The Mortal

Enough to break something.He imagined that at any other time he would not choose to hand over the memory, but the reason he regrets now has nothing to do with the life he still has to face when he sees the sun again-look at that boy, why you were so cruel to him.

He walked silently in memory.

Harry's proposal was not a whim.He had to learn the ability to search for the information he needed in the vastness of memory, so he set Snape up with a final message waiting to be probed.Before he started he said it's about you, what you need to find, what I'm hiding, it's about you and me.

"It's a broad category," Snape said at the time.

"I don't think so," Harry said. "I have only one conspiracy against you, and that is very clear."

So Snape kept looking.He zoomed in and passed the period of time when he was unconscious, and at the same time felt the shoulder under his palm tremble slightly, and then quickly returned to calm.They sat face to face on the sofa for this unlikely trip.

The first screen that popped up was only Harry.

His bedroom had the simplicity of a hypothetical Gryffindor dormitory. Snape picked up some familiarity, and tried to compare it to the impression he had glimpsed during that late-night visit the other day - even though he'd been more focused on the damned gunshot wound.There is no fancy wooden wardrobe on the surface and a bed that is neither wide nor narrow. There are two rows of storage partitions on the wall that should be the original decoration of the house, because there are so few items on it, and he didn’t even find one. The Snitch (not that he wanted to see it either).He noticed the storage box that Harry had mentioned contained instructions for electrical appliances, and a few books and magazines.

There is a small desk by the window, just big enough for one person to write on. Harry was sitting behind it, dismantling a letter from Hogwarts in his hands, the midday sun falling from his side.

Snape came behind him to read the letter without hindrance.

This is when it all started.The news from St. Mungo's, the plea from the Headmaster, the starting point where they ended up huddled under one roof. Harry stared at the short letter in silence for a long time like a victim petrified by a basilisk, but the silence that didn't reveal any emotion was anything but flattering.

"It appears that I have caused you considerable distress," Snape remarked harshly. "I'm beginning to suspect that your conspiracy is related to the murder of the former professor."

"Don't try to do it in a way that annoys me," Harry resisted.

"Legiliency will not tell you the rules," Snape responded. "Language is the best way to guide."

He perfectly demonstrated how the human will cannot perfectly control the brain, and seized the opportunity to step into another memory derived from it during Harry's brief mental fluctuations.

This time it was when the two of them were together.There was nothing special about everyday life, Snape was very familiar with it, but it was another feeling to see it from an outside perspective, and he was able to notice many details that he hadn't noticed at the time.The quarrel they had when they first moved in together was so corny, Harry went to the room to get the glass bottle of silver memory, Snape followed him, the boy's expression changed slightly from the moment he entered the bedroom. Harry walked to the head of the bed and bent down. He reached under the pillow and took it out, then stopped in place for two seconds before turning and leaving.

The whole process is very fast and kind of unbelievably slow.But the double agent's professional quality is so superb, he once again discovered the spiritual gap of the master of the brain in his thinking, and cut deeper decisively.

"Where have you been?" Hermione asked in the Gryffindor common room. "Ron said you didn't come back to your dorm last night."

Harry looked rather tired.

"I'm fine," he said. "Needs some space, you know."

"I hope you also know that we've always..." she said, reaching out to pat her friend on the shoulder, but opened before her fingers were at least a few inches away.

"You don't-" Harry reacted strongly, emphasizing his tone, then paused, and slowed down again. "Sorry, but don't, just don't. Go to Ron, he needs you."

"I will." Hermione was still not intimidated, "but I have to say that this kind of time is more suitable for spending with family, and you are the one who refused the Weasley's invitation. I can't leave you, Harry, and you It's family."

The moment that should be touching did not appear.

"I don't think it's time yet."

"But I think every moment will be the best moment."

"You...why don't you understand?" Harry began to pace anxiously, the hand hanging by his side clenched into a fist and opened again, the blood vessels on the back of his hand were clearly visible. "I can't. What do you want me to face Molly with? Fred and George? Ginny's tears?"

"It wasn't your fault," she said firmly. "No one blames you, Harry."

"Then what is my fault?" He approached her eyes. "Sirius, Lupine, Dumbledore, Tonks, Colin, Cedric, Dobby, even Hedwig?"

"Do not-"

"I don't need it." He interrupted her loudly. "I've fucking heard enough - damn I haven't been clear enough? Get away from me, please!" he yelled at her, so hoarsely, "I'm saying let me go! Did you hear that?"

Without leaving any room for discussion, Harry strode away immediately. Snape followed him slightly puzzled as to what this could have to do with him, but he was sure he was looking in the right direction.

Harry's final destination was St. Mungo's.He almost ran wildly through the long corridor as if something was chasing after him, then he opened the door to enter, and then closed it gently with a force completely inconsistent with the momentum.He was panting against the door panel as if emerging from an oxygen-deprived ocean, and Snape thought inappropriately that this was ironic - when would he be a Potter refuge again.

The situation was rather odd. Harry found a corner to sit down - the ward's space was certainly not wide, nor was it narrow, but he chose a corner in the shadows, and sat on the ground with his knees bent on the chair on the other side as nothing. Snape only glanced at himself on the hospital bed before being pulled back by a small sound.He leaned closer to the boy who bowed his head and hugged his knees, but the murmur was so vague that he couldn't hear anything clearly.

Everything around it turned black.

Snape looked up, frowning uncomfortably at the cramped space.He lowered his head again, and the owner of the memory was already covered in darkness.

"Why can't I be with Harry?" The obviously immature voice sounded through something.

"Because he made a mistake." The shrill female voice replied.

"So he's going to be locked in the cupboard?"

"Yes. If you make a mistake, you will be punished."

"What did he do wrong?"

"He killed his mother," she said.

Snape suddenly realized what it was.He looked down in shock, he tried to reach out for confirmation but apparently he was just watching a consciousness of the memory - there was nothing he could do.

He killed his mother.

How dare she, how could she say that?

Bright and extraordinarily dazzling white abruptly re-occupied the field of vision. Harry still kept his original position curled up in the corner.

Soon the next few episodes poured out like a flood of opening floodgates: sometimes arguing with friends, he finally had a clearer idea of ​​how unstable his savior was at the time, which, over time, until It wasn't much better after graduation, either; other times it was a dark space in a cupboard with the occasional sound from outside - including laughter, but he never once got to see Harry as a child.These quick flashes alternated erratically, but the invariant was that the interval would always switch back to St. Mungo's ward, and Snape tried again and again to hear what Harry was muttering silently, and failed again and again.

This is much more than expected. Snape was suddenly at a complete loss as to where the information Harry asked him to look for was, as if everything had nothing to do with him or anything to do with him.Human memory is like a progressive maze. If you want to find the exit, you need to keep trying different routes until you realize that this is a dead end. Then you know that this is the wrong branch, and this ward is the one that branched out. The intersection of countless forks.

"You need to stop this," Hermione said.

This is yet another fork in the road. Snape thought.

"What?" Harry asked vaguely.

"You've been back too many times," she said worriedly. "You have to understand... accept the fact. He may wake up, maybe he won't, no matter how many times you go, you can't change it, and that will do nothing but keep you in the pain of the past."

"It's not pain." He shook his head in denial. "You don't understand, Hermione. It's the only place where I feel safe."

It wasn't just the girl who didn't understand. Snape secretly wondered what the word safe meant. He thought of that corner and the cupboard in the dark, and for some reason suddenly decided that the young Harry must exist in the same posture in a place he couldn't see.

And then it's time to become an Auror. Snape knows