you raise me up || harry potter

chapter 32

»»-----　song:　-----««

making love out of nothing at all

★ by air supply ★

❝ i don't know how to leave you
and i'll never let you fall
and i don't know how you do it

making love
out of nothing at all. ❞

♢ ♢ ♢

Harry would rather have been snatched by Sirius Black than sleep in the same room as Snape. Still, he tried to be courteous.

"You can take the bed and I can take the couch, Aunt Petunia won't know—"

Snape gave him a fearsome glare. "I don't need sleep," he said. Evidently, he held the same sentiment.

"Oh," Harry said, and that was the end of that matter.

As Harry slid into his bed that night, he tried not to think about the fact that this bed was lumpy and hard, and the sheets dusty and musty, not like the cushiony bed at Snape's with the sheets smelling of soft detergent. And even as he tried not to think about it, pretty soon it was all he could think of before he had to hop out of bed because he was certain a spring had sprung loose and was digging into his shoulder. But when he checked his clock, he was surprised to see that it was past midnight—he must have dozed off at some point, then.

Through the floorboards, Harry could hear voices drifting up through the cracks. Petunia had made one of her rare visits home. But the man's voice was not Vernon's. It was Snape's.

As quietly as he could manage, Harry opened his bedroom door and quietly tread on sock feet to the top of the stairs. He had to strain to hear Snape's low voice, but Petunia's shrill one was not easy to miss.

"I would know those eyes anywhere," Petunia was saying. "Even with your stupid disguises. It's you, isn't it? You always did sneak around poking your long nose into other people's business, the weirdo you were—"

"Look at yourself," Snape said. "Are you proud you got out of Cokesworth? Found a worthless husband and a pretty little house and forgot all about the fact that you had a sister?"

"Worthless!" Petunia shrieked. "Her husband was the one who was worthless! Worthless, the whole lot of you, and especially you! Think you're so high and mighty, now that you're a teacher at that freak school—"

"The very same freak school you wanted so very much to attend that you even wrote to Dumbledore begging for admission!" Snape snapped. "You pined for our world, you were jealous of us, you always were—"

"Jealous of you? Jealous of her? Look where your world got her! Six feet in the ground and I buried her, I buried my sister and where were you? Where were you when your precious Lily died?"

There was an awful silence.

"I pined for your world, did I?" Petunia scoffed. "You pined for her, always following her around like a stray dog in your stupid mother's blouse."

"How dare you?" Snape's voice hadn't increased in volume for a single second, but the sheer rage in his voice could not be missed. "You dare speak of her this way when her child is sleeping upstairs! Lily left her child to you and that child depended on you—"

"And I wish she hadn't!" Petunia exploded. "Nothing but nuisance and a blot on our name, that wretched girl! Looks absolutely nothing like her mother either, wouldn't be surprised if that Potter boy had another woman on the side—"

"You know full well those eyes are Lily's," Snape said softly, simmering in his fury. "You can't bear to look in them, can you? A blot on your name... but don't forget you were an Evans once, too."

To hear his mother's name fall so easily from Snape's lips was equal parts jarring and horrible. Harry noiselessly sat down on the top step, legs numb.

"You look into those eyes and you see Lily, I know you do," Snape said, in that same low, horrible voice. "You can't let go of your guilt, can you? Can't bear to think that your wonderful, smart, witty sister had cast you aside and left you in the dust... the truth of the matter is that you cast her aside. Her heart was filled with so much love, but you pushed her away. And then one day in front of you, the living, beating heart of the person you once loved is now your responsibility."

The bitterness in Snape's voice was palpable, as was the silence in the room. It sounded as though Snape wasn't talking about just Petunia.

"How does it feel to be second best, Snape?" Petunia spat. "You were all she could talk about—Sev this, Sev that—until that Potter boy came along. And then you weren't even second best anymore, you were nothing. You were nothing to her. Stopped mentioning you, as if you'd disappeared. Just up and "left you in the dust," didn't she?"

"Lily would have loved Dudley," Snape said, ignoring what she had said. "You know she would have, if you and your pig of a husband had died. She'd have raised Dudley with love and care for her only sister's son. And this is how you honor Lily Evans' memory?"

Silence, again. But there was a rustle, as though someone had sank into a couch.

"Get out of my house," Petunia said. "Leave. And take that filthy, worthless, ungrateful freak with you. If you want her so much, you can have her."

Stunned silence. Then:

"I know you're listening, Potter. Get your trunk."

Harry scrambled to his feet. The cupboard, as it did before he left this house after he blew Marge up, magically unlocked for him without effort. He heaved his trunk out... and something caught his eye. He hadn't slept there in two years, but in his hurry to move into the upstairs basement and his fear of going near it again lest they force him back in as a nasty joke, he hadn't quite gathered up all his belongings. Something clattered to the floor at Snape's feet.

Snape stooped down to pick it up. It was a toy army man, one that Harry had pilfered out of the trash perhaps three years ago. He looked at it for a moment before holding it out to Harry. He hesitated, before letting Snape drop it into his palm.

As Harry stowed the figurine away into his robes, Snape turned to Petunia.

"I believe the 'freak' here is you, Tuney," he said. "This is Harry, and he is not any of the vile words you spewed. Your son, it appears, shamelessly gorged himself while his cousin starved. Perhaps you should all take a look in the mirror."

"Always knew she was a freak of nature," Petunia spat.

Snape pushed Harry to the door. The hand on his back wasn't rough or violent or threatening. It was a weight that grounded him, kept him upright.

Snape didn't look over his shoulder, but he did say one last thing, quiet and mournful. "Remember that Lily loved you," he said, "But you returned that love with hate. I won't make that same mistake."

The two wizards set out into the night and disappeared from Petunia's sight.

everytime I see you
all the rays of the sun are
streaming through the waves
in your hair

and every star in the sky
is taking aim at
your eyes like a spotlight

the beating of my heart is a drum,
and it's lost
and it's looking
for a rhythm like you

you can take the darkness
at the pit of the night
and turn into a beacon
burning endlessly bright.

a/n: simping hard for air supply