Bethlehem Down

Bethlehem Down

The wind whistled breathily, like a badly blown bottle. The poplars rustled somewhere far off. Rain fell, in a constant 'shh,' as if it was telling Harry Potter to be quiet.

But Harry didn't need telling to be quiet. He was silent already, mud soaked and lying on the earth as if there was no storm but a sunny day, as if the moon was the sun, and the violent rain merely interesting cloud shapes.

Harry Potter was going mad.

Perhaps he had known it for a while now, a vague nagging oddness about his edges, a slight glitch in his behaviour... He had surely shouted at enough people to put him in anger management.

But this was different. This madness was all encompassing. This madness had sent him out in the middle of the night, in the midst of a storm, through resilient wards and charms, to his old school.

Perhaps that would be okay, now, if he had a reason. Any reason to come back here. But Harry did not. More than that, he had been too afraid to even enter the castle. For some ridiculous reason, lying on the soaked mud like this felt comforting.

Yes, Harry really was losing it.

Beyond that, there was the fact he was only wearing a thin layer of clothing. Though the cold barely seemed to matter anymore. At least he was not seeing two moons yet.

As Harry watched the sky, he scanned it reflectively for the Dogstar, Sirius. His Sirius. He wondered vaguely if everyone he had ever known to die would be up there somewhere. Draconis, Sirius, Bellatrix... It was all very Lion King.

But be that as it may, madness had caused Harry's attention span to severely diminish. He got bored of the stars as quickly as he had evidently got bored of warm, dry places and sanity.

So, with one last glance at Sirius, Harry rolled over, yawned, and snuggled into the mud.

Deep in the heart of the castle, one Severus Snape was knocking back tequilas and talking to himself.

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'Good grief! It's Harry Potter!'

Harry grumbled and murmured at the comment, but did not get up. His lips had turned an unsightly shade of blue overnight, and his fingers were numb.

Besides, people would help him. He looked terrible. Anyone sane would suspect he had been in some sort of tussle. Why else would the vanquisher of the Dark Lord be lying in the mud at 7 a.m.?

Whatever student had found the Chosen One soon returned with backup.

'Mr Potter?' McGonagall sounded a little unnerved, 'Harry Potter?'

Harry waited, eyes screwed shut, and listened to the mud squelch around him as many pairs of feet crowded and gazed and walked away again.

Then he felt a quick 'schlup' of mud retracting, and rose a few feet into the air. McGonagall must be taking him to the hospital wing. Goodie. Like the olden days.

The buzz of excited students surrounded Harry as he felt himself levitating into the warmth of the castle walls. McGonagall shushed most of them away, but he still caught the odd shocked swearword here and there.

'Pomfrey, I do believe we have an ex-resident who needs attention?'

Harry was gently lowered onto a bed. He listened silently to the women's conversation as they muttered frantically about the 'why's and 'how's of the situation. Finally, her clip-clopping growing quieter and quieter, McGonagall left the room.

Madam Pomfrey let out a loud sigh and there was a clinking of bottles. Then Harry could hear her approaching, and his jaw was wrenched open to swallow some vile concoction or other.

Whatever else, the potion made him drowsy. Harry barely heard Pomfrey retreat before he had fallen into a warm, blissful slumber.

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'Stop pretending to be asleep, Potter. You do yourself a disservice.'

A harsh voice was speaking.

Harry knew that Snape was sneering before he even opened his eyes. But he did anyway.

'There you go, absolutely fine,' Snape scoffed, 'one would have thought you would have grown out of attention-seeking by now.'

Harry gaped. Then he scowled. Then he gaped again a few times for good measure. Finally, he decided to speak, though after the mud and the wind and the rain he had felt as if he may never talk again. He was part of the earth and the air, not human. But Snape's face was far too tempting.

'I saved your back,' he spat, seething at the man's continual hatred towards him, 'Voldemort would have killed you instantly.'

Snape looked down for a second, with dimmed eyes. But then he seemed to gather himself up and snarled back,

'No, Potter, that is merely what you like to think. Your hero complex is really quite overdeveloped by now...'

Harry caught a vague scent of soap from Snape's robes, intermingled with bitter potions ingredients and somehow, darkness.

He was tired. Snape was a bastard and too much effort to waste breath on.

'Just get out.'

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Harry didn't open his eyes for the rest of the day. That is, indeed, if it was even daytime. Without vision of light or darkness, time was completely irrelevant to him.

He just lay there, like some log or rock or something, inanimate but existent. And he thought about it. The event.

It had hardly been huge. Harry had defeated Voldemort for chrissakes, and then this one small thing unhinged him. Sent him screaming over the moors naked, painting his entire house purple, tying clothes to trees, lying in the mud at night in the rain.

Actually, put like that, he had little choice but to sleep outside. His house was full of paint fumes and his possessions were in the whomping willow in his garden. They probably didn't really exist anymore.

Harry sighed. He felt the stirrings of humanity inside him, and wished he didn't. It had been peaceful out there, slowly dying of pneumonia or something, thinking only of stars and calm and the splitter of rain.

Being human was far more difficult. He had realised this even in his fifth year, he vaguely remembered, though it seemed like a lifetime ago. Dumbledore had believed that it made him strong, made him loving.

Well, Harry rationalised, Dumbledore was a dead fool.

And Dumbledore wasn't gay.

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That night, Harry really was asleep when Snape entered the Infirmary.

The lank-haired professor didn't leave, though, when unable to taunt or sneer, but instead calmly walked around the bed, examining Potter like a pinned beetle.

Then he did something extraordinary. He sat down on the bed, at Harry's feet.

He didn't say anything, of course, sitting anywhere near the boy was quite enough as far as Snape's sentimentality stretched. If Harry could indeed even be called a boy anymore, for he had long since left school.

But Snape still saw Harry as a boy. A boy who had never had the chance to grow up, surrounded by death threats and rumours. He had never had the chance to be normal. Not even to foster successful relationships. He even demonstrated that fact now by going so completely mad at the extinguishing of one.

Not that Snape could talk. The man sighed and ran fingers through greasy hair. He had been mad for far longer than Potter, perhaps longer than Potter's very existence.

Then he got up. A five-minute visit was quite enough, thank you. He took one last look at the sleeping boy before heading back to the dungeons to laugh manically at life once again.

His students should be glad that they never experienced his happy side.

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Harry yawned, cat-like, and stretched.

For once, his waking had synchronised with the day's morning. He wasn't about to waste that coincidence by falling back to sleep.

Besides, he felt strangely rejuvenated by the night's sleep, as if he had gained something from it, though he hardly knew what. His dreams were all inevitably miserable.

Harry pushed the covers aside and got up. Then immediately had a headrush, couldn't see, and flopped back down again. Damn. He needed to eat.

He didn't remember the last time he ate. Food tended to make him feel ill, or else was just inconvenient. Without mealtimes, the day seemed to flow so much better.

Well, hey, he would have to eat now at any rate.

Harry inhaled a slow breath, then called,

'Dobby!'

The elf, now aged and liver-spotted, appeared in an instant.

Before Dobby could make a sweet, obedient nuisance of himself, Harry requested some scrambled eggs on toast, and the elf obligingly disapparated again with a loud crack.

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Later on in the morning, feeling better on a full stomach, Harry decided to have a walk.

The sun was out, if a little mistily, and the ground sparkled with dew.

It was odd weather for summer, he thought, slowly rustling up the walk to the Forbidden Forest. He hadn't seen Hogwarts since the war, but, save the weather, everything was the same.

Well, almost everything.

The empty gamekeeper's hut had boarded up windows now, left dark and to its own devices. Cobwebs hung from the guttering.

Somehow Harry always thought that Hagrid would survive. But that was probably just bias. So many must have felt the same. So many must be now, as he was, missing someone. Missing everyone.

'We always believe it won't happen to anyone we care for.'

The words could almost be Dumbledore's, Harry smiled to himself. He was getting wise.

Harry rounded the hut and walked back towards the castle. Pomfrey would have his head if he stayed out for too long. After all, he could do any number of eccentric activities outside.

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When Harry had finished scourgifying the mud off the hallway and his boots, he walked back towards the Hospital Wing.

'I just don't know what we can do...'

Voices filtered out through the doors, and Harry paused to listen.

'...He's been so unhinged of late... not even sure he is fit to teach anymore...'

That was McGonagall's voice, he realised. The other must be Pomfrey.

'Well his role in... certain matters... was not well received... I suppose the spiked Pumpkin juice didn't help with his paranoia?'

'Poppy, that's just it, even the students do not respect him anymore... I can't think... Well, we even had a preliminary interview with a possible replacement...'

Pomfrey said something too muffled to make out.

'I know, he has never coped well with rejection... But what options do we have? He is becoming a laughing stock, Poppy...'

'Who have you interviewed so far?'

'Oh a few, here and there... None too promising, though Lee Jordan has worked wonders since university...'

Harry pushed open the door and the two women stopped talking immediately.

He almost didn't notice Pomfrey's orders or McGonagall's bustling questions to him. All he noticed was that there, in the bed beside his own, was Professor Snape.

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But he had been fine when he had come to visit Harry, he had been fine... His normal, snarky self. He had told Harry that he was attention-seeking, just as he always did. He had sneered, just as he always did.

Or maybe Harry was just less observant now.

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'He's not waking up, there's nothing we can do about it...'

Snape shifted. His sheets crumpled as he thrashed into them. Madam Pomfrey's brow crinkled with worry, and she fetched him some dreamless sleep. It seemed grotesque to see her pouring the liquid down Snape's fighting throat. There was no point anyway. It did nothing.

Harry felt like he was trespassing to watch, so he rolled over. But even then, he could hear the man gasping and twisting on his bed. He wondered what Snape was dreaming.

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Winding, winding...

The city is dark. Night is risen among the beasts. Far off a cat yowls, some drunk retches, a bottle smashes. But deep within is only silence, and the smell of the night.

Blue cloaked over nakedness, Snape finds himself walking slowly to the door. It is not his door, yet he feels he has been here before. It is London, London save the seaside smell of salt and cockleshells. It is night.

Somewhere within his subconscious, a child is singing.

When he is King, they will clothe him with grave sheets,

Myrrh for embalming and wood for a crown...

He that lies now in the white arms of Mary,

Sleeping so lightly on Bethlehem Down.

The king. The king somewhere, anywhere... He can't place him and the memory is fading, the words are blurring... But him, he is just a child. It is night.

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Snape whimpered loudly, and Harry shot out of bed.

He then looked around quickly, wand in hand, realised where he was, and flopped back down on the bed.

Just Snape.

Harry had never expected such a pained noise to come from his former professor, though. Snape was far too reserved, too composed. But as Harry looked at him, he noticed that nothing about the man suggested composure anymore.

Snape's hair was now so greasy it almost bled oil, but there was nothing to be done about that. No reason to do it either, since nobody knew when or if he would wake.

His face seemed doubly wrinkled since Harry's schooldays just three short years ago, and the professor's skin was a horrible dry yellowing colour, somewhere between parchment and jaundice. One of his cheeks was even smudged with dirt.

Harry shuddered. It would still feel better if someone would just use a quick scourgify. What ever happened to dignity?

The Potion Master's face was far more expressive now though, Harry had to admit. It was just a tragedy that his only expressions were silent screams of agony.

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'We do not speak of such things,' a voice hisses from the shadows of the murk of the street.

Snape turns and nobody is there.

It is the same again. The slight caress of inevitable madness. The voices, always in Voldemort's tone yet a thousand times wiser. Or was that just self-importance speaking? Perhaps not wiser, more grandiose.

The only sound is the beat of his feet and, somehow, the stars. He remembers learning them once, the constellations. Orionis, Scorpius, Leonis, Draconis...

The last causes him an involuntary shudder and a tear slides down his cheek.

There are always those we cannot save.

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Bethlehem the castle. But why else? It flits and flicks and rains on him.

For some reason, the rain piles up as dust. Soon he is covered in lint.

'Yes, I get it, I have sinned,' he snaps, as if the darkness would listen.

'What are you going to do?' he hollers, echoing into the ruined abbey. He lifts his face to the night, he laughs.

On and on, that laugh. The laugh that only the mad know.

Oh, and he should know.

When he straightens up, his face is coated in dirt.

Are you trying to bury me?

'No boy, not you.'

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He that lies now in the white arms of Mary...

Who is his Mary?

'He never had a Mary.'

Jib and click and the birds are singing out the dawn.

'Come, Severus, soon it will be time to wake.'

Come. Think.

Who is his Mary?

The abbey lightens without any answers.

But in the half-darkness, Draconis gleams.

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Here He has peace and a short while for dreaming,

Close huddled oxen to keep Him from cold,

Mary for love, and for lullaby music

Songs of a shepherd by Bethlehem fold.

Snape awoke crying.

'Professor? Are you okay?'

He jumped at Harry's voice and didn't look at him.

Harry had never seen an adult man cry. Not like this. He was pulled in two directions by the urge to shrink away and the wish to provide comfort. But the matter was solved for him anyway.

'Severus?'

Madam Pomfrey had returned, carrying a tray of medicines.

Snape wiped his eyes messily and straightened his face like a dirty white sheet. He still looked more undone than Harry had ever seen him, and his eyes were still pink. Pomfrey didn't seem to notice.

'Thank God you're awake Severus! You have no idea how worried we all were! Why, since the war, we haven't had anyone who-'

She stopped as Snape pushed her back, roughly, and stood up. He swayed on his feet.

'Goodness, Severus, you must lie down! It is imperative for the healing-'

Snape was already walking, shakily, towards the door. Pomfrey seemed to realise that she could not stop him. He was a stubborn man, all things considered. She sighed, and returned to Harry's bedside.

'So... have you been having any suicidal thoughts lately?'

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It was night, even in the real world.

Snape walked out of the castle slowly. It was raining. In London, the streets would be shining silver. He laughed.

The windows of the castle glowed a homely orange. If only they were.

He had never taken Potter for the depressive type. Arrogant, headstrong maybe, but never self-destructive. But now he saw it more and more.

The boy had lived the first eighteen years of his life as a vessel for others' victory. Whatever Dumbledore may have said, it was not really his fight. But he had fought it. And he had won. And now he was going insane.

Snape laughed again, emptily. Then stopped short.

That had been Voldemort's laugh.

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Inside, Harry was playing with his shirtsleeves, changing their colour, their pattern... He had grown good at domestic, petty charms since Voldemort's downfall. He didn't want to think about anything big or dramatic. Flashy shows had been the Dark Lord's forte.

He let out a breath slowly.

On top, perhaps, he could be seen to be coping. Pomfrey had suggested on a number of occasions that he needn't stay.

But Harry knew he must stay. Underneath he could never be the same. Draco was dead. The one joy he had in his life had been taken so stupidly, so cruelly...

Even before his turn to the good, Draco had been Harry's life. If he hadn't had to fight his corner, he would never have been confident enough to even function. He had been used and abused and had felt it even then, in his small, round-rimmed glasses and muck of hair.

Now, he felt it more than ever.

He had failed as an Auror and he wouldn't go back. They would accept him, of course they would, he was a good name to have on their lists. But he wasn't an Auror. Not inside.

Inside, he was nothing. Blank slate.

No one had ever told him he would need an identity.

His whole life had led up to that final battle and now what was he?

Harry pulled impatiently at the sheets, dug his nails into his pale, hospital grey skin.

Nothing.

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What could he do about it, really?

Snape stared up at the two moons, feeling nothing.

Bloody bothersome things, visions. Interrupting perfectly dreamless, dark sleep. Snape finally begun to get true, deep sleep after his Death Eater days and immediately those damn prophetic dreams come and sashay in.

And a prophetic dream was just that, whatever he did. His role was to see, to prophesise, not to change. Not even to believe.

Like Cassandra, who went so willingly to her death all those millennia ago. Like Merlin, who saw the victory before he even sought the good behind it. Like Sybil Trelawney, and all her stupid truths.

Without her, perhaps things would have been different.

But what could he do about it, really?

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It was just becoming morning when Harry realised he had one day left.

His twenty-first birthday. Twenty one. The number of utter maturity. Adulthood. Something he could not be, because he had never been taught how.

He was always the child who got the scar, the child who killed Voldemort.

Everyone's Peter Pan.

Even Dumbledore had known it, surely, behind those knowing eyes...

The boy who lived.

Harry wasn't meant to survive.

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Snape walked slowly down the streets of Hogsmede.

The Shrieking Shack loomed up ahead, with more memories than he cared to remember.

He lugged the weight behind him, invisible to the crowd. If there had been a crowd, which there was not. It was bad weather for this time of year.

Snape ducked the barbed wire and walked through the damp, muddy grass to the shack. That shack. The place no one went, so no one could disturb.

He was too used to this. The slimy, greasy Ex Death Eater.

Ha. Ex Death Eater. Like you can ever leave.

'You're proving your own point,' part of his brain reprimanded.

Snape creaked open the shack's old, lichen-covered door, and stepped inside.

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While he waited, Harry thought of all his dreams.

He had wanted to marry Ginny Weasley, have lots of kids. Of course, at the time he didn't know he was gay, nor that she would reject him for his emotional infancy. He wondered where she was now.

He had wanted to be an Auror. That hadn't worked out.

He had wanted Draco, when he had opened his eyes enough to realise it, but that was dust in the wind now, too.

He had wanted, at some point, to write his own spells.

Harry cussed. He hadn't even managed that.

If only Hermione was still there to help him.

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Trelawney was smaller than Snape remembered her, when he straightened up her stupefied self.

She looked a lot saner, as well, without the open, goggly eyes and breathy intonation. Hell, she was almost normal.

But she wasn't.

This was the woman who had caused everything, Snape thought angrily, the woman who had sentenced Harry Potter to living a half-life, the woman who had sentenced him to a half-life also. A spy's life. He had never been valued.

Snape pointed his wand at Trelawney. He almost expected her to plead, but she was still out cold.

Then, slowly, almost lazily,

'Avada Kedavra.'

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As the body cooled on the floor of the shrieking shack, pale and peaceful and almost alive, Harry Potter accidentally-on-purpose smashed one of Madam Pomfrey's empty medicine bottles.

He thought groggily, as he resisted his coming adulthood with broken bottle glass, perhaps he should replace the bottle. Then he realised the ridiculousness of the idea. He was killing himself for Merlin's sake. He might get blood on the apothecary floor.

Then Harry laughed. And he panted as he laughed and no sound came out because he was laughing so hard. But he could feel the laugh sitting warm in his stomach as he lay back on the hospital bed, staining the white sheets with a wonderful Gryffindor red.

Ah, Gryffindor.

'Sorry Draco,' he smiled. But he could hardly make it green.

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Snape was running away. He was good at running away; he had done it all his life.

What he hadn't predicted, however, was that he would gain one last, bothersome vision, as he sat staring out of the whizzing Knight Express.

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King's Cross was white and glittering through its glass ceiling. It was the kind of white at the heart of a fire, or the light of a perfect summers day.

He saw the clock strike, lazily, twelve midday. It chimed. He had never known it to chime before.

As the clock chimed, he saw a figure amble slowly about the station, as if lost.

The figure's hair stood up messily at the back, the more messy the more he touched it, which he did a lot.

He was the only figure in the station, this messy-haired boy, and Snape could not see his face, though he knew who.

When he is King...

King's Cross, of course. His cross. There was a sad order to the symbolism.

The boy's footsteps made little echoing slapping noises as he traipsed along to the barrier between platforms nine and ten.

Then, slowly, calmly, he disappeared from sight.