HP Fanfiction: What might have been...

"Just go in already!"

Harry Potter paced to and fro outside of Sna-Professor Snape's office. He still could hardly believe that it had been the potions master that had tried to save him, not kill him, during his first quidditch match. That all this time, he had been wrong. It wasn't Snape after the stone, but Quirrel, who had Voldemort growing out of the back of his head. Harry feared he would have nightmares all summer of that showdown. He shook his head fiercely.

"Stop it already! You are being bloody ridiculous! Just go in there and say thank you! It's not that hard!"

But it was. Just being near the man gave Harry a sense of foreboding. It didn't help that he had treated Harry as something he wanted to squash under his boot only to scrape it off later. Ever since the first potions class, Snape had been nothing but nasty to him. Of course he also treated the other Griffondors pretty much the same, but a sort of malice had been saved especially for Harry, and yet he had saved his life. He considered what Dumbledore said about Snape and his father. Was that really the reason for all of this? Some life debt to a dead man whom he hated? How does that add up? Snape hated his father so much that even ten years after his death he hates him enough to hate his son! Harry felt a little queazy. Dumbledore had said that they were much like him and Malfoy, but it seemed that the headmaster wasn't telling him something. Was it something only Snape and his father knew? Something only Snape knew or felt?

Harry began to feel sad. Just what had happened all those years ago to make a man continue hating someone who was dead? James had supposedly saved his life, but Snape hated him for it? A sudden thought occurred to Harry. Had Snape wanted to die, or had his father been a part of the cause that had almost been killed him in the first place? Harry didn't know which possibility was worse. If Snape had wanted to die, what could have possibly made him want to end it all? An image the man hunched over the astronomy tower played in Harry's mind. He saw a dark haired man with a long nose, sallow skin, and sorrowful, pain filled black eyes, looking down over the railing, and the thought shook him with such force and emotion he felt tears prick his own eyes.

Harry shook himself, holding his arms to stave off the cold that had nothing to do with the dungeons. He looked up at the door that stood between him and the man who hated yet saved him. He so desperately wanted to see the him, now. To thank him, to say how sorry he was for thinking he had tried to kill him; but the image of a hurt and angry boy and the cold hateful man he was now, cut into him like a knife. He just did not know what to think and just standing there was not helping at all. 'Some Griffondor,' he thought bitterly. He reached out for the wooden door and pressed his hand against it but no matter how much he told himself to go in the door wouldn't budge.

At last, head down in shame and defeat, Harry made his way out of the dungeons and far away from Snape's office.

"You stupid coward," he said to himself as a tears fell down his face.