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Harry Potter and the Expert Potions Master	By : SickPuppy Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 21301 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe. I make no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Quick note - this is a long story (longer than Prisoner of Azkaban) so don't expect a PWP. It came about as I wanted a satisfactory explanation of various things from the HP universe, so I set about writing them myself (mostly to keep me entertained). Most of the story is canon compliant (with a couple of fairly obvious exceptions) and all things Muggle are accurate for the time period.
The story picks up after the Battle of Hogwarts in Deathly Hallows.
And this is for Christine, who is always so supportive. Sorry I'm not a better friend. SP
(HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS)
Chapter 37 - After the Battle
Hours passed.
Harry, Ron and Hermione sat quietly together, making occasional comments, and surveyed the damage. Harry sat next to his best friends and couldn't help the feeling of isolation that swept over him and settled firmly as he looked at the two. Now, more than ever, he was an outsider. He had known, of course, that Ron and Hermione cared for one another. How could he not? But now they were a couple, a pair, and had no need of any third person.
During one of their long silences, Harry got up silently, still under the cloak, and walked away. In some indefinable way, Harry walked away from a friendship he had relied upon for seven years.
Is this victory? he wondered, feeling empty and hollow, and seeing the destruction all around. Unnecessary destruction if only Voldemort had realised it. But he hadn't and people had died. People were now lying in the Great Hall, surrounded by mourners. Someone would have to notify their families that they weren't coming back.
A wave of desolation almost knocked Harry off his feet. So many dead for nothing. And what good did mourning them do? It didn't help the person, cold and stiff on the rubble-strewn floor.
Stumbling on feet made leaden by exhaustion, Harry trudged through the school. He noticed the blasted windows, the cracked and crumbling walls, the chunks of rocks on the staircases. One staircase kept switching position, never settling long enough for anyone to safely step on. And still Harry continued out of the building, not really aware of where he was going or why, just knowing he had to escape.
He clambered over a huge lump of masonry, his tired body skidding on it and grazing his skin, and then he was outside.
In the courtyard the destruction was all too clear. Hogwarts, his first true home, had been ruined. Any wandering Muggle wouldn't need to see a falsely ruined castle, it was all too real. It was here that the price paid was more obvious: arched stonework lying in jumbled heaps; one section of wall flattened by a giant's club that must have fallen out of the owner's hand, as it still rested awkwardly on the shattered wall; marks on every surface showing where spells had missed their targets; one spell had hit with such force that a jagged lightning shaped crack had been created in the brickwork. And yet this was just one area where the fight had been – a few short minutes of battle and something which had seemed so secure and sturdy had shown itself to be neither.
Now more than ever, Harry felt like the school itself. So many people had expected so much of him for so long, he'd had to be secure and sturdy, and now he realised he was neither.
If this was victory, what was defeat like?
His body led him away from the devastation, towards something he hadn't acknowledged yet. He stumbled in the grass, tumbling to the ground, the cloak falling from him. One hand grabbed at the slippery material in passing and he continued ever one, the precious garment loosely dangling from one hand. The other hand held his wand, but even that grip was relaxed.
It was when he came within sight of the Whomping Willow that Harry understood what he had been moving towards: Snape. The one man not mourned. The one man isolated, like Harry, apart from all of the other dead. Even Voldemort's corpse was stored at the school, but not Snape. Not Hogwarts latest Headmaster, and Harry's most loyal defender.
It seemed odd, even knowing what had been revealed in the Pensieve, to think of Snape as Harry's protector and helper, but there was no denying that Severus Snape had been both of those. Both of those and far far more. Willing to risk his soul to save Draco, willing to gamble his life over and over again to help the Order, willing to sacrifice his happiness to do what was right.
To Harry it was incomprehensible. Could love last so long? Snape seemed to be evidence that that was the case, but Harry couldn't believe it. How could anyone, Snape especially, continue loving, day after day, when all hope was gone from his life?
Not just the hope that Lily could love him, or even return from the dead, but the joy of life itself, the joy of living. Snape had never appeared to enjoy anything. How could love survive in that frigid, barren landscape?
Harry was close enough to the Willow to be able to freeze it with a judiciously levitated twig pressing against its knothole.
Were all things so easy to stop? Did Harry have a 'pause' button that he had never realised? And how unkind was it to force the tree into immobility? What did it feel during those moments of helpless stillness: frustration? Or was it not even aware?
So many questions. So many things Harry had taken for granted and only now was he truly beginning to think and develop his own ideas about things. And now, really, was almost too late for thought. For nearly eighteen years, well certainly the last seven, Harry had acted first, relying on Hermione to do his thinking for him. Well now that was over. He had to begin thinking and reasoning for himself. It was high time he was curious about all the things around him that he'd always just accepted.
Stepping forward suddenly, Harry realised that the tree had been stuck while his thoughts had free-wheeled. He wriggled through the gap and stroked the tree in apology. Above him he heard the swishing of the branches as the Willow was released from its temporary imprisonment. It thrashed wildly, as if to make up for that awful, forced, helpless, stillness.
The crawl along the passage took a long time. Harry stopped just at the entrance to the tunnel and folded the invisibility cloak up and tucked it under his top, stuffing some of the material into his jeans to prevent the garment slipping. He slid his wand up his jacket sleeve, ready to be grabbed at a moment's notice. Harry did feel rather vulnerable like this, but crawling was difficult enough without a wand possibly tangling on hidden roots, and handicapping him so that only one hand was really able to bear weight or feel about.
His shoulders brushed the roof, bringing showers of dry dirt onto him, but he didn't stop. He didn't care. Not about his discomfort, not about the silence, not about the feeling of earth pressing in on all sides. Here, under the ground, he felt safe. The cold numbness in his heart eased slightly and he could feel again: the painful jab of a sharp stone under his knee, the rough texture of a root coiling along the wall, the dryness of the soil under his fingers, the dampness of the air he drew into his lungs, that was what was real. Far more real than what had taken place that night. Far more real than anything Harry felt. Far more real than Harry himself.
At the end of the passageway, Harry stopped. He didn't want to go into the room and sit there next to a dead man, but neither did he want to leave Snape's body to decay alone. Maybe, he told himself, seeing him dead and having time to understand what that means will help me come to terms with all the corpses I left behind in the Great Hall.
Cautiously, Harry edged out and straightened up.
Looking about him, he felt amazed. Nothing had changed in the Shrieking Shack. How could so much in Harry's life have changed, in Harry's very soul, and yet nothing here had? The world had gone on turning without caring about Harry's trauma. Feeling very insignificant indeed, Harry crept forward. Moving stealthily wasn't really necessary for a dead person, but he didn't want to just stomp forward as though what was ahead was just a thing.
Harry shuddered. Without his soul, without his life, Snape's body was just that. A thing to be moved and put somewhere neatly out of the way so that everyone else could get on with their own affairs. Remembered on birthdays, anniversaries of deaths, and special occasions, but otherwise forgotten. Anger coursed through Harry. He understood, having been so close to that other place, that the dead wouldn't care what happened to what they left behind, but he cared. He cared so much he burned with it. He wasn't going to be able to neatly get rid of Fred, Lupin, Tonks, Colin, Snape, Dumbledore, Dobby and all the rest of the dead so easily. He was going to carry them with him forever. And that was only right; they had died because of him.
For now, though, all he could do was ensure that Snape was not left here unloved and alone.
The mangled remains on the floor were left just as they had been when Harry had last seen Snape alive: black cloak screwed up around him, twisted and folded into grotesque shapes, pale pale skin showing over the black collar, while around the body dark red fluid had begun to sink into the warped dry floorboards, making them swell and creak.
Harry drew in a deep breath, hearing a sob in his own voice. Around the head were faint streaks of pale silver liquid: more of Snape's memories that had spilled out before Harry could catch them. Could he still capture them now? Understand more of this enigmatic man lying dead he had so misunderstood in life?
He dropped to his knees and gently stroked one pallid, slack cheek. The warmth surprised him. Harry had no experience of corpses really. Cedric he had pulled back with him but not paid attention to anything other than returning to safety, so he couldn't say whether his skin had been cool or warm, although Harry had a faint memory of the arm being unwieldly, and reluctant to move. Watching television with the Dursleys had given him a few details about death: the way blood gathered at the lowest bits of the body, and then the corpse stiffened before relaxing. His aunt had had a fascination for police procedural shows and even though forbidden to watch (heaven forbid Harry watch anything he might have enjoyed), Harry had heard plenty whilst under the stairs, or later, when he had had a room of his own.
Those half-remembered programmes came back to him as he touched the body near him. Harry shifted the hair carefully, not even noticing that it didn't feel anywhere near as greasy as it looked, and peered at the back of Snape's head. In the dim light it was difficult to tell if there was blood pooling there, but then, given how much Snape had lost, was there any left to gather?
Harry stroked his fingers over the black cloth, down, over the arm to Snape's right hand. It too felt warm. Harry looked at the long fingers, discoloured nails, wrinkled skin and slipped his own fingers between Snape's, holding this man's hand as no-one had done in life.
So warm. So very warm. Almost life-like. Almost.
The hand twitched. Tightened very slightly on Harry's, then relaxed.
Harry stared. He had imagined it. He had to have. There was no way Snape was still alive, not after having been so brutally attacked. It was impossible. Harry rubbed his eyes with his free hand and stared intently at the hand he held. Nothing moved. Sadness and exhaustion took Harry and he collapsed beside Snape, instantly asleep.
Next to him, sparks of golden magic struck the pale hand. At first the sparks seemed to bounce off, then one penetrated, then two, then dozens, all infiltrating the skin and flowing freely into the body. Harry gave a great heave of breath and sank deeper into sleep unaware that he was sharing his magic, unaware even that such magic was possible.
But, as Dumbledore had repeatedly told Voldemort and Harry, love magic was the most powerful magic there was.
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Harry Potter and the Expert Potions Master