| birdsong - new snarry fic |
[5:44pm Tuesday, February 26th, 2008] |
Author: paperbacked
Pairing: Snarry
Rating: M for mature - some adult concepts, but no sex (alas) - about a PG-13, I suppose.
Warnings: ANGST! Character death
Disclaimer: I do not possess H Potter or S Snape, damn it. But I did write this.
sorry can't figure out cuts over here...
Birdsong
Life is thundering blissful towards death
In a stampede of his fumbling green gentleness
Joanna Newsom – Only Skin
The hardest thing to get used to was the silence. All his life he'd been surrounded by the noise of others; it coloured his formative memories, lingered on his lips with a whisper, a song or a shout. The sound of his uncle's voice, raised in anger, feet on the flagstones of the Great Hall, Hermione's laugh (don't think about that, don't think about Hermione), someone's cry in the night and the smell of spellfire – gone. When Harry shouted, nobody silenced him. When Harry swore, nobody reprimanded him. Sometimes he'd wake up tasting dust, all those words crumbling from lack of use, his language becoming a dead tongue even as his still moved in the cavern of his mouth. Even as he lived.
Sometimes he wondered whether it would have been better if he'd been the only one left. At least then he could have gone comfortably insane and it wouldn't have mattered to anyone. But Fate had played her final trick, and instead he had Snape. Or rather, Snape had him since it was Harry who cared for him now, Harry who watched over him and if that wasn't irony, he didn't know what it was. The disease had started slowly but Snape, already weakened by Nagini's final attack, had succumbed to it rapidly and it had soon spread, covering the man with the discoloured blotches that Harry had come to know so horribly well. A rattling intake of breath was the only noise that Snape made now; Nagini having already accounted for that singular voice several years previously. The eyes were still the same, at least, although they no longer blazed with anger when they caught Harry's own. They looked instead resigned; though whether it was to his constant presence or to the man's own impending mortality, Snape wasn't telling.
It had started about six months after the war had ended. The first outbreaks had been in the Muggle community. It didn't matter to the wizarding world. Muggles were always dying. Nobody cared, nobody paid attention until it had become an epidemic and by then it was too late and the first wizarding cases had already begun to surface. Nothing could be done. Hogwarts was closed, whole cities were quarantined. Nothing could stop it. Harry had held Ron in his arms and felt him die. He had been with Hermione at the end when she was blind and delirious, crying out for Ron, he had stroked her hair and told her that he was coming very soon, that they were all going back to Hogwarts and that it was all going to be all right forever. She died anyway. They all did, in the end.
Harry had become obsessed with his own mortality, checking his skin head to toe for the first blemishes, wanting it to happen, needing it to start. The disease never touched him. He lived. Before it took Minerva, she told him about the cottage in the country where he could stay until the worst of it was over and the world began to start again. He didn't share her fervent belief that it would, but he went anyway, taking Snape for a reason that he himself could not understand. The man had begun to display the first signs of the disease after only a week. Harry had lost track of how much time had passed since then, but he knew that it wouldn't be long.
Letting himself into the side door, he could hear Snape's rattled panting in the lounge from the kitchen. He blinked, concerned, despite their still-mutual animosity. Despite the fact that Snape had been an unmitigated bastard to Harry throughout their snarling and bitter relationship, he didn't deserve to die like this, laid out in dowdy state in the middle of a poorly-furnished Muggle living room. Snape's eyes were shut awkwardly, scrunched at the bottom like tangled window-blinds. He was sweating copiously, biting his thin lips as he struggled to draw each painful breath. Harry touched Snape's face.
“It's me”, he said. It was unnecessary, but he liked the sound of it, a declaration.
Snape opened his eyes to meet Harry's own. At this late stage of the disease, his magic had all but vanished, but Harry felt as though the other man was looking into his soul anyway. Not that he believed he had one. Without knowing why, he leaned forward and placed his mouth upon Snape's own, kissed him without ceremony. Snape moved beneath him. He smelled like sweat and forests. He broke away. “It's me”, he repeated quietly, and the dim echo of the silence was like the roar of a million waves breaking, like the crest of a thousand orgasms, like a hundred voices in unison. Harry placed his hand upon Snape's chest. Still real. Snape closed his eyes slowly, breathing more evenly and Harry could swear that he saw those pale and bitten lips form, just once, his name.
He awoke later to the blur of a twilight room. Snape was cold and lifeless beneath his touch, eyes closed as though asleep, despite the cliche. Harry nodded slightly. It was done. Carefully he removed his hand, drawing the brown woolen blanket up to cover the other man's face. Standing, he walked to the window to watch the sun dip below the horizon. The sky was endlessly red and the land rolled on forever. Tomorrow he'd start walking, looking for other survivors, for the promised new life. Harry looked at the familiar stain of blotches along the inside of his arm. Perhaps he'd hear the birds again, just once, before it was too late.
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