you raise me up || harry potter

chapter 34

»»————-　song:　————-««

nine

★ by sleeping at last ★

❝ honestly, it's easier

to let myself forget... ❞

♢ ♢ ♢

Harry lay in bed, holding the toy army figurine up in the air between his thumb and forefinger. He remembered this one. He never gave it a name, but it was always the hero. There was a bad guy too, although Harry wasn't sure where that one went. 

He had hoped Snape wouldn't put two and two together and realize the cupboard had been where Harry slept for eleven years. But now, that was the farthest from his mind. 

He wasn't angry. He wasn't brokenly depressed, although the inexplicable sadness he had felt still lingered. But he had to recognize that, while Snape was definitely trying to undo his wrongs since that much was clear, it did not explain anything. Harry didn't understand Snape's motives, and that made him nervous. What could he possibly gain from suddenly acting nice to a student he had always made clear he hated?

It was easy, laughing at Snape's half-jokes and planting and picking. It was easy, and it made it all the more harder. Come the end of summer, he'd leave all this behind. The dog-eared books and vanilla smell. The punctual meals like clockwork. His lemon tree that wasn't a lemon tree yet—he'd be gone before it sprouts. 

He had come to depend on Snape. He didn't expect anything of Harry—he held him at a low standard, at least at first. He only expected sensibleness and and a reasonable amount of deference. He didn't make Harry do back-breaking chores, but he didn't put Harry on a pedestal, either. Snape was probably the only adult Harry ever knew that treated Harry normally... well, relatively. And more so after he came here. 

At least with Snape, Harry didn't have to suspect anything. Snape hated him, and that was a fact. Anything he said or did was his authentic self, for why did he have to pretend to be nice to a person of mutual dislike? Snape gave him food and a place to live out of obligation to his job post and Dumbledore. Nothing more. It was safe. 

But now Harry couldn't be so sure. Harry did not like not being sure. Snape from last year would never have helped him plant a lemon tree, wouldn't have looked so discomfited at the thought of accidentally saying something hurtful.  

Harry was hurt. He didn't quite admit it to himself, but he was hurt. A part of him had hoped that perhaps Snape and Harry could ignore the last two years, since they clearly didn't... hate each other anymore, but the fact that Harry was hurt forced him to acknowledge that things could never be that simple.

When Harry had broken the plate, it took him an embarrassingly long time to remember that wizards simply Reparo their broken possessions instead of super-gluing them back together or throwing them out. Wizards don't lose sleep over broken objects, he had thought. 

Wizards don't lose sleep over broken objects because of spells like Reparo... but the cracks between Harry and Snape felt like they had been haphazardly super-glued together. And Harry definitely did not want to throw away everything that had happened this summer, even if that happened to be the easy way out. Their Reparo would be a conversation.

They had to talk. And Harry dreaded it.

♢

Snape seemed surprised when Harry came down for breakfast the next morning. Maybe he was expecting Harry to shut himself away in his room like he did for dinner last night. But Harry wasn't going to be dramatic and petty anymore. If Snape wanted them to talk, they'd talk.