All That You Leave Behind

Chapter One.

Although exhausted from the final battle and its terrible consequences, there was one last thing Harry wanted acknowledged. He stood in the Headmaster’s office and turned his steady green eyes to Dumbledore's picture.

"Snape....Professor Snape. He was a real hero, wasn't he?"

Dumbledore's painted blue eyes filled with tears. "Yes, my boy, he was. If ever a boy was mis-sorted, it was Severus Snape."

Harry shook his head. "No," he disagreed, feeling his hair shift around his sweaty face. "Professor Snape would never have fitted in in Gryffindor. He would never have been comfortable there. Slytherin was the right place for him."

"But had he been sorted into Gryffindor he might never have been..."

Harry shook his head again. "You can't think like that. He made bad choices, yes, but then so did I." He rubbed his stinging eyes with dirty hands. Harry spoke quietly, but there was no mistaking the intensity of his feeling. "He shouldn't have died like that. So alone. So undramatically. He, of all of us, deserved the right to a grand death."

Albus was reassuring. "Severus was never one for grand gestures," he said, a tiny, sad smile just beginning to show on his face. "Tell us what happened."

Harry did.

When he had finished, he looked at his shoes, biting his lip to keep his tears in. He wouldn’t cry yet, not whilst he still had to be strong, that would come later. His gaze stayed fixed on his dirty and bloody trainers. He just couldn’t trust himself to speak or look at anyone, not after re-telling Snape’s death; and certainly not after saying how wrong they had all been about the man.

Next to him he heard Ron say softly, "Blimey...he was in love with your mum?...That was his patronus...the doe...?"

Harry nodded slowly, finally looking up to meet Ron’s eyes. He stood there with a disbelieving look on his face. Hermione stood next to him, a sorrowful look on her face, her eyes bright with tears. Harry took a deep breath as he looked up at Dumbledore's portrait, and then frowned. Something wasn't right, but it took a moment for his exhausted mind to process it.

"Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

"He...he's dead," Harry said slowly, "he's dead so...where's his portrait?"

"Harry," Dumbledore said gently, "Professor Snape abandoned his post as Headmaster. I'm afraid his portrait cannot...."

"Abandoned?!” Harry shrieked. “What choice did he have?! Voldemort called and he had to answer! He worked so hard to protect us all, to protect me and now you say he can never have his role acknowledged? YOU did that to him! You held my mother over his head and you made him swear to protect me! You made him a spy, you made him risk his life, and then YOU made him a murderer!! And now, after everything he did for every last one of us, you're going to say he isn't good enough to have his portrait with yours?!" He was furious, his hands clenched into fists by his side, shaking as he glared at Dumbledore.

"Harry," Dumbledore began, "please.."

"NO!" Harry bellowed. All at once, he was exhausted. It was too much. He stood there, finally beaten; beaten not by Voldemort or his Death Eaters, but beaten by a man he had respected and loved, who just didn’t see what Harry saw – that Snape had earned his place as a hero. Feeling defeated after all, fighting tears, he closed his eyes, not hearing Hermione's tiny gasp of surprise, nor seeing Ron's frown.

There was a tense moment of silence before Harry spoke, a new note in his voice.

"That's it," he muttered, "that's it." He suddenly turned on his heel and went striding towards the door, flinging it open and stomping down the stairs, ignoring Ron hurrying after him calling "Harry! Wait...". Harry was fuming to himself, determined that he would at least make sure that Severus Snape received a decent burial.

Harry reached the lower corridor, Ron on his heels, Hermione a moment later. Harry had covered a great deal of ground in his fury and both of his friends were panting from keeping up. He glowered threateningly at them and began to move off again, but he didn’t get far. Hermione suddenly stopped outside a girls' bathroom. "I just need...," she paused delicately, "you go on. I'll catch you."

Ron touched her shoulder, nodding towards Harry and said, "We'll wait."

Hermione looked as if she wanted to say something, but closed her mouth with a small nod and went off in the direction of the girls’ bathroom. Ron turned to Harry to voice his commiseration at the injustice done to Snape. Before he could say anything, however, a loud BANG! rang out. They rushed in the direction of the noise.

A group of students was looking at the large tapestry that had been tugged to the floor. Nearby Peeves was singing one of his victory songs:

"Voldy's gone mouldy, Hooray! Hooray!
Potty wee Potter has saved the day!"
The pupils gave weary laughs and crowded around Harry. Ron tried to hold them off, but soon his friend was surrounded by grateful children.

"Wow", said Hermione from behind them. "It's lucky no one was under it." She looked red in the face and her hair was wilder than ever, her eyes rapidly filling with tears. A deep weariness showed in her eyes, mixing with the tears.

"It'll be alright, Hermione," Ron said reassuringly, and Hermione suddenly flung herself at him, burying her face against his neck and hugging him tightly. The crowd oohed and ahhed as the two clung together. Harry took advantage of the opportunity to slip away unnoticed, and left Ron to comfort his girlfriend.

Harry made his way through the mostly empty corridors. Almost everyone was down in the Great Hall helping tend to the wounded, mourning the dead, or reuniting with family and friends, relieved at knowing their loved ones had survived. He stepped in to the Entrance Hall, glancing towards the Great Hall then turning away quickly to avoid the row of shrouded bodies, focusing his mind on another body instead, his anger overriding his exhaustion. He slipped out of the Entrance Hall and set off across the debris-littered grounds toward the Whomping Willow.

Ginny Weasley looked up from her contemplation of her dead brother's face and wiped away her tears. Movement in the Entrance Hall caught her eye, and she left her parents holding each other in their grief to follow the only person she wanted to be near now. Her heart had stopped beating at the sight of Hagrid carrying Harry's limp form out of the Forbidden Forest, and had begun pounding madly when she saw Harry was still alive after all. Now that he had vanquished Voldemort, fulfilled the prophecy they had fought so hard for, done everything he had to do, Ginny was determined not to let Harry go again. Silently she followed him across the grounds, wondering what he could possibly be doing now.

Harry reached the Whomping Willow, drew his wand, and cast the immobilising spell. When the branches, with which he had past experience, stilled, he headed for the opening of the tunnel that he and Hermione had squeezed into what seemed a lifetime ago. As he crawled along, the shaking in his hands seemed to spread through the rest of him, and his nose was filled with an acrid smell.

Harry paused momentarily thinking he'd heard noise behind him. He twisted as much as he could in the cramped space to peer into the gloom behind him. He shook his head to clear the weariness and exhaustion threatening to take hold, and crawled on determined not to succumb until, now that Voldemort was gone, this most difficult of all his tasks had been completed.

As the dim light from the entrance to the Shrieking Shack came into view, the acrid smell became stronger, and Harry hurried along as fast as he could towards it. At last he reached the point where he could stand and crawl up into the opening, and frowned at seeing the sky looming overhead. He stuck his head up into the opening and gaped in disbelief at what he saw. It was gone.

The Shrieking Shack was....gone.

Harry stared stupidly at the smoking ruins of what had once been Remus Lupin's hideout, the place he had first encountered his godfather Sirius, the place where he himself had once attacked Severus Snape. The place where Snape had paid the ultimate price on Harry's behalf. Gone, all of it, including the thing he had come here for.

Harry looked about wildly, his mind refusing to believe what his eyes were seeing. Somebody had burned the Shrieking Shack to the ground and along with it Severus Snape's body, leaving nothing but the smouldering remains now surrounding him. This was the final injustice, Harry thought, for both himself and the man who had died protecting him, both pawns in Dumbledore's power game. Suddenly Harry felt hollow, as devastated as the wreck surrounding him. It was too much, too unfair, the cost too high. He felt utterly and finally defeated. Unaware of his own actions, he sank back out of the trap door, coming to his knees on the floor of the tunnel, drained completely, not knowing what to do.

Ginny crawled along the cramped and stinking tunnel after Harry, wondering what in the world he could possibly be after now. She finally caught up with him just as he dropped down from what looked like an opening leading up out of the tunnel. He sat there, motionless on his knees, and as she neared him the blank, expressionless look on his face frightened her. "Harry?", she said questioningly.

He appeared not to have heard her, appeared not to be aware of her, or anything else, at all.

"Harry!" she said sharply, and after a moment he slowly turned his head in her direction, his eyes, duller than their usual bright green, following even more slowly. He was looking in her direction, but she wasn't sure he was actually seeing her, and worry joined her fear. Obviously he was in a state of shock, and she wondered what was above them that could have caused it. Frowning, she slid herself alongside him and then pulled herself up into the opening above them. She looked around at the smoking ruins and the landscape surrounding it, Hogsmeade a ways off in the distance, and realised she was in the midst of what had, until recently, been the Shrieking Shack. What in Merlin's name had Harry come here for? He obviously hadn't known it had burned, perhaps a casualty of the battle, so evidently the fact that it had had caused his present state? But what could he have wanted here? She considered it as she took one last look around before retreating back into the tunnel. "Harry?" she said once again, "What's happened? What did you come here for?"

"It's gone," Harry said tonelessly, "it's all gone. He's gone." Before she could ask, Harry continued on in that same dreadfully emotionless voice, his face deadpan and expressionless as he spoke. "It's so unfair. He just used him, because of me, and he sacrificed everything, for me. Just because he loved her. It's not right. And even after he died, after he was turned into a murderer and was murdered, it isn't over. Everything he did, everything he gave up for me, his own life, and I ...I...this too. I can't even give him this. We were pawns...just...pawns. It was just a power game. They were on the same level. It's not ....fair....it's...loving somebody shouldn't cost that much. It's not right. And all he did, and I never knew, and I was wrong, and it's too late to make it right, and this one little thing, it doesn't make up for all he did, but....it...it was something I could do and...now....now...I can't even do that. Everything's been taken."

"Harry...," Ginny said hesitantly. She had no idea of who or what he was talking about. "What....what's happened?" she asked again, gently.

Now Harry turned to look at her, seeing her this time, his large green eyes filling with tears. "Ginny...," he gasped.

"It'll be alright, Harry," she said, trying to sound reassuring through her worry and fright. He looked as if he were about to breakdown. "I promise," she said, "I promise, everything's going to be alright."

"No it won't!" He shouted suddenly, voice cracking. "It isn't alright, it'll NEVER be right!!” Angrily he swiped his shaking hands under his glasses, wiping his tears, and heaved a great, gasping sigh before turning to her again. "You don't know...nobody knows, ....and nobody will now."

Ginny needed to get Harry out of the Shack and back to Hogwarts as quickly as possible. She doubted that the Ministry would object too much to an unlicensed apparition amidst such chaos. She only hoped she could manage, she’d never tried a side along apparition, and had only recently really begun to apparate properly herself.

"Hang on tight, Harry," Ginny muttered, wand held tightly in her slippery palm.

---

Poppy Pomfrey uttered a surprised shriek and dropped the bottle of Skele-Gro she'd returned to the Hospital Wing to find. It crashed to the floor as she stuttered, "Wha...How...? Miss Weasley!!"

Taking in the Hogwarts infirmary and the outraged medi-witch, Ginny smiled to herself and opened her eyes. It had worked then.

"Sorry Madam Pomfrey", she said hastily, "but...it's Harry. I think it's all become too much."

She reached down and pulled Harry’s head up to face her.

"It's okay, Harry," she said gently, "it'll be alright."

Madam Pomfrey took one look at the vacant expression on his face and the way he clung to the girl and said, businesslike as ever, "Over there," pointing to an empty bed.

Ginny led Harry over and made him sit. "He's had a shock..." she began.

"Of course he's had a shock!" Madam Pomfrey erupted, "He's vanquished the Dark Lord, not fallen off his broom!"

"But...I mean...some other sort of shock," Ginny protested, "he...well, he was...babbling, really...not making much sense. He...it seems Dumbledore's death has finally sunk in, I think, but...for some reason he'd gone to the Shrieking Shack, as if he expected him to be there."

Madam Pomfrey threw her a disparaging look and said sharply, "Mr. Potter...Mr. Potter!"

"He's stopped talking," Ginny said worriedly.

"Obviously," Madam Pomfrey said, "he's catatonic, and no wonder after all this boy has been through. He needs peace and quiet and plenty of bed rest. You may go, Miss Weasley. I will make sure he gets the care he needs."

"But...," Ginny protested.

But Madam Pomfrey, who was bustling about getting out pyjamas interrupted saying briskly, "You may visit him later, Miss Weasley. I'm sure your family is wondering where you are."

"They're fine," Ginny said, "and...Harry is my family."