Occlumency
Harry isn’t sure what he’d expected from his stay with his least favourite professor, but it wasn’t this. After a week of sharing living space and one meal a day with the other man – for some reason Snape was always too busy for lunch and Harry didn’t know how early he got up in the morning, if he even slept at all, but he’d always finished breakfast by the time Harry got up, even when the one morning when Harry made the effort to get up really early with hopes of catching him mid-meal – he wouldn’t say he was enjoying himself, but he certainly wasn’t having an abysmal time either.
The Occlumency lessons were as hard as ever; although Snape wasn’t as hard on him as he had been the last time he’d tutored Harry, the lessons themselves were hard enough. And unlike any other subject, with the dubious exception of Divination, it didn’t get any easier either, quite the opposite it seemed to Harry.
He’d voiced this concern with Snape once, but the other man had merely told him to try harder and that had been the end of that conversation.
Harry sighs and stretches his arms over his head and arches his back. For some reason, he always manages to crash to his knees and then collapse on all fours during their lessons and it’s starting to take its toll on his body. He hasn’t felt this sore since the last time he played Quidditch, and it’s actually quite comforting to feel the familiar ache in his muscles and joints.
Placing his glasses onto his face he gets up from the bed and pads out of his room.
When the tinkering sounds from the kitchen reaches him he feels a jolt of excitement – which only confirms just how bored and restless he is really – and picks up his pace slightly.
Harry enters the kitchen as calmly and quietly as the creaking floorboards will allow and finds Snape in the middle of making breakfast. Harry checks his watch – 9:33 – and confirming Harry’s and every other Hogwarts student’s suspicion that he can see through the back of his head, Snape promptly tells him to make himself useful instead if he feels that breakfast is taking too long, and he sounds just as surly as Harry used to think of him as and he represses a smile at the familiarity and continues into the room.
“What can I do?” he says politely as he sidles up to the other man.
“Oh, just sit down”, Snape snaps and slams a cupboard shut and immediately turns away from him.
“I want to help”, Harry insists.
“I said sit down, Potter!”
“Fine”, Harry mutters and takes a seat at the table.
Snape looks worse for wear. Not pale so much as ashen and his hair, normally hanging off his head like a set of silky black curtains, and slightly greasy when he’s been brewing potions, is now a tousled mess. Nothing compared to Harry’s own birds’ nest, of course, but a mess all the same.
“Rough night?” Harry asks before he can stop himself.
Snape grumbles something under his breath, but Harry can’t make out the words. He decides not to push it, though. He knows better than anyone what it’s like to not be able to sleep properly, or when you do manage to fall asleep to have it haunted by nightmares. And he also knows exactly how annoying it is then when people remark on your state the next day, questioning the quality of your sleep as if you’re somehow at fault for not having a good night of it.
Deciding to try and lighten the mood or at least change the subject, Harry looks around the kitchen for inspiration and lands on the bookcase crammed into the corner next to the muggle fridge. Snape has got so many books he’s literally had to put up shelves on every available surface of the house, including the bathroom and kitchen, and Harry realises he never did ask him about the books in his own room.
“Hey, what’s—?“Harry starts, but is instantly cut off by a silky Potter, quite closer than he’d realised Snape was and he jumps a little and jerks his head back around to face him again.
The other man is looming over him, holding a pan with sizzling eggs and glaring.
“I know we’re not currently at Hogwarts”, he says in a quivering undertone that actually makes Harry shiver slightly. “But if you could see it in you to muster at least a Sir, that would be much appreciated…”
“Sorry. Sir.”
“Thank you”, Snape murmurs and dumps half the contents of the pan onto Harry’s plate, before swooshing away again.
*
Harry’s scar bursts open; I’m dead, he thinks, the only thing he can think through the pain, just that, a feeling more than a conscious thought, a sense of certainty, it’s over now, I’m dead; and then the image of being locked in the coils of a creature with red eyes, so tightly bound that there’s no way of telling where his own body ends and the creature’s begins; they’re fused together, they’re one and the same, bound by pain and powerful magic… and then, Harry locks eyes with Professor Dumbledore, desperately trying to reach out to him, trying to connect through the blurriness of tears, the creature’s voice rips through his throat… Kill me now, Dumbledore…
Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry feels his jaws move and the creature’s hissing voice claw its way past his vocal chords: If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy…
And Harry can’t think straight, can’t do anything, just make the pain stop please, let him kill us, end it, Dumbledore please, he thinks feverishly… Death is nothing compared to this… and I’ll see Sirius again, he thinks hopefully, longingly…
Suddenly the pain lifts and Harry finds himself collapsed on the threadbare rug in Snape’s sitting room, familiar to him by now and oddly comforting. He gasps for breath. Tears are still streaming down his face, but he barely notices. He gingerly sits back and looks up at Snape, who is staring at him silently, paler than Harry has ever seen him and he feels sick… freak, he thinks numbly, he thinks I’m a freak…
“I think we’ll stop… for today…” the Potion Master mumbles and Harry thinks he can make out the strain in his voice even though it’s as steady and emotionless as ever.
“O-Okay”, Harry mumbles, even though he’d like nothing more than to insist they keep going, to prove himself to the other man, he honestly doesn’t think he’d be able to take another minute of Occlumency right now, still feeling sick and faint.
Snape eyes him warily for a moment, saying nothing. Harry wonders if he’s expecting Voldemort to pop back in, and feels the impulse of a wry chuckle churn in his belly but doesn’t let it out.
Snape pockets his wand and strides out of the room without another word. For some reason, Harry experiences a sinking feeling. It’s not the first time since he arrived to Spinner’s End, but he still doesn’t get it. It’s like disappointment, like disappointment in himself whenever Snape is disappointed in him, as if it mattered to him one bit whether the professor was disappointed in him or not, as if he cared what the other man thought of him at all… except, he thinks dully, I do care what he thinks, not about my dad or Sirius, but what he thinks about me…
“Here…” the other man’s voice startles Harry slightly and he whips his head around to look at him.
Snape is standing mere feet away from him, holding out a goblet. His face is unreadable, but Harry thinks he might prefer that right now. He accepts the goblet silently, without getting up from the floor. He’s still feeling faint and whatever potion Snape has brought him might make him feel better, so he might as well drink it first before attempting to jump to his feet.
Snape is still eyeing him warily and Harry finds himself avoiding his gaze before long.
“Are you all right?” Snape asks in a neutral murmur.
Harry nods quickly, but keeps his eyes on the rug in front of him as he sniffs the potion experimentally. Smells like tea, he thinks numbly and takes a careful sip.
“It’s tea”, Snape says and for a moment Harry thinks he can detect a note of amusement in his voice, but when he glances up at the man’s face it is as inscrutable as always. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine”, Harry lies and takes a larger sip of tea once it’s clear that the first hasn’t upset his stomach, scorching his tongue in the process.
“I didn’t know”, Snape says after a while.
“What?” Harry mumbles distractedly, still struggling with breathing and drowning the rising bile with tea.
“Dumbledore didn’t offer any details about what happened at the Ministry of Magic, he just told me it was crucial that you should learn Occlumency… I had guessed, of course…”
Harry nods.
“Well”, Snape says and looks away. “That was… good work, Potter…”
Harry snorts softly, before he can stop himself. Peering up at Snape through his lashes, he catches some of the colour returning to the older man’s face before he turns away and walks back into the kitchen.
“Time for a spot of lunch, I think”, Snape says resolutely over his shoulder. “Any requests?”
Harry feels his stomach churn unpleasantly again.
“I-I’m not really…”
“Eating is not optional”, Snape says firmly from the other room. “Have some tea. If the nausea persists, there’s a green vial on the second shelf in the bathroom that should do the trick.”
*
“Sir?” Harry says tentatively. “I was just wondering… I mean…”
“What is it, Potter?” Snape says without tearing his gaze from the book he’s been reading for the past couple of hours, and as if to emphasize that he isn’t going to, he turns the page carefully, his nimble fingers fluttering down onto the page as if reading braille.
“I’ve been thinking…”
“Oh dear”, Snape mutters.
“About something Lupin said to me.”
Harry can tell the moment Snape stops reading, even though he puts on a convincing show of continuing. He takes a deep breath and walks over to the other armchair and sinks down on it. He starts to pull his feet up, but stops when Snape shoots them a warning glare and immediately places them firmly on the floor again. He watches the hole in the sock on his left foot intently, taking another deep breath.
Snape sighs, an impatient noise. Harry sits up straighter, steeling himself.
“Lupin told me that the first time he saw me, he’d known exactly who I and it wasn’t because of my scar, but… my eyes…”
Snape snaps the book shut. The noise seems almost deafening in the otherwise quiet room. Harry looks up. Snape isn’t looking at him, but Harry can tell that he’s conflicted, tormented even. For some reason, it encourages Harry to press on.
“He said they’re my mum’s”, he says. “He’s not the first one to tell me that, but it’s sort of… I dunno, it’s nice to hear…”
“I can imagine”, Snape mumbles.
“Anyway, that’s not… He told me a bit about her, what she was like. People keep telling me about my dad, or my mum and dad, but he was the first one who talked about… just her, you know?”
Snape looks at him then, and his eyes are definitely haunted. Harry feels his heart start to hammer away in his chest. This is it, he thinks. I just know it. He knows something, and he’ll tell me…
“He said she was remarkable”, Harry says, finding it a little harder to breathe through the storm in his chest but not caring one bit.
“She was”, Snape murmurs and lets his gaze flit away from Harry again, resting it somewhere in the empty space in front of him.
“He said she had the ability to see the good in anyone, even… especially… in those who couldn’t see it themselves…”
A ghost of a smile flickers across Snape’s face, but it’s gone just as soon and he looks more miserable than Harry has ever seen him.
“And you were wondering if she could see anything good in me even…” he murmurs.
Harry’s heart skips a beat. No, he thinks, except that was exactly what he’d thought. But hearing it from the other man like that, Harry felt a sinking feeling in his gut.
“Well, she did”, Snape adds. “Believe it or not.”
“Sir, that’s not what I—“
“It’s okay, Potter”, Snape says tiredly. “One day I shall probably tell you the whole story I imagine, but it won’t be today.”
“S-Story, Sir?” Harry asks, barely containing his excitement.
“It won’t be today”, Snape repeats firmly and opens up the book again.