Chapter Text
Harry still had a long day ahead of him, before he could start the weekend. If someone had warned him about the paperwork involved in becoming an Auror, he would have asked George, if he could be hired as a shop assistant.
He wasn't a finished Auror yet either, but just in training. And as trainees, he and his colleagues were responsible for everything that happened during the week.
Each Auror had to submit an overview of the week's events. There were incident reports of potions accidents, public casting and its consequences, illegal possession of magical beings, arrests... the list was endless.
And before he could go home for the day, he still had a lot to do.
Harry hadn't imagined any of this, as he stood in front of Voldemort's ashes. With ashes at your feet and a pile of dead people, you don't think of stacks of paper. They had been able to incapacitate most of the Death Eaters. After that there was a big investigation, so that nobody could again claim, that he had only fought under Imperio.
After that investigation, everyone had been given a trial, and everyone found guilty had been thrown through the veil that Sirius had fallen through.
He had buried Severus. No one knew that he had feelings of friendship with the Potions Master, and probably no one would have believed it either.
Everyone had seen the Potions Master as downright evil. No one had bothered to really see him. Snape was the evil Potions master.
Nobody had cared that Severus was taking care of him when nobody else was.
Severus had taken care of the torture wound Umbridge had inflicted on him, trying to protect him from Voldemort's manipulations and visions.
The fact that Sirius died anyway was a series of unfortunate events, if not to say a heap of shit.
Harry had put even more effort into learning how to protect his mind, but Severus had also explained to him why he was having so little success. Back then, Harry had felt quite keen to declare Dumbledore completely insane.
Whose plans for him were, after all, no better than Voldemort's plans either.
Severus had done his best to help him. Just because of him, Harry had never given up. Not being able to save him, had hurt Harry deeply. Severus had been a bad-tempered good friend and he hadn't been able to give anything back. Even today, a feeling of inadequacy nagged at him, the thought of what he should have done, could have done... and it didn't get any easier with time.
Everyone around him was building their own life, everyone was trying to come to terms with the losses that had taken place. And he was mentally always in the boathouse. He stood in front of the corpse and wished for nothing more than a time-turner. Or a miracle.
Now he was 20 and sorting through the week's paperwork. Just one more stack of confiscated parchments from the home of a wizard whose ritual had gone wrong, and then he could leave his job.
Suddenly he stopped. An old notebook lay between the parchments. And upon it the sign of the Deathly Hallows.
What could that be? It wasn't Beedle the Bard's storybook...
He took it and opened it. A card fell out. He picked it up and read the first sentence, and suddenly nothing else mattered.
"I have a debt to pay, a life debt. As I faced death, someone died in my place. He shouldn't have died. I know it. He died and I lived. My guilt and conscience urge me to... Finding a way to save someone from death makes it possible. I think I've found it."