember," he said, and it was his own voice again. "It's just… in this moment… I'm not sure I can trust that memory."

"You can trust it," Snape confirmed. He hesitated, not sure what was needed right now, but thoroughly fed up with his own verbosity, if he was to be honest.

Brusqueness had always been more his cup of tea than cosy talks about one's feelings, and if he judged Potter's relationship to Ayda correctly, the other man might be the same. So he tried for a different tone.

"You are far too self righteous not to trust in your memories, Potter."

Again, Potter laughed. It almost sounded real now.

His eyes were still on Granger. His hands still in her hair. He sat very quietly.

Then, as if a signal had sounded, inaudible to anyone but him, he lifted the girl's body away from his lap, carefully set her down on the dark stone. His fingers untangled from her bloodied locks. He tenderly brushed them out of her slack face, reached out and closed her eyes.

For a while longer he sat, his hands now folded on his knees, and watched her reverently. Then he folded the blanket over her body, touched her hand one last time and slowly lowered himself on his elbows.

He kissed her forehead. The lines in his face smoothed out.

The man who looked up at Snape then was the Potter he'd come to know. He looked tired, and mournful, and there were many things in his eyes Snape couldn't interpret, but perhaps that wasn't necessary yet. He had survived, and that would suffice for now.

"You never lied to me," Potter remarked almost casually.

He gestured for the potions Snape had prepared for him – Pepper-ups, strengthening tonics and nutritional potions that would improve his state long enough for nature to do its work. Snape handed them to him mutely and watched Potter take the remedies against his weakness of his own, free will.

He felt exhausted all of a sudden, weary to his very bones. But he didn't show it.

"Why should I bother lying to you, Potter?" he asked, and it was a relief to settle back into the harsh edges of his usual persona. Even if he knew that Potter could see right through it. Or perhaps because of that. "You assume far too much importance. I only lie to very powerful wizards, after all."

Potter chuckled.

Already the potions were doing their work. It would be a long time until Potter regained his full strength, and perhaps the side effects of these weeks would last a lifetime.

But his survival was ensured. He would heal, and not just in the physical sense. It would take time.

But for now, it was enough for him to sit quietly besides the body of his friend, and for Snape to stand beside him, with the weight of this responsibility gone from his shoulders.

"I had forgotten this," Potter finally said, and the words encompassed this room, the sorrow of the past hour, perhaps even the future Potter had regained.

"There are many things I had forgotten, too," Snape admitted.

Looking around the throne room, he realized that he hadn't seen it as the place of his own pain and humiliation for quite some time now. His past was truly in the past, not just because he had chosen to shove it back into the dark corners of his mind, but because something about this experience had put it behind him. But there were also things he had learned during the last weeks, betrayals he'd never known about or had chosen not to recognize, loyalties that had been misplaced, old bitterness that had poisoned not only his life.

He shivered, almost overwhelmed with exhaustion for a moment, and drew his robes closer around his shoulders. "And quite a few I'd have preferred not to remember."

"Sometimes we need someone else to remind us of the things that truly matter," Potter said musingly. It was such an asinine, trite statement that Snape couldn't suppress a snort of disgust.

Only when he saw the amused glitter in Potter's eyes did he realize that Potter, weak, hurting, mourning Potter had parodied his own serenity, and he barked in surprised laughter, only to be rewarded with a broad smirk from the other man.

Then Potter tried to move his stiff limbs, and his face twisted in a pained grimace. He stretched out his legs slowly, massaging his knees. By his side, Granger's body thinned into mist, now that the memory had played out and was dissolving.

"It'll be good to get back to my life," Potter said, almost conversationally.

Snape snorted and aimed a muscle-relaxation spell at Potter's legs.

"You are aware that we're going to return to a Hogwarts invaded by centaurs, druids and vampires, yes?" he inquired sardonically. "It will be bedlam, absolute bedlam, and nearly impossible to oust Ayda from her position of power. I don't even want to know what she has done with Dumbledore's office by now."

"We're going to return to a place where all my friends gathered to protect me, when I could not help myself," Potter corrected softly.

He got his legs under him. Then he looked up at Snape one more time.

"Thank you, Professor," he said quietly. "I could not have done this without you."

Snape sniffed disdainfully.

"It's not as if I did it willingly," he said, and ignored the knowing smile that played on Potter's lips. Why had he ever forgotten how irritating the man could be? "You fairly blackmailed me into this, and once your madcap group of friends was involved, I had no choice at all but to play along. Don't expect me to open my door to you every time you cut your dainty fingers while chopping vegetables now, Potter."

And Potter smiled.

"I wouldn't dream of it, Professor," he said. He tried to stand, but he was too weak yet and fell back on his knees with a huff of irritation.

For the third time since they had entered this memory, Snape offered his hand to Potter.

And this time, Potter reached out and took it.

A/N: This is the last chapter of the story proper, dearest readers, though an epilogue will follow in a week or two to wrap up the threads of our tale. Thank you all for reviewing and reading, for staying with me all this time. It meant a lot for me to finish this story, and it meant even more that you cared and continued to care. My best wishes to all of you!