The Wish Jar (pt 3)
Spring arrives as Harry opens his eyes, the patrichor of the April showers mixing with the cherry blossoms. Strange. Harry cannot remember cherry blossoms at Hogwarts, or spring showers being so delicate.
When he turns around, head dipping down on the silk sheets, his eye catches the crack between in the wardrobe, a glint of light in the murky darkness.
Oddly enough, he feels a voice urge him towards it, whispering incomprehensible words hidden behind a wall of water. Harry struggled to a stand, and limps towards the window, with each step surging delicate strands of pain up his leg.
Now why on earth would his leg hurt?
The window struggles, wrenched and stubborn. Harry has to go save his nails from breaking, curling his hands into fists. And if possible, the smell is somehow stronger. Ruthless. A perfumed poison, cheap like the ones in Uncle Vernon’s car.
Uncle Vernon’s...car?
Harry’s head spins, and the pain jolting up his leg is more profound. The glint calls for him, growing brighter. Brighter. Like a wishing star, the single hope he’s collected in the palm of his hand when the nights grow darker and longer.
“Wishing star,” Harry repeats the words, and it doesn’t matter how much his leg hurts or how fast he spins; because the wardrobe door is wrenched open and from under a familiar cut of fabric glints a jar of stars, in reds, blues, black and white newspaper folds. Harry cries out when he lifts the jar up, collapsing on the floor with it pulled against his chest.
Following his crash comes another from the other side of the door, Snape; alive and frantic, comes hurling towards the room, hair tied up like Harry had recommended he do.
...Alive and frantic?
Since when was Snape dead?
“Harry, oh thank Merlin you’re awake,” Snape’s voice is honeyed and concerned, no different than the cheap smell of the cherry blossoms; overbearing like the scents clouding Professor Trelawney’s classroom.
Harry scurries away when Snape steps forward, almost falling when he stands up.
“Harry, what’s wrong?” Snape asks, a hand brushing Harry’s hair, feeling his forehead. Harry is quick to slap it away, though, shaking his head with wide eyes. He places the jar on the desk of the room, starting to turn drawer after drawer out to find the remaining of the stars.
The stars he doesn’t remember how he learnt about.
“Harry,” Snape tries to touch him again, hurt creasing the lines of his face when Harry flinches away, growling, “Where are my stars?”
“Harry —”
“I said where are my stars!” Harry screams without looking, picking up the jar and starting to move towards the living room, hands shaking whale he throws open books and ornaments, angrily ripping out pages when new books arrive in the place of others.
“I’m not playing your games anymore!” Harry screams, throwing books behind him towards where he assumed Snape is standing, breaking the glass decorations as he clumsily runs towards the kitchen and the bathroom, giving it the same treatment.
Snape only watches, a concerned frown on his face, and doesn’t keep Harry from messing up his room and laboratory. Harry only grows relentless with each fruitless search, the sky seemingly growing brighter and warmer to oppose his own emotions.
When he finds no stars, the pain no longer accepts, pricks and bites piercing his leg as he collapses, jar still held towards his chest. This time, without a word is how Snape approaches him, a finger to wipe away the tears wetting the aged, old jelly jar in his hands.
“Why would you need stars, son?” Snape whispers, and there is also a tear in his cheek, meeting Harry’s ones down on the jar, “I thought we had gone over this, Harry?”
“We went over nothing,” Harry spits out, glaring with the last effort he still had, “I need those stars, and you will give it to me.”
“You’re asking me to kill you?”
“I’m asking —, no, I’m telling you to free me.”
“And what’s the difference if the only freedom the world will give you is when you no longer breathe?”
The glare falls from Harry’s eyes, and he has no words when Snape continues, his arms coming around Harry’s shoulders, “Tell me I’m wrong, I plead of you. Tell me that, when you leave, freedom is what you leave to, and not to what fate has prepared you for you at the end of a killing wand.”
“You think I don’t know that!” Harry shouts, pushing away Snape’s hands and struggling to a stand, “You think I’m not terrified? You think I’m not sick to my stomach every time I think about the death I’ve cost? You think I don’t have a breakdown every time I imagine people dying because of me?”
“Of course I know, son,” Snape cries, voice laced with the panging hurt, genuine sorrow curved into the letter, “Of course I do! Why do you think I wish you’d stay, where spring is warm and winter is warmer. Where we are together, and you can forget the world and the fate you weren’t even meant to be a part of.”
“If I forget — ” Harry wipes his tears harshly, blinking the tears away “ — If I forget, I won’t be me.”
“You will be free… free with me.”
Harry chuckles, another tear sliding down the jam jar, “You think I don’t want that? To die? To leave everything and be happy?”
“And you can,” a smile cracks open on Snape’s lips, wide and ugly, “You can, and you may. You’ll have everything and — ”
“I’m sorry,” Harry whispered, taking a step back, closing his eyes at the satisfying sound of creaking floorboards. He doesn’t pick it up right away, and instead, he walks to the living room, where Snape always keeps a newspaper on the black armchair. Straps of paper come loose freely, the ritual of knot, punch, fold and drop earning Harry another five stars, ones he keeps safe in his pockets.
Snape watches from the doorway.
“Figuring it out is the easy part,” he says in a voice that isn’t quite his, a curve of anger on the brim, “Summer will come and go by the time you finish a thousand.”
“Summer has already come,” Harry says, ducking under his arm. The floorboard comes loose just as easy as the straps of paper, and Harry has jars of 995 little stars. The furious expression on Snape’s face isn't quite his, either; a dark shadow to the edge of his scowl, a reflection of fear to the eyes he’s pulled to a glare, “You’re losing a chance. The man you call father is doomed to die, Harry Potter, just like you. You could have had it all.”
“And could you?” Harry says when the sun begins to set, the last day of August. Four jars all crash down, and the pain is stronger; the light of the sun burning his skin. Nothing happens, and curse-Snape grins; ugly and with ashen teeth.
“Summer is leaving.”
“And so am I,” Harry says, tears still falling. He lifts the stars from his pocket, and they fall one by one, and this time the sun won’t burn the wishes that were never its.
“You won’t get another summer, Harry Potter,” the shadow hisses, distraught between shapes Harry has met and those he hasn’t, “Your world has no summer! The winter always lasts, and there is no escape from pain.”
“That’s the beauty of love, dad,” Harry says barely above a whisper as the last star falls, seconds before the last light of the hot August day, “Love is always, no matter the winters it has to pass.”
The world spins, and so does Harry. A cloud of smoke, ash and pain all enveloping him like a storm. From the ashes and the flames, Harry sees Snape, his blood ruling scresma mixing into the storm.
Summer leaves, and before Harry does too, his words remain.
“Thank you, dad.”
And then, summer is no more.
*
Summer is no more when Harry wakes up either, screaming and wet with tears and sweat.
There are sounds, there are always sounds, but somehow they are stronger, familiar. The ones that aren’t the soft touches from a dream he can’t remember, but the ones found in concern, ones human.
Ones alive.
Harry gasps for air, shooting from the bed, eyes wide and screaming.
“Dad! DAD! Please dad, PLEASE! DAD!”
Madam Pomfrey wrestles him to lie down, and so does Ron; they’re trying to tell him something, while Professor Pomrey tries to push something down his throat.
That’s when Snape arrives, looking as through he’d suffered a hundred years of misery, suffering and disease. He takes Harry from the pair of arms, curling his arms around him instead, protective and afraid.
Snape isn’t affectionate. Snape isn’t the one to show his love for the world to see.
Neither Snape or Harry mind when he presses a kiss to Harry’s forehead, a few tears dripping down on Harry’s hairline.
That’s when Harry finally accepts the Calming Draught.
And that is when Harry finally, truly sleeps.