The world was alive with the coming of spring, snowmelt liquefying beneath his shoes as he turned another path in the forest. He wasn’t supposed to be here, Harry knew, but then there were a lot of things he wasn’t supposed to do that he had done. His eyes tracked the flight of a bird through the bare branches, the bright green irises distant behind round glasses.

He could not go back. He had learned that last year when struggling to understand Cedric’s death and his own torture at the hands of Voldemort. If anything, he knew now how to push aside his grief, numb it so that it did not consume him. It wasn’t occlumency exactly, for no matter how Harry tried, he could not completely shut off emotion. But it was easier now that he didn’t keep slipping into Voldemort’s mind, easier to pretend around Ron and Hermione that he was fine.

The distant stampeding of centaurs came and Harry stilled, listening to the far-off thunder of their hoofs as the herd moved west. He knew this was dangerous, he’d been in the forbidden forest enough times in the evening and he wasn’t a wide-eyed first year looking for an adventure anymore. Still, there was solace here in the wild where monsters and magical beings coexisted, however unstable that coexistence might be.

The woods were old, still bare from winter. Bark was savagely stripped off trees by the elements or perhaps a hungry thestral. Harry stopped in a small clearing, the damp hem of his school robe falling further into the snow as he felt his knees give out, the grief striking him anew. He buried his face in his hands, glasses digging against his skin as he breathed in harshly. Control, he needed to control. Discipline your thoughts, close your mind. He inhaled roughly, shutting eyes against the outside world that was suddenly too much.

The air was cold, the decay and growth of the forest unchecked for centuries so that he breathed in the smell of rotting wood and melting snow. Fingers wound in his black unruly hair, his thin body hunched over, absorbing the emotions he didn’t know how to accept. Sirius was dead. Cedric was dead. Voldemort hadn’t found the prophecy, but it meant nothing. Not when the dark wizard had had a whole year to increase his power while the Ministry had wasted time painting Harry as a dangerous lunatic. It was all so pointless. Harry bit his lip, knowing where his thoughts were careening toward and wondering why he always bothered to pull himself back. He’d been at that edge before, more times than he wanted to acknowledge.

Snow was seeping into him, chilling him further. The darkness of the woods pressed close, creatures moving through dead leaves. Harry remained still, even as he heard footsteps approaching quietly from behind him. He knew who it was without looking but the anger he’d been holding on to whenever he saw the man suddenly wasn’t there. Exhaustion and pain over Sirius’ death had spilled over every other emotion, threatening to flood the wall he’d tried to build around it.

Harry let his hands slide to his sides, green eyes staring at the ground before him. Winter had pulverized the dirt, dead leaves, and moss covering the forest floor but water puddled in low areas, new grass growing beneath the rotting foliage. Flowers of some kind were just starting to push through the old leaves, they looked like small daisies but blue and magically able to withstand the cold and dark of the forest. The footsteps stopped a few meters behind the kneeling adolescent.

“What are you doing, Potter?” A low voice demanded sharply and Harry reached out, touching the curled in petals of the flowers before him, refusing to look at the man.

“Practicing occlumency,” he finally whispered when it seemed that his professor might speak again.

There was a long pause, broken only by the sounds of birds calling to one another far above their heads, looking for somewhere to roost as night approached swiftly. Snape hadn’t said anything nor had he moved and Harry turned his head, meeting dark eyes. He thought the sight of his hated Potions Master would be enough, that seeing that thin face with long loose greasy black hair and hooked nose would bring his anger to the surface and drown the darker thoughts that swam below the volcanic rage he’d known last year. Grief. Despair. Self-loathing. Wanting it over, wanting it to end in some way that he could still control. The anger didn’t rise though and Snape was still watching him, expressionless in the shadows except for his eyes that narrowed imperceptibly.

Harry didn’t know what his own face looked like, if the sadness inside of him was as visible as it seemed. He’d thought having his mind exposed to the man during occlumency lessons had been vulnerable enough but now it felt as if he were bleeding out with this pain he didn’t know how to heal. He dropped his gaze downward again, studying his skeletal hands as if they belonged to someone else. Pale and trembling, they were bluish from the cold so that small scars along his bony fingers showed. Earned from years of drudgery and starvation as the Dursleys’ slave and all the times that he had been careless in quidditch and classes, allowing his potions knife to slip a bit closer, allowing his body to take the blows from wayward bludgers. It had been a release then but now his attempts felt childish and ineffective, unable to silence the growing dread inside.

“Occlumency will not help you,” Snape murmured, his head tilted slightly, eyes tracking Harry’s motions. Harry could not look at the man anymore. He knew how transparent he was. Snape had always said that Harry could not close his mind. Now all of that was too late. He was left with only this terrible sadness, this burden of living when people he loved died or were killed because of him. He was shaking from more than the cold, breathing tightly as he gazed at the ground, the forest pressing in around him.

“Potter,” Snape’s voice was closer and Harry jerked his head up, eyes large and wary when the man stepped near enough to touch him.

They stared at one another, Snape’s expression as impassive as it was in his potions classroom, but there was something different about his eyes, the blackness of them not as icy as usual. The animosity Harry had always known from Snape was muted now, unable to quite shape itself into the vindictiveness the man was prone to showing. Somehow, as snow dripped from branches blackened by winter and birds flew overhead, Harry realized they were coming to a sort of understanding.

Slowly, Harry exhaled, trembling hands gripping the wet fabric of his robes, his thin face turning away. Snape studied him, gaze unflinching, there in a way that very few adults had ever been for Harry. It was strange, unthinkable, Harry knew, to imagine that he could find Snape’s presence soothing but the sorrow was more manageable, the dark thoughts easier to contain if only because he saw them reflected in his professor’s eyes.

“It will pass,” Snape said quietly, “you will think that it won’t, that shutting out your grief is the only solution, but that is not the way to mourn.”

Something, regret or shame crossed the man’s features before it became remote once more, the vulnerability visible in his eyes fading so that only the coldness remained. Still, he extended a hand to Harry and Harry found himself taking it, allowing the man to help him to his feet. He stared at his Potions Master, wondering how it was that someone he had truly hated could understand him in a way the people he cared about never could.

The sky was growing darker, shadows lengthening as evening came. Harry looked at the ground, his trainers soaked from the wet snow, “I don’t know how to get over this,” he confessed, drawing his cloak closer to him at the memory of Cedric dead in the graveyard, Sirius falling through the veil. It was cold, his clothes were damp and dirty, water dripping from his dark hair.

“You don’t have to,” Snape stated, his voice soft but filled with the intensity he usually reserved when teaching Defense against the Dark Arts, “you only need to live so that it doesn’t kill you.”

There was a challenge in the man’s voice, in those dark impassive eyes that met his. It was and was not like how it had been with Sirius. His godfather had always been the one to take a dare and in turn to encourage Harry to be more daring. Yet, Harry hadn’t ever felt he could speak freely of what had happened in the graveyard, or of the Durselys, or all the times that he had found himself at the edge and thought of letting go. He hadn’t ever told anyone but here was Snape, already knowing how Harry felt without Harry having to speak at all. Snape who hated him, or had hated him at any rate, now challenging him to live despite everything or perhaps because of everything inside of Harry that didn’t want to.

Unexpectedly, Harry found himself smiling a small crooked smile, glancing up at the taller man, shadows obscuring the trees around them, “I guess I’m good at surviving,” he admitted tiredly.

Snape inclined his head slightly, his agreement as silent as his spellwork as he cast a nonverbal lumos. They studied one another for a moment, faces gleaming like bone in the wandlight, their surroundings barely visible as night fell fully over the woods. And then Snape was striding away, his thin form a blur of black between trees, his lit wand lighting a pathway for them out of the darkening forest.