I hope this has not been done before, but I didn't check all the other one-shots. Leave your feedback here, please. Enjoy!
The Flight of the Prince
“Severus.”
The dark-haired teacher looked down on the headmaster, who had sunk down the wall and was now nearly sitting on the ground. They were looking into each other’s eyes. No one spoke. Severus Snape did not take into consideration the other dark-cloaked figures around them anymore. He showed no emotion, no part of his face twitched, and his eyes were cold and jet-black. The two wizards were communicating without words. Dumbledore’s blue eyes were piercing Snape, were asking him to do what he was to do, to kill him before anyone else could do it.
Snape did not know why he had to kill Dumbledore. ‘A short and painless end? HA!’ Snape thought.
That could not possibly be the only reason, not for a man like Dumbledore, who never had only one reason for anything he did. Snape’s thoughts went back down to Dumbledore’s office, to an evening less than a year ago. He remembered the voice of his headmaster, a man whom he completely trusted, because he had to, because it was the only way to get revenge, the only possibility to stop Voldemort, the murderer of his one, great love.
Dumbledore had seemed merely interested in his own death. He did not seem to care about himself a lot. And, Snape thought with bitterness, Dumbledore did not seem to care about others either.
“Severus, I must ask this one last great favor of you.”
‘A favor? Nothing else? Do you know what you are doing to me? Do you have any idea what I shall do without you? Don’t you think you’re making things far too easy for yourself?’ Snape had thought.
“Severus… please…”
The voice was nearly impossible to hear. Immediately Snape’s mind was back in his body, at the top of the astronomy tower. Snape’s features changed into revulsion and hatred when he focused at Dumbledore again, thinking of Lily’s son whom Dumbledore wanted to sacrifice to destroy the Dark Lord.
Dumbledore’s eyes seemed to be pleading. They seemed to say ‘Do it! Finish it! Relieve me!’
‘Please forgive me!’ Snape thought, yet the hatred he needed to feel to be able to perform the curse successfully was really aimed at Dumbledore.
“Avada Kedavra!”
Green light emerged from the tip of his wand. Snape saw it hit Dumbledore’s chest. The tall body was lifted into the air and flew over the wall. There it seemed to be dangling in mid-air for a split-second which stretched into hours and days. Then it fell down and vanished. The night was dark again, the stars could be seen above and the sounds of the fighting downstairs, that had been cleared out of his head, returned.
“Out of here, quickly!” Snape said.
While they ran down the stairs, he was dragging the Malfoy-boy behind him, shielding him from the curses of the fighters in the corridor. He could not risk wasting time by trying to protect the members of the order or any of the pupils. He had wondered on his way up from his office why there were children fighting. Potter had probably sent them to watch out, as always believing that he himself knew better than Dumbledore or anyone else what was going on in Hogwarts.
“It’s over!”
Now that they were past the fighting group, Snape’s thoughts were wandering away again. He only carelessly turned around when he heard someone screaming. The Carrows were not behind them anymore, and a part of him hoped that whoever was following them would injure the siblings badly.
‘Dumbledore, do you know what you demand of me? Do you have any idea what you are doing to me? Everyone will hate me; everyone will be convinced I am a Death Eater, even those few people who thought differently before. But the others do not matter compared to the boy. The boy, the boy! What will the boy think of me? He never liked me, but now he will not believe anything I could tell him. The one person alive that I care about will hate me now. He already blames me for his parent’s death, for his godfather’s death and now he will blame me for your death, too.
‘And how do you think I can tell him what you ordered me to? How can I convince him that a part of Voldemort’s soul is sticking to his own? How on earth shall I convince him to sacrifice himself? And how can I bring this message to him without breaking apart? Did you ever bother to think about that, Dumbledore?’
Snape was concentrating solely on Harry now. Maybe he would not know. No one knew who had finally killed Dumbledore. The Death eaters surely would not tell the boy. Hope began to glow in Snape’s chest like a fire, the hope that Harry Potter would not know what he had done, a thing that he had never wanted to do. Yet Dumbledore’s last order was bothering him less than the thought that Harry might not hate him for the short rest of his life, which was probably the rest of both their lives.
By now Snape and Malfoy were out in the grounds of the castle. No one would be able to stop them now, Snape thought. He felt relieved. Impossible to imagine what would happen if Draco was accidentally killed. Not even Dumbledore had known whether the unbreakable vow would cause Snape’s death if Draco died. No one could tell him if the vow would decide he had not fulfilled his promise to protect Draco. What would happen to Dumbledore’s plans without Snape surviving to carry them out was incredible to imagine.
Suddenly a red stream of light flew past Snape’s head.
“Run Draco!” he shouted.
Then he turned around and what he saw tore his heart apart and made the small glowing bit of hope in his chest drown in darkness. Harry Potter was following him, running as fast as he could, not even stopping to aim when he shot curses at Snape and Draco. With agony Snape realized that Harry knew.
Snape had no idea, could not think of any way Harry had found out so quickly, but in the boy’s eyes were nothing but fury and hate, and he knew that Snape had killed Dumbledore.
Snape knew he had to be careful when Harry attacked him. The boy’s skills were mediocre, but he had used black magic before, Sectumsempra, his own spell. If Harry had really found his old Potions book, as he surely had done, he might have learned other dark spells, too. And the boy was angry, even furious, which made him somehow uncontrollable.
Moreover, in case the Dark Lord would watch his memory of the fight later, he had to be as convincing as always, which meant he had to show no mercy and even had to sneer at Harry if he had the possibility.
Snape watched Harry raise his wand and did so himself immediately. He entered Harry’s mind and saw what the boy was planning to do.
Before Harry had even finished the Cruciatus curse, Snape had already blocked it, causing Harry to fall over. He would never hurt Harry consciously, but he knew he had to hit back hard enough to stop the boy.
“No Unforgivable Curses from you, Potter!” Snape sneered after he had blocked Harry’s second attempt to perform the Cruciatus curse. Snape tried to make Harry angry, tried to motivate him to try and close his mind by laughing at him.
“You haven’t got the nerve or the ability – “
Snape blocked Harry’s Incarcerus spell lazily. Fighting against someone who had no means of closing his mind and such a limited set of spells to use in a duel was too easy. Snape knew that Harry would stand no chance if he found himself in a duel against the Dark Lord, so he tried to humiliate him to make him realize how much he needed to improve.
Yet the boy did not seem to understand this. Instead of controlling himself, he shouted “Fight back! Fight back, you cowardly – “
Anger flushed through Snape’s mind, but he managed to regain control over his face quick enough.
“Coward did you call me, Potter?” he shouted. “Your father would never attack me unless it was four on one, what would you call him, I wonder?”
Snape wondered if James had indeed been a more powerful wizard than Harry was now, or if he only thought like this because he had been less skilled back then. Yet this did not change anything if the Dark Lord would really manage to get hold of Harry this summer, as it was already being planned.
“Stupe –”
“Blocked again, and again, and again until you learn to keep your mouth shut and your mind closed, Potter!” Snape meant these words in a hopeful way, but made them sound contemptuous, again thinking about having to present the Dark Lord his memory of the events later that night. Then he turned towards the last Death Eater fighting Hagrid.
“Now come! It is time to be gone before the Ministry turns up –”
He heard Harry shout “Impedi –” and for a fraction of a second he wondered if he would be able to turn around fast enough to block the curse successfully when the boy’s voice change.
Snape turned around to see Harry fall to the ground, screaming.
“No!” Snape roared.
He fired a curse at the Death Eaters who had hit Harry with the Cruciatus. He was howling inside. He wanted to kill them, wanted to punish them for hurting Harry, but he was the master of self-control and shouted what had saved Harry’s life several times before: “Have you forgotten our orders? Potter belongs to the Dark Lord – we are to leave him! Go! Go!”
Snape waited until the Carrows had drawn past him, not caring about what happened between Hagrid and the other Death Eater.
He turned around to take a last look at Harry. He saw that the boy had stood up again and could not be but impressed by boy’s enormous will. He blocked Harry immediately when he saw what the boy would try.
“Sectum –”
Snape became angry. Not only had the stupid boy failed to close his mind again, he also had tried to use Snape’s own spells against him. He felt rage rising inside his throat, which made his face distort, but before he could decide what to do, he saw Harry concentrating hard. Snape entered his mind and saw that the boy was concentrating hard and trying to cast an unsaid spell, which he had failed to do all year long. For one moment Snape had the ridiculous feeling of being Harry’s teacher again, being proud that the boy had finally mastered his task. A millisecond later he blocked Harry’s Levicorpus-curse.
Memories of his own time at school flashed through Snape’s mind, and he saw the beginning of his worst memory again, the one that was omnipresent in his mind at all times, except for when he was in the Dark Lord’s presence. He was hanging in mid-air and helplessly watched Potter and Black move towards him. Before he came to the point where he made the most terrible mistake in his whole life by calling Lily a mudblood, he looked at Harry, whose face suddenly became James’, and he defended himself. It was simply too much.
Snape shot a curse at Harry, who flew backwards, losing his wand as he hit the ground.
This time, Snape was unable to keep his thoughts in his head. The thought of the one man he hated more than anyone else, the man that had taken Lily away from him, was nearly driving him crazy. He heard himself scream the words that came to his raging mind. His face was torn by anger and did not at all resemble the smooth, stone-like mask it usually was anymore.
“No, Potter! You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them – I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you’d turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don’t think so … no!”
Harry had dived for his wand, but Snape was faster and sent it a few more feet away into the darkness.
“Kill me, then,” Harry panted, looking up at Snape “Kill me like you killed him, you coward –”
A white light flashed inside Snape’s head, wiping his mind blank and before he knew it, he had shot another curse at Harry, who flew a few feet backwards and hit the ground, his cheek bleeding.
“DON’T CALL ME COWARD!” Snape shouted, losing all control, his face torn in unbelievable agony. His mind felt like being tortured by hundreds of white-hot knives. His heart nearly stopped beating when he had to endure this one word, “coward”.
‘Coward? COWARD???’ Snape screamed inside.
He wanted to scream out aloud, wanted to shout to the whole world and especially to the stupid boy lying on the ground a few feet away from him, who knew nothing. Nothing! He desperately wanted Harry to know, to acknowledge what he was doing to fight Voldemort, what he was doing to avenge Lily, what he was doing for Harry himself. Snape wanted people to know that he acted on Dumbledore’s orders, wanted to laugh at Minerva McGonagall’s face and at all the other people’s faces who mistrusted him, who told Dumbledore he was betraying them.
But then, on second thought, all this happened to secure Harry. Snape himself had not wanted Dumbledore to tell anyone this embarrassing thing that the old man called “the best of him”: that he had loved Lily Evans. Now he was the only living person to know about it.
A loud, echoing scream brought him back to reality and when he looked up, he saw the hippogriff flying at him. He ducked just in time to avoid Buckbeak’s first attack. Instinctively he shot a curse at the hippogriff, which had no effect because the creature was too big and the curse had been badly aimed. Snape then turned around and hurried to get away from the angry creature, which had already started a second attack. Snape ran for his life, trying to avoid the razor-sharp claws and the not at all less dangerous beak.
He saw Draco, whom the other Death Eaters obviously had not taken with them when they had disapparated, wait behind the front gates. He stepped over the border of the grounds of Hogwarts, grabbed Draco’s arm and spun around, aiming to bring the boy away from any harm to ensure his own survival.
Later, when the Dark Lord had honored him at the Death Eater’s gathering, where he had felt the other’s envious glances, Snape sat in his house in Spinner’s End.
He thought about Harry, of course, and about losing his temper in front of the boy. He had never lost his temper before, not since he had changed sides and had started working against the Dark Lord. He had stayed calm when the other Death Eaters had joked about Lily’s death, had stayed calm when they killed people he liked in front of him. He had even stayed calm when the Dark Lord reminded him of the day he had told him about the prophecy, the day Snape had destroyed his life and started a new one.
But today, when a sixteen-year-old boy had called him a coward he had lost his temper. Snape sat there for what felt like hours and days, thinking. It was at this moment that Severus Snape truly realized how much Harry Potter meant to him.