Author: Rose
Pairing: Harry/Severus eventually
Rating: Um R maybe?
Word Count: 788
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The crappy attempt at 'plot' within belongs to me.
Warnings: Slash, Attempted Suicide. Ignores HBP
Notes: For hirei, noagirl, sev0109 and all the rest of my f-list, and huge thanks to my beta iheartwillhoge Bad language Alert!
Summary: What do you do when everything you have been living for is taken away?
OK everybody, Harry's POV for obvious reason, and my apologies for it still being so damn short. I promise the next one will be 1000+ words...
Chapter Six: An Awakening
Harry felt himself begin to wake up, which told him instantly that something had gone wrong. He also felt something attached to his arm, digging through his skin, making him itch.
The temptation to tear it out and run as fast as he could from whatever bed they had him in was overwhelming.
Harry didn’t want to open his eyes, to see the faces of the people he could hear moving in the room, the disappointment, the anger, the guilt. Harry didn’t want to deal with anything. He just wanted to go back to sleep, and never wake up. But, of course, that was too much to ask…
His eyes seemed to open of their own volition, and he was mildly surprised not to be confronted with the bright lights and sterile walls of the hospital wing. Instead Harry found himself staring in the gloom, and the last person he expected to see walked across his blurred line of sight. There was no mistaking those robes though.
Snape had been watching him.
Of all the fucking people, they had left him in the hands of Snape. They should have just let him fall.
Harry felt his glasses being placed gently on his face, and the Headmaster came round into view. The first thing Harry noticed was the lack of insane twinkle in Dumbledore’s eyes.
‘Harry, my boy, how are you feeling?’
Of the sodding inane questions.
‘Remarkably alive, Headmaster, and you?’
Dumbledore’s face fell yet further as he looked at Harry, and seemed, for once, to be unsure of how exactly to answer someone’s question.
‘I am at a loss, my boy.’
‘Ain’t we fucking all?’
A feminine voice gasped his name. Hermione was in the room and clearly holding herself back from a tirade on the proper mode of address to authority figures. It was all Harry could do to keep from snorting.
‘Why Harry? Why would you choose to do this.’
‘Because nobody wants used goods, which is pretty damn obvious from the fact you’ve got me hidden down here like a bloody leper.’
Nobody seemed to have an answer to that.
The silence dragged on, and just as Harry was contemplating going back to sleep, the final voice in the room spoke up.
‘What about us Harry? Don’t you care about your friends? Or weren’t the squealing fans enough for you.’
‘Fuck you Ron.’
The door slamming as Ron rushed out was his only reply.
Hermione came into view, and took Harry’s hand. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes though. He could see her swollen features in the candlelight, but any guilt he felt was squashed down. He needed fewer people around so he could plan his next attempt.
The tiredness, the empty ache that had been with Harry for so long came crushing back down onto him. He knew he didn’t have long to get rid of everyone before he fell back to sleep.
‘Won’t you even look at me, friend? What can you see now that you couldn’t see before? Or maybe you just didn’t care. I had a job to do right? A bleedin’ mission from the highest powers. And now it’s done. Why are you even here?’
‘I care a-a-about you Harry, I d-don’t want you to die.’
The tears that had clearly been shed before were back with a vengeance, flooding down her face, dripping onto her clothes and Harry’s hand. The Headmaster looked on at the disillusioned and injured young man that lay swamped by black sheets, looking already as if he was covered in his shroud. It looked like a dark foreshadowing of the future, as Dumbledore watched the young man push his friends away, as only one who had known someone so well could.
‘Just get out. Go look up a way to cure this. Then you’ll never come back.’
A second slam resounded in the room.
Snape had remained remarkably silent through all this. It made Harry feel weak, that he could bring even this man to pity. The impenetrable shield around the greaseball had fallen to one suicidal saviour. Or maybe he just couldn’t see James Potter ever taking the plunge off the tallest tower in Hogwarts.
‘You will be staying down here with Professor Snape until you are healed and…’
‘And you can trust me not to go for the nearest razor blade?’
‘And you are fully rested.’
‘Fuck you.’
This time the door closed with a barely audible click.
And Harry stared at his prison warden, determined not to give an inch, until he couldn’t fight it any longer and the cold blanket of oppressive weight closed down on him and he fell back into a restless sleep.
TBC
I'm not sure about Harry's reactions, but I think I works judging on what we saw in book 5.
R&R pleeeeease...
Rose