"Don't let me down, ‘cuz I need you now to make it easy..."

He had let the glamour fall. The glamour he had spent the first hour of the train ride applying. The hour he had hid from his friends. The hour he said he was finishing up his potions essay in. He had let it fall.

The gasps and the shocked whispers no longer fazed him. He simply did not care what anyone thought of him any longer. No, it did not matter anymore. He had made his choice between what was right and what was easy.

"Dying ain't that hard so in a little while I'm gonna make it easy."

He had chosen what was right. However, he needed someone to carry on what needed to be done. To make it easy.

"Make it easy..."

The hallways grew still; the students stopping and starring, gaping at the Chosen One as he walked, head, for once, held high with the markings of summer glaring back like a veiled enemy now revealed.  The whispers rolled through the air, tangled together and tangoing above their heads, turning and traipsing to the ears of the teen whose face was marred with his uncle's easy decision.

"Do you want the good news? Or the bad news?"

Severus Snape startled when he heard the door to his office bang open. No one, not even the headmaster, dared to just barge into his office. The spell was swift and sufficient. As the dust settled around the splintered pieces of wood, Severus got a good look at just who had busted his door down.

Potter.

"You want the good things? No, you want everything..."

"Exactly what do you think you are doing, you insufferable brat! Blasting down my..." Snape stopped, catching sight of the face in front of him. Potter stood, stoic, like the hero he was, amid the flailing dust, the battered light streaming from the hallway, and the few brave students watching. And his face... Where once creamy, flawless, pale skin sat, now deep and revolting bruises lay. A black eye, a gash on his forehead, a puffy cheek, and a map of dark bruising.

"Keep your possessions. I've made my decision."

Slowly, wand still drawn, Potter stepped through the rubbish, carefully stepping over the bigger pieces and making his way to where Snape now stood. The professor shook himself from his shock. "What is the meaning of this?"

"And it was easy...easy..."

"Look at my face."

Snape tilted his head to indicate that he had seen.

 "Are you looking? Are you seeing?" Potter pointed to the bruised skin, "I just spent an hour on the train trying to cover this, trying to hide from everyone what has been my biggest secret since I began here at Hogwarts." He paused and made a point to hold Snape's gaze. "They had said you were the one to go to if you were abused, but you never made that easy, did you? You made me feel like I had no one to turn to." His voice was steady and strong.

Snape said nothing.

"I've made my decision. I am not letting another year go by with that monster on the loose and you know what? I'm probably going to die."

Still, the former Death Eater stayed silent.

"But I will NOT let this go." Again, he gestured to his face. "I got my arse handed to me on an almost daily basis growing up. When I came to school, he made up for time lost in the summers." Snape looked away, disgusted at what he saw. "Look at me. LOOK AT ME!" Black eyes turned and rested, once again, on the beaten face. "I will not allow this to happen to someone else. You will remember this, this conversation, my face. Everything. And you will make sure that no student goes ignored again. You will make sure that no child fears going home, that no student needs to hide from his friends in order to cast a glamour charm." Another pause. "You will make sure that no first year ever has need to learn a glamour charm until it's in the damn syllabus."

"I've waited for this all my life."

"Do I make myself clear?"

Snape gave a curt nod. "And what do you plan on doing, Potter? Now that you've told me?"

"I plan on doing what should have been done long ago. I'll stop the obvious monster, you stop the hidden ones."

"You are not prepared."

"I never will be." Potter took a step back. "Don't come after me. I have given you your assignment. Don't let me down."

With those words, the 16-year-old turned and left. To face an uncertain future. To face victory. Or to face defeat.

No one tried to stop him. He left the castle unhindered.

It was then that Snape understood. Albus knew. He had allowed it. He had let the child fester in that home like an infection. The line between what was right and what was easy was blurred.

Severus Snape thought of his own childhood.

He thought of the last request from a boy so different from himself and yet so alike.

Harry Potter had let the world see him as they should have seen him from the beginning. He had let them see him as an abused child, not as the Chosen One, not as the Boy-Who-Lived, but merely as the Boy-Who-Survived. Now he was off to save the arses of the people who should have watched over him, the people who should have protected him from his own hidden monsters.

"Don't let me down,

I need you now

To make it easy.

Dying ain't that hard,

So in a little while

I'm gonna make it easy."

Snape sat. He would grant Harry his request. He would. If it was the thing he did, he would grant that one last appeal. He picked up his quill and began writing. He wrote everything; he wrote about his own childhood; about the students he helped have removed from abusive homes; about those he suspected to be abused. He wrote of Harry Potter, a child he finally understood.

Later, days later, when Voldermort was found dead and Harry Potter was found unconscious and next to death himself, Snape silently praised his resilience, his strength that no one knew he really possessed. And he bowed his head, for the first time in a long time, and prayed for the life of a student he had hated so; he prayed that Harry may see that Snape was doing what was asked of him. He clasped his hands and begged that damned deity that Harry would know. He stood over the limp form and clamored for comprehension, for it to be easy, for the boy to still be alive.

 Through the days and the weeks and the months that followed, he sat by the bedside of the Savior of the Wizarding World as the teen flittered into and out of consciousness.  He cradled his quill and parchment and toed the blurred line. He was writing everything down. The good and the bad. He was going to tell the world.

"Make it easy."