The Wish Jar (pt 1)
Harry keeps the wishing jar closed.
He’s kept it closed all this time, under loose floorboard, charmed wardrobes and the little invisibility cloak he hasn’t touched since-
When his eyes close, the tears slip past anyway, tearing down the wish he was folding in his hand. The ink is smudged, the words a blur and the moving figures of the Daily Prophet scatter to get away from the spreading water and suddenly he’s young. Too young to be here, stuck in a cupboard, like today folding wish stars out of the newspapers Aunt Petunia because he’s not allowed the colorful paper like the rest of the class.
Somehow, he's young again, and the world is too big for those folded stars he’s made his wishes.
Summer rain hits the open cottage window, the remaining specs of light collecting on the dusty floors. The room smells of old wood and wet soil, used books spread on the floor like fallen leaves and the sea is gentle against the beach sand when he can’t afford to be gentle with himself.
Snape smiled from the corner of the room, only visible to Harry’s eye.
Another star drops to the floor, and the counter he’s set clicks into 690, flashing green and bright.
“You want to get out.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Snape says, walking towards him in the form of a haze, no sound from his steps. He presses a hand to his shoulder, like the touch of a breeze in summer. A brush, a thin string of hold that made you want more of that relief.
The last strips of sunlight were swept clean from the floor, retreating back out the window, the rain too cold now that the sun had sunk. Gone.
Snape is here.
Snape is dead.
“Harry, we can leave,” Snape says, and Harry turned around, and Snape followed, down on one knee, both hands on his shoulders, “Don’t you want to leave?”
“I want to leave this place,” Harry snaps, trying to push Snape away. His hands dives into where Snape’s shoulder is meant to be, marking a hole and chilling his skin. Curse-Snape raises a brow, brushing his shoulder, and stepping around him again.
“Don’t you see, Harry? You’re not happy. You’ve never been happy.”
The newspaper tears easily between Harry’s fingers, a thin stripe joining the line of nine others. Then, Harry starts folding, and he is young again. Working on the little stars without the light of morning, the dim flashlight lighting his folds. And when the flashlight dies, he needs no light to path the way.
Knot, fold, punch, drop.
Knot, fold, punch, drop.
Knot, fold, punch-
His hand stills at the hand brushing his hair back, a free hand messaging his shoulder. Harry closes his eyes, and continues like that, the click of the counter the only noise disturbing the rain.
Knot, fold, punch, drop.
And Snape presses a kiss to his forehead, so like the Sunday afternoons warm in the dungeon, when the future feels like a bargain of fate Harry had no hope of surviving. It’s enough for Harry to cut his finger on the page, the scar healing without giving the blood enough time to collect.
There is no pain.
Snape chuckles beside his ear, “See, Harry? There’s no pain here. No sadness. No Dark Lord. We’re here. I’m here and I am not dead.”
“You... you were dead?” Harry’s whisper is a notch above pained, a notch below confusion. The invisibility cloak sits in the closet, he knows, hiding and Harry can’t seem to remember why.
“I was, I still am, where the world is cruel and fate won’t ask for your consent when they come to play,” the words hang between them and the 695th star, sitting idly in the palm of Harry’s right hand, where there had never been any scar.
“Where Cedric dies. Sirius dies. Where I die. Do you want to go there, Harry?”
No. Harry doesn’t want to go there. He turns around. So does Snape.
There’s a smile on his face that Harry hadn’t seen before, Snape’s hand coming to brush the side of Harry’s face, no longer stained, his skin healthy. Eyes bright. Hair clean. The shadows under his eyes are gone, and his body is no longer the skeletal figure Harry for some reason remembers.
And when he leans into Snape’s chest, the tears already streaming from his face, Snape’s lean fingers truffle the hair that falls on that spot of his forehead where there had never been a scar.
“Three days,” Harry manages between his sobs, breathing in the smell of Snape’s robes that smell the sea, “Three days, and I will decide.”
“Of course, Harry,” Snape whispers, drawiıng his arms around him, smiling into his hair, “Of course, son.”