you raise me up || harry potter

chapter 15: amateurs at war

»»————-　song:　————-««

mars

★ sleeping at last ★

❝ we were full of life,
we could barely hold it in.

we were amateurs at war,

strangers to suffering. ❞

♢ ♢ ♢

"I'm not talking to him."

"Now, Severus," Dumbledore chided, "You are his Head of House. It would only be appropriate."

"Precisely—he is my student, and I shall treat him in any way I see fit. And I would like to ignore him until him until he gets on the Hogwarts Express and I don't have to deal with his disgustingly Gryffindor escapades for a summer."

Dumbledore simply kept looking at him, blue eyes piercing.

Snape inwardly sighed. "Very well, if only to take away points," he surrendered.

He stood at the doorway to the hospital wing, watching Potter open his gifts. He hadn't noticed Snape's presence yet, and was laughing a little at a card he'd opened. Snape's lip curled; of course he had gotten fan mail, disgusting things that they were, and of course his head was getting bigger by the minute.

Snape strode over to the bed. Potter looked up, startled at the shadow that had suddenly fallen across him. 

They stared at each other for a moment.

Finally, Potter spoke first. "Professor," he nodded, laying the card he was holding down on the nightstand. 

Snape was a man of few words, but never at a loss for them. But here, all of a sudden, it was as though someone had cast on him a Tongue-Tying Curse. 

Potter looked down at his bed sheets. "I guess I should thank you," he said. "For saving me."

The Tongue-Tying Curse came loose. "Yes, well," Snape snapped caustically, "I couldn't exactly ignore your desperate plea for help, now could I?"

Potter merely looked up at him. Gone was his customary glare, usually reserved for only Snape. He just looked tired. Like an eleven year old who had seen too much. "I wasn't asking for help," he muttered. "Quirrell threatened that Voldemort would kill you. I was trying to... I don't know. I just didn't want to get you killed." 

Potter looked up at him, as though expecting Snape would flinch at the utterance of "Voldemort." He snorted silently—did Potter expect him to be a sheep-brained fool? It took much, much more than a name to daunt him.

"Lies, Potter," Snape said, trying not to roll his eyes. He felt it might be too juvenile. "Saving your own skin, it's what Potters do best, isn't it—"

"I don't really care what you do and don't believe," Potter interrupted. The nerve of this child! "I was expecting Professor Dumbledore to come get me. Besides, I didn't even know I did... whatever it was I did. The headmaster called it residual magic?"

Snape opened his mouth, with half a mind to tell him that saintly Professor Dumbledore had been standing by to watch Potter get himself killed. 

so we found our way back home,
let our cuts and bruises heal.
while a brand-new war began,
one that no one else could feel.

But Potter continued: "Speaking of 'the Potters,' Dumbledore told me... that my father saved your life. And that you hated him. And that's why you hate me." Potter's expression was accusatory. "That doesn't make any sense."

Snape almost saw red. "And you are privy to all my deepest, darkest secrets, are you, Potter?" he snarled. "You are Dumbledore's closest confidante now? I'll have you know, Potter, no one likes a teacher's pet." He spat out that last word emphatically.

"That's rich, coming from you," Potter pointed out. "If you looked up 'teacher's pet' in the dictionary, it would probably say 'Draco Malfoy.'"

Snape was not in the habit of strangling children. But Potter made him come close.

"When your father saved my life, as you so conveniently called it, he did it to save his own skin," Snape hissed. "Like father, like dau—son. Arrogant, conceited, with mush for brains. Tell me, Potter, how did you manage to get sorted into Slytherin?"

"Tried to hoodwink the Hat to put me in Gryffindor," Potter shot back. "Wish it did, because I wouldn't have had you as Head of House." He glared, but then closed his eyes as if in pain. Bringing one hand to his head, he reached up with the other to pull his glasses off and placed them on the nightstand. The glasses, Snape noted, were worn and broken.

Snape pointed at the glasses. "Are you so stupid that you can't even do a simple Reparo?"

Potter looked as though he was about to roll his eyes, but then thought better of it in case it worsened his apparent headache. "I've done my research, sir. I'm not good enough with charms yet to mess with glasses. I don't want to mess up their prescription if I make a mistake. They're the closest to my vision that I've ever got."

Snape refused to look into the underlying meaning of what Potter was saying. He didn't want to. But the broken glasses bothered him. "Oculus Reparo," he snapped. "Perhaps now you'll be able to bring up your abysmal grades in my class." 

Whatever words he was about to say died in his throat. Potter had rubbed his eyes, then looked up at Snape with a glare. 

Snape had avoided looking into Potter's eyes for too long the entire year. But without his glasses, nothing to obstruct them, Snape couldn't deny that they were exactly like Lily's. Exactly the same shade, same almond shape.

"Twin emeralds," everyone had called them. Snape disagreed. Lily's eyes weren't emerald green—they weren't such a bright color. They were jade green, like the green of a forest. But no one else really looked into her eyes long enough to tell the difference. 

Lily's eyes looked into Snape's dark, tunnel-like eyes with hate. No, not hate. Something more weary, something closer to disappointment. And Snape remembered that look all too well. 

He stepped back abruptly. 

"A hundred points from Slytherin," he said. If it were any other situation, he might have felt pained by the vision of the Slytherin Cup vanishing. But here, he only registered rage and loss. "Ungrateful, selfish brat. I should have expected you'd care nothing of your parents' sacrifices."

If Snape had turned back before striding out of the hospital wing, he might have seen Harry Potter's face, so very clearly stricken and tortured, so very clearly wearing his heart on his sleeve.

But he didn't. 

Besides, it wouldn't have done any good. Snape was not in the business of wearing his heart on his sleeve, and therefore knew nothing of open, honest emotion. When Severus Snape loved, he loved secretly, silently, profoundly; burying it deep within his heart until hidden even from himself. 

Perhaps, then, denial is the strongest of Fidelius Charms.

there is goodness in the heart
of every broken man
who comes right up to the edge
of losing everything he has.

a/n: i don't know how i came up with those last few paragraphs but i'm fucking glad i did

how do i copyright a concept