Counting the steps to the door of your heart (chapter 2)

HARRY POTTER 
Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Soulmate!AU 

Cow-T #14, week 4, m2 - La maschera 




II - The Ministry falls, Death Eaters storm Bill and Fleur’s wedding and Harry can’t do anything but run. 

 

* 

 

The wedding guests are panicking and Harry does’t see Ron anywhere. There are people running from every direction and Harry grabs Hermione’s hand so that he won’t lose her, but her skin is slippery under his palm, and she gets swallowed by the crowd. 

“Hermione!” Harry yells but she’s gone, and everywhere Harry turns there are people running, and he doesn’t recognise anyone. Where are his friends? Where is Bill, or Ginny, or Fred and George? Harry moves frantic through the scared mob, he crash into a woman, and she pushes him back, sending him spinning and with him spins the room. 

Where is he? 

Suddenly there are screams and masked figures in dark cloaks apparate in the pavilion. Harry raises his wand, but he doesn’t have that anymore and he clutches at the air, as one Death Eater turns toward him and Harry realises that the Polyjuice potion has worn off and now he’s showing his own face. 

Harry tries to run but his foots are anchored to the ground, he can’t move and the Death Eater is coming for him, raising his wand as the crowd parts for him. 

Harry is going to die, he’s so sure of that. 

And then someone grabs his wrist and pulls him back and then Harry’s running.  His soulmate doesn’t look back to him, he just keeps running until they are outside the tent, until they are outside the Burrow and the landscape changes to the quiet place the boy was dreaming about the first time they met. 

“Thank you,” Harry tells him when they stop. He’s not breathing hard, he was not really running, but still he feels out of breath. 

“That was quite the nightmare,” the boy shrugs. It’s the first time they talk, and Harry feels giddy and excited, despite everything that just happened. 

“I’m sorry, it’s just...” He ponders if he should tell him. But he’s his soulmate, he’ll have access to a bigger part of his mind than his dreams as their bond progresses, so Harry doesn’t really think hiding something could do him any good. Beside, his soulmate is on his side, by definition, isn’t him? 

“It’s what happened today.”

“You were attacked?” The boy asks, but he doesn’t look particularly surprised. 

“Yes, Death Eaters came to my friends’ wedding. We managed to escape and there were no casualties, thankfully.” 

The boy nods, thoughtful. “Your subconscious needed to elaborate that. If it’s something that happened today it probably won’t become a recurring nightmare...” 

“Do you have much experience in recurring nightmares?” Harry asks, because he still doesn’t know anything about the mysterious soulmate. 

The boy looks at him, almost as if he couldn’t believe he was stupid enough to ask - and there’s something in the way he looks at Harry, something familiar that Harry recognizes, even if he can’t put a name on it. But it’s fleeting, because the boy scolds his features into something impassible and looks away. 

“Sometimes,” he replies at last, “But don’t worry, I made sure you won’t have to partake in them.”
“What?” Harry tilts his head confused, “How?” 

The boy bites his lower lip, “I sealed them away. I prefer happy memories, when I dream.”

“Who doesn’t,” Harry nods, “If I could, I would dream nothing but flying on a broom, probably.” 

The boy doesn’t reply, and Harry would like nothing better than ask him what are his happy memories then, but he doesn’t think they are there, yet. He doesn’t even know who he is, after all. 

Harry puts his hand in his pockets and looks at the same distant point the boy is observing, trying to understand if he’s seeing something Harry doesn’t. 

“So what’s your name?” He asks at last, because that’s the least. 

The boy turns to look at him, eyebrows raised in a way that Harry has already seen. Now if only he could place it... 

“What’s in a name?” The boy asks back with a smug grin and doesn’t answer his question. 

“Well I’d like to know who you are since you already know who I am.” 

“Do I?” The boy keeps moving in circles around his question and Harry is loosing his patience. He had never thought a soulmate was supposed to be someone that got under his skin, and yet here they are. 

“Well, the girl you dreamed about surely did,” Harry points out, “so if she knows, you must too.” 

The boy takes a moment to ponder his reply, and Harry feels the need to shake him. It’s so unfair for him not to know him.
“Being the soulmate to the great Harry Potter has some downfalls at the moment, don’t you think?” The boy tilts his head, “If it’s the same for you, I’d like to keep my name to myself.” 

It feels like a blow - of course, knowing Harry is a danger at the moment, and yet he had thought that somehow his soulmate would be someone that would look past it, that, somehow, if the universe had destined them together, his soulmate would be able to take it - his role in the war, his fame, his prophetized future. 

Harry takes a step forward, challenging, “And if it’s not the same for me?” 

“Well then, you can’t always get what you want, Potter.” 

Merlin, it’s so uncanny, so familiar... but Harry can’t remember who this boy resembles so much. 

“I have to call you something...” 

“Then figure something out,” the boy tells him with a smirk, “because I won’t tell you.”

And before Harry can protest, he’s gone. 

 

* 

 

Harry doesn’t tell his friends about his soulmate. They have more important things to figure out, such as where is Mundungus Fletcher and how could they have been so stupid as to not realize they had had a piece of Voldemort’s soul in their hands and they had thrown it away. 

Besides, his soulmate has been very clear he’s not willing to associate with Harry at the moment, and Harry, honestly, can’t fault him. The war is raging outside the protective walls of Grimmauld Place and Voldemort is evidently having the upper hand. 

Harry might have wished for a soulmate ready to sacrifice everything for him, he might have dreamed of a desperate love that knew no bounds, of someone that would fight alongside him despite the odds... but what it got instead was a stubborn boy who refused to show himself (his soulmate had to be at least seventeen, which meant that he was choosing to present himself in that form) and refused to tell him his name, and refused to share a dream with him for more than a few minutes at a time. 

Harry shouldn’t complain. At least he isn’t Voldemort. 

So when Hermione and Ron asks, Harry shakes his head. Better for them to believe he doesn’t have a soulmate than to add another mystery to the pile of unsolved ones. 

 

* 

 

“You can’t tell me you don’t have happy memories after the age of ten.” 

Harry doesn’t mean to sound so mean, but he’s getting tired of seeing his soulmate as a child. They are in the same clearing of their first shared dream - under the canopy of threes the small river is calmly flowing at their shoulders, and Harry understands why the boy has chosen this place for meeting him. It’s peaceful, it’s calm... it’s way too silent. 

“Believe what you want,” the boy says, not even shifting his gaze to look at Harry. He’s laying on the ground, watching the clouds go by. “This are my happiest moments, you don’t want my nightmares.” 

Harry sits next to him, hugging his knees and looking at the river. “Where is this place?” 

The boy hesitates, maybe thinking that giving up a location will help Harry figuring out his name. Harry wants to tell him that he didn’t even know Dumbledore was from Godric’s Hollow, so there’s little chance of him figuring out anything just from a place, but before he can say anything the boy decides for himself. 

“Cokeworth,” he says at last. 

It doesn’t ring any bell and Harry shakes his head. “Never heard of it.” 

“You wouldn’t have, no.” The boy doesn’t sound too surprised. “I spent so many years here, and I never went back to this place, except in my dreams.”

Harry knew his soulmate was older than him, but it could have been a day or a decade. His tone now seems to implicate the latter more than the former.
“Why?” He asks, instead, prying for more informations and careful to not sound too eager. 

“It doesn’t matter,” the boy shakes his head, but Harry doesn’t give up.
“It has something to do with the red head girl you were dreaming about?” 

The boy chuckles, a mirthless and bitter laughter, “Something like that, yes.” 

“What happened, was she angry you weren’t her soulmate?” 

The boy still has a twisted grin on his face, and Harry feels stupid, feels as if he’s onto a big joke that he can’t see and the boy is laughing at him. 

“No, nothing of the sort. If anything, she found out who her soulmate was long before I did. But she’s dead now.” 

“Oh,” Harry feels stupid now. He doesn’t know who his soulmate is, he doesn’t know the red-headed girl, and everything he says seems to be the wrong thing. “I’m sorry.” 

“As I said, it doesn’t matter.” 

They keep silent, then. Harry doesn’t know what else to say, the boy didn’t look like he wanted to talk in the first place. 

 

* 

 

Severus keeps waking up with a need for destruction. He reign himself in, anger flaring in his vein and burning his skin. He was stupid, he tells himself, he shouldn’t have talked with Potter about his mother, he shouldn’t have opened himself up - what was he expecting to gain by telling Potter where he had grown up? What was even the purpose of conversation, when anything they said to each other couldn’t be of any significance. 

Severus has sacrificed everything on the altar of the Dark Lord’s downfall - his whole life, his reputation... he has killed Albus, the only person who had ever had faith in him, and he has done everything to avenge Lily’s death. He can’t risk Potter figuring out who he is, spilling his role to the Dark Lord and ruining everything. 

He would kill Severus, surely. Or worse, he would force Severus to prove his loyalty once more:  use your bond to bring Potter to me. It was too big a risk. 

But Severus could control his dreams only up to a point - dreams are the reign of the subconscious and Severus doesn’t have on himself the same hold he has while awake. Dreams don’t make sense, dreams shift and change and don’t stay still, they’re like water: constricted into a vial too small it will spill over. 

And the more walls Severus builds in his head, the smaller the vial gets. 

 

* 

 

“Why are we dreaming this awful woman?” The boy asks, as Harry studies the hideous pink plates depicting meowing cats that adorn the pink walls of Umbridge’s office at Hogwarts. Harry hates this place, he would like nothing better than to burn it down. 

“She has something I need,” Harry tells him as Professor Umbridge explains them how useless learning is, how they’ll never need a wand and honestly, they would probably be better off living as Muggles.  

She’s teaching from her office, the room morphing half-way into a classroom, with desks, all empty, except for Harry and his soulmate - and it doesn’t make much sense, but what really does in a dream? 

“She has something you need?” 

Harry turns to look at the boy, “Wait a second... you know her?” 

“I...” The boy must realize his mistake, but Harry doesn’t give him time to come up with an excuse.
“You do!”
It’s not much, but it’s something, and now Harry knows that his soulmate was at Hogwarts during his fifth year. 

The boy looks unsettled now, ready to bolt and Harry grabs him by the wrist. 

“So, you know me, you are older than me, and you were at Hogwarts when she was a teacher,” he lists. The boy squirms, tries to get his hand back, but Harry holds on. He knows the boy can’t leave if he’s anchoring him there. 

“I didn’t meet her at Hogwarts. She works at the Ministry, Potter, I’ve seen her there.” 

True. Harry hadn’t thought of it. There are many ways the boy could have met Dolores Umbridge and being at Hogwarts while she was a teacher isn’t the most likely one, - but there was something in his explanation, an edge of panic in his voice that Harry had almost missed. 

“No, you didn’t,” Harry’s sure of that, “You were at Hogwarts. Which means, that you must have been a sixth year, maybe seventh?” Harry looks at him, tries to recognize his face, to understand how his boyish features might have grown into adulthood, but he doesn’t recognize one of his classmates in him.
Truth be told, Harry hasn’t exactly interacted with many students if they were out of his year or out of his House. If his soulmate wasn’t part of a Quidditch Team, Harry doesn’t think he could place him as a Ravenclaw or an Hufflepuff.

But the boy looks so familiar... 

“Can I have my arm back, or are you planning to stare at me for the rest of the night?” The boy asks, curt, and Harry is about to let go, when another thought strikes him. 

The boy had a friend, a red-headed girl. She’s dead now, but she was old enough to have found out her soulmate, so she was a witch and she had reached seventeen. Harry doesn’t know of any red-headed witch who died when he was at school. Damn, he doesn’t remember any red-headed girl, except Ginny at Hogwarts. 

Unless she has died recently, this summer... 

“Potter? Give me my arm back right this instant!” 

But no, the boy was talking about that with too detachment for it to be a fresh wound. Harry is sure it had happened years ago. But that would make the boy much older and why would he be at Hogwarts, then... 

“Potter, let go,” the boy’s seething, full of anger, and Harry can’t really blame him, but he’s so close to get something... “Now!” 

“Yes, sir,” Harry, cornered, replies without thinking about it, and lets go of his wrist almost immediately.
Then what he has just said, sinks in. 

He raises his head to meet the boy’s eyes, and - 

“Fuck.” 

Of course, it’s him, how Harry hadn’t recognized him sooner is the real question. Harry takes a step back and then another. It’s not Voldemort, but it’s not much better either. And Harry has just told Severus Snape a pivotal part of their plan. 

“Of all the times I tried to get you to show me some respect, this is the moment you choose,” the boy - no, Snape shakes his head.
Harry doesn’t have time to figure what Snape’s tone implies. It’s too much. Harry is facing Snape for the first time since Dumbledore’s death and he can’t curse him, he can’t hex him, he can’t do anything of significance. 

Severus Snape is in front of him and Harry can’t do anything but stare. 

And then it hits him, because Severus Snape is a Death Eater, he’s a killer, he’s Voldemort’s right hand. And he’s also Harry’s soulmate. 

For the first time since this charade has started, it’s Harry the one that runs away.