Harry couldn't hold that somber gaze; he looked away. He didn't want to know, he told himself. He just didn't. He wouldn't ask.
But he did. "What, then?" came whispering from his lips.
It took Snape a long while to answer. "Admiration is there," the man finally said. "Because I have suffered too, Harry. It is easy to become embittered... but you have risen above the impulse. Forgiving that cousin of yours..." He lightly shuddered.
"Oh, Dudley isn't so bad."
"Now, perhaps," Snape conceded. "But I knew you before you could Occlude. You will never convince me that it was easy growing up alongside him."
Well, that was one thing about Snape, Harry reflected. He knew things about Harry that went deep. Memories that had scarred him, way down where nobody knew to look. But Snape knew. Actually, he knew, and he'd never used those memories to hurt or taunt him, not even back when they were enemies, not even after Harry had looked into that Pensieve and Snape had wanted to get even.
Deliberately dropping his potion assignment, Harry suddenly realized, though vindictive and reprehensible, hadn't been the worst Snape could have done. Not by a long shot.
Harry shrugged. "I'm not really that admirable. If you knew how many times I wished the Dursleys dead, all of them, even Dudley--" He stopped, because Snape's lips were twitching despite the gravity of the conversation. "Oh. Right. You do know." Because that, too, was woven throughout the whole matrix of his memories.
"You're entirely normal," Snape told him. "And that, perhaps, is my whole point. You've never been treated normally. You went from ten years of base deprivation to being held up to honor and glory which you'd done nothing to merit. You said a moment ago that you managed to live despite getting your parents killed. But you did neither the one nor the other, Harry. Your mother shielded you with her love. She managed to make you live, and gave her life in the process. And the consequence for you was to make everyone treat you as something other than normal."
"Tell me about it," Harry muttered.
"Everyone except me," Snape added.
Harry's eyes opened wide at that. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me! No offense, all right? Because it's over, but you spent five years being awful to me, absolutely awful!"
"I wanted to hurt James," Snape admitted. "Irrational and inappropriate response--"
"Immature, arseholish response," Harry put in.
"Yes. Because I had let myself become embittered. Yes, Harry. When I would shred your ego to ribbons in Potions class, and see the hurt on your face, I somehow thought James was hurting for you, wherever he was. And that satisfied me. But for all my own... issues, I am the only one here who insisted--tried to insist, rather--that no matter what nonsense the Daily Prophet spouted about you, within these walls we should ignore your celebrity status."
"Is that part of why you were so mean? You were trying to balance out all the damned hero-worship I got from other quarters?"
"No. You imbue me with too much altruism... Don't sugar-coat how I treated you. It was ill-done of me. In my own way, I was reacting to image as much as anyone, just in a different sense."
"Then why do you say you treated me normally?" Harry tilted his head to the side, trying hard to understand.
Snape tapped his fingertips together. "It was more a case of trying to make the headmaster do so," he admitted. "I wasn't able to rise above my anger to do it myself, but I entreated him to keep you to the same rules others were required to abide by. First-years are not allowed to have brooms at school or play on House teams; you were. Neither is it standard practice to issue students invisibility cloaks. Time and again he allowed you to circumvent the rules, his purpose being to forge in you the strength to fulfill that prophecy. Worse than that, he set you to challenges no child should have to face. Fawkes could have rescued you from the Chamber of Secrets, you realize. He did carry you out in the end. Instead, the headmaster had his blasted bird deliver you the Sorting Hat so you might have a sword. A twelve-year old, expected to slay a Basilisk! And as if that weren't outrageous enough, he wanted to see if you could vanquish the memory of Riddle, as well! The fact that you could do it didn't make it right to subject you to what amounted to another form of abuse. Albus and I have had words on the subject, more than once."
"You can't be saying you cared about me all those years ago," Harry mumbled.
"No," Snape admitted. "I thought you were arrogant, and that raising you as a savior instead of a boy would make you even more unbearable. I even thought it would be counterproductive; that you would begin to disregard your elders' instruction, which would make you less likely to fulfill your destiny, as it were. I was not concerned about you as a person, not at all, not then. But still, I was the only one who fought Albus, who argued that you should be treated normally."
Harry felt tears welling to his eyes, awful globs of tears he couldn't stop. "You were right," he gasped. "I was arrogant, just as you said! Everybody told me to learn Occlumency, and I thought I knew better, and Sirius died because I was too stupid to listen to advice!"
Snape's hands wrapped themselves around his wrists, and gripped them firmly. Only when Harry looked up did he speak, his voice intense with sincerity. "Your godfather died because I made those lessons an exercise in humiliation instead of strength. He died because Albus spent five years conditioning you to save others, because he deliberately inculcated in you the conviction that you are responsible to do so! Fawkes could have spirited Miss Weasley out of the chamber, Harry! The second task did not need to be one that endangered a loved one! Diggory's death only hit you so hard because by then, you had been taught that you should be able to save anyone!"
Dumbledore could have saved Sirius from the Dementors himself, Harry mentally added, instead of sending me back with Hermione to do it. Dumbledore could have gotten me out of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Binding magical contract or no, he could have found a way. But I saw that glimmer in his eye when the Goblet spit out my name. He wanted me to compete. He wanted me to face those Tasks, and develop my reflexes, build my skills... no matter that without all the help I got from Crouch I'd have failed, and failed again....
Things seemed more clear to him than ever before. What he had taken for leniency... the broom, the cloak... had been nothing short of strategy. Dumbledore, molding him into a warrior for the Light.
"But you think you can treat me normally?" Harry prompted.
"I think you present challenges in that regard," Snape returned, squeezing his wrists, then releasing them and sitting back again. "Because from the moment Voldemort marked you his equal, you ceased to be an average child, to say the least. I also think, however, that I am the only one who so much as realizes that you are a child, Harry."
"I'm sixteen, in case you've forgotten."
Snape's hair billowed slightly as he shook an amused head. "The only one who realizes it's wrong to expect you to live and breathe as a quasi-adult instead of an adolescent," he amended.
"You aren't the only one," Harry had to say. "Sirius wanted me to be a kid. He wanted to take me in, even, offered way back in third year. Did you know that? For a long time I blamed you that I had to keep going back to the Dursleys, when I could have spent my summers with Sirius. I never got to know him, not really. And I could have."