Chapter Text
"Rip. Tear. Kill."
Harry watched, horrified, as the magical cage that held Nagini encased Snape, swallowing him in its malevolent brown light. He was backed up against the filthy wall of the Shrieking Shack, frozen and wide-eyed, displaying uncharacteristic fear. The giant viper reared up in its cage to strike the Potions Master in the neck, once, twice, three times. He collapsed under the assault with an agonised scream, blood spurting out of the torn flesh.
For a few moments, Voldemort looked at the bloodshed with as close to amusement as his deformed face would allow. Then, he called his snake and its cage back to him with a satisfied nod and glided out of the Shack like a Dementor, brushing past the alcove where Harry, Hermione and Ron were huddled beneath the Invisibility Cloak.
As soon as the pain in his scar faded, Harry ripped off the Cloak to kneel beside the fallen man. He pressed his hand to the gaping wound as hard as he dared, but the amount of blood seeping through his fingers indicated that they did very little to staunch the flow of the crimson lifeforce from Snape's veins.
A strangled gurgle from the man and a tug on the front of his shirt brought Harry's attention to the gaunt, deathly pale face, eerily illuminated by bluish - tears? Memories? - that flowed out of the man's eyes.
"Take… it… Take… it…"
Harry had to lean closer to understand the dying man's whispered command, and when he finally understood, he turned pleading eyes to Hermione who conjured a flask he guided the shimmering liquid into.
Another weaker tug had Harry's attention on the man once more.
"Look… at… me…"
Those dark eyes captured green ones one last time, holding them in their spell. What was it that Snape wanted to see? What did he want Harry to see, in those eyes that were, in this one suspended moment, no longer fathomlessly blank, but held pain, fear and regret, bitter regret, tinged with something warmer?
'Please, forgive me.'
For a tiny moment, Harry was sure he had heard the man's weak plea in his mind. And then, the spell was broken, the light gone from Snape's eyes as well as the last of the strength in his grip.
Snape was dead.
Harry was still kneeling next to the fallen man, frozen, when a hand on his shoulder and Hermione's voice cut through the blankness of his mind.
"He's gone, Harry. We should go now."
"Y-yeah. Let me just…"
He gently closed the man's eyes before he stood up and jerked his unbloodied hand roughly over his face, astonished that it came back damp from tears he had not realised he had shed. With one last look, he started to turn away when Voldemort's cold, high-pitched voice cut through the air. The war would not wait.
Harry raced up the stairs to the Headmaster's office, knowing that the hour's reprieve would be the only chance to examine Snape's memories. He could not pinpoint the exact reason why he knew, maybe because Snape was a spy, on whichever side he may have been - though that last expression in his eyes would never have appeared on any of Voldemort's men.
At any rate, Harry knew that the information contained in this silvery liquid would change the course of the war, and potentially beyond.
As if sensing Harry's urgency, the gargoyle guarding the spiral staircase leapt aside as soon as Harry sprinted towards it. He arrived in the office, breathless, finding it silent, vacated of both past and present occupants. Unlike Snape's dungeons office and the Defence classroom last year, it was strangely neutral and lacked any disgusting ingredients on the shelves and ghastly pictures of curse and torture victims on the walls.
The Pensieve sat on the shelf where it had always been, and Harry barely registered the tingle of wards when he lifted it to the office desk. He plucked out the flask of memories from his pockets and poured them into the basin. With a deep breath, he plunged in.
Harry slowly descended the stairs from the office, feeling a lifetime older than he had before entering the Pensieve, reeling from the revelations. Whatever Harry had expected, it was certainly not this - a rundown of Snape's life.
He had watched as nine-year-old Severus, after a bumpy introduction, became his neighbour and muggle-born witch Lily Evans' friend, introducing her to the magical world. He had cherished her like the sister he never had, as well as those happy moments in a generally bleak childhood.
After an unpleasant first run-in with a far too arrogant James and Sirius, young Severus had been heartbroken when his best friend had been Sorted in Gryffindor with them, while he himself was put in Slytherin. In spite of that, and the lure of the Dark that permeated a powerful part of Slytherin House, he had managed to stay friends with Lily until his fifth year when it all came to blows due to the Marauders' assault.
Harry had seen this memory before, during his Occlumency lessons, before he had been hauled out of the Pensieve by his irate teacher. But he had never truly realised how far his family had gone to humiliate the quiet, studious boy. They had backed him into driving his only friend away - leaving him with an expression that was not dissimilar to the last look he had given Harry. Despite the remorseful boy's repeated attempts at apologising to Lily, even going so far as to wait all night in front of the Fat Lady's portrait, the red-haired girl would not hear of it.
The fact that his mother had promised Severus her friendship and then let herself be driven away by a slur that, though ugly, had clearly been spoken in desperation, was hard to understand for her son.
And gods, how he could ever have thought Snape a coward was beyond him. He had watched him as a young man no older than twenty, during a stormy night, begging the leader of what would have been his enemy's faction on his knees to save his estranged friend, and by extension, her family, whom he had unwittingly endangered by reporting the prophecy to Voldemort. Harry had seen and felt the weight of Snape's mistakes on his shoulders as if they were his own, and the memory's fear and desperation had resonated deep in his soul. But Snape had swallowed it all down and, with a resolute glint in his resigned dark eyes, promised to do "anything" in return for Lily's safety.
And Dumbledore had used the man, ruthlessly.
"Is this remorse, Severus?" Dumbledore had asked in the wake of the Potters' murders, rather heartlessly in view of Snape's grief and obvious guilt. Even to Harry, seeing Snape, slumped forward in a chair in Dumbledore's office, keening bitterly over the death of his childhood friend, had driven home how much the man suffered under the weight of his actions.
Dumbledore had used the man's guilt to force him further into his service. He had forced Snape to protect his assailant's son, callously disregarding the trauma the man had suffered under the Marauders' hands and the spy's rightful grievances against them. Had forced Snape to kill him, ostensibly to save Malfoy's soul, but eyes as cold and hard as chips of ice when Snape had asked about the state of his own soul, when just minutes before, the Potions Master had done everything he could to save the Headmaster's life. He had pushed the spy so deep undercover that none of his allies would trust him again, leaving him alone and friendless in the heart of the enemy's territory.
And in the end, he had forced Snape to betray his Vow. Harry was a Horcrux, and so, he had to die. Dumbledore had not even bothered to deny Snape's horrified accusation that Harry had been raised "like a pig for slaughter", but had asked instead, eyes hard, whether he had actually come to care for Harry. The spy, of course, was quick to deny it, showing Dumbledore his Patronus that was identical to his late best friend's whom he still loved, twenty years after their falling-out.
But after that, something had changed in Snape. Whenever he had talked about Harry in his memories before, his eyes had been cold and blank, one-dimensionally hateful - the way Harry had known them in the six years as Snape's student, without the expressiveness Severus, his younger self, had shown. But in that last memory, the one that had felt like an addendum, as if it had been added at the very last moment - gods, Snape's eyes had burned with grief and regret.
For a long moment after the glow of the doe Patronus faded, Harry hovered at the edge of reality, before he was sucked into a memory once more.
Silence greeted him upon entering the memory, save for the occasional scratch of a quill. Snape was alone, sitting at the desk in the Headmaster's office, bent low over a piece of parchment he was writing on. For a long time, Harry simply watched the man, wondering what exactly Snape meant by giving him this memory, when the man looked up - and, impossibly, looked directly at him with such grief, it stilled Harry's breath. What was Snape writing that caused him such pain?
Harry inched closer to see more clearly. It was a letter… And it was addressed to him. With a yelp of shock, Harry crossed the room to stand behind the spy, and started reading.
"Harry Potter,
If you read this, I must thank you, first, for watching the sordid tale that is my life, and for allowing me to explain my part in the war, whatever your opinion of me may be.
I write this, remembering how, just hours before, you followed an unknown Patronus and jumped into a freezing lake to retrieve the Sword. As usual, you did what you felt was your duty, without regard for your own life or well-being. In light of the progression of the war, and of the so-called "last task" Dumbledore had me set for you, there are things I would not like to leave unsaid if you are still willing to hear me out.
I would not fault you if you did not. I treated you abominably, in the six years that we were student and teacher, all without the excuse of having to maintain a façade for my spying duties. I believe I did, in fact, hate you. I hated you unreasonably, when my grievances were with James Potter and Sirius Black, and, of all people, I myself was the one person who deserved my loathing the most. I regret, second only to my part in Lily's death, that the cost of my realisation will be your life, the sacrifice of the one young man whose only crime in this war was to survive against all odds.
Having vowed to protect you, to keep you alive, I wish I could selfishly ask you to live because I believe in this instance, a living coward can do more than a dead hero does. However, I know that you have never shied away from the tasks handed to you. I fear that this time, even my best efforts will not be enough to find another way for you, simply because I was too late.
I regret there will be no chance to apologise, or to make amends. In the end, I can only beg you, knowing that I ask too much, to forgive a foolish man for his blindness, and a blinded man for his foolishness.
Yours, apologetically,
Severus Snape"
Snape signed with a flourish, then the memory faded, and, with a gasp, Harry found himself back in reality.
Reading this heartfelt letter of apology had broken down the last of Harry's reservations against the spy - the hatred had already faded with Snape's death, leaving behind deep respect, maybe even admiration, for the man who had always watched over him from the shadows. It took a special kind of courage and valour, especially for someone as stubborn as Snape, to bow the knees of his heart to someone his inferior, in the way he had done to Harry.
Even if Snape had not apologised, gods, he had still been more of a hero than Harry had ever been. Whatever his grievances with Harry and his family, he had still saved his life countless times from behind enemy lines, adding to the already immense risk of discovery. In fact, that he had done so despite his personal feelings towards Harry… And the supposed Saviour had repaid his efforts by letting him die, bleed out on the dirty floor of the Shack like slaughtered cattle.
Harry should be the one begging for forgiveness.
Hidden under the Invisibility Cloak, Harry crossed the dim light of Great Hall where the grieving families were gathered. The sight of Remus' and Tonks' bodies, reunited in death, burned itself into Harry's eyes once more. Nor could he ever forget the sight of a shaking Ginny who was trying to console a young girl, one arm wrapped around a sobbing Mrs Weasley who was bent over Fred's corpse. George was staring off into the distance, eyes almost as blank and lifeless as his twin's. They had all fought and died for him, and their blood stained his hands…
But none so much as Snape's, the traces of which no amount of water, no cleaning spells in the world could ever wash off.
He would have to live - and die - with this knowledge.
Gods. He had to die. His steps faltered as the realisation finally, finally sank into his consciousness. He had to die. He wished he could have lived, just as Snape had begged him to, in his last letter, to find another way to defeat Voldemort. But there was none. He had been foolish to hope for a future, should have realised, from the very beginning, that Dumbledore had planned his life and death like a pig for slaughter when his task was done. He had to die, to save those still alive from the horror that was the Horcrux inside him before it fully took him over. To end this before anyone else died for him.
He walked on. There was no time for goodbyes, or he would be tempted to rejoin the living. He had to die. But Merlin, the prospect of walking to his death terrified him, chilled him to his very soul. His bloodied and dirt-stained fingers trembled when he held them up against his face.
The chill of the Dementors invaded him when he stepped outside Hogwarts' grand oak doors and grew stronger the further he walked towards the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort's encampment. He walked past Hagrid's hut, now devoid of life, thinking of his friendship with the big, warm-hearted man and his slobbering dog. Remembered Hermione punching Malfoy here, in front of this boulder, saving Buckbeak, saving Sirius. But there was no joy in the memories. It was Harry's fault that Sirius had died, as well.
He walked past the Quidditch pitch where, in those few happy moments, flying had defined the whole of his existence, when he had been free. But freedom had been an illusion, and others had suffered for it.
Came to a halt at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where Voldemort was waiting for him once more, behind the line of the dementors that guarded the monster's lair. He had no strength left for a Patronus, but this time, his mind stayed silent. He heard neither his father's last shouted warning nor his mother's screams to spare his life. What was left was the continuous mantra of, I must die; guilt, choking him like a tightening noose around his neck, and soul-deep terror, that this would be what eternity looked like for him - endless numbness and silent despair. He was drowning, sinking like a stone…
A hard, metallic bulge against the inside of his robes anchored him, brought him back to his senses. What…?
Oh. The Snitch. Just this morning, before setting out to Gringotts, he had fiddled with it, traced the inscription, and, on a hunch, put it into one of his pockets instead of back into the pouch around his neck. Now it lay cold in his palm, golden glint muted in the night darkened by the dementors, the familiar inscription against the skin of his hand.
Harry didn't need to read it to understand. I open at the close, it said.
It was time.
"I am about to die."