Harry's Shorts

A Trip Down Memory Lane

AN: This chapter begins with an excerpted and cited bit of Deathly Hallows, and anything else you recognise is all JK Rowling as well.

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DH ch 32:

Back in the tunnel and his own mind, Harry opened his eyes: He had drawn blood biting down on his knuckles in the effort not to shout out. Now he was looking through the tiny crack between crate and wall, watching a foot in a black boot trembling on the floor.

"Harry!" breathed Hermione behind him, but he had already pointed his wand at the crate blocking his view. It lifted an inch into the air and drifted sideways silently. As quietly as he could, he pulled himself up into the room.

He did not know why he was doing it, why he was approaching the dying man: He did not know what he felt as he saw Snape's white face, and the fingers trying to staunch the bloody wound at his neck. Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak and looked down upon the man he hated, whose widening black eyes found Harry as he tried to speak. Harry bent over him, and Snape seized the front of his robes and pulled him close.

A terrible rasping, gurgling noise issued from Snape's throat.

"Take ... it ... Take ... it ..."

Something more than blood was leaking from Snape. Silvery blue, neither gas nor liquid, it gushed from his mouth and his ears and his eyes, and Harry knew what it was, but did not know what to do.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

He wasn't even sure that he wanted the memories of the man who had as good as murdered his parents—the memories of Snape, the man responsible for a childhood with the Dursleys and all that had followed when he gave Voldemort half of the Prophecy.

"Harry," whispered Hermione, conjuring a vial from thin air, "Here—quickly!" She thrust it into his hands.

"My parents—because of him... and he killed Dumbledore," he hissed, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. "I don't want—"

"Just take it Harry," she urged him. "It could be important!"

Against his better judgment, he did as he was told, and with his wand he siphoned his enemy's memories into the vial and stoppered it. Snape's grip on him slackened and Harry began to rise, but Snape pulled him closer.

"Look ... at ... me ..." he whispered. And then the light faded from Snape's eyes and the hand clutching Harry hit the floor.

Harry was shaking, the vial clasped tightly in his hand, and stared at the man who had destroyed his life. He wanted nothing else but to fling the vial away—to smash it into a million pieces. But Hermione's voice whispered at him again—not the voice of the girl beside him: her voice in his head—and he knew that he would regret it if he didn't take the memories, always wondering what Snape wanted to show him.

A familiar high cold voice startled all three of them, and Harry clambered quickly to his feet, peering around the room in a panic. But Voldemort wasn't there; only his voice echoing all around them, as if it was reverberating through Hogwarts and the surrounds, reaching all the way to the village. Hermione clutched at his arm, and he heard her sharp intake of air. Ron's face dropped, his mouth gaping.

"You have fought," said the hateful voice, "and you have done so valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery.

"Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste.