Recollection

By Taleya

Chapter Nine

Reality filtered around them, seeping through the memory.  Harry slowly drew back, blinking.  He knew what the Headmaster was trying to do, assuage his worry, ease his soul, but somehow, he just felt worse.

Trelawney’s story wound around Dumbledores and he felt hollow, as if someone had scraped his insides clean.  Severus had known. With his unusual parentage he had known there was a chance.  There were wards, spells that could be used to stop such a thing happening and he hadn’t used them.  Not from stupidity or carelessness on Snape’s part, he knew.  The other man was far too careful to be that rash.

Which meant he wanted to be pregnant.  Wanted to bear Harry’s child, to give him the deepest, most precious gift he could bestow. Severus had, indeed, given his heart to Harry.

And Harry had smashed it on the floor with the unthinking cruelty of a spoiled brat and never looked back.

“Harry Potter is a great wizard! Great and powerful and wise and kind!” Dobby’s words echoed through his mind and he lowered his head in shame.  Harry Potter wasn’t great, or wise, or even kind.

Harry Potter was a bloody idiot.

“He hates me.” The same words again, but different.  Not the whine of a child against some imagined wrong, but the soft words of a man who knew his actions.

And accepted the consequences.

“I don’t blame him…” the last was whispered off.

“Why?” Dumbledore peered at Harry over the shimmering surface of the pensieve. “Are you intending to make him fall in love with you and then leave again?”

“No!” Harry reared back and nearly fell, luckily there was a chair behind him.

“Then I don’t see what the problem is!  Harry, Severus hates the you that was you when you last separated.  He doesn’t hate the you you are now - how could he? He doesn’t know the person you have become. What Severus dislikes right now is a memory, a notion, and the wonderful thing about notions is that they can be completely swept away by a new set of experiences and memories.”  He picked up his pensieve and put it away in the cupboard, puttering over to a tray by the fire. “Tea?”

Harry reached up and rubbed his scar, fingers tracing over the brand in a motion repeated thousands of times. Would he go back to Severus? Could he make it all right, make it what it was?  There was too much passed and lost between them, he didn’t even know where to begin.  He’d not only burned the bridge, he’d watched it drop into the river, followed it downstream, then pissed on the embers.

“Do you think…Is there a chance?”  He’d thought hope had been beaten out of him long ago, but there it was, tremulous wings fluttering against his ribcage.  “Can I…can we…”

Dumbledore took pity on his stumbling speech and sat down beside him, gently patting his knee.  “There was obviously a great deal of good in the relationship if Severus thought it safe to bear a child –“ he avoided Harry’s by-now automatic cringe “- and that will never fade.  It’s like that muggle law of energy – completely irrelevant but the words do hold some meaning to love.  Severus is not a man who gives his love or trust easily, it’s an incredibly rare gift that few have earned.  You earned that, young Harry, and even if something has…happened between you to make him believe that gift was ill-given, it’s not one he can easily take back.  Even if he believes he can.  And at the very least young Araminta has the right to know both her parents.”

Harry let out a sigh that felt like it took half his body with it. Pressures that kept arguing they were valid kept dissolving under the other man’s cheerful logic, leaving him with a vaguely disquieting feeling. “I have to say...you’re taking this incredibly well.”

 “You will find, my dear boy, that when you reach my age there is very little left to shock you.”

“I thought the saying went “very little to fear.”

“Very little to fear? Poppycock! There’s always plenty of things to fear.  I myself live in perpetual dread that the house elves may someday mislay my favourite pair of earmuffs.  The ones Poppy likes so much.”

Harry stared. He couldn’t help it. It was the reaction many people had to the headmaster, even the ones who knew him. Dumbledore beamed an idiots grin at him.

“You do realise that I was still a student when all this happened.”

“And seventeen, I’ve no doubt. Severus has no taste for raping underage boys.”

“Sixteen, actually, although you’re right, he refused to do anything...physical until I was of age.  And he was still my teacher….”

“Unless you’d dropped potions – which I know you hadn’t, a score of 94, respectable indeed, congratulations by the way – yes, he was.  My dear boy,” He laughed at the sheer befuddled look on the other man’s face. “It happens far often than one single boy falling for his potions master!  Although we don’t encourage that sort of thing, when it’s between two consenting adults, the school really has no concern.  I myself was in a similar position some years ago with my Herbology teacher.  Mind you, Nicolas and I were far more low key!”

Harry blinked. For some reason something in his brain was sitting up and begging for attention. “Nicholas….”

“My dear boy, you know him quite well. By reputation, if not personally.  Those wizarding cards really do tell a deeper truth than they know, he was my partner in more ways than one.”

Harry stared blankly for a moment, then the penny dropped. “Flamel?! But but but he was married!”

Blue eyes twinkled mischeviously at him. “Yes, he was.  Not that dear Milly minded that much, in fact, she enjoyed herself immensely on more than on occasion.”

Harry shook his head. Now that was a mental image he did not want.  He had the suspicion it would come creeping back though.  Probably at about three am.

“But, this isn’t getting anything done!” Dumbedore pushed himself to his feet and made a show of brushing off his robes.  “You’d better get down to the infirmary young man, I believe that there is someone there you need to talk to.”

“If he even wants to see my face again.” the pessimism wouldn’t die. “He may hate the me that was me when we parted, and not the me now….but all he knows is the me that was then.”   and as completely as possible  “He doesn’t know the me now.”  and I’m not sure even I want to.

“Hate is just love with its back turned.”  Dumbledore’s soft voice carried him down the stairs.  “Don’t forget that.  Have faith, Harry.”
 

Chapter Ten -->

All Content Copyright © 2001 Taleya Joinson
Last modified: November 12, 2010