By the way, thanks to all who commented. You egged me on to finish my book, which is now done and so I am taking a break with a bit of Severus angst. Enjoy.
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Habits die last, they say, and I am definately not the exception. How could I be, after all? For almost half my life I have been playing pretend. It's not as easy to discard as a Death Eater mask, assuming that discarding the grotesque and tasteless thing is at all easy in the first place. However, there is something that's changed in me. After all I have allowed myself to experience, I cannot hold back my feelings however demeaning or irrational they are. At the moment, I feel one specific emotion, burning hot to the point of madness.
I am damn angry at the Golden Boy.
Why the hell did you have to be alive, Potter? I had just started to get a sembance of order in my thoughts, classifying you with the dead, and now you have to be the annoying brat you've always proven yourself to be and mess it all up by being alive. I think I dislike you for it some more.
I realise I am walking again, backtracking my steps around the corpses and the landscape and everything else that still remains the same, and yet so different. I was planning to do this holding a corpse that I would bury with my own two hands next to the man that believed in the boy enough to give up his life for him. Yes, I do believe Albus would like to have the bloody Gryffindor next to him. But Albus will be all alone now, because the stupid kid is alive. Why did he have to be alive?
He moans again. It's a painful sound. I can hear by his shaky, shallow breath that immaculate as he seems, he is seriously hurt. I shift my hold on him so that he won't be more laboured than necessary.
"We're going to Hogwarts, Potter. Stop the whining." I tell him. My voice is sharp, not at all encouraging or warm or anything to hold on to. For an insane moment, I wish Black was around. He would know how to coach Harry Potter to consciousness. I just manage to make him gurgle.
I bite my lips. There is one quality in my reasoning and my thinking that I have always hated. An intuition by far outshining Trelawney's Sight, assuming she can see anything even with those mostrous glasses of hers. It seems that my greatest fears or offhanded wishes always come true. The wishes that I never truly wish to come true always materialize, just as those that I would even pray for never do. It's ironic. I had many times wished James Potter dead, him and all his family, and it happened even as I tried to prevent it; I wished for Black dead, and it happened. I wished for McGonagall to trip over her robes once and it happened. I regretted every single wish coming true. Well, maybe not the one about McGonagall.
Potter's gurgling sound comes somewhat louder. I know what it means. The minute I realise it my knees buckle up and I kneel with him in my arms. No, boy, don't die on me. Can't you realise when one does not -mean- something? Why do you have to obey the one order I don't want you to follow?
I want to set him down and try to save him. I peer around me. Deatheaters in grotesque positions with the waxiness of death leer at random sides depending on how they have landed, and aurors are completing the design of crisscrossing bodies. No. This is not the place to set him down. He needs to be somewhere cleaner, at least, and I need room to work.
"Hold on, Potter, or the points taken from your house will be abysmal."
What an empty threat. As if there is a House Cup to worry about at this stage. As if anyone cares at all what colour the flags will be at the end of the term banquet. There isn't going to even -be- a banquet.
I have lost my wand, but Potter is still desperately holding his. I pry it from his fingers and point it to him.
"Effectio Stasis" I whisper, and the boy goes limp in my hands, not breathing, not moaning. For a brief second dread washes over me that I have killed the boy instead of bringing him to stasis, so that whetever it is that is eating away his life will wait until I have found a more appropriate place to treat him.
I scramble upwards and clutch the limp body to my chest as I break into a mad dash for Hogwarts castle. It's amazing how small the boy is. It's amazing how nobody had actually noticed enough to make fun of him for being one of the shortest boys in his class. Not even Malfoy ever chided him for that. It's only now that I realise how petite and thin he is.
I get angry all over again. What significance is it that I hadn't noticed up to now? As if I didn't have anything more important in my mind but Potter's measurements!
I feel myself winded. Odd. I usually can run for miles. Multiple crucio sessions have made my stamina and tolerance levels skyrocket. But I am winded. I cannot possibly run anymore, and the castle is down the hill, still a prop in the general view. I turn around. At least the battlefield isn't visible anymore. That's something. It allows me to remove myself from that reality even for a while.
Or it would, if it weren't for Potter limp in my arms as if he were already dead. His wand is still in my hand. There is positivism, warmth resonating from it. Potter's signature. There is no doubt that his heart had always been in the right place. Which is more than I can say for myself. I start running again, regardless my body's protestation. Or perhaps because of them.
Dammit! Why do I always compare myself to the little squirt? Especially now that he is not dead but alive. It is, ironically, much easier to admit that someone that has passed on had been your better. Perhaps not so ironic. After all, anyone dead is gone, and except in memory, you don't have to measure up to them in reality. And just when I had admitted to myself that Potter was better than me, he had to be alive!
For another brief bout of madness, I am tempted to kill him just because. I never tried to look nice, not even to me. But the madness is gone as fast as it came and I am once again steadfast in my resolution to save the boy.
It is just as well that with my musings I finally reach Hogwarts. The castle is unharmed. Albus protected it with his life, just as Lily had her son. The rest of us only assisted in Voldemort's maddened assault when he saw that by killing the Headmaster he had not weakened, but strengthened the castle's wards and guards to the utmost. But I don't want to remember this, not now, not yet.
I enter the main hall, and I cannot make an appearance as I would like, with banging sounds and swishing garments. For one, I have lost my beloved cloak, and nothing can billow around me anymore. For two, I am too tired to storm through, and Potter is getting heavier in my arms.
There are students in the castle. As a matter of fact everyone up to the fourth year is still here, staring at me wide eyed, with fear or even terror in their eyes. Lupin and Flitwick keep them at bay, but even they have frozen, looking not to me, but to the burden in my arms. For a while, I am tempted to let them believe that Potter is dead. I even start to announce it.
But then I see Lupin's terrified eyes, the hurt and torture in them, and I realise that I cannot do it. I must have grown soft without Voldemort or Albus around. When Albus was here, I could count on him to be the gentle one so I could be as nasty as I liked. But now there will be nobody to soften the trauma I will inflict, and therefore I have no right now to inflict it without thought.
Blast you, Albus!
"He's alive." I hear myself say curtly and with contempt. Everyone breathes more easily and I have rested enough to walk through quickly. Lupin trails after me and stutters like Longbottom would, were he still the inane young imbecile and not a venomous deatheater wannabe. Another burden on my soul. Perhaps if I hadn't been so hard on him, he would not have had so much hatred in him.
I reach the infirmary and expect Poppy to flutter around me. But after I stand there waiting to be relieved of Potter, I realise Poppy is not coming to my aid again. Most medi-witches died in the battle and Poppy was one of them.
I set the boy in a bed and throw all the covers away. Then I strip him of his robe and sweater and point his wand to his chest. The diagnosis is as I expected. Far too many ribs have punctured his lungs and the blood has been pooling in them. It has to be let out, and quickly. He has not much time left.
"Finite Incantatem" I mutter. I know that any spell at this moment will burden his heart, and that will only lead the boy to death faster. I look around and see what I need. The boy's shallow, gurgling breathing is maddening.
"Accio Knife".
I plunge it from the side between specific ribs, and it goes in with a sickening sound of paper tearing. The boy is much too thin. A growl and a punch is my reward for my efforts.
Blast, I had forgotten about Lupin.
"Killer!" he says with teary eyes as he tries to strangle me. I have not much energy, and I need it all for Potter.
"Let me go." I manage to croak. Something in the way I say it, or something he realises makes him release me. I stay where I am for a few seconds. I realise the gurgling has stopped. If only the breathing has continued. Then perhaps there is a reason why I was left alive. After all, Poppy wouldn't dream of using muggle means to treat the boy and she would fail.
Lupin is helping me up. His hands are bloody, sign that he has touched the boy and has found his condition acceptable enough to let me live and in addition help me.
"I'm sorry. Help him." he says in a raspy voice and I just do it. Using magic this time, I set the ribs right and then I heal as much as I dare his lungs. Then finally, I remove the knife that has been letting the blood from the lungs flow so that there would be room in them for air. Lupin is crying near me.
"Stop that sniffling. He's going to be okay." I snap at him. I would love to go unconscious there and then, but that is not possible. I have to stay and monitor the boy.
Something happens that startles me when I am in a state I believe nothing can jog me. Lupin takes my hands, regardless the blood, and kisses them as if I am some kind of muggle priest or something.
"Thank you." he mutters as I pull them back, more because of embarrassment than dislike. I am about to reproach him for his conduct, but then I remember that he has lost far more than me. After all, the only one I really cared about was Albus. But he was attached almost to everyone, including Potter's classmates and Black. I swallow my words and say instead
"It's fine, Lupin." For the first time, I don't let my facade make my voice venomus. For the first time, I let his thanks warm my heart.
For after all, Harry Potter is going to live, and I helped him do it. Openly this time.
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And that's all. I call this story done, with the prospect of a sequel if you like it enough. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. Severus stabbing Harry legitimately is not something that happens often, is it now? *chuckles*