could barely manage to hold on. He had to tell, had to let him know. The world was doomed and it was all his fault.
'What is it, Harry?' Snape asked. His voice, so calm and full of understanding, was all it took in the end; it was his undoing.
Harry broke into sobs, wrenching, chest heaving, horrible, choking sobs as he clutched at Snape's robes and refused to let go. 'I can't do it, Professor. I tried and I can't, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry . . .'
'I know,' Snape said, and tugged him against his chest, put arms around him and spoke soft, nonsense words that would never mean anything. Not to him, never to him.
Because he didn't know, not yet. And Harry had to tell him. 'You have to know, Professor. You have to tell them, please. I can't kill him. I can't, I'm sorry. Please, tell them I'm sorry. You'll do that, won't you? Dumbledore should know.'
'Shhh, Harry. It's all right. I know.'
Snape's robes grew wet with the volume of Harry's tears, but he couldn't stop, knew he was going to weep until he was dry, and then it would all be gone. It would all be over.
'I know,' Snape said again. 'But I swear to you, you are not alone in this.'
Harry shook his head in the darkness of damp wool robes. Snape was wrong, so very, very wrong. He whispered, 'I'm alone every time. I always face him alone.'
He barely noticed when the arms tightened around him, and only cared that someone finally knew.
TBC . . .
---
A/N: Hmmmm, I'm beginning to get the sense that y'all really loathe cliffhangers. Alas for me, I am susceptible to pressure as much as the next writer. Thus, I hope you're pleased with the outcome of my little plot to destroy Harry's well-being. Remember, you asked for it. ;-)
*Chapter 31*: Chapter 31
Walk the Shadows
By jharad17
Chapter 31
Disclaimer: None of this is mine. Honest. She's rich, I'm not.
-----
Aug.18
Snape loaned me some paper so I could write. I won't let him take flying time away from me, just 'cause I don't have my journal here. I should've taken it with me when we went out to Diagon Alley. I should have just not gone to Diagon Alley at all, or I should have agreed to go back to Hogwarts right after I'd got my wand, and then we wouldn't have . . . . . . .
--- Okay, I'm back. That was, um . . . awkward. If this ink is smeared, Snape told me that for posterity's sake, to make sure that I write it wasn't his fault, as he wasn't the one dripping tears all over it. I know he was just trying to make me laugh, though. It's been a . . . rough couple of days. Yesterday afternoon, after I finished slobbering snot all over Remus' robes, and Snape changed into his own clothes, he said we could stay here for the rest of the weekend. He let Dumbledore know where we were, I guess, but he said we could both use a change of scenery. He's right, I guess. I was . . . pretty upset yesterday . . . and today. My nightmares last night were . . . bad.
Snape says it's okay I'm upset, that I have good reason to be, although the words he used were more like: 'Any dimwit can see that with the varied pressures you've been under of late, your response to such stimuli presented at our point of egress would be over-reactive, blah, blah, blah.'
I think he was being serious, then. I'm not sure, though. He may have been making a joke. It's hard to tell, sometimes with him. Part of me wonders if he's figured out that I figured out his tells, and he's swapping them all around so I can never get a handle on him . . . and the other part of me wonders if I'm just expecting him to do certain things, and rather than accept that he's done something different, I pretend he's not using the right tell.
He was serious, though, when he told me that the Ministry is sending someone from Child Welfare to come and talk to us tomorrow. I don't want to talk to anyone else. And I like the quiet here, at this old manor, and the garden out back that's full of lilacs and flowering bushes of some kind, and the soft hum of insects, and I almost don't want to go back to Hogwarts at all. But like Snape says, that's simply not an option, at least for him, not this close to term. If I'm not ready for classes, though, he says I'll be able to stay with him in the dungeon rooms, and we can work out some kind of tutoring thing to keep me up with classes until I can return to a regular schedule.
I just don't know yet, if I'll be ready.
---
Monday morning, Harry woke in the bedroom Snape had given him in the old Prince Manor and stared up at the ceiling for a while before rising. The bedroom was done in light blue and cream, soothing colors, and a warm breeze through the open window nearest the bed riffled the sheer curtain drapes and flowed over Harry's body like a balm. He wondered if they would come to this house for holidays, when . . . if he was Snape's ward, and if he could have this bedroom then, too. He liked it, even more than the one in the dungeons at school, because, well . . . dungeons.
Finally, though, he couldn't excuse still lying abed, and got up to take a shower and dress in some of his new clothes. Though he hated to admit it, he was glad Snape had insisted on buying all those clothes, as he wasn't sure he wanted to go back to Diagon Alley anytime soon. Or anytime ever, as long as Lucius Malfoy was alive. A sick feeling rose in his gut, threatening to make him hurl, and he swallowed convulsively
