HARRY POTTER

“And finally add four slices of beetroot skin.” Snape’s chalk tapped and slid across the black board at the front of the classroom.

I, Harry Potter, boy-who-lived, fourth Triwizard Champion and student of Hogwarts wanted to stuff wax in my ears and crawl into the small cracks in the dungeon floor brickwork. Potions class was boring on days like this when all the students just wanted to go outside and play in the fresh blanket of snow. Not to mention it was cold in the dungeons and it didn’t help that Snape apparently decided that heating charms were out of style.

I vaguely heard Snape command us to get out our cauldrons and followed along with the rest of my compatriots in moving like sheep in a herd to grab our cauldrons and respective potions ingredients. I counted each ingredient, mentally going over the list of items that Snape had written on the board.

I passed Neville on my way out and nodded at him. He had the unfortunate honor of sitting at the desk in front of Draco Malfoy. I could easily remember the exploding slime and various disasters that befell Gryffindors who had the misfortune to sit in front of Malfoy.

“Who wants to bet four Galleons that Longbottom will botch his potion? Five says he takes out half the classroom!” Malfoy and his cronies heckled and catcalled poor Neville who was already nervous. I mouthed “sorry” to him when he passed my seat and he smiled tremulously. He was trying to be brave.

Snape barked orders for the slow-goers to speed things up. “This is not a tea party! Get a move on!” He swept across the classroom, a dark cloud in an even darker classroom. I set all my ingredients down and set the base in the cauldron to a boil. I added the first of the ingredients, monkshood and feverfew to start and let it roil around in the boiling and bubbling water. When it got close to adding the wasp wings I realized that I didn’t have my stirring stick. It wasn’t in my book bag and it wasn’t under the desk.

“Hey, do either of you have an extra stirring stick?” I whispered under my breath to Ron and Hermione on either side of me.

“I only own one.” Ron shrugged apologetically.

“I lent my extra one to Padma already.” Hermione frowned, also apologetically.

“It’s okay.” I pushed out of my seat and walked over to the far side of the classroom where Snape kept all of his extra cauldrons, pestles and most importantly… stirring sticks.

“Lost something, Potter?” Malfoy sneered as I passed him.

“Lost the key to your straight jacket.” I muttered.

“What’s that, Potter?” Malfoy sat up straight.

I didn’t reply but winked at Neville who was chuckling under his breath at my comment.

I rummaged around in the pile of cauldrons and looked for a stick that wasn’t covered in slime, broken or otherwise unusable.

“Very good, Mr. Malfoy. Fine work as always.” I heard Snape comment from the desks behind me. “Longbottom, your potion is pink… it is supposed to be brown.” I looked up and saw that Neville’s potion was indeed bright pink, hot pink in fact. Something tickled at the back of my mind. I had seen this before. Back in second year when Hermione had made the Polyjuice potion, there were a ton of extras left over and Ron and I had used them to practice for class while Hermione tended to the potion. Ron and I had accidentally made something using the exact first two ingredients for this potion that we were making now followed by too many dried lacewing flies.  It was exactly that color of hot pink.

Neville grabbed a handful of the wasp wings and moved to put it in the hot pink concoction. Back when Ron and I had been experimenting he had added a single set of wasp wings, just to see what would happen, and the potion and not only exploded but melted clean through Ron’s pewter cauldron. If it hadn’t been for Hermione yelling out a shield spell—who knew she was that advanced?—Ron and I would probably have lost all our limbs.

“Nevile don’t!” I didn’t speak fast enough, the wasp wings dropped into the potion and for a split second I thought that nothing was going to happen. The whole room was dead quiet.

“Longbottom is there no end to your--” I stopped listening. All I heard was the near silent hiss coming from the core of Neville’s cauldron where the pink was turning molten black. The explosion was coming. I backed away from it, and fell backwards into the pile of cauldrons.

“Everyone out!” Snape just realized what was happening too. The class room began clearing but Snape wasn’t moving. He was fiddling with something right next to the cauldron. It was then I realized that his robes had been caught on a hangnail sticking out of the edge of the desk. He was tugging at the material and it was ripping but it wasn’t coming loose.  I scrambled to my feet, but instead of following the rest out I ran towards Snape. The hissing got louder and louder until all sounds to ripping cloth, breathing, footsteps hitting stone were all obliterated. My hands curled around the robes at Snape’s back and pulled him away, torn cloth ripping through the hiss. I shouted the exact same shield spell that Hermione had so many ages ago and when the black potion blossomed from the cauldron it glowed like a million fireworks as it hit the shield and filled the dungeon with the sound of billions of breaking glasses.

Somewhere deep in my mind I realized I was casting a shield wandlessly, but that realization never reached my conscious mind. Because all I could think, all I could feel, all I could BE, was the burning on my back as the individual skin cells were seared away inch-by-inch. My failing was that, in casting wandlessly, I hadn’t been thinking about protecting myself, but someone else. That wandless magic, wild and unpredictable protected as it was commanded to, but only the person who was in need of protection: Snape. The shield enveloped him and blocked the exploding black potion from reaching him, but the shield ended at my hands and did not cover them or any other part of my body.

The black potion on the walls and the ceiling convulsed in my vision. Pain was everywhere, I couldn’t identify a specific place or even an offender. Everything tingled, twitched, burned, exploded with unimaginable fire. I closed my eyes as my vision became more black than color.

I heard things in the distance as I let myself sink to the ground near someone, I think I’d forgotten who it was. Whispers, sharp as glass, cold as the ice in a dead man’s bones spiked through my ears and melted away in the void that had already taken away my vision.  

The feel of the cold dungeon faded along with the subtle smell and taste of stale potions in the air. Chill turned to shale, taste to gravel, smell to dust.

Somewhere, someone called my name.

Someone, somewhere, cradled my head.

 Sometime, some place, I dreamed of snowflakes.

SEVERUS SNAPE

Snowflakes caressed the windows in the Hospital Wing and melted only to freeze again as they made trails down the glass. It hadn’t stopped snowing for days, ever since the accident.

I stood at the foot of Harry Potter’s bed and watched the bandaged boy sleep. He looked fine. Like he only slept, and not lay in a coma. For days he never moved an eyelash. For days he never whispered a word. All movement from the Boy-Who-Lived ceased. Poppy told me at some point he had actually died. His heart had stopped. But it beat now. Steadily, like the fall of snowflakes, never stopping their fall down through the atmosphere until the ground meets them.

I crossed my arms and watched the even fall and rise of the boy’s chest.

The question was: when would he wake?

 When would the steady stream of dreams cease their fall through the boy’s mind and reach the ground? Reach consciousness.

Every day since the Accident, I came here and stood for a few minutes at the boy’s bed side. I saw his transition from a mottled broken human creature to the dark haired boy who now slept. Magic could do wonders for the human body, but the mind was another matter entirely. Something no man, magic or Muggle, could conquer.

And so he slept. Surely avoiding the question that I so urgently needed to ask. Why?

My mind answered the question a hundred times by now.

He looked for more glory. Another commendation to add to his shining record.

He thought that I was someone else.

He was trying to get out of the way and just happened to get in front of me.

He tripped.  

None explained it. The very intentional move to pull me away. The shield spell, cast wandlessly no less.

The boy obviously knew what was going to happen. I could very clearly remember his voice yelling to Longbottom seconds before the wasp wings fell. Neville don’t!

I didn’t want to thank him. I didn’t even want him to know that I was even a tad grateful. I just wanted to know why? Why me? Why stand in front of someone who had done nothing more than to make your life miserable. Why? What compelled the boy to do something so stupid?

I remember asking why when he fell to the ground. His body moved like it was far too light for the world and sank slowly to the cold dungeon floor.

The potion was thankfully inert after the catastrophic explosion, so many wasp wings in the concoction had literally blown out all its acidity. But not soon enough to be ineffective against skin hit at point blank. Potter had held his hands out in front of him like his was pushing a great force away, but instead was casting a shield spell of such strength that it could only have been fueled by wild magic. The magic of raw emotion and the very lifeforce of the world. Such magic was not easy to use.

So, why? What compelled the boy to be able to use such magic instinctively?

I tightened my hands around my arms where they crossed to prevent myself from speaking out in frustration. I didn’t like things that I could not understand. I didn’t like not understanding at all. Things that I didn’t understand I sought even harder to understand but this, this did not click.

The image of him, of the boy who was the son of a man who caused me no end of trouble was one I was more than willing to grasp onto. It was easy to see James Potter in Harry Potter. The hair, the glasses, body language, it all spoke of a man long dead in body but not in spirit. This boy was a reincarnation of a time that I had long wanted to forget, of a torturous school life that wouldn’t go away, of a series of bad decisions that defined my life into a twisted portrait of hell.

This boy… shattered everything with a single act. Now, the stable image that I had long accepted as truth was made false. The eyes of Lily, the eyes that stared up at me as the life faded from them while the boy who owned them died in front of me, telling a tale that I could not decipher.

No, I didn’t want to thank him. I wanted an answer to the mystery in front of me. Without his glasses as he was now, I could see more of Lily in him than ever. It wasn’t just the eyes; Harry Potter had her nose, her cheeks, her stubborn chin. The glasses, dark frames and echoes of a distant past hid them all. The boy was changing before my eyes from the son of James Potter to the son of Lily Evans.

“Severus, are you here again?” Poppy tapped my shoulder and I suddenly realized that I was cutting off the circulation in my arms.

“What of it?”

Poppy pursed her lips, “If you must be over here then sit with the boy, and not stand at the foot of his bed like a vision of Death. If he wakes you’ll scare him to an early grave!”

“If only.” I muttered but not low enough for Poppy to not over hear.

“Well I never… Severus Snape behave yourself while you are in my Hospital Wing. If you must come here then SIT.” Poppy pulled a chair out from behind one of the privacy screens and plopped it in front of me. She turned on a sickle and puttered away.

I took the chair and moved it not right next to Potter’s bed but around the middle, across the small walkway between hospital beds. I didn’t need to hold the boy’s hand. That was intolerable.

I don’t know how long I sat. For a time I watched the snowflakes fall, their short, uniquely designed lives ending with a single breath on the warm windows of the Hospital Wing. The headmaster had cancelled the Hogsmeade visit for the students because the snow had reached a height of five feet and looked nowhere close to stopping.

“The snow is magicked.” The headmaster had said. “It’s a natural reaction to so much magic being pulled from the world. It’s trying to repair some tear in the fabric of magic.” That’s why no one had attempted to use a spell to move it out of the way. Mixing wild magic with controlled magic of witches and wizards never turned out well.

“Fine predicament you’ve gotten us in, Potter.” I said to the comatose boy.  He didn’t stir.

I fell silent and waited for something to happen. But nothing did.

I left as evening approached, but returned the next day, and the day after; waiting for him to open his eyes so that I could resolve this mystery. The boy, as always, continued to infuriate me, even in a comatose state.

More and more days passed. Soon I was bringing potions journals with me and reading while the boy never moved. Then I found myself having conversations with him, even though he slept. I asked my questions of him, even though he did not answer. I speculated and I postulated. The only day that I didn’t come was Christmas. His friends surrounded him that day and I dared not step out of the shadows. I poured over my research in my labs the whole day and did not return to the hospital wing for a full twenty-four hours.  

When I got there, I started talking and I didn’t stop. I talked about my research, I talked about the stupidity of the students, I talked about inane things like the weather. It wasn’t until the first day of January that I realized what I had been doing. I found myself starting to talk about my troubles with Dumbledore and the Dark Lord. I found myself feeling something like nostalgia. I used to talk to Lily like this all the time.

I didn’t return to the Hospital Wing for a whole month.

And the boy continued to sleep.

The Triwizard Tournament went on without him. Moody was found out to be an imposter when he snuck into the Hospital Wing with an illegal portkey some time after the second task. Poppy had clobbered him over the head multiple times with a pillow before one of her nurses had half-a-mind to cast a Stupefy.

The school year ended with Cedric Diggory as the Triwizard Champion winner.

And the boy continued to sleep.

Summer, with its broiling heat hit the school hard. The cool stones of the castle were the only thing that saved the teachers and house elves from death by heat stroke. Oddly, I felt too cold in the dungeons. I took to wandering the castle at odd hours of the day, pondering over my research and other subjects of concern.

So one day, I found myself walking past the Hospital Wing and couldn’t help but go in and see the boy. He had long been moved from the open beds in the center of the Wing and was now in a private room off the edge of Poppy’s office. She was in there mulling over some text or another. I passed her office and pushed the wooden door of the private room open. He was just as I had left him many months ago. Asleep. Comatose.

A chair near his elbow beckoned my walk weary legs and I sat for awhile. Ii didn’t speak, for fear of falling into the same trap of thinking that I was talking to Lily again.

And yet, still I wondered. What had I misjudged? Where had I gone wrong in my image of this boy?

I reached out and touched his forehead. The bristly looking hair was uncharacteristically soft. He was only a child after all.

I used my abilities in Legillimency to reach out and seek the boy’s mind.  It was locked up tighter than Gringotts most expensive vault.

“Fascinating.” I murmured. I wondered if anyone had taught the boy Occlumency. His mind was heavily fortified. That would explain some of the frustrations that Dumbledore had voiced a couple months ago. No one could reach the boy’s mind to even see if he was still alive inside.

I pulled away and felt for the first time a lament for the boy. His childhood was being eaten away.

HARRY POTTER

I stared at the man sitting at my bedside. He moved his hand off my forehead, a touch that I could not feel, and rested it in his lap. I had actually missed him. It was odd. Snape used to come every day and sit by my bed, bringing some break in the monotony of living as a specter outside of the physical world. Weeks of screaming, pleading and otherwise trying to make some effect on the real world were all together fruitless His visits had always been enlightening in some way. Especially when he talked of my mother.

When they stopped I had waited and waited. But months passed, and here he was again. My one constant companion outside of the nurses and healers come again. I wondered how long he would stay this time.

I had long given up at trying to speak to anyone. My voice was muted and my only respite was that I could still think. My body, more thin air than anything, looked real to me. If I had a sense of touch I would surely believe that I was as real as anyone. I could hear just as well, if not better than I could in body, every sound reached my phantom ears with such crystal clarity that I wondered what I had become. If not a ghost then what was I? I knew that my body still lived. I had heard them say that many a time.

 Snape stood and left the room. I followed him as far as I could out into the hallway and watched him walk away. I took a half-step further and watched my hands start to disintegrate. This always happened when I stepped just far enough away from my body. I could hold it for awhile but then my body would start to disappear. Over the past few months I had widened the circumference of my range. I could now get a hundred yards away from my body before I would start to fade.

I pushed myself this time. I was two steps away from my limit and my body was fading fast. This was one of the few times that I felt pain. It hurt like the dickens to step out of that limit. It was only sheer bull headedness that had enabled me to push my limit out as far as I had.

I pushed myself as far as I dared and then stepped back into the safety of my limit. My body rematerialized and I breathed a sigh of relief. I went and stood in Poppy’s office and read over her shoulder. She was reading about recent discoveries in spell casting for medicinal uses.

 Another week passed before I saw Snape again. I happened to be wandering in the hallway where I was trying to extend my limit once again when he walked clear through me startling me. But the most startling thing was that he stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned around. His dark eyes scanned the hallway that surely appeared empty to him.

“Who’s there?” he called out.

For the first time in months I tried to use my voice. I was already outside my limit but I took the last few steps between Snape and the edge of my limit and called out to him. “Professor, help me!” my body shuddered as I felt the pain thunder in and start to dematerialize even faster.

Snape’s eyes widened and he reached out. His hand went through my chest and for the first time in my whole ordeal I felt something other than pain. I felt Snape’s mind. Confusion roiled and shock speared through it all. He could sense me.

But my body was fading fast so I had no choice but to step away and go back behind my limit where there was a void of nothing, no voice, no feeling, no pain, no thoughts other than my own.

“Help me…” I said once again. Snape still had his hand out and was staring into the air like he had just been struck with ice water.

“Potter?”

I rushed at the limit once again and had I been tangible I would have slammed right into Snape. Instead I pushed my intangible hands through his chest and called out.

“Help me, help me, I’m here, I’m here!” The pain was nearly unbearable. It ate at my vision and my soul like acid.

Snape back stepped and looked thoroughly unnerved. My body was almost gone so I had to step back into my limit.

“Where?”

“Severus?” Dumbledore stepped into the hallway from another corridor and looked at the teacher curiously.

“Albus… I heard Harry Potter.” Snape reached his hand out again and felt around like a blind man would.

“I’m not sure I understand.” The headmaster stood next to Snape and looked in the direction that Snape was exploring with his hand. “What do you mean you heard him?”

“I heard him. Clear as if he was standing next to me asking for help. I thought that I felt something, too.” Snape took on an inexplicably perplexed look and finally glanced at the Dumbledore. Dumbledore on the other hand looked like he had just been given the biggest bag of candy in all of Europe.

“Severus. I think you have just discovered the answer.”

“What ans--” Snape started to say.

“Mr. Potter, if you can hear me. Step out as far as you can. I know it hurts to do so, but once you do and your body has the chance to free itself you will find yourself where you need to be.”

Did he mean that all I had to do was just let the fading of my body happen? That all this would have been over had I just let myself go? It seemed like it was such a risk, but I had to take it. I couldn’t stand another day in this solitary world.

 I ran. I ran as far down the hall as I could and as the pain rushed in I ran harder and my body faded faster. I felt needles, sharp pinpricks of fire and ice spearing my arms, legs face, fingers, toes, chest, back… all of it was surging with pain.

Darkness engulfed everything and a feeling not unlike the feeling of a portkey tugging at my navel pulled me into reaches unknown. My head throbbed with unmentionable waves of pain. A brilliant lightshow played out in front of my eyes, awash with kaleidoscope memories and thoughts. The pain lilted away and I felt a coolness trickled through my veins. I felt something in the core of myself begin to grow like a crystal. Blossoming outwards, solidifying and blossoming out again. I felt like a flake of snow taking on some impossibly complex structure, I wasn’t sure what I would become when it was all done.

But suddenly it ended and the world warped like a rubber band set loose and I opened my physical eyes to stare into the faces of Dumbledore and Madame Pomfrey. Snape was nowhere to be seen.

I spent a week in a rigorous physical training to rework my unused limbs. I recovered fast, much to the surprise of Madame Ponfrey and the headmaster. I spent a lot of that time just talking to whoever would listen. I enjoyed the feeling of breath moving past vocal chords to create a cacophony of sounds.We also discovered that my magical abilities had increased tenfold. All that pushing against the limits of my mind had done more that give my projected mind more area to wander.  But once I was declared fit by Madame Pomfrey I had to get ready to leave.  I packed my bags and prepared to take the train to London to spend the last month and a half of summer in Surrey.

Before I left, however, I made a trip down into the bowels of Hogwarts and stood outside the door to a certain professor’s office. I knocked multiple times but received no answer.

“Professor Snape?” I called.

I heard an indistinct grunt from within and took that as a beckons to enter.

“What do you want Potter?” Snape didn’t look up from the book he was reading.

“I just wanted to thank you for all your visits over the past few months. I think they were the only thing that kept me sane.” I chuckled uncomfortably. 

“Hm.” Snape replied, still not looking up.

“So… yeah, thanks.” I moved to leave, but Snape’s voice made me stop.

 “You heard everything?”

I nodded.

He set down his book. “If you’ve told anyone--”

“Oh, I haven’t--”

“I better not hear--”

“You won’t.”

“Good.”

It was quiet for a good a minute before I half-waved and stepped out. But again Snape’s voice stopped me from leaving.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“I do not…” He looked uncomfortable.

“I know. You said it a lot when you visited. I did what any decent human being should do for another.”

Snape looked like he wanted to say something but picked up his book again instead and didn’t look up again.

I left without being stopped again. But when I was saying goodbye to Hagrid at the train platform at the crossroad between Hogwarts and Hogsmeade a tawny owl dropped a loosely rolled parchment into my hands and flew as quickly away.  

You will need proper training. I will see you on Monday 10 a.m. sharp. Do not keep me waiting.

S.S.

Severus Snape was coming to Surrey. I smiled and boarded the train for London once again. I had a compartment all to myself and had the whole trip to just think about the future.