Harry pulled in a breath when Snape did, and as he let it out, those fingers returned to smooth up and down across his temple. Snape kept speaking, his voice low and calm, and Harry found that every time he exhaled, he leaned more against his teacher, until he felt boneless. It was a feeling he hadn't liked when Lockhart had caused it, but now, it was actually pleasant.
"All right," Snape murmured. "Now don't try to think, Harry, don't try to feel, or remember, or react. Just let yourself go, let yourself just be. Yes, that's it, melt into me. I'm going to enter your mind, now, but don't be alarmed."
On one side of Harry's head, those fingers still caressed him, but on the other, they were replaced by the hard tip of Snape's wand.
Incantations filled the air, breathy whispers that Harry thought he could have understood, had he really listened. They drifted all around him, twirling themselves against his neck and face, and then it seemed he breathed them in through his nostrils, and he felt an otherness, a presence, alongside him in his mind.
It wasn't like being possessed by Voldemort, or being under Imperio. He was still there too, and in control, but the wispy otherness was there with him. Snape, he was slow to recognise. Snape, waiting patiently for Harry to let him enter further.
Harry slumped, leaning completely against his teacher, and let his teacher fill his mind.
Rivers flowed through him, wide rivers such as never could exist outside the realm of dreams. Then, just one river, widening as he watched, until it filled the entire landscape of thought. He saw it from above, until the waters rose in incandescent glory to engulf him. Submerged, surrounded on six sides, he felt the current, felt the coolness, felt the lull of the waves.
And then the tableau before him underwent a change, for he was no longer in the water, feeling and seeing it; he had become the water itself, and there was nothing in all existence save that great river. No Harry any longer, and with him, no memories. Just a huge rush of water that filled the universe to overflowing, baptizing all creation in a realm of purest being.
Coming out of it all at once was rather like being dunked in the river he had just been visualizing, it was such a shock. Harry gasped, and tensed against Snape, but his teacher's arm held him fast until his breathing had slowed to something approaching normal. Then Harry levered himself up, and swivelled his head to look at Snape.
"That was . . . well, bloody magnificent, I think."
Snape nodded, his eyes half-closed, his body mired in lines of exhaustion.
"Is that what Occlumency is supposed to be like? I thought I was supposed to turn off my emotions, or something."
"No wonder you did so poorly, last year," Snape wearily replied.
Harry felt like he'd just caught the snitch; it was that same sensation of triumph and excitement, the same surge of adrenaline filling his veins. "Last year, why didn't you tell me it was about . . . I don't know, non-existence instead of stoicism?"
A long, painful sigh greeted the question. "Don't you understand? It's not even a learned skill for me, Harry. It's a birth power. I just needed to be pointed towards it, really, and the one who taught me was . . . rather harsh in his methods."
"Oh," Harry said, thinking that over. What Snape had told him before the session was coming back, and making more sense than it had then, even through the drink and the rush of sensation that was Occlumency. Snape had taught Harry the only way he'd known, the way he himself had been taught. But it hadn't worked well, had it, because for Harry this wasn't a birth power. "Hmm, I guess Occlumency is for you a bit like what Parseltongue is for me," he murmured. "Though that's not strictly a birth power, I don't think. But still, I've never had to work at it. It just is."
Snape just gave a groan in reply to all that.
Feeling a bit of a jerk that he'd only thought of himself up until then, Harry turned around more and took a good look at his teacher. "That was kind of hard on you, I guess. I'm sorry. Is it that terrible being inside my mind?"
"The questions you ask," Snape roused himself to murmur, frowning as he crossed his legs again and bent low over them. "It's as if all those years listening to your uncle speak of normal people have convinced you that you aren't one. It's no more terrible being in your mind than anyone else's, Harry. Directing thoughts can be exhausting, that is all."
"Anyone else doesn't have Voldemort lurking around in his mind."
"Not true, although no one else has quite your scar, certainly. At any rate, the Dark Lord wasn't in there tonight. I think that eliminating Kreacher from your house has helped considerably to strengthen the protections charmed onto the structure."
Something about Snape's wording caught Harry's attention. Come to think of it, he'd heard that phrase earlier, too. Your house. He wanted to ask about it, but first things first. "You . . . um, you don't look so good, Professor. Is there anything you need? A glass of water, maybe, or more whiskey?"
Snape pushed himself off the floor, stumbled slightly, and collapsed into a thickly upholstered, if tattered, arm chair. "Just talk," he said, the request strange in Harry's ears.
"Talk?"
"Yes, is that too complex a concept for you to follow?" When Harry recoiled slightly at his tone, Snape sighed, tipped his head back against the cushions, and explained, "I could Floo back now, though it wouldn't be wise when so debilitated, but neither should I fall asleep here. So talk with me, Harry. Keep me awake until I feel . . . more myself."
"Uh, okay, sure," Harry replied, flopping full length onto the couch and plumping up his cushions to hold his head up enough to see Snape. "So, how long since you have slept, Professor?"
Snape gave a low, harsh chuckle. "A while. That's not your worry."
Hmm, not exactly a fruitful avenue for conversation. Well, Snape had mentioned that the house was safer for Harry now that that evil excuse for a house-elf was dead, and Harry had been meaning to ask, so he went ahead. "Okay . . . what happened to Kreacher?"
At that, Snape opened one eye and stared rather fixedly at Harry as though determining how much to divulge. A long moment passed, and then another, until finally Snape said three words Harry wasn't expecting:
"I killed him."
"You. Killed. Him," Harry slowly goggled, his mind feeling like it was playing leapfrog with itself. "Um, because of what he did to Sirius?"
"That certainly made it easier to kill him," Snape admitted, his voice absolutely flat. Harry got the feeling that the Potions Master didn't give a fig that he'd killed a house-elf. Not that Harry had any love lost for Kreacher; he probably would have killed him himself, given half a chance. He was frankly shocked that Snape had done so, though. It wasn't like Snape had gone into mourning over Sirius, now was it?
But Snape confounded him once again, by detailing, still in that level, emotionless tone, "I know what you think, Harry, but I didn't want Black dead. I did once, I won't deny it, but at the time I did honestly believe him responsible for both your parents' deaths and a massacre of Muggles. It took a while for me to rethink all that and understand it had been Pettigrew all along. After that, everything you saw pass between us . . . it was just the old antagonism still festering. But he was fighting the Dark Lord as he could, as was I. I shouldn't have still been jeering at him for wounds inflicted over twenty years earlier. I'm not proud of it."
"That's what he said," Harry recalled, rolling onto his side and propping his head up on an arm. "About how he and James treated you. I'm not proud of it."
Snape raised his knees to sit sideways in the chair, letting it cradle him.
"But Kreacher," Harry pressed. "Why did you kill him, if it wasn't for Sirius?"