Memorializing a Hero
Chapter Two

            “Potter,” a voice spoke, “what, may I ask, are you doing out of bed at this hour?”

            Harry groaned and looked up.  “Can’t you leave me alone, Snape?  Just this once, try to pretend you’re human.  I know you don’t care that he died, but you could show a bit of sympathy.”

            Snape swept into the picture.  “I didn’t want Black to die, Potter.  But that was six months ago, shouldn’t you be over it now?  He’s gone.”

            “I don’t want to get over it.  I don’t want to forget him!” Harry stood up, angry now.  “It was my fault he died!”

            Snape blinked.  “Your fault, how is it your…Never mind.  Come with me, Potter.”

            They all watched as Harry followed Snape down the hall to his office.  Those who had once taken classes under Snape were certain that he would be receiving a detention.  Once in the office, however, Snape pulled a bowl from a shelf.  It was the pensieve that they saw before them now.  He handed it over to Harry.

            “Take it, Potter.”

            Harry looked down at the bowl in his hands.  The markings were different from those he remembered.  “It’s not Dumbledore’s.”

            “No.  I made it.  I thought it might be useful,” Snape said, not looking at Harry.

            “You haven’t used it.”

            Snape shook his head.

            “Why are you giving it to me?” Harry asked, confused.

            “Because, Mr. Potter, it was my fault, not your own, that Black died,” Snape answered.  “I was the one to contact headquarters.  I should have known the idiot would go after you.”

            “I can’t take this.”

            “I said take it, Potter.  Use it.  I won’t take no for an answer,” Snape said, once again staring at the wall.

            Harry nodded and headed out the door.

            “And Mr. Potter,” Snape called out as the boy walked away, “fifty points from Gryffindor for being out after curfew.”

            The audience watched their young savior fumble through the ordinary anxieties of adolescence: first dates, first heartaches, the first true discovery of himself. Their first real shock came with the discovery of Harry’s life away from Hogwarts.  The Dursleys’ treatment left the audience grumbling angrily.  No child deserved that.

            Their second shock, much worse than the first, came as they watched a confrontation between Harry and Draco Malfoy.

            Harry was sitting beneath a tree near the lake, his eyes closed and his face turned toward the sun.  He opened his eyes only briefly to confirm the identity of the other person who’d appeared before closing them and relaxing once again.  Draco watched him for a few moments before going to the edge of the water and staring out over it.

            “You know I could kill you now as you lay there, Potter.”

            Harry snorted, not opening his eyes.  “No, Malfoy, you couldn’t.  Nor would you.”

            “You really think I wouldn’t?  You know my father.  You know I’ve always wanted to be like him,” Draco said.  “What makes you so sure I’m not already with Voldemort?  Maybe this is what I have to do to earn my Mark.”

            In one fluid motion Draco was crouched over Harry, his wand at his throat.  Again Harry opened his eyes only briefly to raise an eyebrow at Draco, before closing them again.  He made no move toward his wand.

            “It is very likely what you have to do, Draco, but I like to think that you aren’t like your father at all.”

            Draco pulled back suddenly and collapsed into an  ungraceful heap beside Harry, burying his face in his hands.  Then, finally, Harry moved.  He wrapped his arms around the other boy as he sat there shaking, tears leaking from between his fingers.  Eventually the tears subsided to only the occasional hiccup, and Draco looked up at Harry.

            Anyone else would be red-faced and puffy-eyed after crying, but Draco looked like a mournful angel.  There was no redness to his skin or eyes, and his eyelashes were wet and spiky from the tears that still pooled in his eyes.  His hair was mussed, and when Harry reached to push a pale strand behind Draco’s ear their eyes locked.

            “Harry….” Draco started.

            “So beautiful….” Harry said, and pulled Draco to him.  

            There were no few gasps in the audience as they watched the couple kiss.  Other than his closest friends, no one had known of their hero's orientation.  One, in the front row, sat with misty eyes as he watched his best friend during what he’d described as one of the happiest moments of his life.  Ron had never seen the memory before, but as he watched he reflected that if he had, perhaps he would have been more accepting of Draco.  As it was, he’d hardly had time to get to know the Slytherin before he was kidnapped by his own father and murdered.

            Harry had told him once that just before he killed Lucius, the man had told him Draco’s final words.

            “Just tell Harry that I love him.”

            Once again Harry was found crying in the hallway by Snape, this time before a portrait in the Slytherin dungeons.  Snape had ordered it done as a memorial, something that was traditional when a student died while still attending Hogwarts.  Draco may have been among the first to have his portrait lining a hallway during this war, but there would be many more to join him.

            “Of all places for you to go wandering, Potter, this is perhaps the worst,” Snape said, scowling at the boy in front of him.  He had placed his hand against the portrait, and the portrait-Draco had placed his hand against Harry’s.  Snape’s face softened into an expression that surprised many of his students.  For the few Slytherins in the audience, however, Snape’s soft side was never a surprise.

            “Please take care of him, Professor,” the portrait-Draco said softly.  It was smiling sadly.  Harry raised his eyes up to it and nodded, and Snape couldn’t help wondering what they had been talking about. 

            “Come, Potter,” Snape said, before turning and starting down the hallway.  Harry took one last look at the picture and reluctantly pulled himself away to follow his professor.  Snape led him to his private quarters rather than to his office, where he had been sitting before his fire in mourning just before being alerted to the boy’s presence.

            “Sit,” he told the boy and didn’t spare a glance at him as he picked up his tumbler from the coffee table and pulled another from a cabinet.  Into each he poured a healthy dose of smoking liquid from a decanter and sat one before Harry.  “It’s firewhisky.  Drink.”

            And they did.

            The audience watched as the war escalated, as Harry watched more and more of his classmates die at the hands of Death Eaters.  They watched Harry face Voldemort once more at the end of his sixth year, as he fought to save his best friends.  They saw him held as he watched Ron’s arm being torn from his body.  He was forced to watch as Hermione was tortured with curse after curse, including a  spell which left the skin on the entire left side of her body permanently scarred.  They watched him lose control of his magic, leaving the entire forest around them in flames as the Death Eaters tried to flee.  Voldemort laughed as he apparated out of the clearing, leaving the broken trio to find their own way out.

            His friends were still in St. Mungo’s when Harry ventured down to the dungeons just before leaving for the summer.  There, he talked Snape into teaching him how to fight and stopped once more before the portrait of his beloved, swearing an oath to destroy the creature who had shattered the lives of all those he held most dear.