Heart of the Guardian

7. The Forest of Dean

What happened?

What happened?

He kept seeing Potter, falling dead across the clearing from Voldemort... kept seeing the boy's body...

His chest hurt. His eyes burned. He dug at them with the heels of his hands, which came away wet. He didn't notice.

A green flash... Potter lying dead in the forest clearing... Narcissa bending over the boy... the boy's body being tossed in the air again and again for sport...

His stomach burned and bile tried to force its way up his gullet. Oh gods... why wasn't he dead?

The boy's dead weight in his – Hagrid's – arms...

The boy's leaden weight against him last night, his heart pounding...

His chest hurt... he was having trouble breathing through the pain of it...

Potter at Hagrid's feet, the Dark Lord pacing in front of him...

Potter, across the room, saying things too complex for Hagrid to understand... to encode...

What happened?

He kept coming back to the wand. The wand Voldemort had taken from Dumbledore's grave... flying through the air... Potter's arm outstretched, picking it out of the air as effortlessly, as gracefully as if it were the Snitch in some Hufflepuff-Gryffindor Quidditch game... The boy standing there... just standing there... before the image broke as Hagrid raced the other defenders to Potter's side.

"And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That's very important..."

He kept replaying the wand's arc in his mind, kept seeing it in slow motion. Potter's wand in his right hand... his Expelliarmus!... the stolen wand arcing down toward his left, tumbling end over end... Potter's unerring grab almost magical in and of itself, as if the wand were seeking him out... as if they were meant for each other... as if it were Hedwig, homing in on the boy.

"Are you intending to let him kill you?"

"Certainly not. You must kill me..."

It made sense. He could almost make it make sense.

"Severus... please..."

Then his mind went back to the forest... back to Voldemort... back to Potter, undefended... closing his eyes... just waiting... and the green flash... and the shack... and the snake... and Fawkes... and Potter's green eyes, Potter at the side of his bed, saying "Four weeks..." Potter throwing himself into Snape's arms – was that just last night?

"And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential..."

Snape curled up on his right side, facing away from the door, staring out the high window at the blue sky, unseeing, trying not to think, trying not to see, trying not to feel, trying not to remember, his chest aching, his stomach on fire, his eyes burning with tears that rolled onto his blanket from his black, unblinking eyes.

***

"Professor?"

"Potter."

He sat with his elbows on his bent knees, his head bowed into his hands, fingers in his hair, thumbs massaging his temples. He had a headache. His eyes hurt. His stomach hurt. He had vomited, repeatedly – first the porridge, then yesterday's pumpkin juice, then, when his stomach was empty, he had nearly vomited up his organs themselves in dry heaves that left him shaking and weak. He had banished the mess before Poppy could return from wherever she was, wiped his mouth with a shaking hand, and gone to the bathroom to clean himself up. He would have crawled if he had to... nearly had needed to. Then he feigned sleep when Poppy came to check on him, so that she would leave him alone to sort things out... Hopeless.