For Us To Cherish by Hopeless Wanderer
Summary: "You need to accept it, Severus,"

"Accept what?"

"The fact that your son is dead."


*One-shot
Categories: Parental Snape > Guardian Snape Main Characters: .Snape and Harry (required), Original Character, Other
Snape Flavour: Snape is Angry, Snape Comforts, Snape is Controlling, Snape is Depressed, Snape is Loving, Out of Character Snape, Overly-protective Snape, Snape is Secretive
Genres: Angst, Drama, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Tragedy
Media Type: None
Tags: Adoption, Alternate Universe
Takes Place: 6th Year
Warnings: Character Death, Out of Character, Profanity, Torture, Violence
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 1 Completed: Yes Word count: 2799 Read: 1796 Published: 23 Mar 2021 Updated: 23 Mar 2021
Story Notes:
This is what I did instead of sleeping, I know it's short, but yay!

*This work features and deals with very heavy themes. Serious, tragic themes.be cautioned.

1. Denial by Hopeless Wanderer

Denial by Hopeless Wanderer
Author's Notes:
Story warning(s) for: explicit language, major character death, depression, vividly depicted death scene, werewolf attack, explicit depiction of violence and gore

*This story is NOT suitable for the faint of heart, or as the rating dictates, people under the age of 16. Please pay attention to the warnings.


Hope you are all doing well, take care of yourselves and stay safe everyone!
“Tell me,” the woman folds her hands on her lap, her face is shadowed by the hue thrown on the side of her face, dotted with patters of raindrops, like diamonds, “How are you feeling?”

There’s the rhythmic pattering that interrupts their silence, perhaps one that Severus wished to remain uninterrupted. He leans back against his seat; his fingers soundlessly tap against the armchair. It’s soft, worn and burgundy. He absolutely detests it.

“Well,” he replies at last.

“Well? Are you sure, Severus?”

“Of course I’m sure,” he sneers, he expects the woman to rear back, sneer back at him or at least look mildly frustrated, but she doesn’t. She’s older than him, not by a large margin, but old enough that Severus sees the small creases pruning the edge of her eyes. She is well-kept, tidy, her face is unblemished and her brown eyes are narrowed.

“Your hands always contradict your words,” she says and he stops the tapping of his fingers at once. He glares at her, but she only stares back.

“Do you want to try again?”

“I don’t know what you wish me to say,”

He doesn’t. This isn’t how he fancies spending his Tuesday afternoons, especially rainy ones, he much rather spends locked up in his lab, brewing for hours, maybe even the whole night. It’s a chore, being here, and Severus needs to get it over with.

“You are a bright man, Severus,” she says, she crosses her arms now, in a gesture that mocks castigation, “Deflecting the obvious will not make our session go faster,”

“I am well.”

“You shouldn’t be,”

Severus pinches the bridge of his nose and heaves a hefty sigh, “Isn’t being well the purpose of this…this whole sham? I don’t understand, Helen.”

Helen looks to the side, to the window where the lashing of the rain has gotten more vicious. His eyes trail after hers but she pretends that she doesn’t see him.

“Your son died, only seven days ago, Severus.” He’s looking out the window but now, Helen is looking at him. “You are not well,”

No.

He doesn’t need this. Not now.

Severus doesn’t need a reminder. He doesn’t need to be stabbed in a wound that is already opened. He knows his son is dead. The thought, the event, every second before and since he knows it all. It barely leaves his mind alone.

He wants it away. But Albus refuses to hand over a pensive and Severus is too much of a coward to wipe his own memory. He’s still not sure if he wants to do that. He doesn’t want to forget him. No. he just wants it to stop hurting, just for a little while. Even though, he knows that the pain is compensation for the life he lost. A life he was responsible for.

“You need to state those words,” Helen says, her voice is gentler than the pouring rain outside. The rain wants to whip him, but she doesn’t. she’s just some squib Albus paid when he forced Severus into this.

“What words?”

This is a game. He knows it, so does she. He has forty-five minutes to kill, and he is a master at killing the things he cherishes. His time. The love of his life. His son.

Helen doesn’t take the bait. She doesn’t skirt around it either. Severus hates that about her. “That your son died last week.”

“My son…”

He closes his eyes. He can’t quite breathe right at times like this. He hasn’t done that since last week. There’s a mental block, in his head, one he built himself, right after the incident. Anything associated with him elicits the pain and the tightening rope around his lungs.

“You have to confront yourself at some point, Severus.”

“To what end?” his voice breaks, he hates that. He can’t stop it, not like he used to do before. Every shred of Occlumency he has left is straining to maintain the shield keeping Harry away, he has none left to protect his image, his expressions, his voice.

He starts tapping his fingers again, furiously this time, in tandem with the pattering.

“To move on,”

He doesn’t want to move on. He doesn’t want to move anywhere. He’s moved further than he wanted to already. He doesn’t belong here on Tuesday. He belongs to the previous one, last week’s Monday when Harry was…

The shield, like an old dam, screeches under the pressure in his mind. The sound of cringing metal is so loud that it momentarily mutes Helen and his own heartbeat.

“I don’t...” he swallows, thickly and with much too effort that it should normally require. “I don’t need to move on. I’m fine. I’m back at work. I have been present during meals. I grade essays.”

“Against the Headmaster’s vehement wishes that you took some time to grieve?”

Grieve?

Grieve what? What was left of him to grieve? Severus has not abandoned grieving for a single moment since Lily Potter died. Not really.

Like a scab, it just came and went away at times.

Harry is too fresh. He will also scab over with time, and even as he thinks this, something hot and burning stabs his chest.

His fault. It’s always his fault.

“I am not grieving,”

“No,” she nods, straightens her skirt, it’s brown and ironed. “You’re not grieving. But you need to start.”

“I don’t,”

“Talking about it helps break the dam, Severus.”

She doesn’t understand. She knows of his other occupation, he knows that she does, that she has been briefed. She knows that Severus Snape doesn’t feel things. Severus Snape doesn’t grieve. Severus Snape only ever loved two people in his life. His best friend and her son. His son.

Harry was his son.

It didn’t matter that he wasn’t biologically his.

Severus breathes.

“There is no dam, Helen.” He wishes so badly that he had his wand on him. Albus took it from him. The sessions with the squib won’t require him to use an ounce of magic, he said. Severus wasn’t too keen on giving it up, but he also wasn’t too keen to fight.

“You need to push past the denial. Your son is dead, Severus.”

As if he could forget.

“His funeral was just yesterday. You were there,”

He didn’t feel as if he was there.

“What is it that you want from me?” he asks but he knows exactly what she is after. She wants him to say those words, by his own violation, using his own mouth, his own voice.

Severus can’t even do it in his head.

“Do you feel as if Harry is dead?”

Why is she so cruel? Is that how muggles do therapy? Is that how squibs do it? She is hurting him. She is just grasping the charred blade and twisting it in his chest.

Did he feel as if Harry was dead? Of course, he fucking did. Was he aware that the funeral was yesterday? Yes, he ordered the fucking coffin himself.
He closes his eyes again, he sees Harry’s bloodied face and he has no choice but to open his eyes to Helen again, blankly glancing at him. Waiting for him to break.

He shrugs. Harry did that a lot. “Yes. I do feel as if…”

The rain intervenes the silence again. The end feels so close to him. It’s always too close.

Harry would have hated this place. It’s so dark and gloomy like Severus is. Was.

“Not saying it will not make it any less real,”

He knows it’s real. No nightmare would be vivid and violent. No torture would last this long.

“How much does Albus pay you?”

“Are you sure you want to change the subject, Severus?”

“I want to pay you double, so you would leave me alone.”

She flicks an eyebrow at him, “He does want the best for you,”

“I don’t understand the purpose of this,” he crosses one leg over the other, jeers, looks away from Helen’s eyes because she knows too much, “I am stable, I teach and handle my classes, I haven’t had a single student making a mess in my…”

Of course, he hasn’t. Harry is dead.

His eyes burn and Severus tips his head back. He is not crying, not here, and not now that he wants to prove his point. “I do not need assistance,”
“What do you think I’m assisting you with?”

“Coming to the realization that my sixteen-year-old son is dead,”

There. He said it. That’s what she wanted, isn’t it? Well, he spitefully thinks, there it is, Helen.

He does realize that Harry is dead. He can’t stop realizing it. Every waking second. And every second since that day has been spent awake. He can’t remember the last time he closed his eyes and left them be closed.

Harry is there. Hurting, calling out to him, crying for help. Severus can’t. He never reaches him in time. He didn’t reach him in time in real life either. He must have been so scared.

Helen doesn’t speak, she thinks she’s giving him time to get himself back together. She’s not.

“I said it,” he says.

“His death is still with you, like a lingering touch,”

“What do you expect it to be?”

She tilts her head at him, “What do you expect it to be? From what you remember from that day,”

He stands.

The action is so abrupt that his vision darkens for a bit and he staggers but he regains his footing swiftly enough. He is supposed to be good at that, being Severus Snape. Not being good at it could cost him his life. It is, in a way costing him his life now.

His life died a week before, alone and scared and crying. And this is a hollow shell of the man that didn’t die with it.

Helen stands but he throws his hand out, and he is very vaguely aware that instead of pushing her, she is thrown back into her seat instead. Accidental magic. It has been literal decades since he’s done that.

If only that instinct had kicked in when Harry was alone with that fucking monster.

His vision blurs again, this time with tears and the rain feelings like booming bombs in his head.

“Severus…”

“Get away from me,” he chokes out, no idea how he musters the strength to say that many words and bolts out of the room, his robe billows behind him in a flurry as he rushes to the corridor and the main staircase.

This was a mistake, him putting up with this fucking show was a mistake, getting out of his labs was a mistake. Not being quick enough was a mistake. Protecting Ian Mathews while his son was the one being attacked a hundred yards away was a mistake.

He blindly pushes through the swarms of students, ignores their cries, their indignation upon seeing their stoic, mean, awful Potions Professor shoving them away with a blotchy face. He is that to them. An emotionless, bat of a man.

No one saw otherwise, except for him. Always him.

He didn’t understand that he was the reason why Severus wasn’t so awful anymore, the reason why he found someplace in his bleak heart to love someone else.
Harry was his sunshine and now everything is soulless.

Severus doesn’t let his mind register a single person as he rushes down the moving stairs, holding onto the railing with a white-knuckled grip.

They were on the grounds, the castle was already locked down, the Professors all madly running from one place to the others, protecting the children, looking for Greyback. Albus was calling the Aurors and Minerva rounding her Gryffindords to the Great Hall.

Severus had just finished barking out orders to his Slytherin perfects, his students were all gathered in the Great Hall already, wide-eyed the younger ones, and blank-faced the elders.

“Harry isn’t here?!” Hermione Granger cried out, she was directly behind him. Severus’ heart skipped a beat as he turned.

“I thought he was with you!” Ron Weasley yelled back, looking just as pale.

Severus didn’t wait to hear the rest of it. He bolted, ran, clawed his way out of the Hall and to the gates.

Harry didn’t know Greyback had broken into the grounds, his son was not in the castle in the first place. He was by the edge of the forbidden forest, he knew Harry was there because Harry always went there when he wanted to be left alone.

Severus had pushed down the urge to vomit as he ran down the stairs to the courtyard, his boot slammed against the cobblestones and his wand was tightly gripped in his hand.

He wouldn’t let that bastard touch his child. He wouldn’t.

The grounds were steep, leading to Hagrid’s cottage and slippery with that morning’s downpour, Severus stumbled over his own steps, he didn’t dare scream his son’s name, he was too breathless to even try.

He could hear screaming as he ran closer to the edge, to the outgrown shrubs and the imposing trees that segregated the forest from the field. It was a child’s, it wasn’t Harry’s, but Severus ran faster, his boot caught on a slippery stone and he nearly went to his death head-first.

Mud caked his hands and gravel embedded themselves into his skin, Severus lunged himself to his feet again and he could finally see, a rabid beast poised over the screaming student.

His student.

Ian Mathews, his second year Ravenclaw screeched, as the wolf launched itself at him, his arms raised to protect his face as Severus stumbled closer and closer.

It was no regular wolf. A fucking werewolf.

Normal curses and charms barely had any effect on werewolves.

Severus raised his wand and aimed it at the beast, “Immobulus!”

It stopped. And Ian sobbed and screamed and writhed as Severus maintained the charm and scampered to the boy.

“Shhh,” he said, pulling Ian out with one arm, hugging him against his side, “It’s okay, it’s okay,”

The beast stared at them, frozen, its eyes wide and mad, lolling in their suckets. Its paws were bloody, and Ian kept crying.

Severus could only hold the charm onto the werewolf for so long.

“Ian, I need you to run,”

The child whimpered into his robe but Severus squeezed his shoulder, “I need you to run and scream for help. Be brave for me, please. Just for a little while,”

Ian turned his face away from Severus’ robes and stared to the side, and then let out the loudest scream Severus had ever heard in his life. He lost the grip on his wand and for one terrifying moment the werewolf almost flung itself on them.

Severus grasped his wand tighter, “Immobulus!” he cried again and then wanted to glare down at the stupid boy and bark what in the world was the matter with him, but then he followed the child’s petrified gaze and saw it.

Harry.

“Oh god,”

Harry was gazing back at them from afar, his face and neck and body bloodied and his eyes unmoving. He wasn’t screaming or thrashing as Greyback slashed his chest over and over again and he didn’t call for Severus.

His world just stopped.

Everything stopped in that single moment, and nothing has started since.

When he reaches his dungeons, he hurls and once he makes it into his office he retches again. His nails scrape at the cold stones and his throat burns.

“Dad?”

He closes his eyes, purses his lips and feels his tears squeezing themselves out of his clenched eyelids.

“Dad are you okay?”

“Yes,”

“Get off the floor,”

It’s his voice that calms him in an instant.

Severus peels his eyes open and stares up at his son’s face, tentatively smiling down at him.

It’s not him. Severus knows it’s not.

But this is…this is all he has left.

“Do you want me to help?”

This can be Severus’ secret. He is not willing to let go of his son yet. Maybe not ever.

Even if it’s not real. Even if Harry is dead and never coming back.

“Dad?”

“Yes.”
The End.


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