Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Endurance	By : WinterRaven Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 29171 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to any of Harry Potter universe. I make no profit from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-One
- 2-Two
- 3-Three
- 4-Four
- 5-Five
- 6-Six
- 7-Seven
- 8-Eight
- 9-Nine
- 10-Ten
- 11-Eleven
- 12-Twelve
- 13-Thirteen
- 14-Fourteen
- 15-Fifteen
- 16-Sixteen
- 17-Seventeen
- 18-Eighteen
- 19-Nineteen
- 20-Twenty
- 21-Twenty-One
- 22-Twenty-Two
- 23-Twenty-Three
- 24-Twenty-Four
- 25-Twenty-Five
- 26-Twenty-Six
- 27-Twenty-Seven
- 28-Twenty-Eight
- 29-Twenty-Nine
- 30-Thirty
- 31-Thirty-One
- 32-Thirty-Two
- 33-Thirty-Three
- 34-Thirty-Four
- 35-Thirty-Five
- 36-Thirty-Six
- 37-Thirty-Seven
- 38-Thirty-Eight
- 6
- 7
- 8
Author's Note: Here's another request for reviews/critiques, especially from frequent readers! I'd like to know how I'm doing. Also a quick reminder that while this is a HP/DM story, it's going to take time before that happens. Thanks for being so patient with me! Enjoy.

Seven

Black eyes bore into frightened green ones, knowing, understanding.

Snape’s eyes flew back and forth between Harry’s wide orbs to the cuts on the boy’s wrist. The open wounds ravished Harry’s thin, wasting arm, red pouring forth like little waterfalls. Snape quickly noted the scars underneath the slightly fading purple bruises and the man stopped breathing: How had Poppy never noticed these? How long had Potter been harming himself? The scars seemed only weeks old, too recent for Snape’s liking. Snape couldn’t help but seem furious, his thin, sallow face contorted in anger, his teeth bared, livid.

His eyes locked on Harry’s again and he saw the boy quaking beneath his gaze, his body shaking as violently as if he were in the freezing cold. The blade was in Snape’s hand now. It was crusted over with blood and muck. But Snape knew he must master himself. He could not be angry with Potter, given what the boy had suffered that summer, given what he had suffered his entire life…

Snape understood that suffering. He empathized, remembering clearly his own self-destructive habits in his youth and his twenties, remembering, as if he had just done the act, the swipe of a blade across his arm above the Dark Mark, the rush of pain, the fleeting distraction. Snape’s angry expression melted, but Harry still stared back like a deer caught in the headlights, scared and waiting for what would come next. What was Snape going to do to him? Harry wondered incoherently if he would be expelled, punished, sent back to the Headmaster, sent back to the Dursleys—

“What were you doing?” Snape finally asked, breaking the horribly stuffy silence where the only sound were the steady drips of Harry’s blood meeting the tiled bathroom floor.

Harry noted the gentle tone in Snape’s voice and this frightened him more. Logic tried to override his instinct; Harry willed himself to remember that it was Snape who saved him from the Dursley’s, Snape who was giving him shelter now, Snape who had told Harry to trust him— But the fear crept in. Wasn’t it also Snape who tortured him for five years? Snape who taunted him because of his dead father’s actions, made part of his life at Hogwarts a living nightmare?

The words came blurting out before he could stop them; Harry’s instinct took over.

“What the fuck does it matter? What does it look like?” the boy snarled.

Snape’s eyebrows shot up.

“It looks like you’re being your usual reckless self,” Snape hissed through clenched teeth. As the last syllable left his lips, Snape knew the damage was done; he regretted his cheek immediately.

It seemed Harry was waiting for those words.

“Why the fuck do you care?” Harry screamed, now looking madder than ever.

Harry’s voice broke cleanly, evenly; the boy fought the tears fighting to surface, cursing himself for seeming so weak, so childish. He did not want to break down again in front of Snape, in front of anyone. Snape watched Harry in silence; he saw the internal battle brewing in his green eyes. The boy looked on the edge of hysteria.

Snape dropped all pretense at once. He opened his palm and the razor fell to the floor with a mundane clang. The man stepped forward, extending his hand to Harry in what he hoped was a non-threatening gesture.

“Come here,” he whispered.

Harry panicked at the concern in Snape’s voice. He slapped away Snape’s hand with the efficient speed of a Seeker, slapped him so hard the man almost staggered over. Harry backed up into a wall, his heart hammering wildly against his chest.

“Don’t touch me!” he screamed. “Don’t come near me!”

Harry saw the brief hesitation in Snape’s eyes as the man struggled with whether or not to obey Harry. The man tried racking his brains, thinking what he would have wanted if someone had caught him cutting himself— Would he want help?

He tried again, reaching out.

“Potter, I’m trying to help you.”

But Harry smacked his hand away again, shaking.

“Y-you don’t want to help me,” Harry stammered. His hands clenched into fists, blood spurting everywhere. “You don’t give a damn!” His voice broke again but Harry could not fight the rage, confusion, fear threatening to rip him apart. “No one gives a damn…”

The boy broke. He slid down the wall, weeping. He fell to the floor in a messy heap, stained in his own blood and tears. Snape, without pausing to think, leaned over and grabbed Harry, pulling him back up to his feet. His hands firmly held Harry’s shoulders, fingers tight against Harry’s flesh. He would not let go. The boy seemed to realize this and struggled against Snape, fury written all over his tear-streaked face. They made eye contact again, and then it happened— Snape saw her, Lily, looking back at him, not Harry. She was angry, vicious—but the image left as quickly as it came. He was looking at Harry again.

Harry stared at Snape, noted the blank look that had passed across his face. Snape blinked himself back to reality.

“I—” Snape started before composing himself. “You—you’re coming with me. Now.”

Harry did not respond.

“I don’t care if you want to or not, Potter, but I’m not going to let you bleed to death on the bathroom floor.”

He yanked Harry with him and the boy stopped fighting. What good was it to protest? Harry was marched back into his room and instructed to sit on the bed. He did as he was told, listlessly. Snape pulled his wand from his pant pocket, flicked it and all the lights in the room sputtered on. He pointed the wand at Harry’s arms, whispered an incantation so that the bleeding stopped and the cuts mended themselves seamlessly. Harry watched Snape’s brow furrowed in concentration, saw his jet black eyes moving quickly as he observed the wounds sewing shut.

Snape looked up. Harry said nothing; he had half expected Snape to throttle him…

“Harry,” Snape said, firmness in his voice. Harry stared at the man, trying to recall when Snape had ever used his first name. “Don’t think so lowly of yourself, Harry, hurting yourself… People do care about you. People care about you more than you understand.”

He didn’t know why he said those things; he certainly believed them but Snape felt desperate to make the boy see logic, see reason; to make him understand just how valuable he was. With a jolt, he realized he was trying to comfort Harry.

Harry’s eyes were downcast.

“That can’t be true,” the boy whispered.

“And why is that?”

“Because,” Harry murmured, “the only reason I’m wanted—the reason why I’m so valuable—is because I’m the only one who can defeat Voldemort.” Harry waited for Snape to snap at him for using the Dark Lord’s name, as he usually would have done, but no retort came. Harry looked up to find Snape peering at him curiously. The boy cleared his throat and continued, “Everyone wants a savior. The Prophecy said I was the savior… But no one cares about me, no one cares about Harry Potter, the boy.”

Snape stared at Harry with a pained expression on his face.

“They don’t know they’re going to die,” Harry said tonelessly. “No one knows I’m not strong enough. The only reason I lived in the first place is because my mum died for me—” Snape grimaced, as though those words caused him immense physical pain, but Harry did not notice. “If it weren’t for her, I’d be dead. Then what? No one understands that I can’t defeat Voldemort if I can’t keep myself safe. I-I couldn’t stop the Dursleys from abusing me… My u-uncle—”

The boy choked out his last words.

“What happened this summer was no fault of yours,” Snape said, an edge in his voice.

“Still…” Harry whispered. “Still. I couldn’t kill Bellatrix in the Department of Mysteries… I couldn’t stop Voldemort, though I had the chance to… I-I couldn’t save Sirius…” Tears fell freely now.

Snape grasped Harry’s shoulders again, but this time, he was far gentler. Harry did not recoil.

“There was nothing you could have done. People are going to die, that is inevitable. We have to do all we can. It’s not your fault that…that Sirius is dead. You are not everyone’s savior.”

To hear Snape say these things imbued Harry with newfound strength, to know that he meant those words was a balm against his pain. But something else bothered the boy.

“How can that be true if…if the Prophecy said I was the one to defeat Voldemort?” Harry realized his voice was unusually high. “I do have to save everyone. I have to kill Voldemort in the end. So many people are relying on me.”

A long pause occurred between the two. Harry hiccupped, trying to will away leftover tears. Snape had been surveying the boy thoughtfully, desperate to give Harry some glimmer of hope, to help him understand that he was not alone in his quest to defeat Voldemort, that there were others, like him, standing before the boy, that he would be there to teach him, to guide him along the way.

“You’re right,” Snape finally said. “I’m not going to sugarcoat reality to make it more palatable. But while you may think you’re the only one bent on defeating the Dark Lord, you aren’t alone. Others are fighting with you, constantly, like myself for instance, or Albus. You forget your strength. You are the only person alive who has escaped the Dark Lord not once but five times. Five times! Escaping five times does not come solely from luck.” They stared at each other, Snape’s eyes boring into Harry’s, willing him to understand. “You must realize you are not alone. You must not continue to allow yourself to…wallow in your misery about the past, about the people who have died. There will be time to mourn for them when the Dark Lord is defeated, but until that day comes, you must put your energy into yourself—into respecting yourself, building yourself up, training, understanding. You will be easy prey for the Dark Lord if you do not.”

Harry returned Snape’s hard gaze, uncertain if he should feel affronted that Snape accused him of ‘wallowing’…but was he right? Should Harry merely be thankful that Snape seemed to understand his fears, that the man seemed bent on making Harry feel better, feel as though he had some worth without treating him like a child? Harry kept himself silent, knowing, in the deepest recesses of his heart, his brain, that Snape was right—that Harry certainly wasn’t alone in this—but the boy did not want to admit this was true yet. Admitting that truth, that he had to care for himself, that he would have to train for this battle with Voldemort, was too difficult at that moment.

Snape took Harry’s silence to continue.

“Harry, if you concentrate on your cause, you can save countless others. You can be a beacon of hope.” A pause. Snape, Harry noted, seemed to be dealing with a brief internal struggle, as if trying to string his next words together carefully.

“I will probably play a role in your training,” Snape said quietly. “I have no doubt that Albus will want me to…and that…that I will want to.” Harry’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Snape pretended not to notice. “But I won’t be able to teach you anything, and I’m sure you will not be able to learn what I have to teach you…unless, we stop this nonsense that we’ve carried on for the past five years—”

Harry’s cheeks reddened; he opened his mouth, for the first time, to protest. Wasn’t it Snape who began that, after all? But the man read the boy’s mind. Snape was also slightly pink in the face as though admitting this wrongdoing was causing him great embarrassment.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Snape said, blinking furiously. “I carried on a grudge that had nothing to do with you. Foolish and immature on my part, I admit.” The man was getting redder in the face. “But, you do realize my role as a spy?” Harry nodded. “I could hardly make you my favorite with so many Death Eaters’ children around me. Kindness toward you would have raised suspicion…however, I know I did not have to be as cruel as I was. I should have explained myself to you. You must understand… I-I am not a kind person to begin with. I-I admit, I thought you to be like-like your father and by the time I realized how completely wrong I was…I thought it too late to admit my mistakes…”

He trailed off but still maintained eye contact with Harry. The boy stared back at him, taken aback. He realized that in Snape saying those things, in admitting his wrongdoings, he was trying to make amends. The boy never thought Snape was capable of this; certainly, it now made sense why Snape was so cruel to Harry, but had it been right of Snape to assume him like his father? Could Harry blame him? The boy wasn’t even sure what he felt about his father anymore, given what he saw in Snape’s Pensive last year. And at the same time, hadn’t Harry also been prejudiced towards Snape; hadn’t he inherited the centuries old feud between Gryfindors and Slytherins? Hadn’t he formed his own, perhaps incorrect, ideas about Snape’s character and disposition?

It was then that Harry nodded, trying to show Snape he understood, he accepted what he had just said. Snape seemed to take this as a good sign.

“Well then,” the man whispered. “I am…willing to put the past behind me if you can. You do not have to consider me as a friend either; I understand if you do not want to. And I want you to know, I am not saying these things because you are my student, because I must teach you… I’m saying them because I empathize with you. All I ask is that you are willing to work hard and learn, not only from myself but from others…”

“You empathize with me?”

Snape nodded. He pulled his hands away from Harry’s shoulders and without ceremony, peeled back the long sleeves of his black shirt. He held his bare forearms out to Harry; the boy’s eyes zoomed from the Dark Mark, black and evil looking as ever, to a more surprising discovery. Countless raised, white scars marring the flesh; above the Dark Mark, below it, covering every possible space. Harry stared in shock.

“You-you too?” the boy asked, aghast, as he leaned forward to have a better look.

“Yes. For many years.”

There was a guarded look in Snape’s eyes now as if he were trying to shield past memories from flooding him. Harry looked at him in awe.

“I don’t want you to go down that path, Harry. It is not a glorious path, it is not easy and it is far too destructive on the body and soul.”

“I know,” Harry whispered, looking back into Snape’s face.

The man pulled his sleeves back down and his arms hung limply by his side.

“Thank you,” Harry said. “Thank you for showing me that. I-I never knew…”

Snape smiled softly.

“Few people do,” he said.

Harry cleared his throat, staring down at his own, new, fresher cuts. Snape’s seemed much deeper; his pain seemed darker, more consuming. Harry shivered, not wanting to imagine what type of state the man must have been in while hurting himself. But Harry knew Snape was right; he did not want to let the self-destructiveness consume him. He wanted to pull out of it.

“I-I want to put the past behind us,” Harry whispered. “I want to learn everything you have to teach me. I want to…to stop… I want to stop hurting myself too.”

“I am here to help you,” was Snape’s calm response.

Harry held out his hand. Snape embraced it with his own and the two shook to a new beginning.

TBC
- 6
- 7
- 8
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Endurance