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Severus Snape’s face was grim as he strode towards the entrance to the Shrieking Shack. He was exhausted to a degree that he had felt few times in his life, driven to it by this evening that seemed like it would never end, yet his duty was not yet done.
It would have been a vast understatement to say that the evening had been both trying, and unexpected. The first day of a new school year was always busy – filled with last minute preparations, and then the chaos of hundreds of students descending on the castle like a swarm of chattering locusts – yet this had been no ordinary first day of term.
First, Rubeus Hagrid, Hogwarts’ Care of Magical Creatures professor and groundskeeper, had apparently died. The traditional Head of House post-sorting debrief with Albus had been interrupting by the blaring of alarm charms from several of the headmaster’s various knick-knacks, which Albus had barely taken the time to explain before hastily leaving to investigate by way of Fawkes. That had naturally left a shocked, grave mood upon all of the gathered Heads of Houses, and would have been more than enough unwanted ‘excitement’ for one evening. But it had not stopped there.
He had barely returned to his office a short time later and poured himself a glass of firewhisky, when he was interrupted by a frantic patronus message from Minerva regarding a magical inferno that was raging across the Hogwarts grounds. He’d been certain she’d been exaggerating, but gone to investigate nonetheless. But it was no exaggeration – Severus had rarely seen flames of such ferocity before, let alone on school grounds.
Even with the majority of the professors called into action attempting to fight the fire, it seemed impervious to everything they had tried to quench it with. It was behaviour that he would normally automatically attribute to Fiendfyre, but this was no Fiendfyre. Filius had been insistent that it was a simple Incendio charm, but Severus had never seen Incendio behave like that before. It was meant for lighting small fires – torches and the like. For it to create such a conflagration… he shuddered to think of the power that must have been put behind it. It had felt like it had a will of its own – one filled with hatred, that would only be satisfied when all before it was turned to ash. Whilst the Dark Lord hadn’t informed him of any plans or attacks against Hogwarts, he knew of few others who would have the ability to conjure such a fire.
They had been beating a steady retreat from it, slowly losing ground, when suddenly it was just… gone, as if someone had turned off a switch or cut off the magic behind it. But then before they could even begin to investigate, the night’s third unlooked-for happenstance occurred.
Even as they’d barely finished the fight to contain the flames that had towered over them, he’d received another patronus summons – from Albus this time – insisting that he come to the Shrieking Shack with all haste. He’d been forced to leave his colleagues to deal with investigating the fire as he hurried away to answer the summons.
To make matters worse too, his sixth sense was tingling. He felt the hand of the Dark Lord in the events of the night, he was all but certain of it. Hagrid’s death he could excuse away as an unhappy accident, albeit an unlikely one – the half giant was tough, he’d give him that, but accidents did happen. But the fire? No, that had the tell of dark magic, and Albus’ summons was evidently not an invite for some lemon drops and a quick chat. None of this was in any way normal.
Even with the fire now out, the Whomping Willow was at this point little more than blackened charcoal. Trying to force his way past it through the remnants of the fire into what was already a likely structurally unsound tunnel would have been unwise at best, so Severus had taken the long way round – hurrying down the path to Hogsmeade. By the time he arrived at the Shrieking Shack, face streaked black with soot, and robes stinking of the inferno he had left, his fatigue was really starting to catch up with him. But still, he had a job to do – this cursed night was not yet finished. With a cursory glance around him to be certain that no-one was watching, he pulled out his wand and muttered an “Alohomora” at the door before hurrying inside.
The hall he stepped into was dark, yet a dull light glimmered from the upstairs, and the hall itself showed clear evidence of recent activity. The shack had been abandoned for decades – only briefly used in recent times when that fool Lupin had served as Defence Against the Dark Arts professor two years ago – yet the dust that otherwise coated the house was very much disturbed. And not by footsteps either. It was as if someone had dragged something through it in places, including up the stairs. Something had happened here, and recently.
“Albus?” he called out, cautiously. Whilst he knew himself a capable wizard, he did not intend to play hide and seek in this house looking for the headmaster, when he was uncertain as to what exactly had happened here.
“Up here, Severus,” came the reply. It made him pause for a moment. Whilst that was undoubtedly Albus’ voice, it sounded so old. He’d been with the headmaster but a few short hours ago, and even after the news of Hagrid arrived he’d sounded energetic, strong even, if worried. But now? What exactly could have happened to cause such a change in tone?
Warily, with a sense of unease settling on him, he started up the stairs, his wand cautiously gripped in his hand. Reaching the top, he saw Albus stood on the landing, peering at him with a look of exhaustion on his face that Severus could rarely remember seeing before.
“We should not be away from the castle for long,” Severus told him, grimly. “I fear the Dark Lord is active tonight. An inferno has raged across the grounds whilst you were away, and it had barely ceased when your patronus arrived. He may not yet be…”
“Tonight’s events were not of Voldemort’s hand, Severus,” Albus intoned quietly. “Come.”
“You are certain?” he asked, as he followed the headmaster down the hall towards the room at its far end, from whence the dull light was glowing. “Then who—“
Then he froze. For as Albus entered the room and ceased blocking his view of the door, he saw what lay within.
The room was in as decrepit a state as the rest of the house, and yet had clearly been in use. The dull light came from a small candle-lit lamp, sitting upon a battered desk against the wall. It lit up a bedroom which lay mostly in ruins – dominated by a cracked and broken bed frame which had been moved into a corner in order to clear space in the room’s centre. And in that space lay the body of a boy – a student by the looks of his robes – who showed no signs of life. The tracks in the dust now became clearer to him, as by the way the boy lay it was clear he must have all but dragged himself across the room. Severus did not consider himself a heartfelt man, but something about the scene stirred up horror-laden sympathy in him.
The boy’s right arm was outstretched, reaching towards a small wooden box which lay on the floor, but he looked to have fallen an arms-length short at its end. The bottom half of a snapped wand had fallen from the boy’s hand, and lay still on the floor beside him. He could not see the other half anywhere in the room at a glance. Clearly the wand had been damaged elsewhere, presumably on the boy’s journey up here, which is why he had not simply summoned the box to himself – as that seemed evident to be his goal. It was only as he moved forward silently to investigate further that he realised who it was – the light catching on the scar blighting the boy’s forehead.
“Potter?!” He hissed in disbelief.
“Indeed so,” Albus sighed heavily, and suddenly he understood why exactly Albus sounded as tired as he did.
But as he looked closer, he almost recoiled at what he saw. If it were not for the scar he would barely believe this was Potter. The boy’s face was twisted, and his hair matted with sweat. A look of fanatical desperation was plastered across his face even in death, and he was deathly pale. Severus could have mistaken his hue for that of a vampire, were it not for his veins – thick, bulging, and deep black. Like harsh, raised lines painted across his face and neck on the exposed flesh. He looked in a truly horrifying state. But it was his eyes that Severus found truly haunting.
He had seen many bodies in death before, bodies that had suffered both peaceful and violent deaths. As life left a body, he knew from experience that the eyes became glassy and unfocused, as the soul departed, generally leaving a peaceful or neutral look on the face. But Potter’s… His eyes were sunken deep into his face, as if craters carved into a landscape, and their colour – that bright, vibrant green that seemed to glow with strength, and had always reminded him unhappily of Lily – was flat, dull and darkened. His eyes were surrounded by great dark circles, as if the boy hadn’t slept for many days, and there was a thick black sludge slowly trickling from the corner of his eyes – and, now that he noticed it, from the boy’s nose and mouth too. Even in death his pupils were fixated on the box that the boy had clearly been reaching for, conveying a desperate need that was as disturbing as it was horrifying to see on the face of a child.
Severus had seen death many times before, but he could not recall a corpse whose face seemed as haunting as this one was to him.
“What happened?” he asked quietly, after a moment to collect himself.
“That is what we must determine, and I require your expertise to do so, Severus,” Albus answered, tiredly. “I have made many mistakes in my life, Severus. But I fear I must consider that which I have learned this evening to be among my greatest. To have had young Harry under my nose and yet to have never noticed…”
“You mean to say this was no curse? That this has been ongoing for some time?” he breathed in horror.
By way of a response, the headmaster stepped carefully over to the head of the room and reached down to pick up the wooden box. Removing his wand, he tapped it lightly so that the box clicked open. But whilst Severus could not see its contents from this angle, he could very clearly see the weight that descended on the headmaster’s face as he saw them.
“Yes, Severus. I daresay it has been going on for some time indeed,” came the weary reply. He carefully removed a water skin of some kind from the box, and held it out towards Severus.
“Forgive me, my friend, for involving you in this. But it it imperative that I understand what has transpired here. Your professional analysis, if you would?”
He reached out and took the skin, only then dragging his eyes from Albus to study the item in his hand.
“A water skin, obviously,” he needlessly commented as he looked it over. “It is potions-grade. Designed to hold milder brews that do not require glass or crystalline containers. Likely from Slug and Jiggers in Diagon Alley. Many students make use of them, they are not uncommon.”
He carefully popped the top off of the skin, wary of any spillage, but need not have worried. “Empty,” he noted, before bringing it up to his nose. The scent perplexed him for a moment. He knew by scent every brew that he taught at Hogwarts and many more besides, but this was none of them. It didn’t even smell like a potion at all – it smelled sickeningly sweet, yet raw, and had a metallic tinge to it. And then it hit him.
“Unicorn blood,” he breathed in horror. “Albus, this held unicorn blood.”
Albus sighed heavily. “It is as I feared, then.” Wearily, he walked over to the battered desk and placed the box on its surface, gesturing for Severus to follow. As he did so, making to place the skin on the desk too, he finally saw the rest of the box’s contents – one worn, stone bowl that had clearly seen frequent use, and dull red gem.
“What happened here, Albus?” he asked again, slowly, as his set the skin down next to the box and pondered over what the collection meant.
Albus didn’t look at him – his eyes were gazing almost unseeingly down at the items. “You look upon the Philosopher’s Stone, Severus. Thought lost to us years ago during my battle with Quirinus. And if I am not mistaken, the cause of all of this.”
Severus was stunned into silence at the admission. The stone survived? And Potter had it all this time? A horrifying, sickening dread settled in his stomach as the pieces began to click. “No… Surely not…” he breathed.
“Much has happened this evening, and none of it good,” Albus intoned. “Some of it I fear we shall need to discuss another day. The hows and the whys of it, I fear we may never know the full extent of. But the Harry Potter that I came across tonight… he was a pitiful, broken thing.”
He paused for a moment, as if to gather his thoughts, before continuing. “In his ravings and his raging he told me much. Of his anger, and his fear of others taking what he had ‘created’. Of his pride and self-confidence in his own power, and his disdain for those he considered weaker than himself. Of his need and desperation for something that he would not name. We crossed paths as I attended to poor Hagrid, as he attempted to plunder the corpse of a unicorn that he had presumably slain. I interrogated him, of course, but I admit that I both underestimated his capabilities, and overestimated his state of mind. He subdued me, broke free of my enchantments and fled. I, of course, followed him… yet by the time I caught up, this is all there was to find. The body of a ravaged, broken child who apparently had both the Elixir or Life and a skin bearing the remnants of unicorn blood on hand, which he was evidently trying desperately to reach. Beyond this, I can only conjecture, but I suspect that no aurors will be required to piece together the reality of his ‘creation’.”
Severus stared at him for a moment before responding. “Then he… that is the price that such a combination would wreak on the body?” he murmured in horror.
Albus nodded wearily. “The Elixir of Life provides its user eternal life and a potent magical infusion, at a price of dependency. Nicholas once described it to me as a benevolent dependency – one that had little downside, as long as one continued to take the elixir. Unicorn blood provides a much more potent magical boost, and is well known to similarly extend life, but the cost it incurs means this is a much more temporary effect. Some call it a stain upon the soul, some a cursed life, but the truth is much worse. It exacts a heavy price on its user, taking as much as it gives. The magical energy it provides is metaphysically toxic, serving to cannibalise both its host’s physical and magical health even whilst temporarily providing them with a vitality and energy that prevents them from noticing the damage until it is done. The immortality it offers is nought but a mirage, as through even short periods of use a wizard would be consumed by it – they would briefly burn as bright as a star, only to be extinguished before they were fully aware of their mistake.”
He paused for a moment before continuing. “From Harry’s physical condition, and his mental state when I encountered him… I suspect that the two substances combined fed and amplified this effect. Together they gave him great power for as long as he took them, perhaps unparalleled by all save a few were his subjugation of myself any indication, yet the unicorn blood ate away at his very body and soul with every dose he took, whilst simultaneously the elixir kept him alive throughout the process. As his body was wracked and consumed over time, the dependency would have grown ever greater. A ruined, ravaged magical core no longer capable of holding any magic of its own – fully slaved to the infusions his concoction gave him – and a body no longer capable of sustaining itself without the elixir’s promise of health and long life. He sought fresh unicorn blood this evening to refresh himself anew, yet when he was deprived of it and could not reach the stone to even temporarily allay his need… His body would no longer have been able to sustain itself under the weight of the damage that had already been done.”
He didn’t know what to say. The very idea that the boy had done something so foolish… so obscene. He had done this to himself, over what? Power? Severus knew the appeal of power, but still, this was in no way a price worth paying...
“His reasoning was flawed, yet still it contained an element of truth,” Albus broke the silence, as he mused softly. “There is only power in this world. But both Voldemort and Harry believed that power could be used to separate the general populace according to strength. Those who have it as the strong, and those without it or who choose not to chase it as the weak. A fundamental and damning misunderstanding.”
Gently, Albus flicked his wand, and a blue light flashed from his wand which impacted the stone. A crack quickly formed across it, and spread until the stone began to fracture over and over, until all that remained of it were hundreds of tiny shards. As they both watched, those shards then slowly melted of their own volition, leaving a small red puddle on the desktop. Smoke then began to drift lazily from the puddle, as even that began to burn itself away until there was no trace remaining of the legendary Philosopher’s Stone save a small scorch mark on the wood of the desk’s surface.
Severus could only watch as it broke itself down into nothing. The world’s greatest alchemical discovery destroying itself before his very eyes. He idly noted to himself that few would ever see the likes of this happening, but perhaps that was a blessing having seen what such a discovery had ultimately wrought.
He turned to gaze at Potter once more – the boy who had clearly been so thoroughly destroyed by the small red stone, and his own lust for power. He could not help the shudder that ran through him at the sight. He had not liked the boy, but he wouldn’t wish such a fate on anyone.
“Not too weak to seek it, but too weak to control it, then?” he asked quietly, unwilling to yet look away from the ravaged body of the boy lying in front of him.
Albus’ eyes were dull and lifeless as he too turned and sadly looked down at the boy. When eventually he spoke, his voice was all but a whisper and filled with grief, despite everything Potter had clearly done. “No, Severus, not so. Much as Harry himself did, you misunderstand. Power for the sake of power is a curse, not a strength. It is not a weakness to be unable to tame it, just as it is not a weakness to choose not to chase it. To fail to understand that is in and of itself the weakness. A young boy made choices that none should make out of a position of ignorance, and was given that which could never be controlled or sustained in return, without any understanding of the consequences to himself. Even I would be unable to tame such power without the ramifications that were clearly visited upon Harry. That is not weakness, it is inevitability.”
His wand waved once more, and a white sheet carefully settled over the boy’s body. Albus sighed once more, then glanced at him before slowly starting to make for the door as he finished the thought.
“It is my belief, Severus, that the true divide between those of us in this world – one which perhaps would have led Harry down a different path had he come to understand it – is that there is only power, and those strong enough to resist it.”