Faith by Aethyr

Harry swayed on his feet as he got his bearings. He heard, rather than saw, Snape fall bonelessly into the armchair behind the desk. When Harry looked at him, he found the man with his eyes half-closed, shoulders slumped forwards, pinching the bridge of his nose with his wand-hand.

“Professor?” Harry said softly.

The man looked up. His face was thinner and paler than Harry remembered; there were dark circles under his eyes, which were themselves red-rimmed and watery, and his hair fell in disheveled strings around his face. He appeared, Harry thought suddenly, as though he had not properly taken care of himself in some time.

“Are you satisfied, now, Potter?” Snape rasped, interrupting Harry's thoughts.

“I –” Harry began. He stopped, recalling the small, cruel things that Snape had done to him over the years – the detentions, the insults, the biased allotment of House points – and found that they did not rankle him as they once did. He thought of the tower, that fateful night, of his confrontation with the man, and his inhuman rage and loathing. “You hate it, don't you?” Harry said instead.

“To what, specifically, do you refer?” asked Snape, though Harry suspected he already knew.

“You hate him for making you do it. You hate yourself for doing it. You –” Harry broke off abruptly as he was assailed by an image of Tom Riddle's cave, of the goblet of poison in his hand. “I understand, sir. Really, I do.”

“You understand nothing,” said Snape.

“You think you're the only one?” Harry demanded. He pulled out his wand; Snape tracked it with his eyes, but made no move towards his own. “How do I put a memory in there?” Harry asks.

“It requires a degree of familiarity with Occlumency.”

“Dammit, Snape, I'm serious! I was pants an Occlumency, I know, but there's something I need to show you. How do I do it?”

Snape took a long, hard look at him, but Harry stared back with equal equanimity, until Snape looked down, at the still-moving silver of the Pensieve, and said, “Come here.”

Harry stepped forward, and did flinch when Snape drew his wand. He held his own wand loosely in his hand, but did not think he would need it, this time. “Think about whatever it is you would like me to see,” said Snape. “Bring the image to the forefront of your mind.” Snape raised his wand and tapped at a point on Harry's temple. “Place your wand here, and draw it out, as though drawing iron with a magnet. Channel your magic through the wand and latch onto the memory.”

Harry dutifully brought his wand to his head and concentrated on the image of the crystal goblet in his hand, Dumbledore's tear-stricken face and potion-stained beard, repulsed as he was by the memory. He envisioned it draining out of his head, like a trickling stream of light, and found that when he lifted his wand, a thin strand of silver came away with it. It settled easily into the swirling contents of the Pensieve.

“Come on,” said Harry, “You should see this.”

Snape glanced sideways at him – testing him, he thought – and cleared his throat. “Do you intend to join me?” he asked, with something of his old asperity.

Harry did not want to see it – did not want to be confronted again with his own powerlessness – but found that as a Gryffindor, and by some strange quirk of circumstance, as a comrade, it would have been despicable to allow Snape to venture into this memory alone. “Yeah,” he said heavily, and saw a shadow of something – relief, perhaps – flit across Snape's eyes.

They tumbled into the too-familiar cave, and out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Snape flinch. He would have said something, conveyed to Snape some meaningless empathy with word and gesture, had he not seen himself, in that moment, hold the cup of poison to Dumbledore's lips.

He would need all his strength now, to stay, and bear witness.

Harry could hear Dumbledore's gasps of pain and his other self's murmured attempts to soothe the old man's torment, unconvincing even to his own ears. He watched himself dip the goblet back into the basin a third time, and a fourth, coaxing a reluctant Dumbledore to drink more, ever more, even as the poison burned him from the inside out. Harry's hands balled themselves into shaking fists at his side, his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands, as he fought to remain where he was, when every fiber of his being screamed for him to turn and run.

It was worse, Harry thought, because he knew what was coming.

He flinched, even so, when the screams came. He looked away, because he had to look away, because even from this distance, he could see his hand shaking, the potion splashing on his fingers, and the agony in Dumbledore's eyes, the poison and tears mingling on his too-white beard. He did not think there was a soul on earth who would blame him for turning from it, towards the nearest human shoulder, which happened to belong to Snape.

Snape's face had gone white – even paler than it had been earlier – Harry dimly observed. Dumbledore's cries grew louder, now, and an answering sound, a low noise of distress, built almost unconsciously in Harry's throat. And when Dumbledore screamed, “Kill me now!” the sob forced itself past Harry's lips – and a trembling hand lifted the glasses from his nose, snaked into his hair, and crushed Harry's face into the warm darkness of Snape's robes. Past caring, past all sense of shame or fear of derision, he slumped against the proffered body, and wept.