The Spy's Greatest Regret
There was a long moment where Snape just looked at him. Harry felt a chill run down his spine and he discreetly slipped his bare feet underneath the covers to warm them. They could hardly be in a more casual setting, exemplifying just how close their relationship had become. Snape was sitting up against the headboard with the blanket over his lap and his hands wrapped around a cup of tea, while Harry was curled up at the foot of the bed as though he belonged there. Like he was getting ready to hear a pleasant story instead of the details surrounding the murders of his parents.
“You asked me why the Dark Lord went after your family?” Snape finally broke the silence, his eyes shifting to focus on some random spot on the wall. “The short answer is that he considered you a threat to him.”
“Why?” asked Harry, his index finger absentmindedly tracing the spiral grey print of the bedding. “I was only a baby.”
“The longer answer is that the Dark Lord was acting on information given to him by one of his followers about a prophecy that was made shortly before you were born,” Snape said. “That is what is being guarded in the Department of Mysteries.”
“You mean a prophecy like what Trelawney is always going on about in Divination?” Harry squinted at him strangely.
“Incidentally, it was Sybill Trelawney who made this particular prophecy,” Snape replied. “It begins by telling of the approaching of the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord interpreted that to mean you and that’s why he targeted your family.”
“He wanted to kill me before I could grow up and kill him, essentially?” said Harry, now squeezing the blanket in his fist.
“That is correct,” Snape replied, “but he couldn’t kill you and the Dark Lord wants to understand why. He wants to hear the prophecy for himself and the Order is trying to prevent that from happening.”
“But I don’t understand that part, sir,” Harry interjected, sitting up straight on the bed again in his eagerness for information. “Voldemo - sorry,” he cut off when he saw Snape grimace. “The Death Eater already told him what the prophecy said.”
“Ah, but that Death Eater only heard the beginning,” Snape said softly. “The Dark Lord was acting on only partial information when he went after your family and considering what happened to him there, it is easy to assume that the second half of the prophecy is quite important. The Dark Lord is desperate to know all of it.”
Snape was avoiding Harry’s gaze, but Harry couldn’t look away from him as he tried to process what he was being told and why it distressed Professor Snape so tremendously. Lily and James Potter had died because Voldemort had wanted to kill him and they were in the way - for reasons that didn’t make sense. How could Harry’s existence have ever scared Lord Voldemort? Whatever a prophecy said to the contrary, Harry did not have special powers. He was worried about passing his Ordinary Wizarding Level exams, he certainly was no match for the darkest wizard that had ever existed. Yet, Voldemort was still desperate to finish him.
“Professor Snape, do you know how the prophecy ends?” Harry asked, deciding he would rather know the truth, however terrible, than be left wondering.
“I do not,” Snape replied coolly. “Professor Dumbledore does but I don’t think he intends to tell you until you’re older.”
Harry noticed how Snape was squeezing his arm very tightly through his black sweater - he wasn’t sure that Snape was even aware that he was doing it.
“I’m going to ask him,” Harry announced determinedly. “It’s my right to know. It’s about me.”
Snape’s mouth twitched in an almost smile. “You go right ahead,” he said, unclenching his arm but continuing to rub it absentmindedly. “Professor Dumbledore actually told me not to tell you any of this, so he isn’t going to be too pleased with me when he hears what we’ve discussed.”
“He likes leaving me in the dark,” Harry said bitterly. “You and Sirius though - you tell me things.”
“I’m glad you talk to me and come to me with your questions,” Snape said quietly. “I’ll be sad to see that end because there’s more to the story and it involves me.”
Harry’s heart was pounding as he waited for Snape to continue, though he seemed to be in no hurry. He was still rubbing his arm and doing his best to avoid Harry’s eyes. He seemed very different right now than he usually did. Nervous and very vulnerable, which was filling the room with a thick sort of tension and Harry knew whatever he heard next was going to be unpleasant - he needed the truth though.
“Sir, please tell me.”
Snape took a deep breath. “You already know that I joined the Death Eaters of my own volition and that I took the mark when I was not much older than you,” he said in a heavy voice, staring at the cup in his hand. “This mark on my arm that burns and prickles whenever his name is spoken or he decides on a whim that he wants me to rush to his side - there was a short time in my life where I was proud to bear it.”
“You returned,” Harry reminded him gently, for he could sense the guilt emitting from Snape in spades. Snape had every reason to feel bad about his poor decisions as a young man leaving Hogwarts, but the fact that he had turned his life around to fight bravely on their side counted for much more, in Harry’s opinion.
“Yes, I returned,” Snape agreed softly. “But the part of the story you haven’t heard yet is why I did that. Up until I discovered that the Dark Lord had interpreted the part of the prophecy he’d heard to mean you, I was a devoted Death Eater that was extremely eager to prove myself to him.”
He pressed his lips together for a pause before continuing.
“Being quiet, discreet, and intelligent, I was mainly given tasks much like what I do for him now; potions, advising, and spying.”
Snape looked up and their eyes met, Harry could have sworn he saw Snape involuntarily wince at the sight of him, but then he looked away again and the moment had passed. He continued with his story.
“There was death and suffering all around me, but I was so...desensitized to it,” Snape said, speaking slowly and choosing each word with care. “I didn’t know those people and if I did - they'd never cared about me, so why should I care about them? It wouldn’t change anything. People were living in utter terror. Dumbledore was trying to fight him, but the members of the Order of the Phoenix were just getting picked off one by one. The Dark Lord was winning, Dumbledore was losing, and I was looking out for myself.”
Harry nodded once to show that he was listening. But it was hard to imagine how Snape could have been content working for Voldemort and using his many skills for such cruel purposes. Snape could have chosen any career that interested him. He could have moved abroad to study and work, finding a niche that would have appreciated him - instead of pledging his life to Voldemort’s service and ending any chance of a normal life then and there. He could have been so much more. He wasn’t really a bad man.
“He asked me to spy on Dumbledore,” said Snape. “It was on the Dark Lord’s orders that I applied for a job at Hogwarts in the first place. However, unbeknown to him, I had already switched by that point.”
“So you went to Dumbledore and switched sides?” Harry verified. “And then he gave you the job You Know Who wanted you to have?”
Snape nodded his head. “I hope that I would have had the sense to turn away from the Dark Lord on my own eventually, but the truth is that I didn’t regret my chosen path until I endangered the one person I cared about.”
“Who-”
“Your mother and I hadn’t spoken in many years,” Snape continued. “I never saw Lily again after we finished school, but that didn’t change how important she’d been to me.”
Harry’s heart was in his stomach. It had never occurred to him that Snape’s repentance had been connected to his family at all. He watched a tear slide down Snape’s cheek and averted his gaze as though it was something indecent - he never would have imagined Snape would cry.
“And then,” Snape cleared his throat, getting control of himself, and Harry looked back at him. “And then I learned that she had given birth to a son - you - and that the Dark Lord had decided that you were the boy the prophecy had warned about. I immediately knew I needed to act. After almost two years of standing by while atrocities were committed all around me, I was suddenly desperate to get involved.”
“What did you do?” Harry asked.
“I went to the Dark Lord and I begged for Lily’s life,” Snape said simply, and Harry did a double-take.
“You begged for my mum’s life?” he repeated slowly. “Just her?”
“You were who he really wanted. And James,” Snape sighed. “Well, I wasn’t about to grovel to the Dark Lord for the life of someone who’d ruined mine. I asked him to save Lily.”
“And then he laughed and murdered her anyway,” Harry said coldly, as he felt his whole body go rigid stiff.
“He actually did agree to spare her as a favour to me, but you’re right, I didn’t trust him,” Snape said. “Immediately after speaking to the Dark Lord, I went to Dumbledore and told him everything. I promised to give him anything in exchange for him protecting your family....all of you.”
Cold tea sloshed onto the covers as Snape’s hand trembled more than ever. He got up to place it on the nightstand and then came closer to the foot of the bed where Harry was sitting.
“I didn’t know you Harry - I didn’t love you - your death would have been one of thousands of deaths that were unfortunate, but of no personal concern of mine.”
“Thanks, Professor,” Harry gave him an odd look, and Snape knelt down on the floor in front of him, almost as if he was going to pray. His shaking hands were clasped together and set on the mattress right beside Harry’s foot under the blankets.
“Harry…..my biggest regret is the harm I caused your family,” Snape said, and the single tear Harry had spotted before had multiplied so that Snape could not possibly be seeing clearly. “Harry….you have to understand. I never meant it - the worst thing- the Death Eater that told him -”
“Was you," Harry said in a deadly voice that spoke much malice. As he was suddenly overcome with the realization of what Snape was trying to say. He didn’t need Snape to admit it aloud, the way he had crumpled at Harry’s words told him everything he needed to know.
“YOU TOLD VOLDEMORT THE PROPHECY,” Harry yelled, making Snape jump. “DID YOU? DID YOU TELL HIM?”
“Yes,” Snape’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Yes, I did. Harry -”
Harry was off the bed like a cannonball erupting. He stormed towards the hallway, and then halted and stormed back across the room the other way. His arm flung out and he knocked everything that was on the dresser onto the floor. Vials, books, and gold scales went everywhere and shards of glass shot across the floor in every direction as their liquids spilled out.
“How could you?” Harry hissed, his footsteps thundering across the floor of the small bedroom. Back and forth, his hands were wrangling together as he imagined himself putting them around Snape’s throat. “HOW COULD YOU!” he roared.
“Harry….” Snape spoke weakly, he hadn’t left his spot kneeling by the bed. “Your foot is bleeding.”
“So what?” Harry snapped, who had indeed sliced his foot on broken glass. He could feel the wound pulsating between his toes now that Snape had pointed it out, but he didn’t care, nor did it prevent him from pacing back through the glass one more time before Snape vanished the broken items from the floor with a discreet wave of his wand.
"You killed my mum and dad," Harry said helplessly, tears streaming down his cheeks. "You're the reason they're dead!”
“Harry, I did everything I could to protect them,” Snape pleaded emotionally. “I tried to save them. It’s my biggest regret-”
But Harry burst out laughing in a horrible, manic way at these words. “You don’t regret it,” he sneered at him. “You hated my Dad! You don’t care about him!”
“That doesn’t mean I wanted him dead,” Snape protested, and Harry grabbed a heavy bookend and flung it at the large window into the lake. It bounced off, and didn’t leave a scratch. Of course that window must be magically impenetrable, and disappointment rose inside his blood which was already boiling from anger. What had he been hoping to do - drown them both in this room?”
He looked back at Snape, who had watched him destroy the room with an entirely dead look in his eyes. “I hate you so much,” Harry’s voice shook as he spoke.
“I know,” Snape said quietly.
Harry was so full of hate right now: for Voldemort, for Snape, and for himself as well. He hated that he still hadn’t left these quarters with no intention of coming back. His legs failed him and he weakly dropped down to the floor, knowing he couldn’t go anywhere, but not sure how he could stay anymore either. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wiped his face on his jeans. Snape still hadn’t moved. Harry’s foot continued to bleed.
“I trusted you,” he said sadly, after several minutes spent in absolute silence.
“You still can,” Snape said softly, but Harry shook his head. How could he reckon the yearning to be fathered by the man responsible for him not having his own father anymore? James was dead, and Snape wasn’t sorry. Harry could have died just as well, for all Snape had cared. None of that mattered, and the family they’d become now seemed immoral, indecent. He wondered what his parents would think of it, though it was Snape’s fault they weren’t around to ask.
“Harry, I’m so sorry.”
“What am I supposed to do with that?” Harry said helplessly, because indeed, he did not know what he could possibly do. Nothing in him was willing to go back to the way things were before he’d had Snape to look after him. He needed him, and he wanted him, and he very much loved him, even as he willed those things to be cancelled from his heart, as they rightfully should be.
“Can I heal your foot?” Snape asked after a few more minutes of silence.
“Absolutely not,” Harry said coldly. “Don’t come anywhere near me.”
But he couldn’t find the strength to get up and walk away either. He stayed there all night on the floor, grieving for his mother and father more desperately than he ever had before in his life. And Snape said no more.