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Love is Cold	By : CruelHero Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 9166 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor any of the characters associated with the Harry Potter universe. I make no profit from the writing of this story.

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Love is Cold

A Harry Potter Fanfiction

By Cruel_Hero

Chapter One

The war was brutal. That much no one could argue.

Families were torn apart by death. Children were left without a home, without a father, mother, siblings; spouse without a spouse; without a future, without love.

The war was every bit of what they said it was. But there were few who knew, who saw with horrified eyes, who felt the true pain of what had come to pass, because they were there, because they fought in the front lines and died on the inside by every life they had destroyed.

And yet, still, no one knew the war like Harry Potter knew it, like Harry Potter felt it with every ounce of his soul. Not one single person’s anguish held a candle to the so-called ‘Golden Boy’s’.

Time after bloody time, the people that Harry dared to love fell around him as he watched the light die within their eyes. And those he loathed triumphed in the name of the Dark Lord up until the very last.

He saw people tortured, raped, murdered; visions that he couldn’t escape from even in his dreams. He was hunted, brutalized, abandoned and double-crossed in a war that raged and centered around him. He was led to the slaughter like a clueless lamb, kept in the dark, when the information he needed would have saved others if he had just been told it in the first place.

In his meager seven years of existence in the magical world, Harry had accumulated enough guilt and self-hatred to last him ten lifetimes.

The final battle had cost him so much more than anyone could know.

Victory meant nothing to Harry.

He’d waited for death for so long- longed for it even, in the deep of night, when no one was there to see his weakness. He believed with all his heart that he should have died for everyone that day and, ironically, surviving it had made life after the war that much harder. He found in himself a deep, unfathomable loneliness, a secret desire for his final breath. And, though he wasn’t ungrateful for his remaining friends, he was bitter towards them.

The fallen haunted him endlessly. The death he willingly went to could not have saved them and staying dead would not bring them back, he knew that. The thought of it tormented him. And that was the very reason he returned - the reason he stayed on the battlefield to the last, trying so desperately to save the few he had found still clinging to their threads of life.

They called him a Hero.

They called him a Saint.

Some even dared to call him an Angel sent from the Heavens.

But Harry was just a lonely lost child, forced to grow up before his time, who yearned to ease the guilt of all the deaths he’d caused and knew that not even his own death would find him resting well. His heart called him to return to the living, to stay and try to make up for the damage he had caused the world.

Ultimately, Snape was the first he ran to. Harry saw his as the greatest sacrifice to the war. He thought that if anyone deserved to survive, surely it would be the man who spent his entire life trying to protect him for his mother’s sake. He refused to let Snape die after all he had done for him- he owed him that much at the very least.

And no one understood better than Severus Snape what it felt like to have the full weight of the war resting on your shoulders. Harry needed to know that someone else was alive who knew that feeling. Hated or not, he needed to know that he wasn’t alone. Yes, he had Hermione and Ron, but it wasn’t the same.

So much of what had happened he hid from them to protect their innocence. They didn’t know, couldn’t know, how truly bad his life had been. But Harry had seen Snape’s life. They were so similar with out even realizing it. He could have had a companion, a friend and mentor, if he’d only been more willing to put the past aside.

He felt cheated and if he let Snape die too, he knew he would never feel satisfied with how it ended between them. It would sit at the back of his mind forever, frustrating him like so many other things he could not change.

Yet, despite his efforts, Snape lay dying. Nothing he could do would fix that.

In a private room of a private hospital ward, behind a guarded door and a lonely, empty hall, a broken man fought off death. He had no visitors. He had no flowers, no gifts, nor cards of well wishes and the only person that actually wanted to see him couldn’t escape long enough to do it. Even though Harry had been so close to the very hallway that held Snape’s hospital room, he didn’t know if Snape was going to die or if he’d even get see him before he did.

Guilt twisted Harry’s insides, ate at his bowels, made him sick to the point that he could hardly eat. So many people wanted something from him, demanded his help, his testimony; he didn’t think there was enough of his self left to give them. And it didn’t matter what he felt, what and when was chosen for him. His weeks were so full of press conferences, trials, reward ceremonies, funerals, hospital visits (except to the one man he should have seen), that the only time he had to himself was when he passed out at night from exhaustion.

Denial and fear ran his thoughts amuck and it wasn’t until several weeks after the clearing of Snape’s name that Harry finally gathered the courage to go and see him.

Perhaps it was guilt, or gratitude, or maybe the precious comfort of the silent solitude he found nowhere else except by Snape’s side, but Harry was compelled to return, and if he gave it a little bit of thought it might even have had something to do with that small amount of affection that grew from the memories he had been given. He didn’t know for sure why. But one thing was for certain: Snape couldn’t judge Harry. He couldn’t yell at him, or curse him, foolishly thank him, ask him a million questions, or force him to relive the things he could barely stand to remember in the first place. Snape made no demands, no meaningless vows of affection. Snape couldn’t even look at Harry and that was something that Harry desperately needed.

There were times when Harry felt a crushing remorse for using Snape in that way, but what comfort the man’s silent presence gave to him outweighed that feeling a hundred times over. He needed Snape, whether he could admit it or not.

And even after the end of the trials, when those hoards of wizards and witches who each wanted a piece of him dispersed, and his days weren’t filled to burst with the ‘duties’ of a war hero, Harry returned to Snape’s side. Because too many things had changed too fast for him and harry wanted to hold on to at least one thing that made sense. He had a duty to see Snape through, and weather he got better or died, Harry would be there. Because having a duty made sense and everything else that changed could be dealt with in time.

                                                                *****

Every day Harry sat in front of the enchanted infirmary window beside Snape’s bed. He thought about the war and the man who had saved his life more times that he probably knew about. Despite the contempt Snape had only ever been shown in return, he still watched over Harry and his friends. The realization of that fact made Harry ashamed of all those years he had spent hating and distrusting the Potions Professor. He wished he could take back all the things he had said. Snape was a horrible, Slytherin biased, ill-tempered man, but somewhere inside that malevolence was a heart, and that mattered to Harry.

Still, Snape’s motives confused him. Harry couldn’t understand why he would protect a child he detested. Even if Snape had loved his mother, it made little sense to him.

He tried to imagine what went through Snape’s mind during all of those years of playing the puppet for two equally dangerous wizards and going back and forth between the dangers, but it was hard for him to grasp and accept the memories he had been shown.

There were so many things he needed to say, so many questions he wanted to ask the man, though Harry supposed he might not ever be able to talk to Snape again. Looking back on their past, he found it ironic how he desperately wished he could speak to him, when before it would have been like punishment.

Watching Snape’s wounds refuse to heal, his mind frozen inside, was unfulfilling- mockingly so. Harry desperately needed to make things better. He needed to tell Snape that he was sorry. He wanted to say thank you for all the things the man had done, that he should have noticed, but didn’t.

He wanted to, but he couldn’t, not when the man wouldn’t be able to hear it. It meant nothing that way.

His friends and classmates paired up or got married as they all waited for the return to Hogwarts. They seemed to be so happy just living past the war. The Order continued to hunt down remaining Death Eaters and questionable sympathizers. And Hogwarts’ Professors spent their days returning the grounds to working order.

Life, in general, moved on and no one understood why Harry didn’t join them, or why he chose to keep the company of a comatose man he’d claimed he’d hated once upon a time. He’d say that it didn’t feel right to let Snape die alone because he couldn’t tell them that he needed to be there as much for himself as he felt someone needed to be there for Snape. He didn’t think they would understand just how much his guilt was affecting him or why he needed to be with Snape to ease some of it away.

And his words were true in the beginning and for a time it appeased them, but his half lie only lasted so long. Then Hermione would give him a hesitant smile and Ron would look at him like he wasn’t quite right. And Harry would have agreed if he weren’t so bloody tired of thinking about the ‘why?’ of his actions.

Everyone seemed to think that Harry needed to find something ‘better’ to pass the hours with. They certainly didn’t hold back in telling him so. But after three months Harry had grown accustom to the silence, to the quiet heartbeat projected through wizarding monitors, and the simple calm of the otherwise empty white room. He didn’t think there was something ‘better’ to pass his hours with.

                                                                          *****

Near the end of the forth month Snape’s condition took a turn for the worse. The side of his neck was still a gaping hole of rotten, weeping flesh, eaten away by vicious poison, and his heartbeat had slowed to a dull rumble. Harry didn’t want to leave his side. He was afraid Snape would die while no one was around. He spent sleepless nights pacing his room at Grimmauld Place just waiting for the moment visiting hours resumed and he could rush back to the Hospital.

Several times Harry truly thought Snape wasn’t going to make it. The monitor’s beeps would skip and stop, and Harry would suck in a breath to hold, hoping they would start up again before his lungs began to ache, because the thought of a world with out Severus Snape made his chest constrict in a way that never really ceased once the thought passed.

On the afternoon of a lunch party at the Burrow, where Ron and Hermione announced their engagement and Luna and Neville proclaimed the conceivement of their child, Harry feigned excitement on their behalf and ate too many sweets so that he could be reasonably excused from the party. His life was too full of sorrow to stand their happiness for very long.

He stopped in his garden to vomit and then apparated straight over to see Snape.

When he arrived at the hallway, which housed Severus Snape’s room, a nurse with a devilish glare passed by him wheeling away a cart with dirty, blood stained bedclothes. Harry had never seen them do that before. He panicked, thinking back to his muggle childhood and the ‘occasional’ visits he’d made to the Hospital then. A troubling feeling came over him. What if it was something they only did when a patient died?

Harry took off running. His feet hammered the ground and he didn’t care if Snape was only two rooms away from him. He couldn’t stand to wait those few extra seconds that walking took to find out if Snape had died.

He halted in front of the door. His hand hovered just above the knob, fingers twitching to grasp the metal. And there it was, like an invisible wall keeping him out, not an empty bed as he had feared, but one crooked at an angle to support a frail, sitting, awake, man. Snape’s heartbeat drummed through the monitor strong and steady and alive.

Harry nearly sank to the floor in his relief, and as he stood outside the door to the room he had occupied for so many months, peering through the tiny window at the man he couldn’t let go, he simply could not bring himself to open the door. Not a single word would rise to his lips.

So he turned around and slowly drifted home.

Every morning thereafter he found himself looking in the little window and every morning he found himself unable to go in, until the day he peered through the window and found that Snape was no longer there.

He stood for a long time, blankly watching the empty bed and wondering what to do.

Then a voice startled him.

“He’s a stubborn one, don’t you think?” it asked.

He jolted and whirled around to face a woman dressed in white robes, smiling sweetly from behind her auburn bangs. He briefly thought he might have seen her before, changing the bandages around Snape’s neck. Harry shook his head and smiled politely. He hadn’t heard what she had said.

“That man,” she pointed to the empty room, “he is your friend, right? None of the other nurses liked to treat him, but I found him entertaining.”

“Oh, uh, No I…” Harry shook his head again, backing away from the door. He could feel his cheeks turning hot and hoped she wouldn’t notice.

If she had, she didn’t say. Instead she came to stand beside him and peered in the room herself. “If you are looking for him, you are too late,” she said, handed him a black set of robes and smiling at his frown. “They released him a few hours ago. Happily, I should think. I say he is stubborn because he tried so hard to recover his strength. Of course there is magical help for that, but still. Never in my years as a mediwitch have I ever seen a man try so hard to leave.”

She chuckled, and pointed to the clothes. “Those are his. The ones he arrived in. I was able to repair them quite easily. I’m so pleased, too. I was going to give them to him myself but my shift just started and it would seem that I have missed him as well. Would you return them to him for me?”

Harry’s blush grew stronger. The girl’s smile was charming but, in truth, he didn’t know if he would be seeing Snape again. Still, he couldn’t turn her down. She had taken the time to repair the man’s things, after all. The least he could do was give her some form of happiness in return, and in doing so it would be the first useful thing he could do for Snape.

Harry stared at the folded jacket. The memory of blood soaking into the collar filtered through his mind, bringing back a sliver of the terror he felt that night. He caressed the fabrics in his hand. “Alright…” he replied, glancing momentarily at her before he turned to leave.

“Thank you, Mr. Potter,” she called, and watched his retreating back with a grin.
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Love is Cold