2.

“I think one week will be enough to clean the classroom without using magic, Mr Potter,” Snape smirked disdainfully at him, and Harry felt his blood boiling in his veins. But he didn’t look up and didn’t let Snape look into his eyes as he had done to the Headmaster. Blasted Legilimenses: the two hooked-nosed gits!

“Yes, sir,” he replied frostily, but with perfect politeness.

“I want the desks being scrubbed, the cupboards cleaned and ordered, the ingredients arranged, the cauldrons cleansed and the floor spotless. You can’t leave before nine: the door will be locked. If you can’t finish cleaning the classroom by the end of the weekend, you will serve another week of detention…”

“But,” Harry jerked his head up and looked at Snape with full loathing, “McGonagall only ordered one week!”

Snape’s smirk widened.

“Oh, she agreed when I mentioned this part to her.”

Harry had to fight the urge to spit at his teacher, so he turned around.

“Right then,” the words sounded like spitting though.

“Five points from Gryffindor for that impolite tone to a teacher…”

“You are not a teacher,” Harry couldn’t help but swirl towards Snape again. “You are a bully,” he hissed.

“That’s another ten points…”

“… not better than James Potter…”

“ENOUGH!” Snape stepped toward Harry and grabbed his shoulder so strongly that the boy hissed again, but this time in pain. “Shut up, Potter, and don’t say things you know nothing about!” he yelled and spit splashed from his mouth. He tossed Harry away from him so that he fell on a desk. “And that’s another twenty points.” And with this, he stormed out of the dark classroom, his robes billowing after him as he went.

Harry didn’t dare to move until the door clicked closed after his retreating form. Only when he was finally alone, he grabbed his aching elbow, massaged it slowly, and straightened up.

“Snivelly,” he murmured hatefully. “Itzy-bitzy Snivelly. Truth is painful, isn’t it?”

He slowly approached the cupboard where the cleaning utensils were, and after some minutes of preparation he began to work. He started the whole cleaning stuff with the desks, scrubbing and scratching the old filth with a blunt knife, and soon he was so deep in work, that at nine, the door slamming open made him jump in surprise. But by that time, almost the half of the desks was clean, and Harry put the utensils away with a somehow proud feeling. The desks he had already finished looked like new, gone was the old strata of dirt and even the stench of the room had lessened considerably.

That night, he didn’t feel it necessary to visit the Astronomy Tower: after finishing his homework with Hermione (who was very pleased with him that evening) and Ron (who couldn’t stop pitying him about his misfortune with the two teachers) he went to bed straight away and after a short meditation and clearing his mind, he fell asleep.

The next day he didn’t even meet Snape: the room was empty when he arrived, and the door locked behind him right after he had entered. For a moment he considered shouting in frustration, but as he thought of himself, standing in an empty room yelling alone, he refused the idea and shrugged. He went to the cleaning cupboard instead, and set to work again.

First, he wiped the filth away from the already scrubbed desks, and immediately after that, he went on scrubbing. The door opened up at nine precisely, but Harry didn’t leave the room until he finished with the last desk. It was almost ten, but every desk was clean like never before.

This time, Hermione seemed a little worried when he didn’t show up on time, but she helped him with the homework nevertheless. After they finished and Ron went to bed, Harry confessed Hermione that he kind of liked these detentions. Snape was nowhere to be seen the whole time, and the work wasn’t too exciting  – but, at least, it made Harry physically exhausted so that he could sleep afterwards.

The third day, during the re-organising the store cupboards where the brewing utensils were located, Harry was even playing with the idea of earning another week of detention. In the Potions classroom, nobody harassed him with questions, cast questioning glances at him, wanted him to tell them about Voldemort or asked him about his well-being and Sirius. It was almost relaxing. Harry scrubbed and wiped and cleaned and washed and arranged while humming some silly Christmas songs (why Christmas, he didn’t know, but they were quite good to hum) to himself. He was so relaxed when he returned later to Gryffindor Tower that he could do his homework faster than ever before, so that he managed to do some additional reading too. Hermione was absolutely satisfied with Harry’s performance.

“If I had known that cleaning up rooms would do you so much good, I would have gone to Professor McGonagall to suggest her to make you work much sooner. Oh, and Harry,” she smiled at him, “today, when I went to Potions, I could barely recognise the classroom. You are doing a wonderful job on it.”

Harry lifted his brows in surprise.

“Do you think so?” but he couldn’t restrain the satisfaction from his voice.

“Absolutely.”

Hermione’s praise reinforced his own feelings: finally, he had performed work, which had visible results, and that pleased him, even if Malfoy and his cronies laughed at him and congratulated him for finding another use for the broom. The whole mocking was so childish that Harry didn’t even get angry. Malfoy didn’t belong to his world enough to be worthy of even hearing his voice.

The next day, he finished ordering the store cupboards and began to clean the cauldrons and the other utensils, which continued even into the fifth day. By that time, Harry could see that he was too behind and he hadn’t even begun to arrange the ingredients in the other set of store cupboards. The next day, fortunately, was Saturday, so he asked Hermione for some Potions books, and getting the right ones, he went to the Potions classroom right after lunch and began to sort the different raw materials. It took several hours, and it was already eleven, when he finished. Pleased, he looked over the cupboards and the room. It was almost unbelievably clean and just a small hint of the usual displeasing smell lingered around: the much better smell of the cleaning agents suppressed the almost rotten-like scent of misbrewed potions and slimy ingredients.

Just the floor and the cleaning cupboard were left for the next day.

On Sunday, he went to the dungeons again right after lunch. He wanted to finish the work before dinner so that he would have enough time to complete his Transfiguration essay and to practice for the Defence class – their newest lecturer, Shacklebolt, was very stern as a teacher, and Harry didn’t want to confront him.

He had no problems with the floor, although it was much worse than the desks – had somebody ever cleaned the room before him? he was fuming to himself – but the small cupboard, where the cleaning utensils were… was unbelievable. Harry had to use the knife again when he tried to remove the almost fossilized filth.

It was a small cupboard, and Harry had grown quite tall during the summer, so he had to crouch down and to be very careful if he didn’t want to hit his head on the frame or the top of the cupboard. But even if he were as small as he had been in his first year, he would have had problems finding enough room to move, let alone to clean it, he thought to himself.

He put the rag he used for the cleaning into the water and wet it. The very last part of his detention was left: the cupboard door, which was not only filthy, but it was smeared with some disgusting material, so he decided to loosen it with water, and after some minutes he would use the knife again.

Soon, he spotted something under the filth.

Letters! There were letters!

He became curious, but he didn’t want to rush and damage the writing, so he used even more water until the writing was readable.

Certificate – the first line read.

Harry almost lost his interest thinking that the Certificate surely was about the furniture, but then, he suddenly spotted the word “Sirius” and “Snape” some lines later. Frantically, he began to rub the door as forcefully as he dared without damaging the inscription.

The disgusting, sluggish material didn’t disappear, but it was transparent, so the letters were clearly readable under it.

The room was quite dim, and Harry had to light his wand.

“Lumos,” he whispered and leaned closer.

The text was written with big, childish capitals and the lines were jagged instead of being straight. It was obvious the text was written by a first or second year. It read:

Hereby we, James Potter and Sirius Black testify that Severus Snape, after spending two days in this cupboard, was not only begging for his filthy life, but was crying and wetted himself like a baby, so that he officially earned the name “Snivellus”, which he has to answer to from now on.

In the name of the board of examination: James Potter and Sirius Black,

With another type of letters was added:

He was really crying - Remus Lupin (witness)

And another line:

He begged and cried and was absolutely wet - Peter Pettigrew (witness)

The 21^st of November, 1970.

The wand trembled in Harry’s hand and fell into the small pool of water, which had gathered under the door. The room suddenly turned dark, and the thoughts in his head began to dance swirling and spinning so hard that Harry felt dizzy and had to sit back on his ankles.

The silence of the room was roaring in his ears.

Harry felt his heart turning to ice and thumping as if he had run the marathon, and his stomach churned painfully. The emptiness of the last months seemed to break somehow, and the illusion of neutrality and indifference shattered into tiny pieces.

These words, these cruel and ruthless words were written by his father and Sirius and their two friends. These words witnessed such an act he had never believed anybody able to do. Other than Dudley, of course.

Four kids, four scumbags against one… And they hadn’t locked that single one in for several hours, but for two days until… until he had been so entirely humiliated and perhaps not only a bit desperate and frightened that… that…

Four against one – just because it had seemed such a good joke. Oh yes, Harry knew perfectly well these kinds of jokes; he had been in the shard side of them too many times to forget. He knew what it meant to sit in the dark without the hope of being released soon, and with urgent needs not knowing the time when somebody would let him out to go to the loo… He knew the burning shame of wetting himself, the taunting laughter and the cruel comments, the dread and humiliation.

But he, at least, had known his cupboard, which was big enough to move in, to stretch himself and he could listen to the telly through the door to let time pass – but here… here was just nothing, and those two days had had to be a weekend, a weekend in an empty room, not being able to count the passing hours when every second seemed half an hour… knowing full well that his saviours would be his tormentors…

And they had done it: his father, the man Harry had always wanted to be proud of him, Sirius, his godfather he had considered as a father figure for years and even Remus Lupin, a man he had always thought to be decent and righteous...

Sirius and James Potter: two men he had felt the closest to him. And even though both had been dead for a while, for the first time, Harry felt really alone.

And he wasn’t sure he wanted them to be back again.

Their memory couldn’t carry any more joy, happiness or hope: it became nothing better than his memories of Dudley and his gang.

In that moment, they did really die in Harry, once and for all.

Harry didn’t know when he began to cry, but the terrible loss he felt in that moment almost killed him with its weight. Lost was the image of the loving father, and lost was the image of the caring godfather. The only thing Harry could think of was the picture of two sadistic boys standing next to the lake and tormenting a third one with cruel glee on their faces, and the two others sitting nearby without a protest… Out of sheer boredom.

In that moment he felt that he had lost them more than one could lose his beloveds to death: no love and care remained in his heart, just pain, suffocating, biting, acid pain and coldness and such an immense loneliness that he had never felt before.

His glasses fell on the floor and he could hear them break, but he couldn’t fumble for them. His hands were trembling so badly, that it made every attempt useless.

Through his tears, with his myopic eyes, he couldn’t help but read the cruel words again and again: had it been true? Had they really done that to another human being, had they been no better than his cousin, or even worse? And on the top of all: how could they just write that down?

How?

Why?

WHY? Why him? Why always him? Why couldn’t he have a loving family even in his heart? Why was everything ripped from him, stolen from him? Why did fate always pick him to torment him, to taunt him even more?

“Mum,” he whined, “mum, mum…” The grief was tearing him apart: he was burying them, the two bullies, James and Sirius, who had been much worse than Malfoy or the Dursleys had ever been, and he found that the only person he could turn was his long dead mother, the only memory he could receive comfort from in those minutes was hers, and hers only.

He didn’t know that he was kneeling in the muddy water and the robe pressed to his face was the piece of rag he used for cleaning: the grief, the pain numbed him, the sobs deafened him, the tears blinded him.

“Mum, where are you?” he sobbed and complained leaning against the cupboard’s door. “Where were you?” he added and couldn’t help but think of the small, crying boy he had seen in Snape’s memories huddled in the corner – now, in his head that small boy was crying in the filthy cupboard for days, and he remembered all those years in his own cupboard, and knew, he knew precisely that if he had gone to school with James Potter and Sirius Black, the big-headed Gryffindors would have picked him to ridicule and torment: the small, muggle-like boy in his cousin’s rags and without proper knowledge of the wizarding world. He was just another oddball too, as Sirius told him about Snape: an oddball, whose biggest sin had been that he had merely existed… How many times had the Dursleys thrown that in his face?

Was it some cruel righteousness of fate that he had had to suffer the same from his relatives that Snape had suffered from his father? Had he had to pay for his father’s sins?

The dirty water was running down his cheeks, but he didn’t care. He had lost his father and godfather, for the second time in his life: but this time, he realised, his loss was absolutely final and irreversible. He didn’t want them to remain with him any more, not even in his memories. He didn’t need them. But he couldn’t help feeling something had been stolen anyway.

“Mum,” he groaned again, and the name was so soft, so good to utter, to cry for, that he repeated it over and over.

He had never felt so miserable before in his life.

Somebody had told him long ago that only when one lost his parents did one become a real adult, and Harry was sure that moment had now arrived in his life: he was utterly alone, and everything he had done in the last months, years pressed on his shoulders crushing him. He had done so many stupidities, he had nurtured so many hatreds and prejudices. He was stupid and had behaved like a spoiled little brat thinking that the whole world had to whirl around him… He had never tried to look beyond the surface, he had hated Snape, because that had been the simplest way to react to the man’s hatred, he had blamed Dumbledore, because that had been much easier than taking him seriously and trusting him to know what he had been doing… He had never listened to Hermione, who had pointed out some very important issues in Sirius and his, Harry’s behaviour with regards to house elves and Occlumency… He had really behaved like a child, recklessly and irresponsibly…

But it was just so easy to be insightful now – and it had been so hard then.

He could barely sense as somebody took the rag out of his grasp and pulled him to his feet.

“Potter,” a cold voice said, but he couldn’t react. His knees were buckling, and he was still whimpering like a puppy ripped from its mother. “Potter,” the voice repeated again, but this time the coldness wasn’t so apparent. “What happened?”

He coughed and cleared his throat, but no speech-like sound left his mouth, just sobs and whines and tears. He felt as he was dragged and seated, and a cool vial was pressed to his lips. He opened his mouth and drank its contents obediently.

The potion was cool and sweet and almost caressed his throat, which was raw and aching after those long minutes of sobbing, and he felt his knotted muscles relaxing and the sobs didn’t threaten him with suffocation any longer. Slowly, he calmed down, and blew his nose into an offered handkerchief.

“Thanks,” he muttered, still dazed.

“Not at all,” the reply came, and this time, Harry could recognise the voice. It was Snape’s.

Next part