Aug. 14

I can't think anymore. I've been thinking and thinking and going round and round about this . . . clusterfuck of bombs Snape hit me with. He wants to be my guardian. He was friends with my mother. He got her killed.

It's too much.

Closing the book, Harry rested his head on his arms. He was back out in the sitting room, after spending most of last evening in his room, thinking, brooding and occasionally, though he hated to dwell on it, crying. He was really sick of doing that, but it was like his body didn't care what he wanted anymore, and just started producing tears whenever he thought about certain things. Like Sirius, or Voldemort. Or the prophecy.

He didn't want to kill anyone, so it was unlikely he would be the one to survive their next meeting. It was only because of others that he was here, now at all. Only because McGonagall and Tonks had come to get them, and because Snape had helped him escape from the Voldemort inside his mind. He didn't know how he kept surviving things, but he knew one thing for sure. He wasn't going to survive the final battle.

Snape let him sit there, unmoving, for maybe ten minutes before he rose, putting his book down, and went to the kitchen. Harry groaned inwardly. He knew the tea was helpful, giving his hands something to do while they talked, but he was really getting to hate tea . . . now that it was irrevocably intertwined with these talks.

What did Snape want anyway?

"What do you want, anyway?" he asked.

Snape, filling the kettle with water, looked up at him through his greasy hair. "World peace," he said with a sneer.

Harry snorted softly. "Yeah, er, I agree. But that's not what I meant."

"I know." He put the kettle on the hob and leaned against the counter, closing his eyes half way, waiting for the water to boil.

From his seat at the writing desk, Harry watched Snape's face, thinking about how almost completely blank it always was, except for a few tells. When he was amused by something, one corner of his mouth would twitch, as if he had to force himself not to laugh - he wondered for a split second what Snape laughing would look like, but then decided that it would probably herald the end of the world and so wasn't worth thinking about. And when he was listening intently, Snape leaned forward, just a smidge. When he was anxious about something, which didn't happen often, obviously, he laced his fingers together and held them perfectly still, whereas if he was trying to figure something out, he often did the same thing, except his thumbs tapped lightly together.

And of course, when he was angry . . . well, Snape had many faces of rage, actually. He had the sour, "I smell something foul, oh it's you, Potter" look, and the "I'm going to skin you alive and use your still beating heart for my potions" look, and Harry's personal favorite, the "I'm about to kill you and everyone you've ever talked to, so you better run" look.

He also had the cold rage, the one that actually made Harry afraid of him. That one wasn't hard to tell either. His face was completely without expression, everything still and calm, except his eyes, which could freeze over Tahiti with a mere glance.

The tea tray hit the table with a whispered scrape, and Harry automatically reached for his cup and stirred in a bit of cream. He blew over the top of his drink, then lifted his gaze to meet Snape's after a moment. "Will you tell me now?" he asked. "Sir?"

Snape squeezed lemon into his tea and stirred deliberately, as if he were mixing a potion. "I have a number of reasons, Po . . . Harry. Not least is what I told you yesterday. You have been subject to a series of incompetent guardians, which has left you flailing about without purpose, discipline or security. I would take it upon myself to help you discover these."

"But what do you get out of it?" Harry pressed. He refused to think about what he had just been offered, not now anyway.

"I fulfill an oath I took to protect you."

"What?!"

Snape set down his cup and folded his hands around it, holding them very still. "I took an oath, when I first eschewed the Dark Lord, that I would protect you to the best of my ability. I have not yet done so, to my utmost regret. I plan to rectify that oversight."

"Oh." Harry stared into his tea. He should have expected that. Snape didn't want him, just wanted to rectify an oversight. Whatever. "I see."

"And, of course, I want to assist you in preparing--"

"To meet Old Voldie again. I know." Everyone wanted their weapon in top form. Nobody wanted Harry.

"No. I would help with that in any case. The assistance I offer is somewhat more . . . personal. I would like to prepare you for when you one day leave Hogwarts and are on your own. I know you own the Black house now, but how much do you know about running a household? Or balancing your asset reports, or selecting an appropriate wardrobe? If you don't plan to live in that old house, do you know how to find a flat, secure reliable help, or cast household wards?"

Harry had snorted again over the appropriate wardrobe bit, thinking it was ironic for a man who wore nothing but black to suggest that anyone else's choices in clothes might not be up to snuff, and then looked up at him again. "So, you'd be . . ."

"Your guardian, Harry. I would have rules, of course, that I would expect you to abide by, concerning curfew and acceptable past times, for instance."

"Of course," Harry mumbled.

"And I would be the first one other professors would go to, if they thought you were having difficulty in class, or if there was any trouble with . . . other students."

Like Malfoy, Harry thought, and had to fight a sudden bout of nausea. He stayed quiet for a while, thinking some more, then said, "You want to hear the rest?"

Snape's eyes narrowed briefly before he rested his palms flat on the table. "Of the prophecy, I assume?"

Harry nodded.

"Very well. It shouldn't hurt now, as the Dark Lord will no longer be able to pull it from my mind at a meeting."

"Is that why he never told you?"

"That is the reason the Headmaster gave me."

Harry heard what Snape didn't say, that the Headmaster might have been just making up an excuse. Regardless, he told Snape the whole thing, as he'd memorized it, having gone over it in his head so many times he could say it in his sleep. He lay particular emphasis on the line, "Either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives," and watched Snape's face.

Unfortunately, the only tell showed that the man was getting angry. "The Headmaster told you that?"

"Yes, sir."

"When?"

"The night we came back from the Department of Mysteries."

There was a stunned silence. Then, in an almost whisper, "The night Black was killed."

Harry swallowed down a lump and made himself nod, not trusting himself to speak.

Snape's face was as pale as Sir Nicholas', but the fire in his dark eyes roared to life. "That . . . bastard. He didn't think you'd already been through enough that night?" Gaping at the professor, Harry actually leaned back in his chair as the man gesticulated wildly. "I cannot believe his nerve. Telling a child he has to become-"

"I'm not a child!" Harry interrupted. "And I wanted to know the prophecy. He hid it - my purpose - from me for so long . . . The orb got destroyed in the Department of Mysteries, and I thought it was lost, and then he showed me, with Professor Trelawney and all. He's got it pensieved."

"I know that," Snape snarled. "I just think it completely inappropriate to have dropped this in your lap when you were already grieving for the mutt."

Remembering the mess he'd made of Dumbledore's office, he said, "Well, er, I had a few minutes to vent before he told me."

"Oh?"

"I might have trashed his office. A bit."

Snape made a sound suspiciously like a snort and his eyebrows both climbed toward his hairline.

"I was angry."

"I see."

"At him."

"Obviously."

"I still haven't apologized."

"We will rectify that shortly." Snape paused, and his lip did that twitchy thing. "In the meantime, I believe I've found another word for our lists. Perhaps under the heading, What Not to Call the Headmaster in His Own School if One Is Hoping to Remain Employed."

Nodding a little, though he was surprised, again, at Snape's dry humor, Harry bit his lip. What did Snape think about it all now, he wondered. Did he understand why Harry didn't think very much about life after Hogwarts? Or why he hadn't fought back like he should have, against his Uncle? Or the others . . . After all, when a person knew they were going to die, it changed an awful lot about how they treated life.

"What is it, Harry?"

Jerking his thoughts away from his musings, he decided to just ask. "I've thought about it a lot, the prophecy? And, do you think it really means that I'll have to kill him or be killed?"

For a long moment, Harry thought maybe Snape wouldn't answer, that he would just stare at Harry forever like that, looking faintly nonplussed. But then he said, "Is that what you think?"

Harry nodded again. "And so does Dumbledore. I think. That's why he didn't want to tell me why I'm here earlier, when I was just a kid. He didn't want me to know I'd have to be a murderer, or, you know, die."

Snape sighed and peered at his hands. They gripped each other rather tightly, and his knuckles were bone white. Harry wasn't sure what tell that was. "That's not your purpose, Harry," he said at last.

"Sorry?"

"Killing the Dark Lord, fulfilling the prophecy, all that rot. That is not your purpose."

"Sure it is. It's what I'm still alive for, right? After my Mum and Dad died, I mean. And now, especially, since Wormtail used my blood in the ritual that brought him back. I'm the only one who can kill him."

"That may be, but it is Not. Your. Purpose." Snape gave him a cold, calculating look. "You are fifteen years--"

"Sixteen."

"Sixteen years old, and you have your entire life ahead of you." He jabbed a finger in Harry's direction. "You will do more with your time than consider the many and possible ways you may bring about the demise of the Dark Lord."

"Like what?"

"Like that abominable game you're so fond of--"

"No, I meant, what many ways? I don't know how I'm going to kill him. I doubt it'll even be possible, when wizards far more powerful than I am can't do it." His voice and his gaze were very steady when he said, "I don't expect to be the one who survives."

Snape's nostrils flared and he pushed back his chair. Looming over Harry, he spoke in a really quiet voice, tinged with an undercurrent of something Harry could not recognize. "I will do my best to make sure that you do. And you will do your best to learn what I have to teach. In the meantime, you will do other things with your life, too. You are not a weapon to be put in a box--"

"Or a cupboard," Harry muttered.

Another nostril flare. Might it be the tell for righteous indignation? "Or a cupboard, and then taken out and pointed at the enemy."

Harry lifted his chin, trying to meet the man's eyes. When he was so close, though, it was hard. He wondered, was this outrage for him? Or for not yet fulfilling his own oath? "And where would you put me, professor?"

Snape seemed to suddenly realize that he was looming, and he stepped away. His blank mask slid into place once more. "You already have a room here, Potter. I assume it would continue to be adequate. While attending classes, you would, of course, be expected to stay in the dorms . . . unless it were not possible for some other reason."

Harry looked away. He had no idea how he was ever going to sleep in the same room as four other boys. Or with anyone else, ever. He couldn't protect himself if he was sleeping. But only Snape knew why he was concerned about it.

Snape was the only one who knew a lot of things about him, in fact. About the cupboard, about Hedwig. The Harry Hunting and the starving and about how he'd broken under torture. And yet, he still stayed, still tried to help. Even when Harry broke his things, and yelled at him, hit him, and called him names. He let Harry vent, and let him cry, and hardly berated him at all anymore.

So what if he was doing it out of duty? Maybe it would be enough that, for once, someone was really looking out for him.

"Okay."

Snape frowned. "Elaborate. What is ‘okay'?"

"I'll do it. I mean, you can be my guardian or whatev--" He smiled, and Snape smirked back. Harry wouldn't have cared, really, if he did lose points just then, but it was the principle of the thing. Someone - Snape of all people - was taking him in, letting him belong to a . . . family of sorts. "You can be my guardian."