FIC: Remembering Lily (Part 1)
Disclaimer: I just like to borrow them and play with them… but now that the owner doesn’t need them any more, do you think I could get away with keeping them?
Title: Remembering Lily (Part 1)
Author: snarkyroxy
Characters: Harry, Snape
Rating: PG
Summary: Despite all that has come to pass, Harry still yearns to know more about his mother, and there is only one person who has the answers he needs.
Author's Note: Unbetaed. Incomplete. Will write more in the next few days, I hope. Possibly not quite canon compliant... working from memory instead of checking the book. Needed to write and post something so I can sleep.
Since reading the brilliant Bambu's post-DH fic, Saving a Death Eater, I am of two minds about the fate of Severus Snape. Remembering Lily came to me at 4am yesterday morning - before I read Bambu's fic - while I was lying awake wondering how I was ever going to write about my favourite character now he's gone.
Whatever his fate - and let's face it, it's all up to the imagination, now - it's still a lot of fun to write about him.
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Remembering Lily
The night was clear, a thin, pale moon illuminating the faint path that Harry Potter followed through the Forbidden Forest.
A month after the Battle of Hogwarts, in which Voldemort had finally perished, very little sign existed of the terrible struggle for life that had taken place in these very grounds. A tree trunk split in half, too accurate for a natural break, a small bunch of monkshood flowers set atop a pile of stones signifying the resting place of a fallen one. The battle scars on the land were few and far between, though, unlike the scars borne by the survivors.
Human flesh, the soul, the conscience… they took far longer to mend than broken trees and crumbling walls.
Harry paused a moment, thinking he saw a movement in the trees off to his right. He peered into the thicket, where the fickle moon hardly penetrated, but nothing else caught his eye. He considered for a moment lighting his wand, but then decided against it. There was something oddly comforting about being able to walk through the Forest, alone in the darkness, without holding his wand at the ready in fear of attack or trap. The centaurs would be somewhere amongst the deepest thickets of the trees, but he did not fear them; the noble creatures had fought side by side with them in the battle. Their losses had been heavy, the price for freedom high.
Moving forwards again, Harry picked his way across a small, rocky stream and up the steep bank on the other side. As the ground leveled near the top of the ridge, Harry finally sensed he had reached the place. It was here… somewhere… amongst the fallen leaves.
Three paces to his left, he suddenly knelt, his fingers brushing the soft, damp forest floor for but a moment before he found what he sought.
The Resurrection Stone.
Did he imagine the almost imperceptible hum of magic as his fingers closed around the small, jagged, black rock? Perhaps not… It was, after all, the third of the Deathly Hallows, and Harry was master of them all. He couldn’t recall where the stone had fallen after the battle, but some unknown pull had lead him here tonight, to the tiny stone that would answer the questions that had been growing in his mind these past weeks.
He had tried to resist, at first. The days following the Battle of Hogwarts had been a confusion of celebration, mourning and rebuilding. The Elder Wand had been placed safely in the Headmaster’s Office; he didn’t want it… didn’t want to use it or hold it. He didn’t want to remember how many lives had been lost as a result of it. And similarly, the desire to find the stone, lost somewhere in the depths of the Forest, had been far from his mind.
Though he would dearly have loved to walk with his parents again… with Sirius, with Remus, with all those who had lost their lives fighting alongside him… he had been warned before of the danger of such pursuits. Had not witches and wizards gone mad dwelling on what might have been in the Mirror of Erised?
But as the weeks passed, another purpose for rediscovering the Stone emerged. One not borne of yearning to see his dearly departed again, but this time of necessity. He hankered for information. He had to know.
And there was only one who could tell him what he needed to know.
Rising to his feet, Harry turned the Stone three times in his hand and closed his eyes, willing the one he called to appear. For a moment, nothing happened, and Harry’s stomach dropped; after weeks of struggling with his desire to come searching for answers, had he come here now only to discover his search had been in vain?
But then… something was happening. His eyes flew open as the slightest breeze stirred the dry leaves on the ground and lifted Harry’s fringe from his forehead.
“I thought you might be calling on me before too long,” said a familiar voice nearby.
Harry turned to see Severus Snape leaning against the gnarled trunk of an ancient tree.
No, a likeness of Snape, he reminded himself, for not even the Resurrection Stone could reawaken the dead. It simply summoned them from the other place for a time, and allowed them to interact with the living once more.
Snape was every bit as imposing in death as he had been in life, sharp eyes, immaculate robes, cloak swirling about his shoulders as he pushed away from the tree and moved towards Harry. The striking difference was the absence of black. Everything about him was a strangely luminescent silver-grey, not unlike a Patronus. Unlike when Harry’s parents and godfather had walked beside him before he faced Voldemort, Snape appeared the same age as the man who had died only a few weeks earlier. Upon closer inspection, though, the dark circles and frown lines that had grown on Snape’s face ever since Voldemort had returned three years ago were gone.
He looked… content.
Realising he had been staring for some time, Harry cleared his throat.
“Thank you for coming, sir,” he began awkwardly.
“One can hardly refuse when summoned by the master of the Resurrection Stone,” the other man replied.
“Oh.”
Harry had failed to consider exactly how the Stone worked. He had thought the spirits who came to its master did so of their own will, at the master’s need… not at the master’s demand, willing or not.
A low chuckle broke through his thoughts, and he looked up to see Snape shaking his head, luminous hair swinging about his face.
“Really, Potter,” he said, “I thought you would recognise a joke, even from someone so unlikely to make one as myself.”
“Oh! Er…” Now Harry was both confused and surprised, uncertain how to deal with this altogether different Snape. It was the Snape he had seen in memories, speaking amiably with Dumbledore, or affectionately with his mother in their youth… but never had he encountered this side of Snape himself.
“I am of the spirit world, now, Potter,” Snape went on, perhaps sensing Harry’s unease. “I can only return to this world at the bidding of a living being, but when Summoned it is my choice alone whether I answer the call. I am here because you called me, and because I consented to come.”
“Thank you,” Harry said sincerely, pleased his assumptions about the Stone had not been misguided. “I do appreciate you answering my call.”
Snape nodded in acknowledgment of the thanks, and silence descended between the two men for a moment. Silently, Harry struggled to put into words all the things he suddenly wanted to say, now faced with this man.
“Sir, I-”
“Potter, allow me to impress something upon you before you go on,” Snape cut in. “I am dead. Even if I were not, I could hardly command the title of ‘Sir’ from you, anymore.”
“Er, okay.” Harry frowned, wondering how he should address the man. Snape? That sounded disrespectful… even moreso given the man was, as he had so rightly pointed out moments before, dead. Mr Snape? No, that sounded all wrong, too. What was he playing at? They were both adults. Any other adult Harry would simply call by their first name. He had been addressing Professor McGonagall as Minerva with ease ever since she had asked him to do so, a short time after the battle had been won. Why was it so different with Snape?
Harry realised Snape was watching him again… closely… and he got the strange feeling that even in death Snape could see inside his mind.
“Do you think we could manage Severus and Harry?” Snape suggested.
Perhaps he did know what Harry had been thinking.
“We are both adults, after all," he added, "and thanks to those memories you now know more about me than any living being on this earth… far more. I think in light of that, such formalities seem unnecessary, don’t you?”
“All right,” Harry said slowly, nodding. “Severus and Harry it is.”
A strange feeling passed over Harry as he spoke the other man’s name for the first time… almost a feeling of something lifting from his shoulders. He suddenly knew what he wanted to ask Snape, no, Severus. And how to ask it. He no longer felt the need to begin the conversation with thanks for all the other man had done for him in the past; his gratitude was unspoken but known.
“Shall we walk?” Harry suggested. The chill of the night air was creeping into his body, having stood still for sometime.
“As you wish,” Severus murmured, falling into step next to him. The leaves crunched under Harry’s feet, but where Severus walked, they barely stirred.
After another short silence, Harry spoke.
“Sirius and Remus used to tell me stories about my father,” he said quietly. “About school, Quidditch, holidays, the times they went to his parents’ house for Christmas. Sometimes Mum was there, too, but not that often… it was more… boys stuff, you know.”
Severus was silent, but he glanced sideways Harry, his face fixed with an unreadable expression.
“I realised I know lots about my Dad… and it’s helped me. It’s painful sometimes, because I see what I missed out on not knowing him, but it’s also helped me understand his strengths and weaknesses, and in turn, my own. It occurred to me not that long ago that I really don’t know much about Mum at all. Most of what I do know, I learnt from your memories.”
Harry stopped walking and turned to face the other man. They had reached a clearing, and the faint moonlit shone through a gap in the canopy of trees. Severus stopped and turned, too, and Harry noted with curiosity he could see through Severus’ body to the moonlit tree trunks beyond. His eyes, though, when Harry met them again, seemed as solid and dark as they ever had in the living man. And the expression in them now was one of pain and regret.
Harry swallowed the lump that had caught in his throat.
“Severus, I want you to tell me about my Mum.”
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To be continued…