It was possible none of this would have happened if not for Hermione. Or if not for Ron being an insecure prat who had to give himself a confidence boost in the worst possible way. Kingsley Shacklebolt also deserved some of the blame for putting Harry in an impossible position.
But mostly, Harry was aware, the fault lay with Snape. With Snape and his penchant for nearly dying in Harry's arms.
But that came later. After all, Harry had done what he'd been asked to do. No soul-fragment of the Dark Lord remained in the world so for now, at least, the world was saved. And he was free, whatever that meant.
In the days that followed Voldemort's death, he sat through endless conversations with the Aurors, McGonagall, Ginny, the Aurors again, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley (Molly broke down sobbing and had to Floo home), the Aurors again; and spent every free moment with Ron and Hermione. His friends guarded him while he slept, which helped, but when he staggered out of bed, he was still knackered and bleary-eyed.
They all struggled to believe the long nightmare was over. Harry had trouble believing it himself. After all, Voldemort had taken Fred and Remus and Tonks and so many others.
But not Ron or Hermione, for which he was grateful. He refused to feel guilty about that. But he was so bloody tired, and it was over, and he needed something to be happy about.
What he wanted most eluded him. He kept waiting to feel relief. Surely that would come, right? Maybe after the funerals.
On the few occasions he was alone, Harry wandered around the ruins of his childhood. Saw with his own eyes that the castle, though battered and empty, was still standing. Said the goodbyes that needed saying. Saw spring warming into summer and felt the stirrings of hope.
A week went by, and on the way down to breakfast, he announced, "I'm ready."
Ron, a few steps further down, stopped to let him catch up. "Ready? You mean, to go?"
"I think so, yeah." To lay down the burden of saving the world. To be an ordinary teenager, a boy without a Dark Lord or a death sentence hanging over him.
"Coming to ours, then?" Ron's face lit up, although his eyes were worn. Since the battle, he'd split his time between Hogwarts and the Burrow, helping out where he could. He'd lost a lot of sleep over Fred. And although he didn't say much about George, he was clearly worried. In a few days, he'd be boarding the train to spend the rest of the summer at home.
Harry bumped his arm. "If your mum doesn't mind. If there's room."
"What do you mean, if there's room? 'Course there is, you prat." Hermione was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, and Ron went straight to her, gathering her close with a lanky arm. "Room for all of us."
Hermione looked both proud and shy that Ron was being so openly affectionate in front of Harry. "I can't imagine spending the summer without you, Harry. It should be the three of us. We've earned the time to relax, don't you think?" She leaned against Ron for a moment, her smile fading. "And I'll need both of you to cheer me up while I work on bringing my parents back."
"Just do me a favour, mate. Don't say anything to Mum about me being splinched. Or Hermione being tortured. Or the Gringotts thing. Or – " Ron cleared his throat. "Or you going off on your own to die, all right?" His voice caught, and Hermione started blinking hard.
"Of course not," Harry said quickly. "I don't want to do anything more exciting than play Quidditch and eat sandwiches in the garden and hide from the gossip columnists. And see Ginny. And George. And your mum and dad, of course. We'll talk about the rest once it sinks in that it's – " He gazed up at the walls. "Over."
Privately he worried it would never be over. Sure, Voldemort was dead. He didn't doubt it for a second. But he'd lived with this sense of dread for so long he wasn't sure he could know what it meant to be over.
"Sounds good," Ron said. His arm had slid down to Hermione's waist, and when Harry came up alongside, Ron slapped him on the shoulder with his free hand, and then his arm just stayed there, casually yoking them together. They entered the Great Hall like that, under the eyes of the teaching staff.
Yes, Harry was ready.
But he had one more debt to pay, so the next morning he trudged up the stairs to the headmaster's office. Black bun askew, deflated hat perched on a corner of the desk, Professor McGonagall sat surrounded by sheaves of papers and heaped-up scrolls. Owls of various sizes and colours swooped in through the open windows and bombarded the desk with officious-looking documents. None waited for an answer, but each took a nip at the conveniently placed dish of owl treats before soaring out again.
"Mr. Potter," McGonagall said, straightening her back and laying down her quill with a tired smile. And then, with a slight shake of her head, "Harry. What can I do for you?"
She showed polite interest in his immediate plans (the Burrow, sleep, Fred's memorial service, repairs on Ottery St. Catchpole, sleep, Quidditch games, more sleep), and Harry skipped any further small talk to get to the point.
"Sorry to barge in like this, Professor, but may I borrow the Pensieve for a while?"
McGonagall laced her fingers together and raised her eyebrows, either waiting for an explanation or simply assessing his state of mind. When he didn't elaborate, she stood with a scrape of her chair and a wince at how long she'd been sitting and led him to the black cabinet. The stone bowl floated out of the drawer that opened to her quiet incantation, and her wand guided it to a carved plinth standing in a shaft of sunlight.
Then she turned, eyeing the flask in Harry's hand. "Well, Mr. Potter. I should hope you know by now to treat what you learn from memories with a little discretion." Harry braced himself for a lecture, but McGonagall merely glanced at the clock. "As it happens, there are a few tasks I've been meaning to finish up. Now is as good a time as any to see to them. I'll leave you to it, shall I? Please touch nothing else in this office." She hesitated at the door. "I trust you would tell me if you preferred me to stay?"
Harry swallowed at the sympathy in her sharp eyes. "I'm all right, Professor. Thank you, but I already know what's in here." He held up the flask. "I've seen these before."
"Severus' memories, I take it?"
The pained note in her voice caught him off guard. There was nothing he could say to make it better, so he nodded again.
She clearly wanted to say more but stopped herself with a sigh. "Well, send a house elf if you need me. Be back in, shall we say, an hour?"
After the door shut behind her, Harry emptied the flask into the shallow basin, grateful for the privacy. Well, as much privacy as one could have in a room full of portraits. He'd been worried Dumbledore would take the opportunity to start a conversation, but whether it was feigned or not, the headmaster slept on.
The mist spun and swirled inside the stone bowl, and Harry spun and swirled with it through light and dark, hoping this would be the last time he'd ever hear the awful words the boy must die. He landed in the playground a short distance from his mum, the sunlight in his face the same as the sun brightening her summer frock. A strange drumming in his chest made it hard to breathe. He ignored the shabby boy he could see hiding in the bushes and bent all his energy on gathering up every last scrap of Lily: the particular red of her hair when the sun bronzed it, the many times she scolded Snape, and everywhere her confidence and humour. More than anything, how young she was, the age of a friend rather than a mother. If Snape had memories of her as an adult, he hadn't shared them.
Goodbye, vibrated through him. Love you. Love you, Mum.
Then he was on the windswept hillside, with Snape on his knees stammering for Dumbledore to save her, I'll do anything, just save Lily, and Merlin, maybe that was enough. Maybe it was better to pack it in.
The undertow of regret swept him on.
As the undersized guttersnipe became the Death Eater became that bastard Professor Snape, casting his Patronus with the few shreds of happiness gleaned from his miserable life, Harry found himself near tears. Not for Snape, he didn't think. For everyone who'd lost themselves in the war. It was as if, in the metaphysical pool of a dying man's memories, emotional boundaries simply dissolved.
He didn't come out until a hand on his shoulder brought him to his senses. As Harry rose from the bowl, shaking free of the sights and sounds of the past, it felt as if he'd been gone for days.
"All right, Harry?"
McGonagall's concern broke the threads connecting him to the haunted gift Snape had given him. Harry prodded the last wisps of memory back into the flask before saying in as normal a voice as possible, "Fine, Professor, thanks for asking." It was a lie, of course. But a few more niceties, and he was out the door and down the stairs, trailing a fog of regrets. He went straight to his dorm and sprawled on the bed, turning the flask over in his hands, just staring at it.
The next morning he went to see Snape.
As the heavy infirmary doors swung shut behind him, he walked along the aisles of beds toward the far corner where Snape had been tucked away and curtained off. The ward was quiet, all the other serious cases having been sent to St. Mungo's. Harry had visited two days before, but since then he'd been reluctant to return.
"Professor?"
Cautiously, Harry drew the curtain back just enough to peek inside. The bed was empty.
Shock burst through him, and only the fact that his throat had gone tight kept him from shouting Snape's name. Across the room, Madam Pomfrey noticed the way his head whipped back and forth, searching frantically.
"If it's Professor Snape you're looking for," she called, "he's sitting outside by the front steps. Enjoying the sun, I hope."
Harry shuddered as the rush of panic subsided. His brain tried to compensate by foisting on him an image of Snape sweaty and irritable in his black robes, scowling at the sunlight. But then he pictured the shabby little punter skulking in the Pensieve and the bandaged, skull-faced figure he'd last seen lying unconscious in this very bed, every inhale scraped up from the bottom of his lungs as if it were his last.
As he headed for the door, Madam Pomfrey stepped into the aisle and beckoned him over. "Be careful with him, Harry. He's – " Her hands hovered as if feeling out the dimensions of the problem, then with a resigned gesture waved it away. "Well, it's early days yet. But he came back changed." She smiled and patted his shoulder. "Unlike you."
Still at loose ends in the aftermath of everything, Harry took his time wandering down one staircase after another and out onto the broken but no longer bloodstained front steps. He shivered as he stepped outside; the weather seemed a bit too bracing for an invalid. In contrast to the nippy air, sunlight brightened the grass, and someone had parked Snape squarely within it. He was ensconced in a bath chair, bundled up in his grey nightshirt and a green dressing gown, with a suspiciously loud tartan blanket tucked around him in a softer embrace than an actual hug from McGonagall would have been. On his knees sat a heavy leatherbound book, unopened and in imminent danger of sliding off his lap.
Harry approached with caution. It was awkward having to view Snape's fragility at such close range. He would have preferred to meet on equal ground, with Snape recovered enough to sneer and insinuate, free to be as much of an arsehole as he pleased. A week after the battle, it seemed wrong for him to still be sitting within the shadow of his near-death like an obedient child, an impression reinforced by the freakishly clean hair hanging in curtains to his shoulders. It looked as smooth as a wig even when tousled by the breeze.
His face, however, was not a child's. It was stern and uninviting and empty of engagement. Harry saw nothing but shadow behind Snape's eyes, and he doubted it had anything to do with Occlumency. He didn't seem to be sunk in thought or enjoying the sun's warmth or cursing the world, or whatever it was Snape did when he was alone. He was simply there.
When it became clear he wasn't going to rouse on his own, Harry stepped forward and blocked his view.
That got the brooding git to react. A flash of familiar scowl seared up at Harry, and Snape tensed. Beneath the brushed-smooth drape of hair, a neat column of white linen twined upward from the open collar of his nightshirt to just beneath his jaw. Harry felt suddenly lightheaded, remembering the splattery mess Nagini had made of his throat. In return, Snape glared darkly into his face, then drew a deep breath and let it out with a quiet hiss. The unforgiving burn of his stare was too fervent and personal for comfort, and Harry was sorely tempted to just walk away.
Instead, with a slight cough, he got on with it. "Hello, sir." Snape squinted, possibly from the sun in his eyes, possibly because he was having trouble believing in a Harry who would say 'Hello, sir.' "I don't want to bother you so I won't stay long. But I couldn't leave without coming to thank you."
Snape's brow pinched, and he looked like falcon who'd just spotted his prey. "...leave," he rasped, his voice as dusty as disintegrating parchment, one brittle fragment with a single legible word.
The gratitude Harry had been about to offer froze in his throat. Surprised by a tiny rush of hurt, he swallowed down the lump while pretending a show of interest in the scaffolding around the spell-cracked towers. After all, this was Snape. However else he might have changed, there was no reason to expect his opinion of Harry ever would.
Snape continued staring at him as if his presence was an inexplicable blot on the landscape, a human obstruction against a backdrop of green and gold. All right, so maybe the poor bastard hadn't been sending him away. Maybe he'd been echoing the only word in Harry's greeting that penetrated his mental fog.
"Don't worry, I'll be off soon," Harry promised, clutching at that straw and doing his best to sound lighthearted. "The Weasleys are putting me up for the summer." It felt wrong not to mention Fred, whose absence was such a gaping wound in the family's life, but he doubted Snape would care, and he didn't want to deal with Snape not caring. Besides, the less Snape reacted, the more Harry wished he had been ordering him to leave. The clutch of pity in his stomach was awful. For both their sakes, he should have waited until later to have this talk.
"Before I go, I – well, I have something of yours. I came to give it back."
Now that the moment had arrived, his natural reluctance swelled into an obstinate spike of refusal. He shouldn't have been so hasty. He could have kept the memories a while longer. Instead, he forced himself to pull the flask from his pocket.
"I thought you might be missing these."
Snape's piercing scrutiny shifted to the bottled memories, the gleam of reflected sunlight along the glass curve, the way Harry's knuckles whitened as he held the flask up for Snape's inspection.
"Potter." The word was like a shred ripped from burlap sacking. Snape rasped a shallow breath and scowled harder. "You didn't die."
Uneasy with the truth behind that, Harry shrugged one shoulder. "Guess not." He quirked a wry smile. "Neither did you."
Snape leaned forward, his expression weirdly urgent, bony fingers braced atop the book's worn binding. He searched Harry's face almost as if afraid of what he might find. "Yes," he croaked suddenly. "I did." Then he sank back into the nest of blankets and closed his eyes as if, after an admission like that, there was nothing more to say.
Harry stood with his back to the sun, the memories in his grasp, his mouth so dry he had to swallow twice. "Oh. Well, I'll let you in on a secret, then. So did I."
There was no response. After a moment's silence, Harry cleared his throat again and continued, not caring if it might be more than the sick man wanted to know, "I saw my mum. And my dad. And after I – after Voldemort killed me – " It was so odd to say this out loud that he got stuck for a moment and couldn't go on. "I ended up in King's Cross Station. Bonkers, right? And Dumbledore was there. He said it was up to me if I wanted to stay or go. Come back here, I mean." His attention wandered to the top step where a crow was strutting to and fro in front of the open doors, occasionally hopping across the threshold to peck at the floor just inside the castle. "I almost didn't. Come back. But if I'd stayed, I would have left all my friends at Voldemort's mercy, so … here I am."
There was a sudden blur of black as the crow winged over their heads. Snape didn't even twitch, oblivious to the brief swoop of shadow across his face. Had he fallen asleep? How ill did he have to be not to care that Harry was watching him?
Eyes stinging with the sense that nothing was the same, not even Snape, Harry tilted the flask and peered into the swirling threads of personal history. The glass was picking up the sun's heat. Harry mumbled, "So who did you see when you died, Professor."
"The Dark Lord … presiding over the gates of Hell, and Dumbledore waiting … with a pitchfork to … toss me in."
The gravelly words gave Harry a start. He would have laughed, but he couldn't tell if Snape actually meant it to be funny. The black eyes were open and fixed upon him, two sparks of heat in an otherwise empty face. Then the bath chair rocked as Snape shrugged himself into an upright position. Like a grave flower cracking open a coffin lid to seek the light of day, his spidery hand stretched out to Harry, proof of a deep-rooted will to live.
"I'll have those back now. Since you don't need them anymore."
Even though he was here for precisely this, Harry hesitated. These images were all he had of his mum. More than he'd ever had. If Snape had died in the Shrieking Shack, they'd be his now. He could have kept them forever.
Oh Merlin. If Snape happened to be reading his mind, he'd be justified in hanging Harry upside-down by his heels.
Ashamed, he edged closer and fitted the bottle into Snape's grasp, holding it steady until the bloodless fingers clenched hard enough that he had no excuse to keep touching it. He took a step back, away from the wand trembling slightly in Snape's other hand.
So that was done. That debt paid. No reason to wait around, yeah? Nothing else he was supposed to do. He was suddenly so tired he was tempted to sit down right there on the grass. Maybe Snape would need help threading the memories out of the bottle and back into his brain. The edges of the tartan blanket fluttered in a fresh gust of wind, and Harry couldn't help pitying the corpse-like circles around Snape's eyes, the way his lips tightened with the effort to swallow against the bandages sealing his throat.
For a minute, birds whistled across the distances, and the healing sunlight eased them both. Finally, Snape flicked his wand. The cork strained and popped. Harry watched, first with regret, then alarm, as tendrils of memory started sneaking out of the open bottle into the air.
Lost inside the maze of his strange, dark brain, Snape gazed at the sky over Harry's head. Without warning, a shiver wracked his body. The flask dropped from his spasming hand. It landed mouth-downward, silver mist and irreplaceable memories spilling from its glass belly into the grass.
"Shite!" Harry's wand shot out to summon the vanishing traces of his mum, the girl who'd once strolled across this very stretch of sparkling grass, who'd been the friend and victim of the boy who sat there twenty years later, the man who'd died a week ago practically in Harry's arms. A man with the power to hurt him still.
Every flourish of his wand slashed the mist into thinner strands. Harry crouched, flicking with quick weed-pulling motions, yanking ghosts of memory out of the damp ground and back into the air. They flowed gracefully upward in time with his wand, but each silver plume split into ribbons and drifted away, losing substance faster than he could summon them.
"Do something!" he cried. "We're going to lose them!"
Snape pushed himself forward, and the heavy book dropped into the gap between his knees and toppled forward. It hit the ground with a dull thud and a sharp crack. The last of the memories flew out from the impact, escaping the broken glass, curling and fading before Harry's eyes.
Desperate, he closed his hand around a swirling tendril. It melted through his fingers, impossible to hold.
Gone. Within seconds, the girl from Cokeworth was gone, along with crucial moments in the history of the boy who'd become Professor Snape, second only to Voldemort as the person Harry hated most in the world. A nemesis he'd almost been willing to forgive for the sake of those memories.
"No," he whispered, hunched over the huge book and the fragments of glass. The green beneath them shimmered a little, as if wisps of silver still clung to the grass. Harry felt fingers touch his head, and recoiled, crying, "No!"
Snape grasped his shoulder instead, leaning on him for support. Scorchingly, insanely angry, Harry nearly wrenched away, while the air around him sparkled with molecules of silver.
"You did that on purpose," he shouted. Having Snape's gargoyle face so close sent his temper sputtering up like a greasy coal fire on a cool and beautiful day. "That was my mum, you arsehole. You just threw her away. Right in front of me! You didn't have to do that. You could have – "
"Leave it, Potter," Snape growled, struggling back into his chair. "That was the past." He was obviously agitated but too weak to do more than pull the blanket up to his chest. Head resting on the tartan, he lapsed once more into staring at some indeterminate point that could have been hills or sky but was probably nowhere at all. His eyes were too dark to betray what was going on inside.
"My mum – "
"My memories, you stupid child." The words were a carryover from nearly every encounter they'd ever had, but the cruel voice was a ghost of itself. "They didn't belong to you."
Harry got stiffly to his feet, already regretting having shouted at him. His heart was racing, and he felt raw, as if he'd fallen through a broken floor and scraped himself bloody on the way down. "I wish you'd let me keep them," he said. "I would have been happy to return them whenever you were ready, and we'd still – " Something alongside Snape's nose caught the light, and Harry's voice shook. "You didn't have to give them up."
He'd seen Snape in Dumbledore's office after Lily's murder, doubled over and wailing with grief; seen him on his knees in Grimmauld Place, weeping over a torn photograph. Now Snape stared blankly out at the world from his chair while water trickled from his eyes, his whole face shiny and empty and – Harry's stomach cramped – lost. Darker grey dappled the neck of his nightshirt as the tears ran to the bottom of his jaw and dripped. He didn't acknowledge them, didn't grimace or sniffle or register mortified rage that he was crying in front of a student. And not just any student, but Harry bloody Potter.
It was one of the most desolate things Harry had ever seen.
"I can't live with it anymore." Snape's voice was bogged down, his ruined throat thick with phlegm. His wand twitched, and the bath chair lifted a few inches off the ground. "There's nothing I can do. Nothing that will bring her back."
The salt water soaked his face as if draining from a well that had been nailed shut, grown putrid and stagnant over the years, washing away a lifetime of remorse and violence, devotion and spite. In that case, Harry wondered what would be left.
"I can't do this. I will always," Snape met Harry's eyes, his own unreadable through a sheen of light reflecting off tears, "always mourn her. And Dumbledore, damn his soul." His chair lurched toward the steps, and he steered it with his wand. "But the Dark Lord is dead now, and so are they. For some reason, I'm not." The chair Levitated shakily up the first step. "I have to find a way to live with that."
Watching the pain and guilt roll down Snape's exhausted face had the effect, weirdly, of reminding Harry that Snape wasn't actually that old. The sight filled him with a mad desire to grab the nearest broom and fly straight up into the pale blue sky. Not for pleasure; for escape. Fly from the heartache and the scorched, smashed-up castle and all the people who would still be dead tomorrow when the sun shone through the window onto his pillow.
Instead, Harry summoned the oversized book and banished the broken glass. He followed in Snape's wake, not offering to help but walking doggedly through the castle doors and leaving the bright day behind, shadowing Snape up each flight of stairs and boosting his chair with a murmured spell when he seemed too weak to keep it afloat. As they neared the infirmary, the damp streaks on Snape's face abruptly vanished. The doors opened for them, and the chair continued gliding until it bumped into a bed. Harry waited at a respectful distance until Madam Pomfrey noticed them and hurried over. Then he placed the book on the hospital blanket, glanced briefly at the ghostly profile shrouded in fuzzy tartan (Snape didn't glance back), and left without saying goodbye.
Two days later, as he and Ron were floating their meagre belongings down the stairs, late for their rendezvous with Charlie and Mr. Weasley, Madam Pomfrey came out to say goodbye. She wished them a good summer, hesitated, then said to Harry, "I want to thank you for what you did for Severus." Her lips curved up slightly. "I mean Professor Snape." As if there could possibly be another Severus for a thousand miles around.
Harry almost said What, yell at him? but decided that wouldn't go over well. "I bet if you asked Snape, he'd say you were barking."
"You don't understand," she said quietly. "Harry. He's barely spoken to us since waking up. It had reached the point where his mental state was impeding his physical recovery. But ever since that day, he's been making an effort. It's still difficult for him, but he's talking."
The moment she was out of earshot, Ron snorted and continued thumping down the stairs, anxious to be reunited with his family. "If you ask me, Snape talking is a reason to stay far, far away from Hogwarts. 'Course, he'll have to talk if he wants to defend himself at his trial, and I bet seeing you made him realise that."
Startled, Harry said, "Yeah," as it sank in that Snape would have to face yet another ordeal, one that might make his miraculous survival irrelevant. If he'd thought ahead, he would have known to keep the bottled memories as evidence. Another reason to mourn them. Well, Harry assumed he'd be summoned as a witness, and he could describe what he'd seen to the Wizengamot then.
Ron interrupted his troubled thoughts with a shout of, "Charlie!" and then Ginny was there, too, and Mr. Weasley, and there were hugs and a heartsick moment when Harry thought everyone was going to break down crying. But then Charlie clapped a hand on Ron's shoulder and said, "I want to hear all about that Gringotts dragon," and Ron elbowed him. Ginny wiped her eyes and smiled gratefully when Harry took her hand, and after a second they got themselves sorted out. Harry felt as if he'd finally landed on solid ground after being stranded on a broom for days, flying with nothing but fog below him. Surrounded by the familiar noise and warmth and bustle of multiple Weasleys, he was able to leave Hogwarts behind, at least for now.
~#~
Later, Harry testified on Snape's behalf before the Wizengamot with a conviction and stubbornness that helped secure the git's release. He and Snape didn't exchange a single word, although Harry was aware of Snape watching him. Harry tipped him an ironic little bow for services rendered before walking out of the courtroom, where Ron and Hermione had to run to catch up with him.
"Harry, slow down," Hermione said, and only then did he realise he was striding along at full steam, frowning as if he were angry when in fact he wasn't really thinking about anything except the way Snape had looked, as drained and emotionally distant as if he were still sitting in the bath chair.
"Are you all right?" Hermione said, falling into step with him.
"Why wouldn't I be?" It was a question asked of him by most everyone he met, which was ironic, considering in the next breath they nearly always went on to beg a favour. Snape was merely one in a long line of those who needed his help. Not that Snape had begged, and he certainly hadn't asked how Harry was doing. But Harry owed Snape a debt. It was as simple as that.
His steps faltered. "Maybe I should stay for the verdict."
"No, you shouldn't," Hermione said, overlapping with Ron's, "That's rubbish, that is."
"He won't want you there," Hermione pointed out. "If he's acquitted, the entire courtroom will pressure him into giving you public thanks."
"Reckon he'd rather swallow a flobberworm," Ron said, then added with vengeful relish, "Raw."
"And if he's sentenced to Azkaban – "
Harry flinched, and Ron laid a calming hand on his shoulder, steering him onward. "Then there's nothing you can do about it."
The Aurors guarding the access hall to the courtroom checked them over and let them through the protective charms. As soon as they stepped beyond that barrier, several reporters and a motley assortment of Boy Who Lived fans surged toward them, shouting questions about Harry's opinion of Snape and Snape's guilt and Dumbledore's schemes and his thoughts on marriage and whether or not he had plans to become the next Minister. Others just reached out to lay hands on them. All three of them had experienced enough of the public's sense of ownership toward Harry to have no patience left.
Harry didn't realise he was dragging his feet until his friends took his arms on either side and hustled him forward through the shouting crowd. "What if they don't judge him fairly?"
Ron brandished his wand and cast Protego, saying loudly to be heard, "Mate, have you stopped to consider that Azkaban might be a fair cop for some of the things he's done? Snape's not exactly Professor Pureheart of the Year."
Hermione rolled her eyes at him and raised an Imperturbable charm. "Whatever they decide, it's not your responsibility to save him."
"I know," Harry said as they veered through the scrum of importunate strangers, fending off charmed notes and offers of marriage and pleas for book deals. "I know, I know. Look, are you free? I have time for lunch before my duelling practise."
The thing was, Harry hadn't saved Snape. He hadn't gone to fetch his body back after the fighting ended, hadn't stopped to think that Snape knew everything there was to know about anti-venins and blood replenishment and Voldemort's fickle rages and rationalisations, hadn't supposed that Snape might swallow a bezoar every time he was called to appear before his master. Hadn't known – how could he? – that Snape believed down to the marrow of his bones it would take more than Harry's death to vanquish the Dark Lord and he should therefore do his damnedest to stick around in case someone was needed to finish the job.
Besides, that was the day a lot of people Harry cared about were being cursed and mutilated by the Death Eaters. He hadn't a drop of empathy left for someone he hated as much as he hated Snape. When he crawled up through the Shack's trapdoor and saw Snape's blood staining the dirty planks, he hadn't even tried to staunch the wound at his throat. He'd simply watched. Later he remembered feeling blank horror at the sight, a vague recognition that there was poetic justice in Dumbledore's murderer dying at his master's hand. It took a snake to kill a snake. Snape had chosen evil, had sided with the wizard who'd murdered James and Lily Potter with the same brusque contempt as a dirt-poor Cokeworth teenager using Avada Kedavra to kill flies.
To prove his allegiance, Snape had slain Dumbledore, a man Harry loved and looked up to for guidance; had made it heart-shatteringly clear who it was he truly served by betraying the man who'd given him a second chance. That Snape had paid for his sins by dying in agony, blood pouring from a pale throat torn by a snake's fangs, had seemed to Harry a sign that the universe was sometimes fair.
It never crossed his mind that Snape might be someone worth saving. He hadn't wasted a single second regretting his own passivity, the odd callousness of kneeling by his enemy's side and not lifting a finger to help. Even at the end, when Snape had begged Harry to look at him, Harry had only done it out of a kind of confused pity. Because he was already leaning over, Snape's memories in hand. All he had to do was look down.
To prove his allegiance, Snape had slain Dumbledore. The truth of that was almost too painful to bear.
Of all the things Harry regretted about the war, he wouldn't have expected his perfectly understandable failure to act on Snape's behalf to make the list. He certainly wouldn't have thought he'd be bothered by the fact that it was Professors McGonagall and Flitwick rather than Harry himself who had saved Snape, the two of them Apparating to the Shrieking Shack to search for their former colleague in the creepy, ice-cold darkness. Lumos had shown them the blood-spattered body, hideously dead – except that a thin slime of red still trickled from his throat, adding to the glistening muck on the shoulder of his robe. He'd been (despite the blood coagulants in his system) still bleeding. Still alive, although not for much longer if something wasn't done.
The two heads of house had levitated his body to Hogwarts as if their robes were on fire.
Fate had been merciful; Severus Snape had lived. Ex-Death Eater, spy, traitor, murderer, hater of children, grudge-carrier extraordinaire: he'd been judged and set free. The Wizengamot, weighing his role in Voldemort's defeat, had chosen to be lenient despite evidence of how the students had suffered under his rule. Surprisingly, most of the professors at Hogwarts showed up to defend him. Dumbledore's death was trickier, but Harry stepped forward with eye-witness testimony and refused to back down.
To say the public disliked the verdict was like mistaking a daddy longlegs for an Acromantula. There were protests. There were death threats. The letters column in The Daily Prophet buzzed like a hornet's nest, and the paper rode the back of that controversy to two weeks of record-making profits.
For his part, Harry had vaguely expected one last hostile, skin-strippingly honest conversation between them. Closure, right? A clearing of the air.
Wrong. By the end of the month, Snape had packed and gone. Completely buggered off. He'd Owled instructions to a solicitor to leave his house in Spinner's End strictly alone, awaiting his return. No forwarding address. No word of explanation or farewell. His last contact with anyone had been a formal apology to the Hogwarts staff. Harry imagined each word delivered from between Snape's teeth with an unspoken "fuck you" burning in every syllable.
Snape's abandonment of their world left Harry strangely sore at heart, but it was fine. No big deal. He was used to people leaving him. In fact, it was probably for the best. Not as if he wanted Snape hanging around like a greasy-haired carrion crow, restored, if not to robust health, then to his old habits of Potter-hating.
And at least the bastard was alive to make that choice.