you raise me up || harry potter

chapter 14: you saw what you had to do

»»————-　song:　————-««

dying in LA

★ panic! at the disco ★

❝ the moment you arrived, they built you up,
the sun was in your eyes
you couldn't believe it...

riches all around, you're walking
stars are on the ground
you start to believe it...

you looked at death in a tarot card 
and you saw what you had to do—

but nobody knows you now,
when you're dying in LA. ❞

♢ ♢ ♢

Harry felt his grip on his consciousness slacken. He slipped in and out of blackness, trying his hardest to keep his eyes open, but the pain was simply too great... and where was the Stone? He couldn't feel his fingers...

Well, he had been right all along about one thing. He felt almost ashamed that he had ever doubted Snape. Of course he had been trying to save him the day his broomstick tried to kill him. Of course he had been trying to stop Quirrell.

Snape isn't evil, he thought. Vindictive and unfair, yes, but not evil. It was an oddly comforting feeling as another wave of pain wracked his body.

He was glad he didn't bring Draco, hadn't put him in this sort of danger. Bringing Hermione had been bad enough, but it was a good decision considering the potions puzzle, although she wasn't at all good at chess and Harry barely managed. It was good that he sent her back, he thought.

Harry was going to die here. After all that he'd seen, how everyone here had built him up to be some amazing hero... he would die, with nothing to say for who he was. For who Harry Potter really was. 

He almost succumbed, then. He almost gave up, gave in to the black numbness lapping at the edges of his mind, inviting him to sleep, promising to take him away from the pain... but his eyes shot open in panic.

Severus Snape will be meeting his end soon, Quirrell had promised in a low voice. No one defies the Dark Lord and lives.

Snape was in danger. He had to be. That high pitched cackle from the back of Quirrell's head said as much.

Harry tried with all his might to say something. Where in the world was Dumbledore?

"Professor Snape," was all he managed to rasp hoarsely before he finally slipped into a deep, deep coma, struggling all the way down.

◇

Far on the other side of the castle, Snape sat grading papers in his office as he counted down the minutes until mealtime. Red ink looked satisfyingly mocking when writing down insulting criticisms.

He was just about finished scribbling Do you understand the properties of indigo milk cap mushrooms or is your head just made out of one? in the margins of Ernie Macmillan's essay on the effects of different types of mushrooms on certain potions, when a strange wind blew into the room. It was an agitated stream of magic, and flew around until it finally sensed Snape.