The master bedroom was empty. The door next to it revealed a nauseatingly pleasant nursery.
Severus entered the moonlit room to stare down at the sleeping baby in the crib, one of the two children who fit the damned prophesy that had sent the Death Eaters on this unholy errand tonight. The boy was perhaps six months old. He was chubby with ruddy cheeks, and a face that was the picture of innocence.
Severus needed no imagination to know what would happen to that innocence should he bring the child downstairs.
The boy's mother was still pleading with her murderers to spare her baby. How the child could sleep through that, he didn't know.
At that moment, Severus became reacquainted with both his conscience and courage. He knew he couldn't save either Frank or Alice. But this child . . . if this were the child who would slay Voldemort, he would do everything in his power to protect it.
Thinking fast, Severus summoned a sleeping draught. He opened the sleeping baby's mouth and drained half the bottle down its throat. It was probably enough to kill the baby, but given the alternative, Severus thought it was a chance worth taking.
Once he was sure the baby was unconscious, he picked him up out of his crib and quickly left the room. Opening a cupboard at the end of the hall, near the loo, he moved a few buckets aside with one hand and laid the child on the floor, replacing the pails. He cast a glamour over the floor, the strongest he'd created, one that showed a closet filled with only cleaning supplies.
Shaking at the chance he was taking, Severus closed the door behind him and raced down the stairs to tell Lucius that the Longbottom baby wasn't in the house.
Alice met his eyes as Severus' companions were distracted by his information. The naked gratitude in her bleeding brown gaze was unbearable. At that instant, Severus had fully understood that his soul was forfeit, that there was nothing he could ever do to erase the evil he'd been part of. But he knew at that instant that he had to try, even if he had to die the same way Alice was.
Alice seemed to surrender to her fate without a fight after that, as if the only thing that had mattered to her was that she knew her baby was safe. She didn't die that night, but Severus always regretted that he hadn't granted her that kindness.
Because he could feel Harry's curiosity, he followed the memory through, letting Harry see how he'd crept back into the Longbottom house before daybreak, passed through the sitting room where Alice and Frank lay drooling in their blood-drenched, urine-soaked clothes, how he'd taken the still-sleeping baby out of the cupboard, and cradled the child in his arms as he'd stepped over the baby's mindless parents and flooed to Albus Dumbledore's private chambers at Hogwarts.
Even as he'd stepped out of the hearth, he hadn't known what to expect. Were it anyone else, Severus knew that the crimes he was about to confess would bring him straight to the Ministry, but Albus Dumbledore had never played by anyone's rules. If there were anyone who could keep the child in the prophesy safe, it was Dumbledore.
Forcibly pulling himself out of the past, Severus drew a shuddery breath and said, "You're familiar with the rest of the story."
It felt as if a spell had broken as his words recalled them to the present. Harry withdrew from his mind as gently as he'd entered it.
Alone with his memories, Severus could only wonder how much tonight had cost him. He felt like he did after one of his sessions with Penbroke, like every nerve he owned had been exposed and jolted with electricity. This went beyond feeling naked.
Harry's face looked pretty much the way he'd expected it to, like he'd bitten off more than he could chew. In fact, he looked as if he might actually be sick to his stomach.
To his shock, Harry met his eyes. Venting a shaky breath, he said, "Well, we knew it wouldn't be pretty."
"You have a flair for understatement," Severus forced himself to respond. The Hat might have wanted to put Harry into Slytherin, but the Harry he knew was all Gryffindor, and Gryffindors were judgmental. He knew what had to be coming.
"If you don't start breathing, you're going to pass out," Harry said, watching him with an indecipherable expression.
Realizing that he was, in fact, holding his breath, Severus released it. Once he'd taken in a few gulps of cool air, he felt less jittery, but no less frightened. He forced himself to meet Harry's eyes. For one of the first times ever, he couldn't decipher what Harry was feeling.
That observation felt like it went on for centuries.
Finally, Harry reached out with his right hand to touch Severus' shoulder. "I wish there were something I could do to make all of that easier for you to bear."
"W-what?" Severus managed to rasp out.
"You never had a chance, did you?" Harry's eyes looked almost haunted.
"What do you mean?" Severus's mind didn't seem able to comprehend what Harry was saying.
"Pain is all you've known, your whole life," Harry said.
"That doesn't excuse -"
"Severus, you were barely twenty when those Death Eater events occurred," Harry said in a firm voice.
"Nevertheless -"
"That night at the Squib's house, if you'd challenged Malfoy and the others, could you have taken them out?" Harry demanded.
Severus gave a negative shake of his head, embarrassed. He might have known more spells than a fourth year when he started school. His talents had always been precocious. But however gifted he'd been, he'd never had the darkness inside him, that cruel streak that had been the earmark of Lucius and his cronies.
"So, you would have ended up dead had you made a stand?"
"That isn't the point. For months, I'd heard my companions bragging. What happened shouldn't have come as a shock -"
"Maybe it shouldn't have, but it did. You were young, scared, and didn't think there was a way out of the situation you'd gotten yourself into. Wanting to live isn't a crime."
"But being party to torture and murder is. I was there. I made no move to stop them -"
"Because you couldn't. The same as when Voldermort killed Cedric before my eyes, I couldn't kill the bastard and his followers, much as I wanted to, much as I will always regret never being able to. All I could do was try to stay alive long enough to escape. Severus, you were up against the strongest, vilest dark wizard the world had ever known. You weren't even twenty, and half of the people you would have to stand against were the only friends you'd ever known."
"Nevertheless, I should have -"
Harry cut his ragged protest off with, "Should have what? Forfeited your life for a principle? That's what you would have been doing if you'd made a move against them in that Squib's house. What good would throwing your life away like that have done anyone? Severus, you made the only decision you could."
"And those people died," Severus reminded him.
"Not by your hand or your orders," Harry said in a steely tone Severus didn't think he'd ever heard before. "Voldemort is responsible for their deaths, not you. As soon as you were able to, you did the right thing. You've spent over two decades trying to make up for a mistake you made before you were even twenty years old. It's time you forgave yourself."
"I . . . ." Severus' words faltered. His entire body was shaking. He felt a familiar burning at his eyes.
Strong hands gripped his shoulders and before Severus knew what was happening, Harry drew him into his arms. He tentatively rested his face against Harry's tee-shirt covered shoulder, still expecting disaster to strike. But the only thing that happened was Harry's hand settled on his back and began to rub.
"You did the best you could in a horrible situation. And you did everything in your power afterwards to set things right. I know how much you risked every time you followed Dumbledore's request and returned to Voldemort to spy on him," Harry said, still rubbing his back, still hugging him. "You are the bravest man I've ever met and I'm honoured to call you my lover."
That did it. Severus squeezed his eyes tightly shut, attempting to keep in those treacherous tears, but, as with Penbroke's sessions, there was no holding them back. How long he stayed there with his face buried in the crook of Harry's shoulder as emotion stormed through him, Severus didn't know. The shoulder of Harry's light blue tee-shirt had an eight inch wet spot on it when Severus finally lifted his face what felt like hours later.
It took every bit of strength he possessed to meet Harry's eyes.
Severus had expected his confession to have made some change in Harry's gaze. He didn't understand how someone as honourable and good as Harry would want to continue to associate with him after seeing his sordid past, but, if anything, those green eyes seemed even warmer as they regarded him.
"You . . . ." Words were beyond him.
Harry took mercy on him and gently encouraged, "I, what?"
"You're not leaving," Severus said, hearing the disbelief in his own voice.
Harry's voice sounded a little rough as he replied, "Never. I'm afraid you're stuck with me for good."
