The battlefield was eerily silent now. The screams, the shouts, the crashes of spells had faded into a hush broken only by the distant crackle of dying fires. Bodies lay strewn across the stone and grass, a cruel reminder of victory's cost.
Harry knelt in the bloodstained dirt, cradling Severus Snape in his arms.
The man's breath was shallow, rasping. His black eyes, once so cold and impenetrable, were now unfocused, glazed with the shadow of death. Yet there was something else in them too — a fragile clarity, as though at last the masks had been stripped away.
"Harry…" Snape's voice was a whisper, torn and broken. "Do you see now?"
Harry's throat tightened. He nodded, though tears blurred his vision. "I see. I see everything."
Snape's lips twitched, a ghost of a smile. "Good. Then… my life was not entirely wasted."
The confession had poured out of him in fragments — the loneliness, the longing, the betrayal. Lucius's cruelty. Narcis's laughter. Lillian's kindness, lost to mistrust. Each memory a knife, each word another wound. And yet, in telling it, Severus had seemed… lighter.
As though at last, the burden had been lifted.
"I thought," Snape rasped, "that if I chained myself to power, to cruelty, I could make myself matter. But all I became was a shadow. A man built of nothing."
His body shuddered with the effort of speaking. Harry clutched him tighter. "Don't. You don't have to—"
"I must," Snape interrupted, a flicker of steel in his fading voice. "You must understand, Potter. Hate is easier than hope. Betrayal is easier than trust. That was the lesson Lucius taught me. And it was the lesson I lived by. Until now."
His gaze, dark and heavy, fixed on Harry. "But you… you are not me. You are stronger. You… choose love, even when it costs you. Do not let the bitterness of men like me chain you. Promise me."
Harry's tears fell onto Snape's bloodstained robes. "I promise."
Snape's breath rattled. His eyes fluttered. "Strange," he murmured. "I spent my life despising you. And yet… in this moment… you remind me of everything I once wished to be."
Harry's chest cracked. "You were the bravest man I ever knew."
Snape's gaze softened at that, a rare warmth flickering through the darkness. "Bravery…" He exhaled a trembling laugh. "If I had been braver… perhaps I would not have lost everything."
Silence pressed in. The firelight danced across his sallow skin, making him look almost otherworldly, caught between shadow and peace.
"Professor," Harry whispered, voice breaking. "It wasn't for nothing. You mattered. To me. To all of us."
For the first time in years, Severus Snape looked as though he believed it.
His eyes closed slowly. His body relaxed in Harry's arms, as if surrendering not to despair, but to release.
Harry bent forward, pressing a trembling kiss to his forehead.
"Rest now," he whispered. "You're free."
And with that, Severus Snape — the boy who had once longed for love, the man who had built himself from nothing, the strongest man Harry had ever known — breathed his last.
Dawn broke over Hogwarts. Golden light spilled across the ruined grounds, bathing stone and scar alike in warmth.
Harry stood alone in the courtyard, the memory of Snape's weight still in his arms. His promise still burning in his chest.
And though grief pressed heavy on him, he knew this much: Severus Snape had not died in vain.
He had died with his truth spoken, his chains broken.
And at last, he had died in peace.