Severus Snape and the Secrets of Time

Chapter 1

Regret

Severus could feel the weight of the world closing in around him as he sat alone in the headmasters office. He couldn’t bring himself to alter it when he took over, finding some small comfort in the illusion that Albus, the former headmaster, could at any time come strolling through the door with some wisdom or comfort that he so desperately needed. But he knew that never again would he see the long white hair and beard and the laughing blue eyes behind half moon spectacles, walk through that door. His last friend and confidant, like everyone he had ever loved, was gone by his own forced hand. The consequence of foolish choices, still haunting him, twenty years later. Death surrounding, yet eluding him. His days were once again, or was it finally, numbered.

Although, he couldn’t yet go. Not until he told Harry the last few things he needed to know, not until he gave him the last few tools he needed. Harry, the son of the woman who still, even in death, possessed his heart and soul. The son who should have been his, but for bitterness, foolishness, and immaturity. But instead his childhood bully, his tormentor, had weaselled his way in, when he was at his weakest, his most foolish, and stolen her...

No. There again was the bitterness, the blame shifting. He had made the horrible decisions that had lost his best friend since they were eight, that had driven her away when they were teens, away from him, and to the person he hated most, after himself. It was his mistakes, his decisions, that had taken her life. And it was his tormentor, who had fought to protect her, and failed, that he saw every time he looked at the child who had come into his classroom six years ago, broken, battered and abandoned. Just as he was when he came to that same class, twenty years before. Only Harry was in far more danger, far greater need of protection, but rather than snatch him up and protect him… he had deepened those scars and bruises…

But he could never allow himself to care for him, to see him as anything but the child of his tormentor. No, doing so would put them both in danger. Maybe when death finally came, too many years too late, he would at last know peace. Maybe he will have managed to pay penance for the choices that cost the lives of everyone he loved. Cost him his own life. Lived solely in recompense for the choices he made when he was younger than the child he sought to protect.

So many children, too many children, in his care. Powerless to protect them all.

But he must get up. He must go on. Without him, how much worse would it be? He could not allow himself to think about it. He must live only to walk the fishing wire thin line that was the price of his ignorance and hatred.

The burning of the tattoo on his left forearm yanked him out of his revelry. One of his hated cohorts had called his “Master”, the dark lord. Harry was discovered. If he didn’t think fast, work fast, Harry would be captured, again. And it would be too late. Harry would go in unarmed of the knowledge he needed, the knowledge he had failed to pass on.

No! No matter the cost, he must succeed. Harry must not die!

Until the appointed time.

His knees nearly buckled under the weight of that truth. Sixteen years of sacrifice, keeping him safe at all costs, only to lead him to the slaughter. He knew it had to be done, but he didn’t know if he was strong enough to do it. He was never meant to care for the boy. It would be so much easier if he didn’t.

He tossed multiple different types of healing potions, anti-venom, and a couple bezoar (A stone from the stomach of a goat that will protect you from most poisons) in his pockets before slipping silently down the stairs and into the hallway.

The dark lord had been called to the Ravenclaw common room. There was a slim chance he could get there first, but what would he do if he could? Maybe Filius Flitwick, the head of Ravenclaw, would get there first. Maybe he could pretend to be outmatched.

Who was he kidding, he would be outmatched.

Whatever, he must get Harry the information.

Moving silently slowed him down. After all, he was the headmaster, he belonged in these corridors. But if Harry was under his invisibility cloak... no, he must sneak up unnoticed.

Minerva, the head of Gryffindor, still in her dressing gown, came striding purposefully down the corridor toward him. Though she was alone, she walked with an authority and protectiveness that she put on only when walking with students.

He quickly concealed himself, then followed as quietly as possible. There were definitely more than one set of footsteps. Perhaps Harry was with her under the cloak.

After a short while, Minerva stopped abruptly, retrieved her wand, and called out “Who’s there?”

“It is I,” Severus responded quietly. Knowing that if Harry was with her she duelled to kill, he too retrieved his wand, ready to shield but hesitant to fight back, for fear of hitting Harry. He had no idea where he was.

“Where are the Carrows?” He asked, vying for time, but trying not to draw their attention.

“Wherever you told them to be, I expect, Severus,” Minerva snapped back a bit too defensively.

Yes, Harry was with her, but Severus struggled to narrow down where. Stall for time, he thought to himself. “I was under the impression,” he said quietly, “that Alecto had apprehended an intruder.”

“Really?” Minerva asked suspiciously. “And what gave you that impression?”

Severus flexed at the burn of the tattoo on his arm.

“Oh, but naturally,” chided Minerva. “You death eaters have your own private means of communication. I forgot.”

He couldn’t let them see the sting of the name that “the dark lord”, Voldemort’s, followers had adopted, and the hatred with which she spat it at him. Nor the desperation with which he scoured the air for Harry. “I did not know that it was your night to patrol the corridors, Minerva.”

“You have some objection?”

“I wonder what could have brought you out of your bed at this late hour?” He said, listening hard for the familiar sound of Harry’s mind. So open and honest, and unsullied, despite everything he’s been through. Jealousy mingled with sorrow shot through him but he did his best to stamp it down.

“I thought I heard a disturbance,” Minerva broke in.

“Really? But all seems calm.” He said, shifting his attention to try to read her. “Have you seen Harry Potter, Minerva?” He said looking into her eyes and focusing all his effort to try to break into her mind. “Because if you have, I must insist---”

He was able to garner just enough of her thoughts to warn him in time to shield himself from the curse she threw at him. Fear for what might happen to Harry kept him from firing back while she was off balance.

It was all he could do to turn the fire she threw at him into a serpent. Harry was a parseltongue; surely it wouldn’t attack him. right?

Suddenly the serpent turned to daggers, flying straight for him. He managed to shove a suit of armour in front of him, the daggers sinking deep into its chest plate.

“Minerva!” Filius squeaked, as he and Pomona, head of Hufflepuff, came running up the corridor in their night clothes, Horace, head of Slytherin, far behind and out of breath.

“No!” Filius squealed, pointing his wand at Severus. “You’ll do no more murder at Hogwarts!”

The suit of armour, behind which Severus had hidden, grabbed for him. Outnumbered and outgunned, he struggled free, sending it flying back towards the others, and sped down the corridor, into a classroom, and through the window.

As he soared high above the grounds, making for the perimeter with all the speed he could muster, Minerva’s cries of “coward!” stung him to his core. He had spent his whole life scared, running to or from someone, cowering behind deception and double cross, living only to make some small recompense for the mistakes he had made in fear and cowardice. He had never been brave. He had only done what he knew had to be done, afraid. He hoped that the other teachers would be capable of doing what he had failed to; protect Harry and the other children. He feared his part in this story was coming to a close. He wouldn’t get another opportunity to give Harry the information he needed. Maybe the portrait in his office would be able to succeed where he had failed.

The air turned icy as he crossed the perimeter, flying above the dementors, oppressive, black, half apparitions who guarded the grounds. Two broke from their watch and followed him, sucking what little shred hope he had left, out of him.

It was over.

Voldemort had won.

Even if someone did, somehow manage to kill Voldemort, once and for all, there would be no reason left for him to go on, to live.

He landed on the street in Hogsmeade as the alarm sounded, telling the other death eaters someone was out and about. He lay there, letting the hopelessness and the grief overtake him. As the darkness enveloped him, draining the last of his will away, he saw a white goat prance through the darkness and chase the dementors back in the direction of Hogwarts.

Still he lay there, trying to conjure the strength and the will to go on. Through the silence he heard a string of obscenities, then felt a prolonged moment of excruciating pain. When the pain let up, he could hear footsteps coming up the street.

“I saw that goat chasing the dementors again. I swear, if that Aberforth comes out one more time, I’m going to crucio him!” A death eater shouted.

“It wasn’t a goat,” Severus shouted as he struggled to his feet. “It was a doe. My doe.” He cast his patronus, a white doe, and sent it prancing around and through the crowd of confused death eaters. Aberforth may have crucioed him, but he had saved his life, in spite of Severus having killed his brother. The least he could do is cover for him.

“First I see a stag,” a man said, “and they tell me it’s a goat. Now I see a goat, and they tell me it’s a doe. I’m losing my bloody mind!” The death eater wailed as he wandered back toward the inn.

A stag. Yes, Harry had been there, and his fellow Death Eaters knew it.

“Someone’s been confounded too many times.” Severus replied under his breath, pulling himself to his full height and following him into the inn.