[SSHP] End of life

During the last hour at Hogwarts, the students sat in their bedrooms.

The return of the mysterious man created a kind of brotherhood of sharing weal and woe, and many students believed that they could never return to Hogwarts, and the relationship between people became more relaxed than ever.Even between mortal enemies, they will pretend not to know each other when they meet.

Harry slipped out of the common room and walked to the door of the headmaster's office.Professor McGonagall still used her office, and she was still Vice-Chancellor, as if she refused the title of Headmaster, refused to occupy the Headmaster's office, and the real Headmaster would return one day.Harry hesitated at the gargoyle for a moment, maybe the password hadn't changed - but what was the last password he said?He said nothing.He just banged on the door furiously.

Harry tried knocking on the door a few times.The gargoyle rumbled away to the sides, and the door opened.Harry walked in, and everything was as familiar as it had been when they had left that night.Harry couldn't help feeling particularly close to Professor McGonagall. He understood how difficult it was to resist the pressure of the school trustees and the Ministry of Magic to prevent them from entering the principal's office, and Professor McGonagall did so.She is like him, even if Dumbledore is dead, she still has to maintain everything about him.

The Pensieve was still in its place, and Fox's golden perch had received a few specks of dust.Except for the portrait, Harry was the only one who could move around in the whole office.Most of the portraits are not in their own frames.With Dumbledore gone, the headmaster's office seemed to be a dead thing, a tomb.Harry closed the door, and he found it almost impossible to stay in it.

He stood in the middle of the office and sighed.He found himself sighing more recently, which is probably a sign of old age.He walked to the cabinet, took out the Pensieve, and poured his memory into it.He needed to reinforce these memories, Pensieves weren't available everywhere, and maybe this was the last time he'd look at them carefully before finally embarking on the journey.He must stand in a different angle and carefully discover the details.And those words that Dumbledore said to him, he must also remember... These are the keys to defeating Voldemort.

After a moment, Harry lifted his head from the Pensieve and replaced the great silver basin in its place.Phineas Nigellus pretended to be asleep when he saw him, and Dexter Fusco was tearing apart his hearing aids.Harry ignored these people who obviously didn't want to talk to him, and turned his head to look at the largest portrait behind the headmaster's chair once again.There was nothing in that portrait.

It looked like Dumbledore wasn't going to give him any more hints.He wants him to be on his own.But can Dumbledore's six years of teaching really allow him to successfully complete his mission?He must be, because Dumbledore believed in him, and Dumbledore was never wrong.

Harry tried to convince himself, but the image of Dumbledore falling from the high astronomy tower into the night was always in his mind.Only then did he realize that he forgot to bring the glass bottle that stored the memory of that night, but time did not allow him to go back and get it.

Harry looked around the headmaster's office one last time, went out and closed the door behind him.

******

The train starts.Some students had already been picked up prior to the funeral, and others had been apparated home directly by parents who had come to the funeral.The train is empty, and you usually have to search to find a seat. Students who get on the train late even need to sit in the same compartment with someone they don’t know. Now, just a few steps away, there is an empty compartment.There was silence in the car, no one was walking back and forth in the corridor, and the people in every compartment had solemn faces and whispered.Even the fat witch's routine hawking was weak, as if everyone was suffocated by the fear weighing heavily on their heads.

Hermione, Ron, and Harry sat in the same cubicle with the door tightly closed.Harry thought of Neville.The first time they sat on this train, he sat with Ron, while Hermione and Neville went from car to car, helping Neville find his ever-restless toad, Rifle.Everything was now as it had been at the beginning, but Neville was no longer there.If only he was there.The four of them sitting together can be regarded as a perfect ending to the only peaceful life left in his life.Harry even missed Draco Malfoy a little bit, who was probably following Voldemort fearfully now.Accustomed to the swagger of his arch-enemy, Harry could never forget Malfoy's crying, pale face, shaking hands, and almost desperate cries.His life and the lives of his parents are being threatened.

But he deserves it.Death Eaters deserve it, Harry thought resentfully.

Hermione was reading the Evening Prophet.That's how she is, uncomfortable not being able to see letters for 1 minute.Harry seriously considered whether it was right for Hermione to decide to leave her favorite life for his own sake, and then he felt a deep pain.He's so selfish, knowing that he might kill his friends, yet weak-willed, wants to spend as much time with them as possible before leaving.He looked at the two people opposite him guiltily.

"Anyone we knew died?" Ron asked lazily.

"Of course not." Hermione knew what Ron was talking about, and he routinely cursed Snape and the Malfoy family almost every day, "If you want to find Snape, I'm afraid you have to find Voldemort... They Likely together. I mean, every day, hiding somewhere. After he killed Professor Dumbledore, I guess everyone wanted to kill him."

"So, is there any progress on the RAB matter?" Harry deliberately changed the topic.He hated to hear Snape's name very much.

"No." Hermione said a little dejectedly, "I've been looking for it, but no one can completely match the number. I think it must be Voldemort's very capable subordinates who can know the location of the Horcrux. So far, only The initials of the two people are exactly the same, but they have nothing to do with Voldemort. One is even a few generations older than Voldemort."

Harry shrugged.He began to wonder if RAB might be a code word, or a variation of a name.

"But..." Hermione looked at Harry warily, "I found out... something about Snape."

Harry sighed impatiently.In the end he couldn't escape the name.

Hermione interpreted Harry's sigh as anger, and she hesitated a bit: "It's about the identity of the Half-Blood Prince."

"Haven't I already said that? Snape is the Half-Blood Prince," said Harry.He felt his heart skip a beat every time he heard the name.He doesn't want to hear anything now.

"That's not it," said Hermione. "I found Snape's mother—her name was Irene Prince, and the papers said she was married to a man named Tobias Snape, and then , after a while there was a very small notice saying that she gave birth..."

"A murderer!" Ron said through gritted teeth.

Harry opened his mouth, but said nothing.Hallucinations again.Snape's silently tearful face seemed to dangle before his eyes.When he bowed his head deeply, his hair fell on the sides of his cheeks, making his face even thinner.Those bottomless black eyes were no longer empty, and the pain inside seemed to overflow.Large tears fell silently and dripped onto his robes.

During this period of time, Harry has not dared to indulge himself to recall this scene.At this time it appeared, and the surprise it brought to him was still not even a little bit less than it was then.Even in hating the man, Harry couldn't deny that his grief was real.Perhaps it was this kind of reality that made his hatred for him shake, and his curiosity gradually expanded and began to take a place.

"Woe to him if we run into him on the road!" exclaimed Ron.He hated Snape even more now, and sometimes Harry thought Ron hated Snape more than he did.After Dumbledore's death, Ron seemed to have great resistance to the fact that he once loved the half-blood prince very much. Every time he mentioned Snape, it was as if he was trying to erase this disgraceful past. His reaction was even more violent than Harry's.

"Ron, let's have a photo together sometime," Harry said. "We've been together for so long that we haven't even had a photo together. When we all get to the Burrow, we'll take one together."

Hermione smiled: "What an oversight."

Ron looked at Harry with surprised eyes, stretched out his hand and punched him: "That's smart, buddy. Remember to play a Quidditch with me!"

The train pulled out of the hills, and there was a wide, brightly colored field in the sun.There were always some things that couldn't be erased, and Harry felt a small pleasure in the thought that there was still a part of himself left in the world, and that he could still walk forward with Ginny's picture in his hand.He nodded and laughed.