Ashes of Armageddon

Harry hadn\'t bothered healing Severus after their question-and-answer session, and Severus did not mind in the list. Truth be told, had he been given a choice, he probably would have opted to refuse the healing – as it would have only created the illusion of nothing being wrong. And Severus, at his age, and at this juncture in his life, had no use for illusions of any kind.



The following day was the second of May, and a Friday. Severus awoke before dawn; only to realize that something was different in the house. There was an odd aura of silence coming from downstairs – he could not hear a single sound that his sharp hearing could typically discern – not a squeaking of a floor tile, not a crackle of the fire in the Floo... just nothing. It was almost as if there was a silencing spell cast on the living room area, he thought. He got dressed quickly, and made his way downstairs.



In the living room, Harry sat at the dining table, his head buried in his arms. At first glance, he appeared to be asleep, but then, as Severus watched, he saw that his shoulders were shuddering slightly. He was crying – sobbing, Severus realized, and he had cast a silencing spell around himself, as not to wake him.



“Harry,” Severus called.



Harry sat up abruptly and glared at him.



“Take the spell off,” Severus demanded.



Harry did, still scowling. “What do you want?” Harry spat.



Severus pulled up a chair and sat at the table across from him.



“Let\'s drop the roles of torturer and victim for a few minutes and just level with each other. Are you still capable of that, Mr. Potter?”



Harry lowered his eyes and nodded slightly. “For now, anyways.”



“Good,” Severus said evenly. “Let me ask you this: what is going on with you? This isn\'t your normal behavior. You must realize that.”



Harry\'s upper lip curled into a sneer that would have made Draco Malfoy himself proud. “Scared?”



“Immensely,” Severus said dryly. “Just not for myself.”



A bitter, resentful laugh followed. “Let me guess. You are scared for me and my soul.”



“No,” Severus said impassively. “I am, however, very scared for your friends, and people who are close to you. Unchecked sadism in a psychopath is not a safe thing. Do you know why, Mr. Potter? Because it grows. No matter how much you do, you\'ll always need more. How long until face-slapping and Cruciatus stop being enough? After that, how long until you grow bored with me, and decide it\'s time to hurt someone else?”



He crossed his arms on his chest, fully expecting the aforementioned Cruciatus to hit him in full force, but Harry barely moved.



“I don\'t know,” Harry whispered. “But right now, I do not intend to harm anyone else. Just you.”



“Just like you did not intend to harm Ginny Weasley?” Severus probed, without any accusation in his voice.



“I haven\'t harmed her,” Harry said wearily. “But... the longer we\'ve been together, the more she was afraid of me. Even though she kept telling me she loved me. In the end, she couldn\'t stand being around me anymore... But she wouldn\'t leave, either. I couldn\'t understand why... but then I saw her crying over Al\'s crib... then, I understood. So... one night, I told her she could take Al and Kreacher if she left. She ... left the next day. Without saying a word.” Harry smiled bitterly. “Who knows, letting her go like that may have been the last decent thing I\'ve ever done in my life.”



Severus stared at him, and suppressed a sympathetic remark – now was not the time for it. “Tell me - have you gone to check yourself out at St. Mungo\'s?”



Harry laughed bitterly and painfully. “Have I? Oh yes. Last year, at Hermione\'s insistence, I spent three weeks under observation. Guess what? I\'m not an incubus, not a vampire, not a werewolf, not an inferius, not under a Dark Magic curse, I don\'t have any brain tumors, and incidentally, I\'m also not a Veela. In fact, as far as medical tests showed, I am in perfect health, and nothing but absolutely and boringly human.”



Severus nodded thoughtfully. “Alright. Those are good things to rule out. Have you kept a diary over the last five years?”



“Yeah,” Harry glanced at him. “Why?”



“Have you gone back to read and see if there were any triggers to your... condition?”



“My condition,” Harry repeated vehemently, “is that I am stuck with a traitor and murderer, bound to him by an Unbreakable Vow. How\'s that for a condition?”



“Well, you certainly seem to be milking it for all its worth,” Severus said humorlessly. “However, I can tell that the vengeance you are exacting upon me is taking its toll on you as well. This leads me to believe that you are not entirely yourself.”



“Maybe I\'ve never been myself,” Harry said. “Maybe I\'ve only been what others expected me to be... the ever-so-nice fucking savior of the wizarding world.”



“Perhaps,” Severus mused. “Still, you seem to have taken the act of not being yourself to a whole new level. Why?”



Harry smiled slightly. “I thought it was blindingly obvious. I hate you. I want you to suffer.”



“Of course,” Severus agreed. “But the question remains, why?”



“YOU\'VE MURDERED MY PARENTS!!!” Harry screamed, his voice echoing through the old house.



Severus did not allow himself to be cowed or deterred. “Yes. Very true. But so did Peter Pettigrew, and still you defended him from Lupin and Black.”



“That\'s different!” Harry hissed.



Severus gazed at him serenely. “How? Forgive me, but I fail to see any qualitative difference between myself and Peter Pettigrew.”



Harry shrugged with absolute indifference.



“Alright,” Severus said again. “Let\'s go back to the issue of your diary. How detailed are your records?”



“Quite,” Harry said tiredly. “Let me guess, you now want to read my diary?”



“I wouldn\'t dream of asking,” Severus said. “However, may I suggest that you send it over to Miss Granger for analysis? Perhaps she can find something you\'ve missed.”



“Such as?” Harry challenged.



“How would I know?” Severus snapped. “I\'ve spend the last five years in a coma, only to find myself enslaved by a psychopath when I awoke. Believe me, I am in no mood to theorize with insufficient information. I do, however, have the unreasonable hope of living out the rest of my life as something other than the next Dark Lord\'s puppet.”



Harry was shaking his head. “You are just fucking with my mind.”



“No,” Severus said. “If I were fucking with your mind, I\'d be appealing to your better nature. I\'d be telling you that your mother did not sacrifice her life for you to grow up to be a sadistic psychopath. I\'d be telling you that Hugo deserves a better role model than this, and that Al and Ginny need their real Harry,” Severus intoned the last two words with genuine mockery, “ taking care of them. But you won\'t hear me saying those things, because ultimately, they do not matter as much as the fact that you, Mr. Potter, are the new Dark Lord, or dangerously close to becoming one, and you can plunge the entire wizarding world into chaos, unless you get your behavior under control.”



Harry shook his head disdainfully and glared at Severus with loathing. Severus met his gaze and returned it. For a few seconds they stared at each other in absolute silence, until Harry finally looked away.



“Do you like it?” Severus challenged him bluntly. He did not elaborate further; they both knew what it was, and Harry\'s reply confirmed it.



“Yess,” Harry hissed defiantly. “I like it. I like it. I like watching you trying to pretend to be brave, when I know you are fucking terrified and ready to burst into tears like a child. And make no mistake, I will make you cry, and enjoy it.” Harry glared at him again, and continued: “I like seeing you bleed. I like seeing you twitch and shudder when I touch you. I like watching you trying to submit, knowing that you hate every moment of it.... and...” his voice trailed off slightly.



“And?” Severus urged ungently.



“And there are moments when I hate myself for liking it,” Harry whispered. “Mind you, such moments are quite rare. Because I believe with all my heart you deserve everything that is happening to you.”



Harry stood up abruptly and wiped his face with his sleeve. He cast a cleansing and grooming charm on himself, removing the traces of dampness and redness from his face. When he spoke next, his voice sounded remarkably calm, and only carried the slightest note of sarcasm in it:



“I will be out for most of the day. Try not to miss me too much.”



Severus looked at him. “Going to King\'s Cross?”



“Yeah. Why, want to come along?”



“I couldn\'t think of a better thing to do for our second date,” Severus said humorlessly.



Harry smiled unhappily. “Then, by all means.”



Together, they left Godric\'s Hollow, before the dawn\'s coming, heading to the train station.



There was absolutely nothing at King\'s Cross. Still, Harry sat and waited, peering into faces of people rushing past him. Severus combed the station, looking for clues to what it might be that drew Harry to this location. As much as he was able to without a wand, he examined the benches, the train tracks, the brick columns, and even spoke to the vendor at the single food stand. There was nothing unusual or remarkable about the location, in fact it was almost exactly as Severus had always remembered it. The day went by, with Severus searching, and Harry, waiting.



A few people recognized Harry and approached him, but the conversations did not last long. When the day came to the close and the sun set, nothing was found. Finally, Harry walked through the entire station, casting Revelio spells and deep scanning spells on every inch of it. When he finally finished, and sat down on a bench, clearly exhausted, it was well past two in the morning.



“I\'ve had enough of this,” Harry said tiredly. “There\'s nothing for me here.”



His voice shook slightly as he spoke, but he hadn\'t moved to get up.



“Shall we go home then?” Severus asked.



Harry gave him a quick glance. “Sure. Not that there\'s anything for me there, either. My wife and son are gone... and, in their place, I am stuck with the person who\'d killed my parents and my mentor, as my company for the next several decades.” He slammed his hand against the seat of the bench. “But yeah. Whatever. It\'s late. Let\'s go home.”



... To Be Continued...