Chapter 3
He did not know why he was doing it, why he was approaching the dying man. Snape seized the front of his robes and pulled him close.
“Take… it… take… it…”
Something more than blood was leaking from Snape. Silvery blue, neither gas nor liquid, it gushed from his mouth and his ears and his eyes.
“Look… at… me…” he whispered.
The green eyes found the black, but after a second something in the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank, and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no more.
The memories swirled, silver-white and strange, and without hesitating, with a feeling of reckless abandon, Harry dived.
The memories of his mother and Snape as children, and during their Hogwarts years, trickled past like sand through a timer. Harry clung desperately to every glimpse of his father, of Sirius, of Remus - even of a young Regulus, he thought - as he tried to follow Severus’s story.
It reminded him of Draco Malfoy’s; the boy with a reputation to uphold. The only difference, as far as Harry could see, was love. Snape had loved, and lost; Malfoy had not. Malfoy had been under his father’s thumb, and his father was a coward. Snape had become independent, and made all the wrong choices. In doing so, he had lost Lily, and become the double agent Harry now knew him to be.
An agent of the light, after all this time.
But there were gaps; snatches of memories that started, but never finished. Of Severus begging Voldemort for Lily’s life; of Regulus, catching his eye and nodding almost imperceptibly; of the careful question, “Will you tell Dumbledore?” and the pause before Snape’s voice said “I think… not”; of Peter Pettigrew, grinning in both triumph and fear as he disclosed the Potters’ location; of him finding Lily in the house, breaking and holding her body as Harry stood in his crib behind him; of a graveyard with a smooth, unmarked headstone, on which he laid flowers; of Number 12, Grimmauld Place and the pain of memory; of Sirius Black. Many of the snatches made little sense to Harry.
He listened as Dumbledore and Snape discussed Draco’s task, and Lucius’s fall from grace. He watched Snape make the Unbreakable Vow, and saw him remember the last time he had done so, to - was that Regulus?
It didn’t make sense. It didn’t matter.
Harry listened almost detachedly as they discussed Dumbledore’s death… and his own. It seemed only right, somehow. Fitting.
“I thought… all these years… that we were protecting him for her. For Lily. You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?”
Harry’s only emotion at this was surprise. Snape appeared genuinely angry, genuinely in love with Harry’s mother, still; his patronus, the doe, now no surprise, filled in another gap in their story. The sword.
But Snape’s anger was muted. His love filled the room. He loved Lily Evans, and his hatred for Harry was eclipsed by it. His horror, though, was foremost.
He took Lily’s letter, and the photograph. Harry wondered detachedly why he was in Grimmauld Place, why he had sought out Lily’s love in written form after so long. Why he had bothered to tear the photograph and leave the part with Harry on behind, if he was so horrified by the idea of Harry’s death. Perhaps that was an arrogant thought, though.
Finally, the truth. Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death’s welcoming arms. Along the way, he was to dispose of Voldemort’s remaining links to life, so that when at last he flung himself across Voldemort’s path, and did not raise a wand to defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been done in Godric’s Hollow would be finished: neither would live, neither could survive. They had all been wrong about the prophecy’s meaning from the start.
Godric’s Hollow. The thought brought the memories, eclipsed by the horror of Nagini and Bathilda Bagshot, rushing back.
James Potter, born 27 March 1960
Lily Potter, born 30 January 1960
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death“It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry,” said Hermione, her voice gentle. “It means… you know… living beyond death. Living after death.”
But they were not living, thought Harry: they were gone.
And yet… there were no death dates on the headstones.
Because everyone knew the dates, he had supposed. Everyone knew.
His touch on the gate seemed to have done it. A sign had risen out of the ground in front of them, up through the tangles of nettles and weeds, like some bizarre, fast-growing flower, and in golden letters upon the wood it said:
“On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981, James and Lily Potter and baby Harry were attacked. Harry remains the only wizard ever to have survived the Killing Curse. This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left in its ruined state as a monument and as a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family.”
Attacked. Not killed.
Harry was going to die today. But something… some niggling part of him… wondered whether his parents had died seventeen years ago. Something had happened that Dumbledore wasn’t aware of, clearly. Some plot had taken shape without his knowledge.
Could Snape still be in love with his childhood friend, so long after she had died? Could he have borne so much bitterness towards him, the last living part of her, if she no longer walked the earth? Would Snape would have bothered to tear the photograph if Lily had died, and his own green eyes were all that remained of her in the world?
But if Lily lived…
It didn’t matter. He was going to die. Tonight. And then he would go on, and he would know.