The Darkening of Your Soul

Chapter 24

Why the hell did this have to happen now? Harry did not want to break down in front of Snape of all people. Inhaling deep breaths through his nose, Harry tried to focus his thoughts away from images of the war and Snape dying and his trial and the veil coming closer and closer...

“Potter, drink this.” Snape held out an opened vial to him, but when Harry didn’t take it, he added, “It’s a calming draught. Nothing else.”

Harry took the vial with trembling hands, sniffed it once to verify Snape probably wasn’t trying to poison him, and downed it in one go. At once warmth spread across his body and his mind, and both his breathing and his heart rate slowed.

“I did everything they wanted me to,” Harry whispered, staring at the floor while leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his thighs and arms held tightly against his body. “Everything and more. I died for them. I killed for them. And in the end all I got in return for giving them my all was a sham of a trial and an execution.”

Snape stood in front of Harry, hip pressed against his desk and arms crossed. He stared down at Harry with a blank expression, which was an improvement over the rage Harry had seen on his face just moments earlier.

Harry looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “My best friends turned against me, sat on the stand and let the Ministry murder me. No one came to my rescue even when I’d given my life to rescue the world.” Harry briefly licked his lips while he gave Snape a challenging look. “So why did I give Tom a second chance? Because I wanted to. Because he’s my soulmate, or the closest thing to it I’ll ever have. And because I was curious to see what he would do with a second chance with his soul and sanity intact.” Harry shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “And I really don’t care if Tom deserves this second chance or not, or what it means to the world. The world can go fuck itself.”

Snape gave a slow nod, shifting on his feet to find a better position while he kept staring down at Harry. “And I take it you have no plans to vanquish the Dark Lord anytime soon?”

Harry snorted with laughter while he looked at Snape in disbelief.

“The headmaster is going to be ever so disappointed,” Snape drawled with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “He’s counting on the Boy Who Lived to do away with the Dark Lord.”

“The headmaster wants me dead,” Harry said in a monotone voice. “He’s going to have to learn to live with that disappointment.”

“Hm.” Snape gave another slow nod. “While I can sympathize with your less than desirable ending,” Snape said entirely without sympathy, “I find it hard to stomach that you’d willingly subject the people around you, new friends you’ve obviously made, to the mercy of the Dark Lord.”

“Tom isn’t Voldemort,” Harry said a little louder than he’d meant to. Snape was getting on his nerves, though, with this constant whining about Tom’s past actions. “There isn’t going to be another war, he told you so. He wants to change our society, sure, but he wants to do it without violence.”

Snape raised a very sceptical eyebrow. “If not violence, then how does he plan to accomplish this? And what are those changes exactly? I cannot imagine you’d go along with any plans to segregate muggleborns, such as the Dark Lord always aspired to do.”

“There’s not going to be any muggleborn registration commission this time, Tom’s promised,” Harry said quickly, so hopefully Snape would understand Tom had indeed changed. Or at the very least had changed his plans. Then Harry went to answer the rest of Snape’s questions but found himself unable to. He knew that Tom wanted to change the wizarding world, but they hadn’t really talked about specifics all that much. Tom had ranted about bureaucracy at the Ministry a time or two, and about their practice of hiring people based on their pedigree or connections more so than for their competency and skills. And of course Tom wanted to bring back certain traditions and rituals the Ministry had banned over the decades. But that was it as far as Harry knew. It’s not like Tom had ever given him a list or something of all the changes he wanted to make in detail.