The Courage to Live

Chapter 5

"Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own." ~ Barbara Kingsolver

—

In the enclosed world of the Pensieve, Harry and the others were whirling backward in time, out of Snape's memories, to a chilly November morning. Not knowing quite what to expect, Harry looked around as the memory — his memory — materialized, seeing his eleven-year-old self sitting on a broom, the new Seeker actively surveying the crowd below.

Hermione let out a small shriek; they were floating high above the ground, their weightless, insubstantial forms tethered to the boy on the broomstick, and she grabbed Ron's arm even as the younger Harry's broom began to buck and jerk from side to side.

"Blimey," said Ron, his face drawn as the broom started rolling over, only a few meters from them. "You were really close to falling off, Harry — I would have thought Snape'd do a better job with the countercurse."

"He was trying to counter Voldemort, Ron," Hermione moaned, still shivering at the sight of the ground beneath their unsupported feet.

"Yeah, but Quirrel wasn't that powerful," Ron objected, even as Professor McGonagall's face pulled tight with anger.

"We should have known then," she said, her voice shaking. She glared down into the stands, where Quirrel was watching Harry intently while Snape muttered a few dozen seats away, his black eyes narrowed with concentration. "We should have known that there was evil at Hogwarts. Albus said not to worry, that he would come to the next match — and we hoped that would be the end of it. Why did he only ask Severus to watch him?"

"We might have been able to stop him from getting so close to the Stone," Professor Sprout agreed, and Slughorn looked between them curiously, not having been present for Harry's first year.

"Did he not trust us to be discreet?" McGonagall asked bitterly, as the Weasley twins tried and failed to pull Harry onto their broomsticks. Harry averted his eyes from Fred's face — he couldn't bear the sight of him, not so soon. "Did he think we would flounce our suspicions for the world to see?"

"I'm sure that wasn't it, Minerva," Slughorn placated as Harry's broom jumped higher and higher, taking them with it as though they were attached by invisible tethers; Hermione whimpered slightly, seeing the ground grow further and further away. "You-Know-Who is — was, thanks to all of our efforts," he corrected, " — one of, if not the most skilled Legilimens in Wizarding history. I'm sure Dumbledore was merely worried that he might tip his hand."

"Perhaps," McGonagall said flatly, but Harry couldn't help but think that she still sounded quite angry.

"There you go, Hermione," Ron remarked in a falsely cheery voice, peering down into the stands, and he looked nervously at Professor McGonagall, as if worried that she wouldn't take kindly to this attempt to change the subject. But, she merely pressed her thin lips together and said nothing; emboldened, Ron continued, joking in an attempt to lighten the mood. "Bet you scared the jeebies out of Snape, if you knocked him off protecting Harry."

"I'd never thought of it that way," Hermione said guiltily, and Ron's expression became resigned as she looked anxiously down into the stands, where blue flames had just started licking around the hem of Snape's robes. "Oh, do you think he thought Voldemort was attacking him? I'll have to apologize, I never meant to frighten him — "

Ron looked at Harry with a flat, exasperated look, and Harry had to try very hard not to laugh as Snape yelped beneath them, jumping so much that he fell onto a neighboring spectator, an older Slytherin who looked shocked to be catching her Head of House. Up in the air, Harry's past self streaked past them on his broom, tugging them along on their invisible tethers, and he clapped his hands to his mouth, choking on the Snitch as he tumbled onto the ground.