Chapter 16
"The Day They Lost"
The rush back through the abyss was better than the first time, Severus admitted as he and Harry hurtled through the nothingness. He held Harry’s body tightly to his own, trying like mad to ignore the hands reaching out through the nothingness and scraping through his hair, his clothes, across his skin, the cold hands that felt ghostly and ill against his flesh. It terrified him to hear the screams for his soul, the want for his blood. Slimy touches through his hair, across his clothes, trying to grasp any part of him and Harry’s heart beat a wild drum roll against Severus’ chest.
They scraped his skin with nails like glass, and almost instinctively, caught in fear, trapped in his own dread, Severus knew they did not want him because if they did, they would have snagged him by now. They kept clutching for his hips, and it took him a moment of fear to realize the stone was in his pocket.
They wanted the stone, that which drew life from the living to feed the dead.
He kept his eyes closed after he started seeing them, horrified by what could be waiting for him in this endless hell of purgatory–too terrified to do anything but hold Harry, hold Harry.
They plummeted through the sheer nothingness, Harry’s arms holding tightly to him. The dagger was pressed flat against Severus’ back, and he prayed to all the heathen Gods that the boy didn’t accidently move the tip in and slay him as they fell through the screaming wind.
When they landed, it was not softly.
They tumbled through open air, and the feeling was so entirely different from free-falling into paradise that Severus opened his eyes scant seconds before he hit the ground. The solid earth and Harry’s heavy male body knocked the air out of his lungs and he gasped, struggling to take in a lungful. Harry was still in his arms, atop him, panting hard and muttering about, "hoping never having to do that bloody nonsense again".
Someone was laughing.
Someone was laughing. Several someone’s, all around him, and he opened his bleary eyes to–
Oh, Merlin.
Death Eaters. Everywhere.
Severus realized, in a moment of crystal clarity, that Voldemort’s plan had come to fruition–Severus had been correct in his assumption. Voldemort knew of his spying, but what hadn’t come to Severus until just now was why Voldemort let him go after the ra...that last night. The beast had intended for Severus to go to Dumbledore, and for Dumbledore to send Harry--the only person who could retrieve it--for the stone.
The dirty work was done, and Voldemort had come for his prize.
Severus and Harry had landed in a circle of massive standing stones–Stonehenge, Severus. Salisbury, England. Harry’s heaved breaths panted out steamy and white in front of him, and the frost and snow around him reminded Severus, in a moment of clarity outside of the total, numbing panic, that it was bitterly cold, so much so that he was already trembling. Under his thin jumper the Dark Mark blazed to counterpoint that cold, and he gave a sharp gasp as it twinged and burned all the brighter.
With great effort, Harry raised his head from Severus’ chest. He pulled the chain from around his neck, and somewhat ungracefully rose to his feet. Power poured off of him in torrents, floods of unchanneled rage that stopped the Death Eaters laughter immediately.
Severus scrambled up to his own feet, trembling on heavy knees, and took a tight hold of his wand. He stood right behind Harry’s slender form, guarding his back from the circling Death Eaters, and tried his best not to panic as their eyes, hidden behind their masks, blazed with hate. Harry might not need his protection, but Severus needed to give it--safeguarding the twit was a tradition with him anyway. Wouldn't do to let him down now.
"What are you?" One of the masked men asked.
"The last thing you will ever see," Harry murmured, and raised Gryffindor’s ruby-encrusted sword.
What proceeded was something that, years later, Severus would call a nightmare slaughter, though even those words were too light to possibly describe what occurred before his very eyes. With the power of Godric Gryffindor embedded deeply in Harry’s body, he began to kill as if he had done this many, many times before. Harry’s rage, though not easily provoked, had boiled over the last time he’d fought Voldemort. What was happening now was far beyond snapping a man’s neck with his hands–what was happening here was a massacre of those who had lived in shame.
Great waves of magic flew from Harry’s hand and before Severus’ horrified eyes, men were sliced in half, rent limb from limb, vomited until they disgorged their guts. The Death Eaters were turned inside out, a terrible parody of veins, blood and organs splashing unnatural, magical acid green viscera into the grass. It was the harshest magic Severus had ever seen in his life, and though he bellowed his share of curses, he couldn’t help but fear this man using what was most certainly dark magic as though born to it.
The Death Eaters never knew what was happening to them. Severus’ hair stood on end as he followed Harry, who was pushing through the crowds of terrified Death Eaters running like rats deserting a sinking ship. Voldemort, furious where he stood in all of his self righteous, half-nude glory, shot off the killing curse at his own minions.
"Stay and fight, you dogs!" His roar thundered across the landscape.
Above them the sky cracked with unnatural lightening, rain clouds forming over the battle field to match Harry and Godric’s combined temper, and as thunder rolled, the Death Eaters screamed.
All around Severus his former brethren fell. Avery split open from neck to groin and Severus looked away as his guts fell to the grass. Harry growled a silencing spell, and the sounds of panic ceased--all but for Harry’s grunts, his heavily snarled spells, and Severus’ own terrified gasping. Someone tried to grasp his shirt, blood like black hate pouring from their mouths, but he wrenched away from the touch, breaking the brittle arm of who he realized was Dolohov as the man screamed for mercy and fell with a wet, thick splash. Severus was covered in gore and he gagged, not daring to close his eyes as he stroked through the blood on his shirt until his fingers closed on his pin.
The stones behind them radiated red power, adding to the carnage unfolding before them. A movement flashed in the corner of his eye and he saw, to his stunned horror, as Draco and Crabbe ran to hide behind one of the menhir arches.
Not Crabbe or Draco! Severus mouthed through a tight throat to Harry.
For a moment he thought that Harry hadn’t seen him until the boy–Merlin, not a boy, not a boy by any stretch of the imagination–shoved him at Draco and Crabbe. "Get them!" He snarled, "And stay out of the way!"
Harry, I can’t–
"Go!" Harry roared, pushing him all the harder with one hand, while the other cast killing blows the likes of which Severus had never imagined, even in his deepest nightmares. "You can’t fight here, do as I say and save them, dammit!"
Severus did not argue again.
He took off running, dodging curses and hexes as he went from the hysterical Death Eaters, and though something struck his shoulder and hurt, he made it behind the arch alive. Vincent and Draco rushed up to him, pale and shaking and grasping his arms tightly in fear. Severus just nodded and held them behind him, protected both by his own flesh and the onslaught of Harry’s fury. Draco’s breath was rushing from him, over and over, Vincent was hyperventilating, gasping for air and clinging to his former professor. Severus kept both men behind him, as far away from Harry and the other Death Eaters as possible.
His defenses, as meek as they were, fell when one of the nameless, faceless sheep running from the slaughter cast a terrified curse at him, which struck green and bright. The jarring impact of the curse stunned Severus breathless, and he realized, in those few moments between life and death, that he’d been struck with the Avada Kedavra.
And hadn’t died on impact.
He stood there, stunned, feeling scrambling fingers over his throat, and opened his eyes in time to watch Vincent thrust his own killing curse at the underling Death Eater and Draco checking for his pulse with a hot sheen of tears that reflected like a mirror off of the pale gray of his eyes.
Severus wasn’t dead. He’d been hit with a killing curse, but he wasn’t dead. How could he–...
Oh. Oh, of course. His fingers scrambled in his pocket, stunning Draco into shouting at him silently, with the only sound the hot, sharp gasps of breath the three of them were making. The stone lay in Severus’ pocket, cold as ice and vibrating gently with the impact of the curse, and Severus yanked it out and opened the handkerchief in his lap.
Of course. Of course. The stone had absorbed the power and was attempting to suckle at his magic. He watched in detached fascination as the stone glowed white hot, the dark green of his own power pulling from his chest, his hands, until Draco snatched the stone from him and covered it back up.
Draco, Draco.
Draco, Severus mouthed, shaking the hysterical young man by the shoulder until those eyes, still filled hot, looked at his own. Severus pointed to the stone, then to Voldemort and Harry, and handed the stone to him. I trust you.
Draco’s tears overflowed as he Apparated with a pop.
Behind him, Severus watched Voldemort and Harry through greying vision. Between them Nott split into a thousand pieces, dismantled like puzzle pieces. Mulciber’s eyes exploded in his head, which followed suit seconds after, and Severus nearly retched as the man’s headless corpse fell to the grass. Behind him, scraping her nails down over her mask, then over her face and arms, Bellatrix was silently screaming. She fell, convulsing, and underneath her torn and ravished robes the veins in her arms and face were rippling, the blood mixing with some sort of black tissue that...that was moving, and Severus gagged, he gagged and vomited as a horde of ants devoured her body from the inside out. They swarmed from her self inflicted wounds, covering her, and were it not for Harry’s silencing spell, Severus was sure would have heard the ants feasting on her unmoving flesh.
Pettigrew, dear, sweet, devious little Pettigrew, the last to stand at the Dark Lord’s side, simply dissolved like sugar candy in the rain. His skin melted from his bones, leaving a macabre mass of muscle and tissue, eyes blinking stupidly from the ruined face. Pettigrew screamed with no tongue, trying to move a jaw which no longer had enough tissue to support it, and Severus knew the image of the mans unblinking eyes, boring into his own as his body turned to ash, would haunt him until the day he died.
In that moment, that lull when Voldemort realized all of his precious minions were dead by a boy less than half his age and his turncoat Potions professor, everything stopped. He didn’t see Draco Apparate behind him, his attention so squarely on Harry that it was almost frightening.
Severus couldn’t take his eyes off of Draco, as the hot, horrible burn of betrayal nearly ate him from the inside out. Draco. Draco was going to give Voldemort the Stone. It was a moment’s horror, total, complete, to see Draco standing behind the Dark Lord and know their mission was lost. Draco had betrayed them.
Severus wanted to cry, to scream at the heavens, but instead slumped weak, so weak, Vincent’s terrified hands grasping him tightly.
Harry, as easily as if he were doing it in his own home, gently lifted the silencing spell with a murmured word, and all at once the rush of noise terrified him. The rotting scent of burnt flesh was enough to make his stomach want to crawl into his throat, but the sounds–the whimpering from those barely alive, the scalding bodies, the hot, rushing breath from his own mouth horrifying him.
But for the second time in his life, Severus had the joy of seeing Voldemort look terrified.
"Did you think, bastard Son of Slytherin, that you would defeat me?" Harry asked through Godric’s fury as the oncoming storm crashed and screamed its arrival. Heavy rain poured, thick drops drenching Severus in moments.
Voldemort threw his had back and laughed.
Harry pointed his wand calmly and like the breeze blowing away, the fierce power of Godric was replaced by Harry’s own. It burned green and red, violent and hot and furious.
"Now, Draco. Avada Kedavra." Harry murmured, at the same moment Voldemort did.
Lord Voldemort never saw Draco, nor did he see the chain drop around his neck, but he staggered as the crushing weight of the white Sorcerer’s Stone settled against his naked chest, even as he finished speaking the spell that would be his undoing.
It was too late to do anything but watch, too late for all of them, and through the haze of horror Severus felt for Harry, his Harry--his analytical fucking mind could only concentrate on what he could do. Draco Apparated inches from him, nearly splinching the both of them, and Severus grasped the boy, dragging him back. Before them, in a nightmare of magic, Harry’s wand and Voldemort’s wand connected and held. The twin wand cores, as they had done so many years ago, attached and snagged, creating a vortex of common magic that lifted their bodies into the air, just as he had witnessed in the graveyard so many years ago. Magic crackled so much that Severus felt the hair on his arms and face singeing.
The voices started.
Slow at first but louder and louder, heard over the pounding rain, over the sizzling of pure, undiluted magic, over Harry and Voldemort’s furious screaming. The voices grew louder as Severus watched there in a puddle of mud on the battlefield, among death, Draco and Vincent shaking next to him. Nothing in his scientific and logical brain could grasp at how ghosts began to echo free of the connected wands. Nameless faces Voldemort had murdered, spells, enchantments, curses, hexes, floating free of the wand in rapid succession.
Shacklebolt.
The Potters.
The ghosts were hungry--Regulus Black, the Bones family, Dorcas Meadows–the faces kept coming until the specters swirled like a pentangle of locusts around the battle-locked wizards.
Severus’ chest heaved, unable to look away from Harry’s bright, half-mad eyes. Severus’ muscles tensed and he tried to get up, his mind and mouth screaming for Harry, Merlin save him, Harry!, but two strong hands held him tight when all he wanted to do was thrash away from them and do what he’d been asked to do–keep Harry safe. Harry, his Harry.
The enormous menhirs erupted into streaming red light, and from them more spirits erupted onto the ravaging hell of the battlefield. People and faces he did not know, but could only assume had died for the cause, for the war.
He could not look away as Black and Lupin, side by side, charged past him to the sphere of spectral light echoing from the mortal enemies.
Something like panic kicked in Severus’ gut, and with the last of his truly conscious thought, he enlarged the chain of the stone around his neck, looped it around Vincent and Draco, his wet fingers trembling. He held onto the both of them as tightly as he possibly could, because it was all he could do not to lose his mind. He could not hold Harry, comfort him, help him. He could do nothing–Severus Snape, intelligent, well-learned, pompous and arrogant bastard was crouching in the mud, terror in every muscle of his body, for Harry bloody Potter
Voldemort was screaming, a high pitched, inhuman sound. Like a wounded dog he flinched, the spirits, more hungry than ever, circled him so fast that they fluttered Severus’ hair.
Voldemort. Who wore the white stone which was the life sustenance they needed. Severus couldn’t stop watching, couldn’t help but watch in morbid fascination as the battle finally came back down to the grass.
Now Severus understood the power of the Stone.
It lay white and vibrant against Voldemort’s chest, almost like an open wound to his soul. The ghosts, as they did behind the Veil, wanted to drain Voldemort to ashes, and through the stone, now they could. The stone acted as a channel, and the ghosts were siphoning Voldemort’s life out of him through the stone. Severus watched as Kingsley Shacklebolt shoved his arm through the stone, through Voldemort until the Dark Lord screamed like an animal dying. Shacklebolt wrenched his hand free, grasping a mass of Voldemort’s very soul--squirming black worms. He pushed the worms into his mouth and Voldemort screamed, and screamed, and Severus couldn’t take it.
He begun to shake and through his haze of a terror so complete that it encompassed his very soul, he saw James Potter, Black and Lupin come to him, break apart from the mass of people, and crouch before him.
Potter was nothing but a memory, a specter the same age as Harry was now. His dark hair, so like his son’s, fell rakishly over his forehead. Severus did not trust those eyes, this man who could be out for revenge, who could take his life from him here in the mud, with the rain falling around them like hell had come to earth.
Instead, instead, Potter’s fingers drifted over Severus’ cheek, and his mouth moved in a silent, Be good to him.
"I will be," Severus croaked back, unsure if his voice even worked, if he had even spoken at all. Potter seemed to understand anyway, because he smiled and nodded, and lifted his eyes back to his son. Lily stood beside Harry–dying, Harry is dying!–holding his arm steady while the Priori Incantatem tore at his soul.
Lupin and Black smiled at each other, then at Severus, and many years later, Severus would find himself amused at the eye roll Black gave him. At the moment all he could do was hold onto the boys in his arms, pressing his face into the back of Draco’s shoulder. Severus was going to die here, cowering and stunned from the Avada Kedavra from before, with the men he hated all of his life watching.
Despair choked him until he held the young men all the tighter, the chain keeping them close. He never expected, never, for Black and Lupin to cradle the three of them carefully, keeping them guarded, keeping them safe. The arms around him felt so solid, so real, and a part of his heart not encompassed by horror clenched as he felt Remus brush a kiss along the back of his neck. Remus, his old lover, who understood, whose gentle, knowing eyes caught his and reflected pale silver in the moonlight.
The moonlight.
Above them the moon shone through the unnatural rainstorm like a beacon for wary travelers, and the sounds of the battle faded from Severus’ ears. The whimpers below him from the two men he was protecting dissolved into meaningless black noise as he watched ghostly tears trickle down Remus’ lovely cheeks. Remus was gazing upward at the moon, seeing it through human eyes for the first time since he was a child, and his tears reflected all the colors of the ghosts before them, of the moon, of the glint of a ruby encrusted dagger.
When he looked down on Severus, Remus’ joy was a physical thing. Black brushed his lips across the high point of Remus’ cheek, as if to catch those tears as they fell.
You’re safe now.
With the last of his vision, Severus turned his eyes to the silent battle before him, his blood roaring in his ears, and watched as Harry drew his arm back and tore the dagger Godric Gryffindor had given him through Voldemort’s chest.
The world exploded and Severus screamed with the ghosts’ rising tide of triumphant cries.
- = - = -
The rain had stopped.
The night was quiet, silent as the grave, with only the small creatures and insects making noise. Grasshoppers sang, frogs croaked to one another, and the ancient standing stones were once again dark.
The stars and moon were still in the sky, the grass was still sweet under his body, and his pulse still sang against his rib cage.
And Harry was alive.
Green eyes, slightly wide and shocked eclipsed the night sky. "Severus?"
It was so good. So quiet here. His arm didn’t hurt anymore, his eyes were full of sand, and like a tingling brand, he still felt Lupin’s kiss against his neck.
"Severus?"
"What's left of him," he croaked.
His body was a mass of aches and pains as he slowly sat up, trying to keep from pitching over to one side. The pin he had fought so hard to keep on fell into his lap, and he stared down at it. His head throbbed, his ears still rang, and around him, the countryside slept on as if a raging battle hadn’t just occurred. Draco and Vincent were sitting off a little way, hunched over a small, magical fire, trying to keep warm.
Harry crouched before him, and in his hand, the blasted chunk of Sorcerer’s Stone, now a depth less shade of black, hung from its chain. The rain had stopped at least, and the mud under him was sticking to his hair, earth worms squirming between his fingers.
The bodies were surprisingly missing, and only the scorched and bloodied grass remained as evidence that there had been a battle. Voldemort, like the other dead, was no where to be seen, and Harry appeared to be whole.
Whole.
Severus reached a hand out, trembling and bloodied and black and muddy, and lightly touched over Harry’s equally filthy cheek. The skin under his touch was warm, and he could just feel the light, even breath on his wrist as Harry breathed in and out.
Alive.
Severus’ hand trembled desperately, body was shaking in aftershock, but his fingers couldn’t stop moving. Over Harry’s chest, down his arms, across his shoulder blades and then up, up to his face, his eyes and with the last of his thought, he wrenched Harry into a kiss. Hot, deep, thick, tasting of mud and dirt and death, but he kissed this man he’d been terrified of only an hour ago, kissed him until his body shook and his need for air overpowered all else. And then Severus hugged him, clutching him to his body, as Harry held him as tightly as he was held. Those masculine, muscled arms circled his shoulders and held him as Severus heaved with the emotion.
Alive. Alive.
"Is he...?"
Harry pulled back the smallest bit, smiling at him, and lifted the chain with the stone on it. The same slightly cryptic, mostly relieved smirk that had crossed his face the first time he’d killed Voldemort flittered over his face. "You could say that."
"Then by all bloody means, let’s go home."
With a soft snort Harry helped him up, and Severus straightened his clothes, just as if he weren’t barefoot, bloody, marked with scorches from hexes and Merlin only knew what else. He clutched the tyro pin in his hand. "Mr. Malfoy, are you coming or do you plan on sleeping here tonight?"
Draco looked up, eyebrow arched, and climbed to his feet with easy drawling grace. "Sorry about that," he answered, pressing the flame out of existence with his hands. "Trying to...ah. Calm down. Are you all right?"
"I am positively perfect," Severus drawled, and some of the pallor fell from Harry’s cheeks as he smiled. "To Hogwarts."
Severus marked the area with a fountain of green sparks, to ensure that the Aurors would find the final resting place of what remained of Voldemort and Harry, beside him, smiled. "Happy Christmas, Severus."
Happy Christmas, indeed.
When they appeared in front of the gates of Hogwarts, Severus could see that Voldemort’s forces had not only been at Stonehenge this night. The bodies of Death Eaters littered the Hogwarts lawn, and the professors who remained were exhausted, walking amongst the dead and wounded of their own colleagues.
Albus gave a great bellow when he saw them, unlike anything he had ever done. "Harry, my boy! Severus!"
The students who had remained for the holidays, and the bloody, exhausted professors on the lawn gave a cheer that echoed through the school.
Dumbledore came rushing down the hill, his hair flying, holding his torn and bloody robes up enough to showcase magenta carpet slippers. Minerva was at his heels, holding her tartan hat in place, and Severus couldn’t help smirking when battle scarred and weary, Dumbledore stopped before them and bellowed, "Severus! Harry!"
Granger and Weasley came loping and Severus left Harry to it. Dumbledore grasped his arms, gave him a firm shake, and smiled broadly. The twinkle in his eye, so dimmed before, sparkled with joy. "I have never been more proud of you than I am in this moment, Severus."
And somehow, after finding the Sorcerer’s Stone, going through death and beyond, and killing Voldemort, none of it compared to those words in Dumbledore’s voice. Dumbledore looped an arm around his shoulders and together they made for the school, Harry and his admirers before them.
Aurors gave him a wide birth, out of respect rather than suspicion, mostly. Ministry officials began popping in from everywhere at once, Jack Bones with his ever-present cow eyes, Madame Bones and other members of the Ministry, all looking exhausted and bloody.
Emily came out of nowhere, tearing through the crowds to slam into his legs with force, squealing and holding him about the thighs like a little burr, babbling all the while about having a horrible nightmare where she'd dangled off a cliff with Harry Potter and almost falling but then Severus had saved her at the last minute and he was officially her hero now. It was a testament to his joy in what he’d done that he bent down and lifted her onto his hip.
He saw the pride on Minerva’s face, then on Flitwick’s when the man came scuttling forward to shake his hand.
Shake his hand.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Severus felt something he never had before.
He felt free.
OR
Back to White Chocolate chapter list
_____________