you raise me up || harry potter

chapter 37

»»————-　song:　————-««

lament

★ by myuu ★

♢ ♢ ♢

He couldn't have gotten very far. Snape tried not to act panicked, not in front of all these people in downtown Surrey, but his gait was less brisk than it was flighty. Just when Potter had convinced Snape that he was a Slytherin through and through, he pulled stupid stunts like this.

How fast could a thirteen year old be? Snape made a quick turn into an alley and placed his wand on his hand. "Point Me, Harry Potter," he murmured. The wand spun around and pointed straight down the alleyway. Snape looked up in surprise. 

There he sat, against the wall by a dumpster. 

Snape wasn't sure what to do. He chased him this far, but what could he say? Snape approached him slowly. Potter didn't look up at the sound of his footsteps, not even when Snape's boots must have been in his peripheral vision. 

They stayed there; the boy with the starless midnight hair slumped against the brick wall, hand splayed on the ground carelessly, head down, defeated. The man with the equally dark hair and arguably darker soul, looking down past his long nose at the result of the mess he had made, head down, defeated.

"You're not worse than the Dursleys," Potter muttered. "That was a horrible thing to say. I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that."

Snape inhaled deeply. He looked up, up at the sliver of blue sky peeking through the gap between the buildings on either side of them. A bird flew overhead. "It's true, though," he said. "You don't have to refute that."

Potter looked up, finally. "You grabbed my collar because I broke a rule you made so I wouldn't get killed," he said. "I'd say that's a tiny bit different from ripping my hair out of my scalp because I visited my cousin in the hospital."

Snape sighed. "Perhaps," he said, and slid to the ground against the wall next to him, ignoring Potter's startled expression. He crossed his legs and leaned his head back. "Perhaps the circumstances were different. But you can't use context to justify the fact that both were abominable ways to treat another person. Don't lower yourself to defend me."

Snape could see Potter frown out of the corner of his eye. "Well," he said, "Don't lower yourself to the Dursleys' level, then."

"You forgive too easily," Snape murmured. 

"Hey, you didn't starve me or lock me in a cupboard," Potter said. And then he froze. "Fuck."

Snape turned to look at him. Half of him was shocked, but half of him that was his gut told him he already knew. He knew, when that toy army man fell out of that cupboard and Potter looked at him with dread on his face. Dread that Snape would find out. He didn't have to be a Legilimens to know that appalling things had occurred in that house.

"I guess that's going on your tally of points," Potter said sarcastically as he whipped his head to the other direction in shame.

"I'll excuse the vulgar language," Snape said mildly. "It appears there are far more important things at play here."

Potter looked back down, face flushed. "Can we forget about it?" he muttered.

"I don't think we can just 'forget about it,'" Snape told him. "This is serious."

"Okay, well—" Potter gestured around him. "How about we don't do this next to a dumpster?"

Snape looked up, pretending as though he had just realized, and made a face. "I concur," he said. "Didn't realize we were in such foul company."