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Vivisection	By : LumosMinima Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 5978 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or the characters from it. I make no money writing fanfiction. No infringement is intended.

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It didn’t take long for Harry to get rid of Snape, returning him to the Centre, assuring Dawlish he didn’t want a refund, and everything was fine.

He couldn’t help but watch Snape disappear back into the shadows of his cell, never giving Harry another look.

Harry left immediately after that, wanting nothing better than to return to the former state of numbness, not feeling anything, not keeping track of time, not needing anything and not being needed. It didn’t quite happen.

He spent hours just washing his hands, trying to erase the memory of touching Snape, and still feeling like he had something of Snape left on them.

He spent a full day, sitting on the porch where Snape had sat. He finished the pack of John Players, while staring at the ground under his feet and knowing that his final words to Snape were meaningless. There was no “we” for Harry to be a part of. Somebody else was working on the problem of the cursed earth, somebody else was keeping the peace and protecting the people. For everything, there was someone else.

He was outdated, a relic at the age of twenty-five. The spells he designed and learned during the war were no longer needed. In a way, he was just as useless as Snape.

Harry shook his head, Evanescoed the empty cigarette pack and rose to his feet. He imagined he needed to go back to the world, get out of the house where he had all but marooned himself to slowly go insane.

He began to walk toward the anti-Apparition boundary, a few miles away from the house. He’d walked this distance before a few times (other times, he just used the Floo), and yet, this time, it felt different. He was aware of how unalive the ground felt under his feet. It had a feeling of a walking across the graveyard, and Snape’s final parting words continued to taunt him.

Perhaps, it was no wonder that thinking of Snape became an obsession he couldn’t be rid of, no matter how hard he tried.

Half an hour later, he Apparated to Diagon Alley. For a few minutes he stood motionless, taking in the bright new buildings, new shops, new bright displays in the windows.

There was plenty of red everywhere: signs, banners, lights. Many houses were red-brick, others were painted different shades of it, from pale pink to a deep garnet. Belatedly, Harry remembered that Diagon Alley was called “the Blood Alley” these days – either because so many people died, trying to defend it, or because of the new colours, he didn’t know.

“Everything on sale, thirty-five percent off every new arrival! Hurry and don’t miss this great opportunity! All proceeds of the day will be donated to St. Mungo’s Phage Care Ward!” A shrill female voice cried out behind Harry’s back. Harry turned around, realizing belatedly that he was standing near the doorway to the Bloody Book Bin – the Alley’s new book shop. The voice belonged to an animated doll, human-sized. The doll’s face looked glossy and shiny. Large blue eyes stared expressionlessly and rubbery lips were stretched unnaturally into a perfectly creepy smile.

Harry winced and entered the shop.

It was mayhem inside. People were grabbing the books off the shelves, arguing and elbowing each other. Harry looked around, feeling lost before he got started.

He spotted a lonely figure in the corner of the room. Thin, tall and hooded, it seemed familiar, somehow, and Harry headed in that direction.

The person turned around and Harry gasped before he could manage to moderate his reaction. He barely recognized the young man in front of him: Terry Boot’s face was mutilated, as if someone, or something, had fed on him for a while before letting him go.

Harry cursed himself for his reaction: he still wasn’t used to the way the Phage had affected all Muggle-borns. Another testament to Snape’s work, Harry thought morosely. He still couldn’t credit how lucky they all had been that the Phage had exhausted itself before actually killing anyone.

Terry grinned at him.

“I know, I know, I look like a zombie. Been a while, Harry.” Terry extended his hand to Harry, and Harry shook it firmly. “How are you doing?”

Harry opened his mouth and shut it. He didn’t know what to say. He remembered the momentary insanity of actually speaking with Snape, and letting him have a cigarette, and couldn’t quite look Terry in the eye.

“I’m okay, I guess.”

“All right.” Terry’s hand was withdrawn. “Look, if you ever want to – you know, reconnect, come find me. I live a block down, above the new quill shop. Me and Jordan share a flat.”

“Sure,” Harry said, trying to imagine what it would be like to visit someone. He failed miserably. “I’ll do that.”

Terry stared at him intently.

“You all right? You don’t look so well. Do you want to come to our place now?”

“Maybe another time. Excuse me.” Harry managed to get away somehow, feeling Terry’s gaze on his back the entire time.

In his attempts to make some distance between himself and Terry, Harry found himself by a small table, fully dedicated to a single book. Harry glanced at it – the book seemed like a children’s type of story. The title certainly suggested something of the sort: “The Girl Who Couldn’t Run Away.” Yet the cover looked like it might have been a horror novel. Harry did a double take, when he noticed the author’s name; Luna Lovegood.

“This one isn’t on sale, I’m afraid,” the shop owner, a young red-head vaguely reminiscent of Percy, said apologetically.

“Not a new arrival?” Harry asked.

“Oh, it’s new enough,” the redhead said, sounding vexed. “It’s just that Miss Lovegood refused to reduce the price or donate any of the proceeds to St. Mungo. Said she needs all the money she can get.”

“Yeah, renting Dolohov must cost her a fortune,” Harry muttered under his breath, suddenly sickened by everything: the memory of Snape, naked and helpless in his house, and the thought of Luna doing some foul things to someone who should have died but didn’t.

“I beg your pardon, I didn’t catch that,” the redhead said.

“It’s nothing. How much for the book?”

“Forty-five galleons.”

“You ought to be joking.”

“Alas. Lovegood calculated the price personally to maximize the profits.”

Harry smiled. Who would have thought that dreamy loony Lovegood would be capable of being this practical. Then again, if his experience with Snape was any indication, he didn’t know people, not really.

“I’ll take the book. Can you let Lovegood know that I’d like to visit her one day?” Harry asked. Somehow, he could stand the thought of seeing Luna again.

“She doesn’t accept visitors. She values her seclusion.”

“I’m sure. Let her know just the same. Maybe she’ll make an exception for me.”

“All right.”

Harry paid for the book and left the shop promptly. On his way out, he gave the glossy doll a quick glance, suddenly wanting to punch it. He didn’t, of course, making a scene wasn’t really in his plans.

Before returning home, he picked up a bottle of Firewhiskey at what used to be the Leaky Cauldron, and was now called the Red Door pub.

***

The book turned out to be a real horror novel, and it wasn’t half bad, as Harry discovered, lying in his bed under a pile of blankets.

The “girl” turned out to be a sixty-year old woman, who moved from place to place every few years, because she was pursued by monsters. Each time she settled in a new town or village and started a new life, the monsters would invariably find her and she fled all over again. Harry scratched his head. He had a rather unpleasant feeling that the book wouldn’t end well, so he shut it and shoved it under his bed.

For a while he continued stare into the ceiling. As he began to drift off, the disjointed images of the day’s events continued to swim before his eyes. The lonely figure of Terry Boot, his disfigured, Phage-ravaged face that suddenly turned smooth and glossy, with the lips acquiring a rubbery look. Harry opened his eyes again and let out a deep sigh.

He reached for the book, gritted his teeth and finished it, even though he didn’t really need to. He guessed the ending before he got to it.

“I knew that,” Harry said, shoving the book back under the bed. “The monsters, the whole army of them, lived inside her, that’s why she couldn’t get away.” He smirked, wondering if Lovegood was really trying to get away from her monsters, or if she simply was explaining why she couldn’t.

Maybe that was her way of making peace with her monsters. Making enough money to contract out the man who killed her father – just once a month, and setting them loose on him.

It hurt to think of Lovegood doing something like that for some reason. Doing that just once left Harry a mess, feeling sick to the stomach and nauseated. He couldn’t imagine what many months of this would do to someone.

He fell asleep, dreaming of the red-brick houses, red banners and window displays and an animated doll, wearing a red dress. The doll’s face was glossy and pretty and dead, but the sunken black eyes were alive, and seemed to be living a life of their own.

to be contnued

delia cerrano : thank you for your thoughts; I know what you mean, I imagine Harry not being in his right mind to a point. As for Snape.... I think there's always more to Snape.
M3 : thank you for reading and reviewing. : )
thewinterraven : thank you very much for your kind words. tension and longing for each other without really being able to explain it fully -- those things are usually at the centre of my favourite Snarry fics, not that I've read very many yet.
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Vivisection