Chapter Text
May 3, 1998
With a mighty roar and an earth-quaking tremor, a giant beast of festering flesh carrying a hulking club lurched out of the darkness of the Forbidden Forest.
“Move!” shouted Harry, but the others needed no telling. In the next moment, the creature’s near-mile-long foot had fallen exactly where the group had been standing. Harry looked around. Ron and Hermione were following him, but the others had been scattered by the battle.
“We need to get out of range!” yelled Ron as the mountain troll took another swing of its club. Its cry echoed over the sound of war, its ghastly face was illuminated by bursts of varying-colored light in the darkness.
“Get to the Whomping Willow,” said Harry. “Now!” Unconsciously, with the same need of magic that found him on a roof all those years ago, he willed his command to be heard by his comrades.
Harry ran, consumed by thoughts of Fred and Hagrid, by terror for the fate of all those he knew were engaged in their battles around the castle. He knew that he must make them all wait because they had to run, had to reach Voldemort and his snake. Because that was, as Hermione said, the only way to end it all.
So Harry ran with the sure-footed glide of death itself, dodging the rushes of green light seeking him out in the darkness. He only focused on the pounding of his heart, echoing the sound of the Black Lake crashing like the sea. On the wind, which whipped past his face and carried dying wails through grounds that seemed to have gained a will of their own.
He ran and ran, faster than he had since the first time his lumbering cousin Dudley left him broken and bloodied. With heavy labored breath, Harry skirted the willow’s thrashing branches. He peered through the darkness toward its thick trunk, trying to see the single knot in the bark of the old tree that would paralyze it. Ron and Hermione caught up; Hermione was so out of breath that she could not speak.
“How—how’re we going to get in?” panted Ron.
“I can—see the place—if we just had—Crookshanks again—” started Harry.
“Crookshanks?” wheezed Hermione, bent double, clutching her chest. “Are you a wizard or not?”
Ron looked around, then directed his wand at a twig on the ground and said, “Wingardium Leviosa!”
The twig flew up from the ground, spun through the air as if caught by a gust of wind - then, with a jerk of Ron’s wrist, zoomed directly at the trunk through the Willow’s ominously swaying branches. It jabbed at a place near the roots, and at once, the writhing tree became still. Harry stalled with the tree's branches, uncertain of his fate, of everyone’s, should he enter the tunnel.
“Harry, we need to go!” said Ron, pushing him forward.
Harry wriggled between the sleeping tree’s hefty roots. It was harder to get through than when they had entered it years ago, having grown into young adults without ever meaning to. The dirt ceiling that had simply brushed their heads four years previously now was so close it left no choice but to crawl. Harry went first, his wand softly glowing, expecting at any moment to meet barriers or enemies.
With adrenaline high, it felt like the passage went on for hours. Then, at last, the tunnel began to slope upward into the opening in the floor of a ramshackle cottage, and Harry saw the breaking of light ahead. Just then, Hermione slowed her movement and tugged at his ankle.
“Your cloak!” she whispered. “Put on the Invisibility Cloak!”
Harry groped blindly behind for the shrunken satchel at his waist. One step ahead, Hermione reached into it and forced the bundle of slippery cloth into his free hand. With an elbow scraping against the tunnel’s rocky walls, he dragged it over himself; the murmured “Nox” extinguished his wand-light before casting a muffling spell.
They continued on in silence. Harry, hands and knees silenced by the spell, strained his senses, expecting every second to be discovered, to hear a cold, clear voice, see a flash of killing green light. A few meters closer, and he heard it, voices coming from the room directly ahead.
Dampened by the fact that the opening at the end of the tunnel had been blocked up by what looked to be an old crate. Without so much as a breath, Harry edged close, his Gryffindor heart daring to peer through a tiny gap left between the crate and the wall.
Having crawled down single-file under the floorboards of the Shrieking Shack, it is only Harry who can peer into the scene before them. The room beyond was faintly lit by weathered gas fixtures, but he could see Nagini. She sat safe in her enchanted sphere, her coiling body taunting him with every slither. He could also see the edge of muddied black boots, the leg of a rotted table, and a long-fingered white hand innocuously placed upon it. Then Snape spoke, and Harry’s heart lurched; Snape was inches away from where they lay hidden.
“My Lord, their will is crumbling—”
“And it is doing so without your help,” said Voldemort in his high, clear voice. “Skilled wizard though you are, Severus, I do not think you will make much difference now. We are almost there. Almost.”
“Let me find the boy. Let me bring you Potter. I know I can find him, my Lord. Please.” Snape spoke as he crept past the gap with a slightly wet trail across the dusty floor. Harry drew back but kept his eyes fixed upon Nagini, wondering whether there was any spell that might penetrate the protection surrounding her. But he could not think of anything and dared not chance it. One failed attempt, and he would give away his position.
Unbeknownst to the men in the room, said boy, who has only known the troubles of a man, was well hidden at their feet. With his friends crouched beside him under the fine threads of Death’s cloak, they waited for an opening and watched. From his vantage point, he can see them both; Snape’s body slowly kneels on the cold floor before his master in begging, head bowed, black eyes resolute. Voldemort sits tall and cruel over him, in a gleaming chair Harry assumes he conjured himself.
Severus Tobias Snape was a thin man from going a lifetime without. With his sallow skin and a large, hooked nose, his face was comprised of striking features from before his ancestors called the British Isles home. His shoulder-length black hair was oilier than usual, weighed down by sweat and heat. It clung messily to a face Harry has only seen sneer at him and veils cold eyes that have only overlooked his pain.
And, as he stands from where he sat at the dilapidated oak table, Harry gets a better look at Voldemort. Although, Harry had always seen Voldemort. Seen the red eyes that have haunted his dreams. Seen the flattened, serpentine face, pressed against his own in a graveyard. Seen the pallor of him gleaming slightly in the darkness of every shadow of Harry’s life. Harry looks on now as pale skin stretches over a skull-like face with snake-like slits for nostrils.
He knows that once a boy named Tom Marvolo Riddle was beautiful and brilliant, just like him. But that was long ago. He knows neither of these men deserves his sorrow and are nothing to be feared. Yet still, Harry hides. From his vantage point in the tunnel, he sees Voldemort approach Snape, hoping that for once an adult will figure out the right way to handle the situation. With all he has seen tonight, Harry does not want to witness another unstoppable death.
And it is unstoppable, for they are only children hiding in a hole - while a man, a monster, and a mortal stand off in the room. Snape looks on as well, knowing that all in this room shall die tonight. Severus can feel it, accustomed to reading the flow of magic. It is in the way the wind whips through the rotted wood around him, in the way the shadows quiver. Snape has been tired for a very long time, and as he faces his certain end, he hopes for rest.
“I have a problem, Severus,” said Voldemort softly.
“My Lord?” Snape said with barely a breath.
Voldemort raised the Elder Wand, holding it as delicately as a conductor’s baton.
“Why doesn’t it work for me, Severus?”
In the silence, Harry imagined he could hear the snake hissing slightly as it coiled and uncoiled—or was it Voldemort’s sibilant sigh lingering on the air?
“My—my lord?” said Snape, resigning himself to his fate. “I do not understand. You—you have performed extraordinary magic with that wand.”
“No,” said Voldemort. “I have performed my usual magic. I am extraordinary, but this wand? No. It has not revealed the wonders it has promised. I feel no difference between this wand and the one I procured from Ollivander all those years ago.”
Voldemort’s tone was musing, calm, but Harry’s scar had begun to throb and pulse. Pain was building in his forehead, and he could feel that controlled sense of fury building inside Voldemort. “No difference,” spoke Voldemort again. “I have thought long and hard, Severus. Do you know why I have called you back from battle?”
“No, my Lord, but I beg you will let me return. Let me find Potter,” Severus speaks, taking all the time he has left in this world.
“My instructions to the Death Eaters have been perfectly clear. Capture Potter. Kill his friends—the more, the better—but do not kill him. But it is of you that I wished to speak, Severus, not Harry Potter. You have been very valuable to me. Very valuable.”
“My Lord knows I seek only to serve him. But—let me go and find the boy, my Lord. Let me bring him to you. I know I can-”
“I have told you, no!” snarled Voldemort, and Harry caught the glint of red in his eyes as he turned again. “My concern at the moment, Severus, is what will happen when I finally meet the boy!”
Voldemort halts his previous pacing, and Harry could see him plainly again as he slid the Elder Wand through his knobby white fingers, staring at Snape. “Why did both the wands I have used fail when directed at Harry Potter?”
“I—I cannot answer that, my Lord.”
“Can’t you?”
The stab of Voldemort’s rage spiked through the broken pieces of soul in Harry’s head. He bites into the top of a fist to stop himself from crying out in pain. He closed his eyes, and suddenly he was Voldemort, looking into Snape’s pale face.
“My wand of yew did everything of which I asked it, Severus, except to kill Harry Potter. Twice it failed. Ollivander told me under torture of the twin cores, told me to take another’s wand. I did so, but Lucius’s wand shattered upon meeting Potter’s.”
Snape was not looking at Voldemort now. His dark eyes were still fixed upon the coiling serpent in its protective sphere.
“I sought a third wand, Severus. The Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore.”
And now Snape looked up at Voldemort, and Snape’s face was like a stone mask. It was hardened and so still that when he spoke, it was a shock to see that anyone lived behind the blank eyes.
“My Lord—let me go to the boy-”
“All this long night when I am on the brink of victory, I have sat here,” said Voldemort, his voice barely louder than a whisper, “wondering, wondering, why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it ought to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for its rightful owner—and I think I have the answer.”
Snape did not speak.
“Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, after all, Severus. You have been a good and faithful servant, and I regret what must happen.”
“My Lord-”
“The Elder Wand cannot serve me properly, Severus, because I am not its true master. The Elder Wand belongs to the wizard who killed its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore. While you live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot truly be mine.”
“My Lord!” Snape protested, raising to his feet with his own wand aimed toward the wizard he branded his life too.
“It cannot be any other way,” said Voldemort. “I must master the wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last.”
And Voldemort swiped the air with the Elder Wand. It did nothing to Snape, who for a split second seemed to think he had been reprieved, but then Voldemort’s intention became clear. The snake’s cage was rolling through the air, and before Snape could do anything more than yell, it had encased him, head and shoulders, and Voldemort spoke in Parseltongue, “Kill.”
Through the shack and into the tunnel filled a terrible scream. Harry saw Snape’s face losing the muted color it had left; it whitened as his black eyes widened, as the snake’s fangs repeatedly pierced his neck, as he failed to push the weight of the enchanted cage off himself, as his knees threatened to give way.
“I regret it,” was Voldemort’s final whisper as he coldly turned away; there was no sadness in him, no remorse. He simply saw it as his time to leave this shack and take charge, with a wand that would now do his every bidding. He pointed it at the starry cage holding the snake, which drifted upward, off Snape’s head, who leaned his weight against the crumbling wall at his back, blood gushing from the wounds in his neck. Voldemort swept from the room without a backward glance, and the great serpent floated after him in its huge protective sphere.
For all the noise his life has been, Severus’ death was a quiet affair. Several snake bites to his face and throat with only one shout. A lingering moment of unwavering eye contact with the man he foolishly chose to bow to all those years ago was Severus’ final reward. And as Voldemort departed with quiet remorseful words to rejoin the battle, all was still inside the Shrieking Shack.
With the last of his strength and his hard-won dignity, Severus lowered his body to the ground as he peered out of a broken window into the night sky just beyond. All he can think is how grateful he is for the last thing he sees in the world to be magic. The Battle of Hogwarts raged on well into the night, littering the smoke-heavy skies with flashes of marveling light and the great wails of death. It is amongst this backdrop of bedlam and hell that Harry James Potter sits in a tunnel, watching a foot in a black boot trembling on the floor.
“Harry!” breathed Hermione behind him, but he had already pointed his wand at the crate blocking their path. It lifted an inch into the air and drifted sideways silently. As quietly as he could, he pulled himself up into the room and with bloody handprints, crawls his way to his most hated professor.
He did not know why he was doing it, why he was approaching the vile man. He did not know what he felt as he saw Snape’s ashen face, and deft fingers trying to staunch the bloody wounds at his neck. Harry took off the invisibility cloak and looked down upon the man he hated, whose widening black eyes found Harry, as he tried to speak.
He hears his friends settle around them as a silvery substance, memories, Harry guesses with trepidation, is pouring from Snape's mouth, ears, and eyes.
"Take—it," Severus’ failing voice just manages. And Harry’s guess must have been right for Hermione Jean Granger hands Harry an empty potions vial as she attempts, and fails, to dress Snape’s wounds. With all the care he has ever managed, as Snape’s bloodied fingers close around his wrist, Harry delicately pours the silver stuff from one eye into the vial with his wand. Snape’s pale shaking hand is still holding on to Harry once finished; he implores the boy to look at him.
In the span of one breath and his next, Harry observes what he can only understand to be a stranger. Yes, he may have spent the last several years in this man’s presence, but there is a mole on the outward side of his wand hand that Harry never noticed before. Yes, he could almost assuredly draw the man's face from memory alone, but there is a feint cut in the underside of his jaw that Harry has never looked close enough to see.
So yes, Harry may have once thought he knew this man quite well. May have once believed that billowing robes and words of wrought steel were all that the man had to give this world. Harry may have once sworn that this man was as unnecessary and unneeded as he appeared to be - though not any longer. For as he listens to Snape give his final breaths, as he holds the man’s once knife steady hand, as he watches memories and life pull away from the Potions Master - all Harry can think is how ignorant to this man’s world he has been.
But their eyes only meet for a moment – Severus dies gazing up at Harry. Harry remained kneeling at Snape’s side, simply staring down at him, until quite suddenly a high, cold voice spoke so close to them that Harry jumped onto his feet, the vial gripped tightly in his hands, thinking that Voldemort had reentered the room. Voldemort’s voice reverberated from the walls and floor, and Harry realized that he was talking to Hogwarts and to all the surrounding area, that the residents of Hogsmeade and all those still fighting in the castle would hear him as clearly as if he stood beside them, his breath on the back of their necks, a deathblow away.
“You have fought,” said the high, cold voice, “valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery.” There is a break, Voldemort speaking lazily without the hurry of war. “Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste.”
He continued, “Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured.” There then came a pause, though magic staticed through the air and filled the silence.
“I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then the battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour.” And with that Voldemort’s magic was gone from the air.
Both of Harry’s friends shook their heads frantically, looking at Harry, too used to his self-sacrificing heroics. But Harry only gathered up the Invisibility Cloak, then looked down at Snape. He did not know what to feel, except shock at the way Snape had been killed, and the reason for which it had been done. His mind too frantic to even begin to process Voldemort’s announcement.
“Don’t listen to him,” said Ron, with the same finality of his every thought.
“It’ll be all right,” said Hermione wildly. “Let’s—let’s get back to the castle; if he’s gone to the forest, we’ll need to think of a new plan-”
It takes Hermione’s years worked armor of assiduity to move Harry from Severus’ crumpled form. It takes her wondrously still soft brown hands, freshly tear-stained voice, and will as wild as the tight curls upon her head to urge him toward the tunnel. It then takes Ron’s indomitable mind and flaming might to match his hair, for he has always had more freckles and plans than he held good sense, to guide Harry through the damned tunnel under the battlefield.
“ Will his body still be there when this is done ?” Harry wishes to ask but cannot seem to find the voice to do so. They crawl back through the tunnel, none of them talking, and Harry wondered whether Ron and Hermione could still hear Voldemort ringing in their heads as he could. Wonders if they too wish they knew more spells, had more magic, to change the fate of dead men.
It is between Ron’s Quidditch sturdy build and Hermione’s book-steady arms that Harry huddles himself into in his thoughts. When they emerge from beneath the Whomping Willow, wand tips alight, it is to see small bundles littering the lawn at the front of the castle. It could only be an hour or so from dawn, yet it was pitch-black.
They willfully allow the darkness to hide what the bundles contain. With sure-footed steps, three of them move on toward the stone walkway. The castle was unnaturally silent. There were no flashes of light now, no bangs or screams or shouts. The flagstones of the deserted entrance hall were stained with blood. Emeralds were still scattered all over the floor, along with pieces of marble and splintered wood. Part of the banisters had been blown away. Further they cautiously followed their memories deeper into the castle, yet to encounter another living being.
“Where is everyone?” whispered Hermione. Ronald Bilius Weasley simply steels his spine and leads the way to the Great Hall. When they finally come across the castle’s other occupants, it is in the quiet chaos that has overrun what remains of the once wondrous room. Without a word to Harry, Ron and Hermione move throughout the gathered crowd, but Harry has stopped in the doorway. The house tables were gone, and the room was more crowded than on the night of the welcoming feast.
The survivors stood in groups, their arms holding each other together as best as they could. The injured were being treated upon the raised platform that once held the professor’s seats by Madam Pomfrey and a group of helpers. The centaur Firenze was amongst the injured; his flank poured blood, and he shook where he lay, unable to stand. The dead lay in a row in the middle of the Hall.
Harry could not see Fred’s body because his family surrounded him. George was kneeling at his head; Mrs. Weasley was lying across his chest, her body shaking. Mr. Weasley stroked her hair while tears cascaded down his cheeks. And wherever one twin was, one found the other. Harry looked on and saw Hermione approach Ginny, whose face was swollen and blotchy, and hug her. Ron joined Bill, Fleur, and Percy, who flung an arm around Ron’s shoulders. As Ginny and Hermione moved closer to the rest of the family, Harry had a clear view of the bodies lying next to Fred.
Remus and Tonks, pale and still and peaceful-looking, apparently asleep beneath the dark, enchanted ceiling. The Great Hall seemed to fly away, become smaller, shrink, as Harry reeled backward from the doorway. He could not draw breath. He could not bear to look at any of the other bodies, to see who else had died for him. He could not bear to join the Weasleys, could not look into their eyes, when if he had given himself up in the first place, Fred might never have died. He could not take another death onto himself, still haunted every night by his last sight of Sirius.
He turned away and ran until he found himself up the great marble staircase. He yearned not to feel. He wished he could rip out his heart; he wished his innards would follow; he wished to be rid of everything that was screaming inside of him. The castle was completely empty; even the ghosts seemed to have joined the mass mourning in the Great Hall. Harry ran without stopping, clutching the crystal vial of Snape’s last thoughts as he wished and wished.
“ There’s not a single soul who knows what this vial contains anymore ,” Harry thinks to himself. Rushing toward the only Pensieve he can recall in the building, he moves through the castle, ignoring the yelled pleas and platitudes of men at war.
“ What if I’m ambushed and it breaks ?” Harry strengthens his grip on the vial as he begins to feel further from his body. His goal, the shattered pieces of a large and ugly stone gargoyle, is just ahead. But Harry only has thoughts of what he is leaving behind. Instead, in the breaking of his heart and mind, Harry wishes. It is as quiet as his still spell-muffled feet, sneaking around fallen walls and upturned floor, at first. It builds with his racing heart as he shifts debris to clear the way to climb the stairs of the Headmaster of Hogwarts’ office.
And it is with a fervor unlike he has harnessed for a very long time that he wishes things were different. Harry makes his way across the room, wades through scattered wizarding bobbles and fallen desolate portrait frames, to the gilded doors of a Pensieve cabinet behind the personally selected desk of the late professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. The exploded pieces of a wooden chair are embedded in the gilded cabinet. It takes several tries of wrenching on the doors to convince them to open.
And in Harry’s attempt to push open the heavy pure silver housing, he drops the vial.
It falls through the air, and with Seeker reflexes, honed to quickly grab a fluttering ball of hardened gold, Harry grabs the glass too tightly. It breaks apart between his already numb fingers and softly wanting mind. Blood and silvery light mix, and Harry can only stare down at his quickly warming hand. He watches as the dripping life of a man he never really knew pools onto the floor. He wonders what to do.
Hermione would be attempting to pry his hand open. But the warmth that is beginning to spread through his chest, reaching into his battered heart, makes him not want to let go. Ron would possibly question him and try to make a viable alternative with the paths they have left. But there is too much magic and magical blood in the air to think properly. And Harry is alone. He can only stand rooted, as he always has, in the center of chaos.
Can only think of how many broken things—a family, a prophecy, another man’s soul—have made up his life to this point. His vision darkens, and he is reminded of a boy with quiet running tears in a too-small cupboard under creaky stairs, wishing that the 11th year of his already weary life be different. Now he wishes this night never happens, wishes there had been a way to avoid the war. The last thing he can feel is his slippery fingers going lax, and he wishes that he could go back to when Severus needed him most.
And, just as he had all those years ago, Harry drifts away as he wishes.