Snape's fingers curled slowly, tremors barely visible in the low torchlight.
His breathing was uneven.
The flood of old memories surged in his mind like an unstoppable tide—Lily's laugh, James' sneer, Sirius' betrayal, his own desperate, foolish ambition. And now him—Harry Potter—standing there, eyes so much like hers, voice steady, heart laid bare.
It was too much.
"Alright… shut up."
Snape's voice broke like a brittle wand—low, sharp, cracking under pressure.
Harry halted mid-sentence, blinking, but said nothing more.
The silence that followed wasn't awkward. It was heavy. Laden with years of pain neither of them had ever wanted to speak aloud.
Snape didn't meet his gaze.
Instead, he turned slowly toward the desk, placing one pale hand on its edge, as if to steady himself. He looked as though he had aged years in a moment.
"I don't need your apology," Snape said quietly, voice stripped of all pretense. "Nor your pity."
Harry stood still. "I know."
"I don't forgive your father," Snape continued, as if Harry hadn't spoken, "and I never will. Not because he bested me. But because… he changed."
Snape finally turned to face him, and there was no malice in his eyes—only grief.
"And he did it too late."
Harry swallowed. The ache in his chest made it hard to breathe.
"I'm not here to make you forgive him," he said. "Or me. I just… wanted you to know that I saw it. All of it. That I understand now."
Snape didn't speak.
Harry hesitated, then added, more quietly, "And I wanted to say that if there's ever anything I can do… not as my father's son, but as me… I will."
Something flickered in Snape's expression—surprise, maybe. Or something dangerously close to hope, too fragile to name.
He let out a breath like a man who had been underwater for too long.
Then, voice rough, he said:"Get out, Potter."
Harry nodded once.
But this time, there was no hostility in the words. Only a thin, brittle wall behind which a wounded soul had chosen, for just a moment, not to lash out.
Harry turned and walked toward the door.
Just before stepping through, he paused and looked back.
Snape hadn't moved.
But he was watching.
And Harry, for the first time, understood what Dumbledore had meant when he'd said that bravery comes in many forms.
Some of them don't look like Gryffindor at all.
Harry didn't answer right away.
He stood still, his fists slightly clenched at his sides—not out of defiance, but from the sheer weight of the moment. His breath came slow and steady, his mind echoing with the last conversation he'd had with Roger.
"You might succeed where others failed… if your heart remains strong enough."
He looked up.
"No," Harry said softly. "Roger never promised me anything. He didn't say it would happen. Only that… I might have the possibility."
Snape's eyes narrowed.
The air between them was thick with tension, almost humming with the suppressed force of Snape's emotions. His robes shifted slightly as he moved around the desk, but he didn't advance.
"You realize," Snape said slowly, "what it means to speak of such things. To toy with a man's hope."
"I'm not toying with anything," Harry replied. "I'm just not giving up."
Snape's lip curled, but not in contempt. The expression was bitter, almost pained.
"Hope," he muttered. "Do you know what hope did to me, Potter?"
Harry said nothing.
"Hope made me believe that if I became powerful enough, worthy enough, she might stay. That if I gave everything to a mad cause, I could fix a broken world and earn her respect. That I could... atone."
Snape turned abruptly, facing the bookshelf behind him.
"And in the end, all hope gave me was a lifetime of watching from the shadows. Watching the son of the one I hated… carry the eyes of the one I loved."
Harry didn't move.
"I'm not asking you to believe in my hope," he said, voice low. "Just don't stand in the way of it."
The words hung in the air for a long time.
Snape's shoulders tensed. He was quiet for so long Harry thought the conversation might be over.
Then Snape said, without turning around:"If… if he really said that you have a chance…"
He stopped.
Harry waited.
"Then don't waste it."His voice was quieter now. Frayed, barely audible.
"Do not waste it, Potter."
And in that one sentence, stripped of all sarcasm and cruelty, Harry heard it—the one thing he'd never expected from Severus Snape.
Trust. However reluctant. However fragile.