you raise me up || harry potter

chapter 25

»»————-　song:　————-««

old college try

★ by the mountain goats ★

❝ from the housetops
to the gutters...

the warning signs have all been 
bright and garish. ❞

♢ ♢ ♢

It was relatively easy to avoid Snape for the first few days. Harry rarely left his (guest) room, Snape rarely left his potions lab and they only came out to eat; it was a perfect arrangement, really. 

There was really nothing to do except his schoolwork. Here, his school things weren't locked up in a cupboard, and he didn't have to worry about being barged in on by his relatives and having his things being taken away. He was bummed that Hedwig was at Hogwarts since he had sent her away before Aunt Marge came, though. Hermione and Draco had promised to write, but he doubted that Hedwig would be able to find this place anyway. All of his summer homework was done in about three days—even he was surprised by his own efficiency. Hermione would be proud, he thought with a grin.

Eventually, doodling all over his spare parchment and counting the scorch marks on the ceiling started to drive him a bit nuts. He could only read his textbooks so much before his eyes started dropping out of his head, although his Defense Against the Dark Arts assigned reading had been quite fascinating. Harry decided around three o'clock in the afternoon on the fourth day, when Snape was sure to be brewing, that he would wander around the house a bit. After all, it wasn't against the rules, was it?

There wasn't much to wander in. There was a locked door next to Snape's potion lab, though, but Harry knew he'd probably be disemboweled for even attempting to get inside. He remembered the books in the parlour, and how it was always nice and sunny there during this time of the day, so he he went straight there, curled up on the less-worn armchair (He assumed the more worn one was the armchair Snape most used), and read the spines off the shelf:

Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration

Potion Opuscule

The titles got progressively weirder, though, and progressively worn. It seemed to Harry that books like Potion Opuscule were so elementary and basic to Snape that he had no use for them—it was one of the only books that looked almost brand-new. The stranger and more obscure they got, the more tattered and dog-eared they became. Moste Potente Potions in particular was practically falling apart, held in place only by a couple of threads and some glue. It was very apparent that Snape was a natural academic.

One in particular caught Harry's eye. Advanced Potion Making, as far as Harry could tell, looked like it was a school textbook. 

Harry reached for it excitedly. It was quite heavy, and Harry grunted a bit as he heaved it onto his lap. Snape fed him well, which Harry hadn't expected and was grateful for, and he had put on a couple of kilograms, but he could tell that he still looked a bit sickly. At least his arms didn't look quite as "skin and bones" as they used to. 

Harry placed his fingers on the cover to flip it open before hesitating. This felt very much like snooping. Well, he reasoned, it was just a textbook. 

The pages were filled with notes. Snape's handwriting hadn't changed, it seemed—that spidery, graceful scrawl covered the timeworn pages like cobwebs. There were a fair number of questions and question marks, which were then neatly crossed out with the self-discovered answer right below it. Snape's complex potion hypotheses and formulations mostly bored Harry, but there were also many jottings that didn't even relate to potions at all. "Muffliato," for one, and another one above the paragraph about transmutations of gold and silver that said "Sectumsempra—For Enemies."

Harry wasn't sure how long he sat there. He briefly contemplated trying some of the spells out, but he wasn't sure if that would put the Ministry of Magic on his tail again or if Snape would disapprove, so he didn't chance it. Besides, the warmth of the sun was making him drowsy, and he didn't feel like doing much more than keep in the comfortable rhythm of flipping the pages of the textbook...

♢

The sun was low over the distant river that ran through Cokesworth, and the afternoon light grew dim on Spinner's End when Snape finally exited his lab to prepare dinner.

 His hair was greasier than usual, his hands stained with salamander's blood and boom berry juice. The Wiggenweld Potion was not difficult to make—after all, it was a potion he taught to first year students—but it was time consuming and extremely difficult to counteract miscalculations and errors, and thus required a taxing amount of non-stop focus. St. Mungo's had ordered a batch of a dozen, insisting the potion be made only by Severus Snape's hand. 

Snape passed the living room, wondering if he had enough potatoes to bake for dinner, when something caught his eye he doubled back. 

Potter was nestled in an armchair, fast asleep. In his lap lay a book, his hand still on the pages.

Snape stood there at the doorway, a shadow in the faint light. Potter looked... peaceful. At ease and at home in a house that wasn't his. His glasses had slipped down his nose and hung off his ears crookedly. His mouth was slightly open. 

Snape tried to bring himself to be offended. To fume that Potter had the gall to lounge around in his house and read his books as if he owned them. But those emotions that usually came so easy to Snape every time he laid his eyes upon him, this boy who looked so very much like James, didn't rise to the surface like they ordinarily did. 

Perhaps it was the dying light of Spinner's End. The kind that reminded him of Lily. Summer days he wished would never end but had to, as all things did. Hazy days of making flowers bloom and water spill out of their fingers. When magic was not a thing of evil but of innocent wonder. Walking Lily home, her hair alight with a fiery halo under an orange dusk, hands loosely interlocked, wishing he didn't have to go home to parents who didn't love each other, wishing he could walk into her house and never again return to Number 7 Spinner's End. 

Snape stared at him, this child, who didn't have fiery sunset hair but starless midnight instead. Who only had his eyes to remember Lily by. 

He awoke. Slowly, torpidly, as though gently tugged from a dream. Perhaps one about summer sunsets. He blinked, and Snape expected him to be startled at the sight of his potions professor standing just several meters away like a dark ghost, but he simply rubbed his eyes and adjusted his ridiculous-looking glasses. 

They looked each other. A sliver of light cut across the boy's eye, and a brilliant green was ignited.

"Turn on the light when you read," Snape said gruffly. "You'll ruin your eyes even more." And instead of leaving and making the boy get up to do it himself, Snape simply flipped the light switch before disappearing into the kitchen.

Harry blinked into harsh fluorescent light as the clatter of pots and pans drifted into earshot. The imprint of Snape was still in his eyes, but even that was fading away, and Harry wondered if it was just a dream, if Snape had even been there at all.

things will shortly get completely out of hand...

in the weak last gasp 

of the evening's dying light,
in the way those eyes i've always loved 
illuminate this place...