Dreams and nightmares
Harry stares in mute horror as Dumbledore’s body is thrust into the air by the force of Snape’s curse, its green light frighteningly familiar to Harry whose nightmares tend to get the same tint, and a horrified scream wrenches itself free from deep within him and tears through his throat like a barbed wire before it’s swallowed by the commotion of the Death Eaters as they cackle and clap their hands.
For a split-second, Snape stays frozen on the spot, staring out into the empty darkness where Dumbledore’s body had hung arched for a mere second before plummeting to the ground below. But then he seems to shake himself out of whatever stupor he’d been in and grabs Draco roughly by the scruff of his neck and pushes him in front of him down the spiral staircase ahead of the rest of the Death Eaters, while yelling at them to follow quickly. They immediately obey and soon they’re all thundering down the staircase, still cackling in triumph, leaving Harry completely alone in the Astronomy Tower.
He is vaguely aware of a wailing noise, but it isn’t until he has to gasp for breath and the noise stops that he realises that it’d come from him. At that realisation, along with the fact that when his knees finally give out from underneath him he can sink to the floor without Dumbledore’s spell holding him in place, he knows it’s true; Dumbledore really is dead.
”No —!” He screams.
Then struggling to his feet, he summons all the rage he has inside of him as though summoning the Devil himself and lets it fill him up completely, pushing grief so far into the back that he doesn’t have to deal with it — anger is easier, so much easier — and it drives him into action.
Without thinking about what he’s doing, Harry starts running down the spiral staircase, taking the steps first two at a time, then three and finally leaping the last ten and jumping over a body lying slumped at the bottom; he can’t see who it is in the darkness, and he doesn’t stop to check if whoever it is is dead or merely stunned, there’s no time; he has to catch Snape… That’s the only rational thought going through his head now, Get Snape, Get Snape…
He skids round a corner, his trainers slippery with blood, but all he can think about is the immense head-start that Snape has now — what if he and Malfoy have already reached the Cabinet in the Room of Requirement? — he hears nothing except the pounding of his own feet, chasing the beatings of his frantic heart… then suddenly he spots a bloody footprint… heading away from the Room of Requirement… Maybe the Order have blocked the Room of Requirement, he thinks hopefully and sprints towards the Entrance Hall instead.
He skids around another corner as a curse flies past him. Catching sight of two of the Death Eaters from the Tower, the brother and sister, ahead of him on the marble staircase, he aims several jinxes at them but hits a portrait on the landing instead. Harry pelts towards a shortcut, hoping to overtake the brother and sister, and catch up with Snape and Malfoy who surely must have reached the grounds by now…
Remembering to leap over the vanishing step halfway down the staircase, Harry throws himself through the tapestry at the bottom and bursts through on the other side, scaring a group of pyjama-clad Hufflepuffs hovering around the corridor nervously.
”Harry! We heard a noise and someone said something about the Dark Mark —” Ernie Macmillan begins.
”Out of the way!” Harry bellows and shoves past him, knocking over two of his friends and then hurtles down the remainder of the marble staircase.
The oak front doors have been blasted open and Harry flies across the Entrance Hall and stumbles outside, the cold night air shocking him for a split-second and he gasps för breath, staring wildly around him.
He can just make out three dark figures racing across the lawn towards the gates, beyond which Harry knows they’ll be able to Disapparate, and then it will be too late…
A sudden flash of light in the distance silhouettes the Death Eaters up ahead, followed by shouts and more jets of light. Hagrid has come out of his hut and is trying to stop the Death Eaters from escaping… No, Harry thinks desperately, not Hagrid… not Hagrid too… and despite the stitch in his chest, Harry picks up his pace further.
Suddenly something hits him in the back of the head and he flies forward, blood bursts from both his nostrils and he realises that the brother and sister that he’d managed to overtake were now closing in on him —
He turns to his back and throws an Impedimenta jinx behind him at random, miraculously hitting one of them who immediately stumbles and falls, tripping the other one. Harry doesn’t take the time to feel victorious however, he instantly scrambles to his feet and continues to run, almost tripping over his own feet several times, but he keeps going as though possessed — must get Snape…
The third Death Eater has stopped by Hagrid’s hut and is aiming curse after curse at the gamekeeper, but the half-giant’s strength and thick skin seems to protect him; Snape and Malfoy keep running, however and they’re nearly at the gates now —
”Snape! SNAPE —!” Harry screams and the sihouetted form of the former Potions Master visibly startles, but when he continues to run without as much as a backward glance Harry takes aim at his back and yells ”Stupefy!”
But he misses, the jet of red light soars past Snape’s head —
”Run, Draco!” Snape bellows, before finally stopping and turning to look back at Harry.
Harry keeps running towards him, allowing the rage to fuel him. Snape stays stock still, but raises his wand cautiously.
”Cruc —!” Harry starts, but Snape parries the curse and knocks Harry backwards off his feet before he can finish it.
He rolls over and quickly scrambles to his feet again, nearly tripping over since his legs are shaking so badly; his whole body is shaking, exhaustion and adrenaline and pure rage running through his limbs like electric currents…
”Incendio!” one of the Death Eaters behind Harry yells and with an explosive bang Hagrid’s hut is set ablaze.
”Fang’s in there ye evil —!” Hagrid screams.
Harry forces his friend’s voice out of his mind. He can’t allow himself to be distracted, not now. Raising his wand against Snape again, Harry yells ”Cruc —!”
But Snape blocks the curse for a second time, and Harry imagines he can see him sneer in the orange glow from the fire.
”Fight back!” Harry screams, sobs. ”Fight back, you fucking bastard! He trusted you! I trusted —!”
Harry’s voice breaks pitifully and he sobs again. Snape is staring at him silently, his face deathly pale and the shadows stretched eerily from the glow of the fire. He stands completely still, and if not for the slight tremours of tension in his body he might as well have been a statue. A hideous, horrible statue, Harry thinks hysterically as another sob wrenches itself out of his throat.
”You saw”, Snape says after a second’s shocked silence, and Harry couldn’t have interpreted his tone even he’d wanted to.
”Yes, I saw!” Harry bellows furiously. ”I saw what you did, you evil bastard! He was defenceless! You coward — You k-killed him — I — I hate you! I HATE YOU—!”
Suddenly Snape kills the distance between them in three swift strides and as his face swims out of the darkness and looms in front of Harry, eyes glittering like black bottomless pools, Harry is momentarily thrown by the look of pure anguish that is suddenly etched there… But it’s gone just as quickly as it appeared and Harry almost believes he imagined it, because staring back at him now is the same indifferent man who killed Dumbledore in cold blood right before his eyes.
”How could you —?” he gasps miserably, please let there be some explanation, please, he thinks desperately.
”You weren’t supposed to have witnessed it”, Snape says.
Harry stares. And gapes. And blinks dumbly, because what the hell…
”I don’t expect you to understand”, Snape continues in an urgent undertone, glancing over Harry’s shoulder quickly, a hint of stress trickling through the otherwise perfect mask. ”And there is no time…”
”W-What —!” Harry yelps. ”I understand just fine! I saw the whole thing! You’re a fucking coward —!”
Snape’s eyes flash dangerously at Harry.
”Don’t call me a coward! NO—!” he adds hurriedly to someone just behind Harry, but too late.
Excruciating pain hits Harry and he keels over in the grass; someone is screaming; this is it, this is death, he thinks, surely there’s no way out of this agony?
Just as suddenly as the pain hit him, it vanishes again and Harry curls up on the ground and heaves.
”— told you, Potter belongs to the Dark Lord”, Snape is bellowing angrily. ”We are to leave him! Just go! Go!”
Harry blinks the tears out of his eyes and gasps for breath, then mustering all of his strength he pushes himself to his feet once more, but nearly topples over immediately. Snape seems to twitch with an impulse to to move forward… to what? help me up? Harry thinks derisively and feels sick. To think there was a time when that possibility had seemed the most plausible to him.
Fresh tears well up in Harry’s eyes. Reminded of Snape’s true loyalty and his many betrayals, he summons enough rage to stagger a few steps closer to the man and raises his wand blindly through his tears, ”Sectum—”
But Snape flicks his wand as effortlessly as if he were swatting at a fly and Harry’s own wand goes flying out of his hand and disappears into the darkness.
”No, Potter!” Snape screams at him. ”You will not use my own spells against me! Oh yes, I am the Half-Blood Prince — and you, you would turn my own inventions against me, just like your filthy father! I don’t think so!”
”Kill me, then”, Harry pants. ”Kill me like you killed him, you coward—!”
”DON’T —” screams Snape, his face suddenly demented, almost inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the howling dog still stuck inside the burning hut behind them. ”—CALL ME COWARD!”
He makes a slashing movement with his wand and Harry feels a whiplike sensation of pain hit him across the face and he slams backwards to the ground. No sooner has he connected with the ground however than Snape has yet again killed the distance between them. He grabs Harry roughly by the front of his robes and pulls him up to sitting, his face pressing close to Harry’s —
They stare into each other’s eyes for a second that spans a lifetime —
”I hate you”, Harry gasps finally.
The dark eyes flashes dangerously at him and Harry flinches. Now he’ll kill me, he thinks.
But Snape doesn’t kill him. Instead he tucks his wand away completely. Probably to rid himself of the temptation, Harry thinks.
”Good”, Snape snarls. ”Hate me! You should hate me!”
Then suddenly, he pulls Harry even closer, until their faces are mere inches apart and with a shudder Harry feels the man’s lips brush his cheek as he hisses in his ear, ”If you ever cared about me, in any way, you’ll stay away from me now, Harry…”
He then lets go of Harry’s robes just as roughly as he’d grabbed them and Harry sprawls on the ground for a second before he’s managed to scramble to his feet again.
”I — I can’t believe I ever trusted you!” Harry cries with angry tears streaming down his face.
”You can trust me”, Snape says quietly but clearly. ”And you can trust Dumbledore.”
”W-What—?” Harry splutters incredulously.
”It will all make sense in the end, but for now… just… please, stay away Harry…”
Harry stares in shock as the man’s eyes seem to implore with him for another split-second, and then before Harry has a chance to think or say anything else, Snape has turned around and the darkness has swallowed him up.
Harry is vaguely aware of Hagrid yelling and Fang howling, he staggers a few steps, feeling exhaustion finally start to seep into his bones. Not yet, he tells himself. I can’t rest yet, I need to get to Dumbledore…
Harry moves through the crowd as though moving in a dream, the air thick like water around his legs and his heart hammering wildly in his chest… he breaks away from the others and continues until reaches Dumbledore’s lifeless body and crouches down next to it. He’d known the second Dumbledore’s Body-Bind Curse lifted that the man was dead, the only thing that would stop a Curse expect a Counter-Curse, but still he’d not been prepared for this… Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of all time, lying spread-eagled and broken on the ground like some disgarded puppet.
In a daze, Harry becomes aware of something hard under one of his knees and picks it up. It’s the locket. But as soon as Harry looks at it, he knows something’s wrong. It’s smaller than the locket he’d seen in Dumbledore’s Pensieve and the ornate S is missing from the front. Opening it, Harry sees a bit of folded parchment wedged into place where a portrait should have been. It’s the wrong locket, he thinks numbly. It was all for nothing…
Somewhere in the darkness, a Phoenix starts singing — but it is unlike any phoenix song Harry has ever heard before, instead of filling him with hope and joy, this lament fills him instead with grief and he thinks of Fawkes and feels his eyes well up with tears once more — and all for nothing, he thinks again.
The next few days pass in a blur, and suddenly Harry is sitting in another, bigger crowd staring in horror at a shiny white tomb as Hagrid carries Dumbledore’s body wrapped in purple velvet down the aisle, his big giant face shining with silent tears.
Different wizards and witches from all over the world take turns talking about Dumbledore, but their words mean nothing to Harry. He lets his mind wander as he looks out across the lake, it’s surface broken by hundreds of merpeople’s heads as they too pay their respect to the great wizard.
Afterwards, Harry finds himself walking away with quick, long strides and tries to tell himself he isn’t running away exactly, but he doesn’t really believe himself… Ron and Hermoine catch up with him and he finally tells them that he won’t be returning to Hogwarts after the summer.
”I knew you were going to say that”, Hermoine says with a sigh. ”What will you do?”
He gives a tense half-shrug, willing the image of Snape’s ghostly face out of his mind even as his parting words seem to be echoeing around him, as they have done ever since that night.
”I thought maybe I’d go back to Godric’s Hollow, you know”, he says stiffly. ”Where it all started. And I can visit my parents’ graves…”
”And then what?” Ron says, looking warily at him as though scared of what his answer might be.
”Then I’ve got to track down the rest of the Horcruxes haven’t I”, Harry says with a confidence he doesn’t actually feel. ”If Dumbledore was right — and I believe he was — there are still four of them out there, and I’ve got to find them and destroy them before I can go after the seventh bit of Voldemort’s soul —”
”T-The seventh b-bit —?” Ron says, his freckles standing out more than ever against his suddenly pale face.
”Yeah”, Harry says bracingly. ”The one in his body. You know it has to be me that kills him. And if I should happen to run into Snape along the way, well… so much the worse for him!”
*
Something large and silvery suddenly comes falling through the canvas of the canopy stretched over the dance-floor; it’s a Patronus in the shape of a lynx and as it lands lighlty in the middle of the astonished dancers, they all stop moving mid-dance and turn their heads curiously to stare at the magical creature that opens its mouth wide and starts to speak in Kingsley Shacklebolt’s booming, deep voice:
”The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.”
Harry and Hermione jump to their feet and draw their wands. The silver cat vanishes and silence spreads like a cold current across the dance-floor until suddenly someone screams. As if that had been the signal they were all waiting for, people immediately spring into action. The wedding guests are running in all directions, many Disapparating, and Harry and Hermione stare around wildly for a hint of red hair —
”Ron! Where’s Ron —?” Hermione cries, half-sobbing as her and Harry are jostled from all sides by stampeding, terrified wedding guests.
Harry grabs her hand firmly, so as not to lose her also in the crowd.
Then Ron is there, grabbing Hermione’s other hand and suddenly all sight and sound are drowned by darkness, Harry is squeezed from all sides, his eyes pressed into his skull and he screws them shut —
The pressure builds and builds, Hermione’s hand slips from his and he flails desperately trying to find it again in the darkness, but there’s nothing, he’s all alone —
Pain pulses through him like electric currents, setting his every nerve ending on fire, his throat burns and he realises he must be screaming, but no sound escapes, none that he can hear anyway… Then just as suddenly as the pain had started, it stops —
He blinks tears from his eyes and pants for breath; a frightening, familiar face swims out of the darkness and looms in front of him, eyes glittering like black bottomless pools, flashing dangerously at him, and Harry gasps; strong, elegant fingers curl into the material of his robes and pulls him closer, closer, closer —
He feels hot breath on his face, tickling his cheek, and he shivers; No, he thinks desperately, not you, not you, you’re a traitor, you’re a murderer —
A look of anguish, then the man’s lips brush Harry’s cheek
”You should hate me! But if you ever cared about me at all, in any way, you’ll stay away from me now, Harry…”
The face blurs in front of Harry and no matter how much he blinks, he can’t get the man’s face back into focus. Stupid tears, he thinks angrily and blinks harder. Nothing happens. But he can still make out the curtains of dark hair, the dark shadows around the eyes, lips pressed thin for a moment and then they seem to relax slightly… Harry can still feel the gentle puffs of air against his face as the man breathes… so close… Harry feels his own lips tingle where the warm breaths land…
Harry, the man whispers and he doesn’t sound angry anymore, only urgent. Harry wishes he could see his eyes properly, so that he could read them.
The warm gusts of air stop hitting Harry’s lips as though the man is now holding his breath. But that doesn’t make any sense, Harry thinks… nor does it make sense for Harry to be missing the feeling. As if trying to chase the warmth, Harry cranes his neck and presses up… He just has time to see those dark eyes widen through the haze that is still invading his sight, before he lets his own eyes flutter closed, and gently purses his lips and presses them against
A tiny gasp
Then thin, soft lips are moving slightly against his own chapped ones, sliding, nudging, sucking
A tiny whimper escapes Harry, and suddenly the body hovering above him freezes, the lips flinch back and press thin once more; Harry tries to chase them
”Somnus”
Harry really tries to chase them, to sit up, to blink the stupid fog from his eyes, but he feels suddenly heavy and before he knows it darkness has pulled him down once more…
Harry awakes with a gasp; for a moment he feels desorientated, the dream lingering around the edges of his mind still, and as he tries to blink the sleep from his eyes he realises why his vision is so blurry and immediately feels around on the floor for his glasses.
As soon as he’s pushed them onto his face, the familiar texture of tent’s canvas wall comes into focus.
He turns his head to look over at Ron’s bunk, but it’s empty.
Then it all comes back to Harry, the huge row he had with Ron the night before… and then Ron leaving, Disapparating… Hermione crying herself to sleep in the chair… Harry turns his head the other way to see if she’s still there, but the chair is empty as well and for one horrible second Harry thinks maybe Hermione has left him too, but then he hears her moving around in the kitchen.
Harry lies back against his pillow and takes a deep breath, trying to bring the dream back but it’s definitely gone. He reaches up and brushes his fingertips against his lips, imagining them to be kiss-swollen and smiles wryly to himself, as if…
While waiting for the misty sleepiness to completely disperse from his mind, he lets his head fall to the side lazily on the pillow and that’s when he sees it… Harry’s heart leaps into his throat and he quickly swings his legs round and heaves himself up to sitting. There, on the floor next to where his glasses had been only moments before, lies a book that Harry is sure wasn’t there the night before.
With slightly trembling fingers he reaches for it and lifts it slowly to his face and stares at the familiar, peeling cover.
Advanced Potion Making
Harry starts shaking his head to himself, it can’t be, must be Ron’s, or maybe —
He flips the book open and stares at the first page in horror: ”This book is the property of The Half-Blood Prince”
”No…” he says in a strangled voice.
”What’s that Harry?” Hermione’s dull voice calls from the kitchen.
”N-Nothing!” he yells back quickly.
Heart hammering wildly somewhere in the vicinity of his throat now, Harry glances down at the book again and lets his gaze travel further down the yellowed page, where a new addition has been added, darker than the original with its fresh ink but in similar swirly handwriting. Snape’s handwriting, Harry realises and stares numbly at the new words: ”Happy 17th Harry”
The book slips from Harry’s fingers and clatters to the floor.