characters property of JK Rowling. no profit intended or made.
burn
by bow.
The summer after Sirius died, during the sweltriest week of August, three members of the Order were killed by giants in Leeds. The facts were hazy and hard to distinguish from rumours, but apparently there had been some sort of explosion.
Snape wasn’t among the dead, nor Mad-Eye Moody, but Tonks was. The casket was left open at her funeral, and Harry peered in at her real face--heart-shaped, with porcelain skin and black, black eyebrows. She barely looked older than Harry did.
Harry returned to Hogwarts as usual in the fall, and nothing much had changed. There were minor differences, of course, but he wasn’t sure whether they mattered. The candles, for one thing. There had always been candles everywhere, floating above the tables in the Great Hall and planted in the chandeliers, but now they seemed to line more hallways than they had before. Harry didn’t think he was imagining it. When they flickered and guttered, they reminded him of last year’s dreams.
There was also a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but Harry was used to that. This one was slender and gracious. She wore bright colors and silver bangles; she could’ve been Trelawney’s pretty cousin. She smiled a lot and insisted that they call her “Sylvia.” Sylvia was competent enough; she could imitate the cry of the Augurey perfectly, and she taught them hexes, though they were mostly ones Harry had known since fourth year. She was certainly preferable to Lockhart or Umbridge. Still, Harry couldn’t help but remember Professor Lupin and how he had broken those chocolate bars into pieces, how they had snapped into perfect rectangles between his fingers. Harry wondered what Professor Lupin did for a living now, even shabbier, grayer, and wearier than before. Wherever he was, that was Snape’s fault, too. The more Harry thought about it, the more he felt an ancient knot in his chest grow hot and tight. It throbbed like a new burn.
Early that first week, Fred and George sent Harry a wooden crate full of merchandise from their shop. It arrived at the Great Hall during breakfast, carried by four great barn owls that struggled to keep it aloft. Harry pried the lid open with his fork and found a letter from the twins inside, dark gray ink on thick, expensive-looking parchment. We couldn’t have done this without you, Fred had written, in loopy handwriting that looked a lot like Ron’s. So this is for you--but you can share with the rest of the Gryffindors if they whinge. And we’re paying you back, mate, every last galleon. Say hello to Ron for us. Don’t let him do anything we wouldn’t do.
Harry refolded the note and glanced across the table at Ron. “It’s from Fred and George. For all of us. They say hi,” Harry told him. Ron and Seamus leaned over the table to see into the box, and even Hermione looked up from her kippers and smiled. Harry stared back at her. During her trip to Spain over the holidays, she had grown into her adult face, leaner and grimmer, with thin purple skin under her eyes.
That night, Harry reopened the crate and distributed the sweets among his roommates. No one was willing to eat them. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just--well, Fred and George,” Neville said. He looked down as he spoke, studying the brightly colored pile Harry had placed at the foot of his bed.
“It’s okay,” Harry told him. “It’s safe. See? The chocolate’s from Honeydukes, anyway.”
Ron chose a chocolate bar from his own pile and turned it over in his hands. “You’re right.” He pushed down its foil wrapper and took a large bite. “Don’t you want any for yourself?” Ron asked, chewing with his mouth open.
“Not hungry.” Harry dug through the box with his wand, past a pair of Extendable Ears and a range of Skiving Snackboxes. On the bottom was an assortment of Weasleys’ Wildfire Whiz-Bangs, tied together with a thick white string. He sat and stared and bit his lower lip, suddenly desperate to burn them. When Seamus and Dean and Ron and Neville had all pulled their bedclothes up around their ears, Harry dropped the crate on the floor beside his bed and put out the light.
They lay there not speaking until Neville began to snore. “I don’t know why I didn’t say it before,” Ron said quietly. “But I’m sorry. About S--well, you know.”
“It happens, doesn’t it?” Harry pressed his head deeper into his pillow and felt the painful warmth inside his chest again. He willed Ron to be silent. It worked.
At three o’clock, Neville was still snoring. Harry slid out of bed then, his bare feet cold against the stone floor. He crouched beside the crate and rooted around until he felt the smooth barrel of a firecracker. Grabbing the bundle by its string, Harry took his Invisibility Cloak out of his trunk and crept down to the lake.
The draughts off the water gave Harry gooseflesh, and he drew the cloak tightly around his shoulders. He untied the string and lit one of the fireworks with the tip of his wand, half expecting it to flash “THANK YOU, HARRY!” in giant, glittering letters.
It didn’t. It kicked off hard and cartwheeled across the sky, swift and green and furious. After it sputtered and died out, Harry could still see it before his eyes. He gritted his teeth and set off the rest of them: some identical to what Umbridge had chased down the Hogwarts hallways, some that were fast and little and whistled the melody of “Weasley is Our King,” and plenty of others. The sky pulsed and burned with something like life.
Harry returned to the castle to find Snape pacing near the portrait of the Fat Lady, looking murderous. As Harry tried to back away, he tripped over the hem of his Invisibility Cloak and swore under his breath. Snape looked up as Harry thudded dully against the wall.
“You cretin,” Snape hissed, striding toward Harry, “anyone could have seen you out there.” He swiped blindly at the air and grabbed Harry’s arm just above the elbow, shaking it until the Invisibility Cloak fell to the floor. “How many people have to die because you’re too insolent to do as you’re told?”
“Don’t touch me!” spit Harry, flailing backward. The light of the fireworks was blinding him still, dazzling behind his eyes. “What do you care what happens to anyone else? You always manage to come out of it okay.” Harry rubbed his arm. “You always survive. Why you?”
“And why you?” asked Snape, leaning in and baring his yellow teeth. Harry took one more careful step away from him. He thought of the shades of his mother and father in the graveyard, and then he pictured Sirius’s empty house. The tingling where Snape had gripped his arm was nothing to the pit in Harry’s stomach.
“Idiot boy,” Snape whispered. “What I would do to you if I could.”
Harry frowned, doubting that Snape would ever blink. Some other emotion had crackled beneath the menace in Snape’s voice. Had it been threat or invitation? Harry couldn’t quite tell. But the memories of Sirius still pricked at the corners of his eyes, and all he could say was “Professor Dumbledore wouldn’t let you touch me.”
“The headmaster worries about other things these days,” Snape said curtly, not bothering to unclench his teeth. He turned on his heel and stalked off without taking a single point from Gryffindor or assigning a single night of detention.
As Snape’s footfalls grew softer, Harry picked up his cloak and entered the common room. He shook his head to clear it and sunk into one of the squashy armchairs by the fireplace. Harry’s eyes fell shut, and the troubles that plagued his dreams were more pressing than Snape’s unusual behaviour.
But it was uncomfortable to think about Snape after that. It made Harry’s cheeks hot and his chest pang in that familiar way. During Potions, Harry fixed his gaze squarely on his own cauldron--he couldn’t even look at Snape, and he didn’t quite know why. Harry wondered, though, whether it might be due to all the fireworks. Or maybe it stemmed from the candles in his dreams, that fabulous burn in Snape’s eyes.
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Update: This fic was remixed by Sinope! Go read Burn (Singed Fingers Remix)!