Tuesday, February 24
Severus stared at Harry.
Harry stared at Severus.
The clock on the wall ticked.
Severus opened his mouth, then closed it.
Harry blinked.
"Harry, I..." Severus trailed off.
You should have done this sooner, a nasty little voice in Severus' head whispered.
How could he do it now?!
Severus looked Harry over. Harry with his multiple thick jumpers on, adding bulk to his thin frame. Harry with the shadows beneath his eyes. Harry with the shadows inside his eyes.
Harry with his madness.
You should have done this sooner.
"Bye."
Harry spun on his heel and had his hand on the doorknob, clearly intending to leave, before Severus could call for him.
"Wait! Where are you going?" Severus asked.
Harry glanced over his shoulder at Severus, his hand still on the doorknob. "Back to the d-dorm. We're celebrating."
"Celebrating?"
What were they celebrating that led Harry to ask Severus such a question?
"Theo and Hermione are having a b-baby." Harry turned and have Severus a small half-smile that didn't reach his dull eyes. "I'm g-godfather. Isn't that mad?"
Truthfully? Yes.
Would the godchild of Harry Potter enjoy a life of fierce protection and comfortable means? Most likely.
If Theodore and Granger died, leaving Harry to raise their offspring, would Harry initiate it into his 'gang' and teach it to stab first and possibly ask questions later? Absolutely.
Severus was quite content, overwhelmed truly, with the three teenagers he somehow found himself the guardian of and had no desire to ever bring an infant in to the world. But if he did, he could truthfully admit, if only to himself, that Harry would hardly be a suitable godparent for it.
Though, he would not be sharing those uncharitable thoughts at present time.
"I assumed you would be," Severus lied smoothly. He actually thought the two idiotic teenagers who got themselves in to quite a situation were at least intelligent enough to pick a competent guardian, especially during an active war. "Theodore is your brother, Granger is your friend. Why would they not make you godfather?"
Harry laughed and shook his head at Severus with mock-disapproval. "Sev, I'm dead. You can't m-make an inferi or a ghost godfather of a b-baby. But they insisted, so," Harry shrugged.
And Severus was meant to discuss horcruxes with him?
"You are neither an inferi nor a ghost," Severus said calmly. "You are alive."
Harry narrowed his eyes then shrugged again. "Did I ask you what 'Little Horcrux' means or d-did I just dream it?"
"You asked me. Though I find myself curious where you heard such a term?" Severus asked. He was stalling, he knew that, but there was no manual for this.
'What to do when your human horcrux teenage son who is suffering intermittent breaks from reality and believes he is a ghost or inferi asks you to describe a term he should never have known' would make an absurd book title.
"Timmy calls m-me that."
Severus felt all the air in his lungs leave his body and the blood to rush to his head. He staggered slightly and gripped the desk to keep himself upright.
"So it's bad."
Severus nodded mutely.
He suspected that the Dark Lord and Harry were conversing once more as Harry's current occlumency barriers were rudimentary at best.
He suspected that the Dark Lord had discovered that Harry was a horcrux, prompting him to change his desires from death to partnership.
How could he have suspected that the Dark Lord would inform Harry of what he carried inside him through what sounded as if a possessive, and disturbing, term of endearment?
Harry watched as Severus processed this all for nearly a minute before he sighed. "I'll ask Theo tomorrow th-then," he said lightly. "I just didn't want to piss him off d-during the party."
Severus found himself quite unsurprised that Theodore knew the term. Granger likely did as well. The two of them had a terrible habit of pilfering books from Barty's library the summer before their fifth year.
"I will tell you," Severus said faintly. "Come, sit."
The only thing more horrifying than this conversation was imagining Harry finding out what a horcrux was from Theodore.
Harry gave Severus a wary look and watched quietly as Severus moved to the chair behind his desk, where he promptly collapsed gracelessly. Harry slowly made his way to the chair across from Severus and sat on the edge of it.
Harry stared expectantly at Severus as the silence between them weighed heavily.
"A drink, I think," Severus eventually said. He pulled the flask that Minerva gifted him for Christmas, a dark green colored flask with 'Emergency Bourbon' engraved on the front, and summoned a glass.
"He's going to say something terrible," Harry murmured. "You could leave... Or you could ask for a drink."
Severus was abruptly struck in the shoulder by a second tumbler while he had been distracted by Harry's quietly spoken thoughts.
"Sorry," Harry said, sounding anything but. "Can I h-have a drink too?"
It is a weeknight. He is a student. An underage student.
You are about to cause a devastating explosion in his mind, do you think he will attend morning classes?
"One," Severus said, pouring them both a generous glass.
Harry nodded when Severus handed him the glass and he held it tightly in both his hands, causing the amber liquid to slosh around as his hands shook lightly. Harry didn't raise it to his lips, he merely held on to it.
Severus sipped his slowly, racking his brain to find the proper way to approach this.
There was none.
There was absolutely no sensitive or subtle way to discuss with Harry that he housed a portion of the Dark Lord's soul. Certainly not now, when Harry was still speaking his thoughts aloud and continued to believe that he had already died.
The Gryffindor approach it was.
Embrace the inevitable, Severus, he told himself.
"A horcrux is an object that carries a shard of a human soul within it," Severus said slowly. He kept his eyes firmly on his glass, cowardly and desperately to avoid witnessing the damage he was inflicting upon Harry. "It is typically inanimate objects, though there are two instances where living beings carried one of these soul shards."
Severus could hear his heart hammering in his throat. He could practically taste his anxiety that was boiling in his stomach. He even set his glass down as he noticed the fine tremor sloshing his own liquor around.
You should have told him sooner.
"I don't get it."
Severus looked up at Harry's even tone and saw that he had his brows furrowed and his glass still tightly clenched.
"What do you not understand?" Severus asked. He was mildly pleased, in the part of his mind that processed things that absolutely did not matter in that moment, that his voice was steady.
"Why- why is he calling m-me 'Little Horcrux' then?" Harry asked. He lifted a finger on his glass and began tapping it with his nail over and over. "Does he th-think I have someone else's soul shard inside me?"
What was he meant to say?
He could hardly lie to him. Yet, he desperately did not want to be the one to say this either.
Severus briefly felt envious of Barty for simply dying to escape having to tell this to Harry.
"Yes." Severus cleared his throat and averted his eyes to Harry's hands as opposed to his young and vulnerable face. "He does and you do. His, to be precise."
A beat of silence.
A couple of tap, tap, tap's on the glass.
Then a laugh.
"You're joking."
Severus turned his head to the left, to the right, to the left, then back to Harry's fidgeting hands. "I am not," he said softly.
Harry made a strangled sort of noise and Severus' gaze flew up to his face. Harry's eyes were bulging, wide and incredulous, and his face was losing color so rapidly that Severus truly began to fear for his physical health.
He got to his feet and quickly summoned a calming drought. "Harry? Are you breathing?"
Harry sucked in a loud breath and a splash of color returned to his cheeks. Severus replaced the drink in his hands with the drought and lifted it to his mouth.
"Drink, now."
Harry didn't seem inclined to obey so Severus began lifting the vial slowly, allowing it to trickle in his mouth, until Harry finally poured the entire thing back and swallowed it loudly. Severus stood beside his chair, waiting for his breathing to even out and the color to return to his face. As soon as Harry looked mildly better, he dropped the empty vial on the floor and snatched his drink back off the desk and drank the entire thing at once.
Severus stepped back and perched on the edge of his desk and waited, giving Harry time to process what he said.
And the clock ticked on.
One minute of Harry staring in to his empty glass with horrified eyes.
Two minutes of Severus' heart racing at levels that were certainly unhealthy.
Three minutes of silence thick with Severus' concern, his guilt, his fear.
Four minutes of Harry's...
Well, Severus was unsure what Harry was thinking at the moment as he stared down in the glass and bit harshly on his lower lip.
After five minutes, Severus shifted, crossed his arms, and Harry looked up at him.
"Get it out," he whispered.
"It is not so easily removable," Severus told him, a hint of desperation in his tone. "The only way to destroy a horcrux is to destroy the host."
Harry blinked as Severus' heart lodged in his throat.
Then Harry laughed once more-
Empty. Cold. Hollow.
"All this time, all this time, I thought I d-died before I went to Azkaban, b-but you're saying I didn't d-die then, but I have to now?" Harry demanded. He looked up at Severus with his lips curled up in an amused grin while his pupils were blown and huge. "Is that irony or k-karma?"
"Neither," Severus said. He shifted uncomfortably again and wondered if Harry wanted a hug or some sort of physical comfort.
... a hug? You've just told him 'you are not an inferi, nor a ghost, but you are a horcrux', and you believe he wants a hug from you?
Severus cleared his throat and recrossed his arms. "And I do not believe you have to die to remove it."
Perhaps it was a partial blessing that their conversation had been delayed until now. Now when Severus knew the location of all three items that could save Harry's life, two already in their possession. He doubted if he could have had this conversation while he had been drowning in despair over what seemed to be a foregone conclusion.
Harry stared at him then jumped to his feet. "You just said I have to be destroyed. Or d-d'you think I'm gonna live with his FUCKING SOUL INSIDE ME FOREVER?!"
Severus kept his ground, remaining where he was with minor confidence that Harry would not strike out at him physically or magically.
"I do not expect you to live with it forever," he said. "And I certainly will not be destroying you."
Harry scoffed and slammed his empty tumbler on the desk and turned for the doorway, stopping halfway there and turning back to Severus.
"Dream?" he demanded.
Nightmare.
Severus shook his head, "Real."
Harry nodded curtly and looked up to the ceiling. "I want it out, n-now," he said.
"I understand," Severus said. He took a few steps towards Harry. "But we must wait until we can remove it without injuring you."
Harry turned narrow and accusatory eyes towards Severus. "How l-long?"
"How long until we can remove it?" Severus asked uncertainly.
Harry laughed and Severus was beginning to hate the sound of his laughter, as cold and mocking as it was.
"No," Harry said. "How l-long have you known?"
Lie.
"The day of Barty's funeral," Severus admitted truthfully. He had kept this from the child long enough, he would hardly make it worse by lying to him now.
Severus expected screaming. He expected curses. He even expected a duel to break out.
Which is why Harry's round green eyes filling with tears felt like a punch to the stomach as all Severus' breath left his body.
"What..." Harry looked around the room quickly. "What day is it?" he asked hoarsely.
"February 24th," Severus said softly, apologetically.
"Months?" Harry whispered.
Oh how the hurt and betrayal in his eyes injured Severus more terribly than any verbal admonishment or physical wound.
Severus opened his mouth, and found that words had failed him once more. He nodded.
Harry jammed his hands in his trouser pockets and nodded slowly back as he stared at Severus as if truly seeing all of his faults for the first time.
"I've got to-to... to..." Harry looked around the room with his frantic and wet eyes and Severus stopped him as they landed on the doorway.
"Home," Severus said quickly, offering the only lifeline he could to the child drowning in betrayal, shock, and madness. He stepped out of the path of the floo. "Go home, Harry."
Harry grabbed on to the offer with a choked gasp and strode straight to the floo. As he passed Severus he pulled his hand out of his pocket and let it brush over his robe sleeve.
Severus had no idea what the gesture meant, but as it was not a dagger to the chest, he wanted to believe that it meant that this too could be rectified with time, explanations, and their history to use as a foundation.
Harry gave him one last searching look, before making a small noise, and then grabbing a fistful of floo powder and disappearing to their house.
And, as Severus was not truly stupid, he called for Mavis, who obediently appeared instantly.
"Would you kindly inform Narcissa and Lucius that Harry is home and to give him space while ensuring his safety?" Severus asked him.
Mavis, who likely knew all the secrets within their very disjointed and peculiar household, squinted suspiciously at Severus.
"Master is upset?" he squeaked.
Severus summoned Barty's book and sat with it at his desk. "He is."
Because Severus upset him.
"Master is needing kept safe from enemies?" Mavis asked slowly, as if already suspecting Severus' response.
"Himself, I'm afraid."
The house-elf did not look surprised in the least. He merely let out a soft sigh, sounding rather resigned, and nodded. "Mavis will be telling Misses Cissy and Mister Lucious to be keeping Master safe from himself. Is that what you is wanting?"
"Precisely," Severus said, too downtrodden to even appreciate the name that either Harry or Mavis gave to Lucius. "And, if you are able to, perhaps you would monitor him? From a distance?"
"Mavis will," Mavis said solemnly before wagging a finger at Severus. "And Mister Snoop should be knowing better than to be upsetting Master! Master is too skinny to be upsetting!"
Severus frowned as Mavis popped away to go watch over Harry.
Were all house-elves so dedicated to their Master's health or did Harry happen to find a rather protective house-elf?
Of course, considering that Harry had somehow earned a title of endearment from the Dark Lord, perhaps Harry's charisma and magnetism were truly magically powered.
Regardless, with Harry now in a place where it would be safe for him to fall to pieces with relative privacy, Severus pulled Tom Riddle's ring from Barty's book and inspected the engraving on the obsidian stone once more.
When Harry came back, he would demand answers.
Severus spun the ring beneath the candlelight.
He laid it on his desk and pulled out the vial of basilisk venom that Barty stole from him to experiment with. He very calmly summoned the sharpest knife he had from his brewing kit and dipped the knife in the potion.
A vibranium knife. Made for the most volatile of ingredients.
Severus turned the ring on his desk until the stone faced away from him, then, quickly before he could change his mind, Severus brought the knife down on the silver band.
The ring shrieked, as if it were in terribly agony. Smoke poured from the metal, causing Severus to cough and wave it out of his face. The handsome silver band was entirely blackened-
Destroyed.
Severus gingerly touched the stone and spun it back towards him, a victorious glimmer in his eyes.
The stone was entirely unharmed, proof of the unfathomable magical properties it carried, Severus was certain.
He carefully removed the stone from the destroyed band and then held it in his hand.
It was small, smaller than even a snitch. It weighed next to nothing, and, aside from the symbol of the Hallows it carried, it looked as unassuming as any other chunk of obsidian.
When Harry came back, Severus would give him answers. He would give him a proper explanation. He would tell him his plan. And...
Severus turned the stone in his hand, just once.
And perhaps he could even offer quite the apology gift.