you raise me up || harry potter

chapter 29

»»————-　song:　————-««

mercury

★ by sleeping at last ★

❝ you would open my eyes
that somehow, all of this mess

is just an attempt to know 
the worth of my life... ❞

♢ ♢ ♢

It was three in the morning when Potter got to ask all his questions. Snape answered them all, surprising even himself.

"Why does he want me, though?" Potter asked desperately. 

Snape hesitated minutely. "He was the Dark Lord's... right hand man," he said, face twisting. "Why wouldn't he want you, his arch nemesis?"

Voldemort's right hand man. 

Snape was Voldemort's right hand man, for a time.

Snape never saw Sirius Black at Death Eater meetings. He always knew they were trying to recruit him, such a powerful wizard with such close connections to the Potters... in the end they must have succeeded, because they had died, hadn't they? The Secret-Keeper had been Black, and the Fidelius cannot be broken unless the Secret-Keeper does. The fact that no one knew Sirius Black was even a Death Eater must have meant he was in very close confidence with Voldemort, indeed. 

That, or Black was innocent. And that, of course, was not true.

Either way, until Bellatrix Lestrange had come along, everyone respected Snape for who he was: a double agent, the Dark Lord's most treasured tool, genius potions master. 

To say that Sirius Black was Voldemort's right hand man straight to Harry Potter's face felt like telling a monumental lie. I was as good as the Dark Lord's right-hand man, Potter, Snape thought. And I have the audacity to sit here in front of you, spinning stories about the stains of other people's crimes even though mine are twice as dark...

"Arch nemesis," Potter was muttering. "I'm his arch nemesis? I'm just a kid, he must have someone else, like Professor Dumbledore..."

"Dumbledore," interrupted Snape, "Never defeated Voldemort so seemingly single-handedly as you. He is most afraid of Dumbledore, yes, but you infuriate him, I'd imagine. Fear is a powerful thing, but ego is destructive."

Ego is destructive. What a laughable sentiment, coming from Snape. His entire life went awry because of his ego—he was man enough to admit that. But not man enough to throw it away, it seemed. Harry Potter was proof of that.

♢

It was half past three when Harry finally crawled into bed. Nightmares were imminent, he knew that, but exhaustion won out his unease.

Breakfast at ten tomorrow, Snape had said. If we can even wake up by then.

When on earth the two had become a "we," Harry couldn't say. 

Harry shut his eyes, and the darkness pulled him under.

♢

He was wandering through Snape's house, but it had morphed into a dark, shadowy maze... every room he turned into was filled with dog-eared books; every corner he turned, Snape's voice taunted him...

Spinach, Potter? his voice echoed, over and over...

Healer Abasi was putting a needle in him, but to Harry's horror, on the back of his head was the face of Sirius Black, grinning at him... 

Hello, Harry, he said with a ghoulish smile, I'm here to steal your ego...

I don't want you to steal my ego, Harry protested, but it had morphed into the angry face of Severus Snape...

You're a disappointment to Slytherin, it said. Maybe you should be a Dark Lord after all...

And when Harry turned to look in the mirror, his reflection turned white and his eyes red, and it reached its arms out of the mirror, wrapped around Harry, and pulled and pulled until the shadows engulfed him...

♢

When Harry woke up, it was with a large "thud" as he fell off the bed onto the floor.

It took him a while to realize what had happened, but as the panic from the nightmare trickled out of him, he realized that someone had turned on the light. Squinting, Harry looked up.

"Professor?" Harry said uncertainly, eyes still bleary. He wasn't wearing his glasses and he couldn't see the expression on Snape's face. 

There was a silence.

"No broken bones, then?" Snape asked.

Harry tried to untangle himself from his duvet. "I don't think so, sir."

The blurry figure nodded—at least, Harry thought he did. "Dreamless Sleep?" he asked.

As far as Harry knew, Dreamless Sleep potions were addictive. The last thing he needed, he decided, was to become some kind of a wizard crackhead. Well, not exactly a crackhead, but Harry didn't want to become dependent on a temporary fix. "No, thank you," he said.

Still, Harry supposed it was decent of Snape to ask. He was embarrassed, of course, probably having just woke the man up. He wasn't five. He didn't have to have someone check in on him just because he had a little nightmare—although truthfully, all the Dursleys did was shout from the top of the stairs for him to shut up when he was five and had a nightmare. The screaming stopped; the nightmares did not.

Snape wasn't shouting at him to shut up, nor was he banging at his door and making fun of him, which would honestly have been less surprising. But all he did was nod again, switch off the lights and close the door, leaving Harry in his mess of blankets.

Harry dozed fitfully for the rest of that night, but he wasn't much afraid of the shadows anymore. Down the hall slept a man who could probably make even the scariest of shadows cry.

a/n: short chapter, but i felt like it was important enough to be a standalone