Between Fine Lines

Thirty.

'Listen up and listen well, I am giving you the opportunity to gather your dead. Harry Potter and only Harry Potter will meet me in the Forbidden Forest and we will finish this once and for all. If Harry does not come to meet me, I will descend upon the school again with my death eaters and will murder every last man, woman and child who does not submit to my reign. You have one hour.'

Draco shuddered where he stood in Dumbledore's office, watching as Theo dug into his ear with his finger. He had the same feeling, wanting to scratch out his insides, scrub the feeling of Voldemort and his dark magic from his flesh and blood.

Harry rubbed at his scar, his eyes closing briefly at the pain that spiked through his forehead, feeling as if a spear had gone in through his skull, straight through his brain and out the other side of his head. With the pensieve floating in front of him, he uncorked the bottle of tears and dumped them in, watching the liquid swirl, the wisps of silver clouding up the pool of water.

With a deep breath, he plunged his head in, watching as the memories formed around him. The first few memories went by quickly as he watched a young Severus and a young Lily meet before Hogwarts, watched them on the train platform, the look of disdain in his eyes as James and Sirius made fun of Slytherin house.

Harry frowned as he watched the pain on Severus' face as his only friend was sorted into Gryffindor. He winced as he watched them argue, Snape calling his mother a mudblood and storming off. He watched through Snape's eyes the fight that Sirius had told him about toward the end of fifth year, watching as Regulus tackled Sirius to the ground, wailing into his older brother as Frank Longbottom tried to pull Reggie off and got an elbow to the face.

The memories swirled again and now he was looking at an older Snape and an older Regulus, the two of them were arguing in what he assumed to be Snape's home, with Regulus pointing at Kreacher, who looked like he was on death's doorstep despite the charms Severus seemed to be casting over him to heal him.

'How are you going to tell me that you want to allow this to happen? Look what he did to Kreacher! House elf magic is ten times stronger than any kind of magical being and he's almost dead-he could have died!' Regulus was shouting at Severus, and the young man had an anger in his eyes that Harry had only seen one other time from the potions professor.

'What do you want me to do about it?' Snape yelled back. 'I have someone I need to protect too!'

'If you won't help me! I'll do it myself!'

Harry took a step closer to the memory, but it swirled from his view and now he found himself watching a much older Snape, closer to the age he knew him to be now, begging Dumbledore to protect Lily. Harry watched as Dumbledore scolded Snape, having no interest in saving James or an innocent babe that would be Harry, but he was willing to sacrifice everything, to become a double agent just to protect Lily.

'Anything. I'll do anything, I've already lost the only other person that was important to me,' memory Snape pleaded.

Harry watches Snape cry on the floor of Dumbledore's office and he knows this is either the night or shortly after the night his parents were murdered. Harry watches Snape agree to continue to be a double agent for the Order, to help protect Harry at all costs.

Many more of the memories take place in Dumbledore's office, the two men going back and forth, deciding what information could be leaked to Voldemort and what should remain secret. Harry watches as Snape and Albus meet at what Harry is pretty sure a room above the Hogs Head, and Snape informs Dumbledore that Draco is a death eater and with shock, Harry continues to watch as Dumbledore makes Snape promise that if Draco can't fulfill the task of killing him, Snape must do so to protect him, because Dumbledore is dying anyway.

The scene shifts one final time, back to Dumbledore's office. Dumbledore tells Snape that Harry must not know what he has to do until the final moment, and that after Dumbledore's death, there will come a time when Voldemort fears for Nagini's life. He instructs Snape that, if there is ever a time when Voldemort keeps Nagini magically protected and always in his sight, Snape must then tell Harry that he is a seventh Horcrux, inadvertently created by Voldemort, and that Harry must die in order for Voldemort to be killed. Snape feels tricked, and upset that Dumbledore made him protect Lily's son only to have him die. Dumbledore asks if Snape has grown to care for Harry, but Snape spurns that possibility and casts his Patronus, a silver-white doe. Dumbledore, shocked, asks Snape, "After all this time?", to which Snape says, "Always."

Harry pulls himself from the pensieve at the end of the final memory, falling to the floor with a 'thud'! He has three pairs of concerned eyes looking at him, but Ron is the first to move to help Harry up.

"Well... what happened?" Theo questioned. "Yeah, what did you see?" Ron added in.

Harry fixed his glasses, which were askew on his face and stood up properly, brushing himself off.

"I found out what I have to do to defeat him," Harry informed the three boys.

"What do you have to do?" Draco questioned nervously.

"Doesn't matter," Harry began. "I have to do it alone. I've always had to do it alone," his tone bitter as he looked up at Dumbledore's portrait. The old man looked back down at him, his eyes twinkling with sadness, but his face giving away no emotion otherwise.

—

Harry remembered going back downstairs, he remembered the tears on Hermione's face as she hugged him, clutching him tightly and insisting she would go with him. He remembered that he wasn't surprised, that Hermione had immediately figured it out once he told the group he had to meet Voldemort alone. She truly was the brightest witch and the best friend he'd ever had.

Harry remembered a half circle of Voldemort's closest followers as he walked into the clearing of trees, Voldemort cackling at his victory, and gloating about how Harry was going to die. Harry remembered, just as Voldemort raised his wand and uttered the killing curse, his green eyes locked on a pair of brown ones just behind the man once called Tom Riddle.

The next thing Harry knew, he was standing on platform 9 and ¾, there was a weird moment where he felt like a long lasting pain had finally parted from him, almost as if his full consciousness was now at peace, but when he turned to find the source of what took away this pain, he found himself looking directly at his parents, Lily and James Potter.

—

"Draco..." came a whisper. "Is he alright? Is my son alive?"

Harry barely opened his eyes, green meeting brown again, the tiniest of nods leaving his otherwise statue-esque frame.

Narcissa Malfoy turned her head from where she was crouched down by Harry Potter, turning to stare The Dark Lord directly in the eye.

"He's dead. You've killed him."