Title: How To Save A Life
Author: Els-chan
Rating: R for repeat usage of the f-word.
Spoilers: Through HBP
Warnings: Mention of character deaths; drug and alcohol abuse; pre-slash for Harry/Snape
Notes: I don't know how coherent this is, as it's unbeta'd and I've been in a particularly strange frame of mind. Post-war.

Please C&C. I'm in the process of writing an original and I know that my style of writing can use some work, so I kind of need to know what mistakes I'm making. No, seriously - tear this sucker apart. Thanks.

Written before the release of DH.

The war had been long and hit everyone hard and no one had emerged completely unscathed, but it seemed as though no one had taken it harder than Harry.

They'd won and Voldemort was dead and gone. Severus Snape had wound up being on the right side after all, but with that revelation had come many others that had left Harry questioning all his previously held beliefs about Albus Dumbledore, the man he'd respected above all others. On top of that, he'd lost countless friends - first Remus Lupin; then his first friend, Hagrid, and Ginny, which had nearly destroyed him; and finally Neville, who had gone out in such a blaze of glory that Harry was certain if his parents could understand what was going on around them they would have been immensely proud. He was certain wherever Neville was he was feeling vindicated in taking down Bellatrix LeStrange and avenging his parents.

But where everyone else, including Ron, Hermione, Tonks, and the Weasleys, had managed to move on, Harry could not. Day by day he sank deeper and deeper into his depression, pulling away from his friends and turning to other means of coping, largely alcoholic or chemical. Two months passed with no sign of improvement and his friends hit the breaking point.

First it was Ron who arrived quite unexpectedly at the front door to his flat, clearly fuming but surprisingly in control of himself.

"Mate, we need to talk," he'd said simply and Harry very nearly shut the door in his face, but Ron, still larger and physically stronger than Harry, stopped him and forced his way in. Harry glared at him but silently shut the door behind him nonetheless.

"Can I offer you a drink?" Harry asked politely as Ron stood in the hallway, staring at him. "Tea, coffee, firewhi..."

"It's eleven in the bloody morning, Harry, of course I don't want a glass of firewhiskey," Ron interrupted, sounding more tired than angry. "Can we please just sit down and have a talk?"

Harry forced a smile on his face. "Of course," he replied, and led Ron into his sitting room, quickly clearing the numerous discarded potions bottles lying about.

Not quickly enough, because Ron managed to grab one before Harry could banish it. He sniffed it suspiciously, then glared at his friend. "More Euphoria? Harry, are all those bottles Euphoria?"

Harry glared right back at him. "Of course not. I have to sleep sometime, don't I?" He grabbed the bottle out of Ron's hand and quickly banished it as well. Ron turned red in the face.

"What exactly do you mean by you have to sleep sometime? Don't tell me you're still using the fucking sleeping draughts..."

Harry barked out a humorous laugh. "As though they even work anymore." He moved over toward the liquor cabinet, grabbing a glass sitting nearby. "Are you sure you don't want..."

Ron grabbed him by the arm, halting his progress. "Harry, sit the fuck down. We need to talk and I want you coherent for this, all right?"

Harry glared at him. "You've got some nerve, giving me orders in my own house. Who do you think you are, my father?"

"I'm your fucking friend, Potter, and if you don't sit the fuck down right now I'll make you."

Harry snorted. "As though you could."

"Watch me."

A long period of silence followed while each man stared at the other. Finally Harry broke the silence. "Get the fuck out of my house, Weasley."

"I won't. We need to talk."

"I've got nothing to say to you."

"But I've got a lot to say to you, Harry. You're killing yourse..."

"Get the fuck out."

Ron didn't even see Harry draw his wand, but the next thing he knew he was petrified and being dragged out Harry's front door. It wasn't until after Harry slammed the door after him that the spell broke. Angrier than he'd been in a long time, Ron spent the next two hours pounding on the door and trying spell after spell to get in until he finally had to give up and Apparated home.

A few days passed peacefully before Hermione arrived on his doorstep. Where Ron had clearly been filled with anger, she merely looked exhausted and sad. Harry smiled cheerfully and let her in without a word. He led her into the sitting room which was conspicuously clean.

"I suppose you're here to talk too, then?" Harry said simply, flopping down on the couch. Hermione took a seat on the chair across from him.

"Harry, we're just concerned. We never see you, you don't respond to owls, and..."

"I'm fine, Hermione. I'm perfectly all right."

"Harry, you're not. You're drinking, you're using potions, and..."

"So Ron told you. But as you can see," Harry gestured around the room, still smiling brightly, "there're no potions bottles. The liquor cabinet is empty. I'm sleeping on my own. There is no problem."

Hermione sighed and looked down at her knees. "Harry, I really want to believe you..."

Harry found that he was quickly tiring of hearing her repeat his name over and over. "Hermione, for the last time, I'm..." he trailed off, realizing with some small degree of horror that his voice had taken on a sing-song quality that caused Hermione's gaze to shoot up and stare at him suspiciously. "I'm fine," he finished, mildly irritated that the sing-song quality hadn't dissipated. He gritted his teeth and silently berated himself for not adding more peppermint to the last batch.

Hermione looked at him sadly. "Please, Harry, I know it's been hard, but won't you just open up to us..."

Harry sighed and mussed up his hair. "Look, Hermione, when I tell you I'm fine, I mean it." He grinned. "Really. I've never felt better. So all of this is really just unnecessary melodrama, wouldn't you say?"

Hermione shook her head and looked as though she was about to cry. "Harry..."

"Look, if I promise to come visit in a couple of days, can we drop all of this? Really, I'll come," he added at her look of disbelief. "I promise. I won't let you down. And I really am getting better."

"Harry, even though you say that..."

Harry could feel the effects of the potion wearing off and irritation taking the place of his manufactured happiness. Only twenty minutes...obviously he hadn't made this batch strong enough. "Hermione. Listen to me. I'm fine. And honestly, I'm really busy right now, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

This time he didn't have to petrify anyone. Hanging her head in defeat, Hermione silently left his flat. Oddly, Harry felt worse than he had after throwing Ron out.

"This is absolute madness. He won't help, Hermione."

"Ron, we have to try. We can't go to your parents, because if your mum found out it'd kill her. Nothing else has worked, and I really doubt that you'd be able to..."

Severus Snape sighed as he heard the voices arguing right outside his door. He swung the front door open and glared at the couple standing on his doorstep. "Can I help you, or are you just here to cause a scene?"

"Professor, we need your help." Granger looked at him so seriously that he couldn't find it in himself to turn them away on the spot.

"I suppose this has something to do with Potter, since I notice he's conspicuously absent," Snape replied, stepping aside and allowing them entrance. He led them into his small sitting room, not bothering to clear the clutter.

"Professor," Granger began, but Weasley interrupted her, as he was wont to do.

"Harry's sick and someone needs to help him."

Snape snorted. "Do I look like a healer to you?"

"Not that kind of sick," Granger murmured quietly, not meeting Snape's eyes. Snape cocked an eyebrow.

"Go on," he said.

He couldn't believe he'd agreed to do this. It wasn't as though he'd had any particular interest vested in the Potter brat. But Weasley had been correct - he was going to end up killing himself, and damn it all if he'd protected the little idiot this long just to let him wind up committing suicide now that the war was over.

He rapped harshly on the door and waited. There was no answer. He tried again. Minutes passed. He pressed his ear against the door and listened carefully but couldn't hear any movement. Irritated and not entirely sure why he felt it necessary, he broke the ward on the door, used an unlocking spell, and entered.

He wandered through the flat, taking note of the fact that it was oddly clean. So clean, in fact, that it could almost be called sterile, which only served to arouse his suspicion.

He moved from room to room, taking note of everything, until stumbling quite unexpectedly on what very much resembled a potions laboratory. He noticed that it was sparsely stocked, consisting solely of asphodel, wormwood, valerian roots, and sopophorous beans on one shelf and an inordinate amount of peppermint and what were clearly the ingredients for Euphoria on the one below it. He gritted his teeth and moved on down the hall, coming to a closed door. Probably the bedroom, he thought. Not one to concern himself too much with Potter's privacy he opened the door.

Empty potions bottles covered every surface save the bed, and there lay Potter, bare as the day he was born, stretched out on his back on the bed, completely still. Too still, in fact. Snape's eyes narrowed and he tried to calm the panic that threatened to rise in his chest, thinking back to the laboratory and the first shelf. It didn't help when he considered just what could happen when mixing Draught of Living Death with Euphoria. Moving to Potter's side, he cast a quick vitality charm to ascertain whether or not the fool was dead or alive. He breathed a sigh of relief when he picked up a faint heartbeat, then angrily cast another spell to wake him.

Harry found he was jolted quite suddenly awake, which was odd since every other time he'd woken from his potions-induced sleep it had been slow and relatively pleasant. A moment later he noticed he wasn't alone and he quickly scrambled up into a sitting position, glaring at the blurry form beside his bed. His glasses were pressed rather forcefully into his chest and he put them on, glaring more effectively at Snape now that he was able to actually see the man.

"What the bloody fucking hell are you doing here, you son of a..." He didn't expect the slap across his face that came next. "What the hell...?!"

"Get up, get dressed, and get in the sitting room. Now." Snape stalked out, leaving Harry sitting in his bed, touching the sore spot on his cheek and glaring after him. It wasn't until a few moments later that he noticed all the potions he'd had in his room were absent, and he cursed.

Ten minutes later, Harry found himself sitting in a pair of sweatpants on his couch, glaring at Snape who was sitting across from him.

"What the fuck are..."

"You know, Potter, I do hate having my solitude disturbed," Snape said. Harry blinked.

"So then why the fuck..."

"Language. So I'm sure you can imagine my irritation at having your two cohorts appear at my front door, quite uninvited."

"What are you..."

"Stop interrupting me. Imagine how my irritation grew when I discovered that the reason they were there was because of you, you irritating little shit, because you were in the process of trying to kill yourself with chemicals and alcohol and they were unable to do a damned thing about it."

"And so..."

"Be silent, boy." Harry suddenly found that he was unable to speak, and he glared even harder at Snape. "Much better. As I was saying. They were so concerned over your welfare and so frustrated over their inability to do anything about it that they felt the need to turn to me, of all people, to try to resolve the issue. And by the Gods, I nearly told them to let you die." He paused and gave Harry a calculating look. "But they raised an excellent point. I didn't save you time and time again to let you kill yourself now that the Dark Lord, the primary threat to your person, has been vanquished. And listen carefully, because I will never repeat this: good work." Snape took a deep breath before continuing. "What I fail to understand is why someone with your list of accomplishments would be so willing to throw his life away and essentially commit suicide. Because," he added at Harry's silent scoff, "that is precisely what you're doing. Did you think that you could just go on taking potion after potion without consequence? Did it never occur to you that taking any potion long enough would cause a toxic build-up in your system? That taking Euphoria and Draught of the Living Death in the same day could potentially kill you? And it's a miracle it hasn't, by the way." He glared at Harry silently for a moment before releasing the silencing spell. "Well? What have you got to say for yourself?"

"Get the fuck out of my flat."

Snape snorted. "You must be joking if you think that will work on me the way it worked on your friends, Potter."

"I'm not kidding, Snape. Get the fuck out before I make you."

"As though you could." A look of rage crossed Harry's face at this pronouncement, this reminder that even now Snape was so much more powerful than he was, that even having defeated a Dark Lord he still couldn't match Snape and he knew it. "No, Potter, we're going to have a talk. A proper talk. And at the end of our talk, you will make a choice. You can either continue on this path to destruction, or you can accept the fact that you're hurting your friends and your family - yes, Potter, your family - with your actions."

Harry swallowed thickly. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't I?"

Harry looked away and a silence fell over the room for several minutes.

"...I can see this will take a while. I'll put the kettle on then, shall I?" Snape finally said, and headed off to the kitchen.

The cup of tea that had been placed in front of him had gone ice-cold before Harry finally spoke.

"Fine. I'll stop using the potions. Just leave, all right?"

"Yes, that's terribly convincing. I'll just sod off then, shall I?" Snape took a sip of his third cup of tea, showing no sign that he had any intention of moving from his spot on the couch. Harry gritted his teeth.

"Look, I get it, I'm misusing the potions and I need to stop. Fine. Done. What else do you want me to say?"

"It's not what I want you to say, Potter. It's what I want you to mean. And you don't mean that. You're saying it to get me to leave but, alas, I've had far too much experience with melodramatic teenagers to fall for that particular trick."

"I'm twenty two. I'm not a melodramatic teenager."

"As good as." Another sip of tea. "And who can blame you, really? It's not as though you've had an easy life, or even a normal one." Harry blinked. Snape almost sounded sympathetic. "Of course, neither have your friends, yet they haven't turned to alcohol abuse or using a myriad of potions to get by." Harry scowled.

"They've got each other," slipped out before he could stop it, and he quickly looked away as Snape froze for the briefest moment before placing the cup back on its saucer.

"And you haven't." It was phrased as a statement, but Harry could recognize it as the question it was.

"Not like that I haven't. I'll never..." He took a deep, shuddering breath and closed his eyes.

"Ginevra Weasley died three years ago, Potter. It's time to let go."

"It's not just about her!" Harry shouted, eyes flying open and glaring at Snape angrily.

"Of course not," Snape replied blithely, and Harry fell silent once more.

Nearly half an hour passed before either spoke again.

"I went to visit Neville's parents. After the last battle," Harry finally said, breaking the silence. He couldn't understand why he was telling Snape this, but found he couldn't stop himself. "They'll never know, you know, what he did for them. They'll never know he didn't make it. His mother..." He trailed off, and Snape waited patiently for him to continue. "His mother gave me a gum wrapper..." Harry blinked back tears. "I tried to tell her...how brave Neville was, how brilliant he'd grown up to be, but I...I couldn't tell her that he..." He cleared his throat. "Well. They're never going to know that he's gone. That it's my fault he got killed in the first place."

Snape frowned. "Potter, it's not your..."

"Oh, be real, Snape. I never pegged you as someone who'd lie to spare my feelings. Of course it's my fault. He shouldn't have even been on the battlefield that day. I was the one who told him what was going to happen, that we were going to go after the Death Eaters that day, and..."

"And if Neville Longbottom hadn't been there, either Bellatrix LeStrange would have lived or someone else would have died in his place or both would have happened and one of the Dark Lord's most powerful allies would have survived and you would not have succeeded in killing him."

"Bullshit. You were there. If I hadn't killed him, you would have."

"You put too much faith in my abilities. I would not have been able to. My soul is too broken to have managed the spell."

"You would have found another way. So don't give me that. And it's not just Neville. Both Ginny and Hagrid were my fault, too - even you can't deny that."

Snape looked at Harry silently for a moment, weighing his next words very carefully. "War is not a game, Potter, and sometimes people die who should not because of mistakes, but..."

"But it's still my fault. It's my fault that they died. I'm responsible for their deaths! Don't you get that? Do you have any idea how that fe..." He trailed off, noticing Snape's expression.

"...I see you just remembered to whom you were speaking."

"...Sorry."

Silence fell over them once again.

"I don't suppose you'd care for a drink?" Harry offered a little while later.

"I rather think that would be in bad taste considering drinking is precisely one of the things I'm trying to get you to stop."

"Right." Harry fidgeted nervously. "How..." he suddenly began but quickly trailed off. Snape waited a moment to see if he would continue, but it became apparent he would not.

"'How' what, Potter?" he pressed.

Harry looked conflicted for a moment before continuing. "How do you live with yourself, after everything you've done?"

It took everything Snape had in him not to get up and leave Potter to his own devices in that moment. If it weren't for the earnest, almost pleading look in the young man's eyes, he very well might have. "...With great difficulty, one day at a time," he replied quietly after a long moment, looking directly into Harry's eyes, allowing him to see just how honest he was being. "And in the beginning, with a great deal of alcohol," he admitted a moment later.

Harry's eyes widened slightly and he looked away, contemplating Snape's words. "So you're saying it's all right for you to do it, but not for me?" he said angrily after a moment.

Snape sneered. "Hardly. You'll note I said 'in the beginning'. Even I had to stop sometime. And I never relied on potions, either, though as I'm sure you're aware I had more than enough knowledge to brew things more effective than Euphoria."

Harry glared at him. "Right then. Why didn't you? And why'd you stop drinking? Must not have bothered you as much as you let on, then, what you did?"

Snape leaped off of the couch and pointed at Harry angrily. "How dare you, you little shit," he hissed. "You have no idea what anguish I've suffered. You've experienced but a fraction of what I have, so don't you dare presume..."

"A fraction? Does the number of times you've watched someone die change how much it hurts, then? The number of people you kill changes the level of guilt, does it? Probably gets easier each time..." Once again, Harry found himself unable to speak, though this time it was because of the look on his companion's face rather than the effects of some spell. Snape looked like he was either going to explode or cry or possibly both, and Harry gulped. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"You are. Very sorry," Snape replied, and stormed into the kitchen. Harry heard the sound of water, and realized he was refilling the kettle.

The silence that fell between them after that was nearly unbearable. Snape was clearly angry, and Harry actually felt a great deal of guilt over goading the other man. He knew perfectly well what Snape had sacrificed, that he'd done terrible, terrible things he hadn't wanted to for the greater good, and still he'd dared to criticize the man and his motives and marginalize his feelings about the whole thing. Even Snape hadn't done that to him, and Harry realized he'd actually sunk below Snape's level. That particular revelation hit him like a bludger to the gut, and he knew, deep down, he'd never have said or done anything like that before...before the drinking and the potions. Before he'd stopped talking to his friends. Before he'd pushed everyone away. Snape was right - he was quite possibly the sorriest excuse for a human being on the planet.

"...How'd you do it?" Harry asked quietly. Snape looked up at him warily.

"Do what?" he replied, a hint of warning in his voice.

"How'd you stop? The drinking, I mean."

It was as though Snape's entire demeanor had changed. The anger that had permeated the room drained away and his features smoothed into an expression of calm understanding. "I just did. I was disgusted with what I'd become and I stopped."

"Just like that?" Harry asked, disbelief coloring his voice. Snape snorted.

"No, not 'just like that'. It was trying. It was nearly impossible in the beginning, until I removed all the alcohol from my presence. Even then, I nearly failed, and would have, if I'd tried to do it alone. If it weren't for..." Snape paused a moment. "...If it weren't for Albus supporting me, I wouldn't have managed," he finished, the last bit clearly causing him pain. Harry swallowed and nodded.

"I can't ask my friends to go through that with me. They're trying to move on with their lives."

"They want to be there for you, Potter. They want to help you."

Harry sighed and ruffled his hair. "Even so." He paused. "Is it really impossible to do it by yourself?"

Snape looked at him contemplatively. "Most likely," he finally replied. "I only managed because of Albus, because he knew what I was going through and knew how to stop me. Of course," he added, "it helped that I was right there under his nose all the time, so if I had fallen off the wagon, so to speak, he would have known right away, and that was quite the deterrent in and of itself." He paused for a moment. "There are programs, of course, but the idea of dealing with my particular weakness so publicly..."

"No, I couldn't do that," Harry said quickly. "That's the last thing I need - the entire fucking world to know I'm fucked up." He sighed. "I don't know what to do."

"Lean on your friends. That's why they're there," Snape replied simply. Harry looked at him, mildly bemused, as though it had just struck him who he'd been speaking with this entire time.

"...This is very strange," he said. Snape cocked an eyebrow. "No, really. Of all the people I thought I'd be speaking with about this, like this, you'd never have even made the list. I still don't understand why you're here, or why I'm even talking to you at all." Snape didn't reply, and there was a brief moment of silence before Harry added, "But I'm almost kind of glad you're here."

Snape snorted.

It had been two days since Harry had spoken with Snape and Snape had destroyed his potions laboratory and obliterated all of his remaining potions. To say that Harry was on edge was an understatement, but he was making the effort, and that's what mattered more than anything else.

"Harry!" Hermione cried out, opening the door to the flat she and Ron shared and immediately throwing her arms around his neck. He could feel her tears on his neck as she buried her face into him. "Oh, God, I'm so glad you're here." Awkwardly, Harry wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back.

"Geez, Hermione, you don't need to make such a fuss, you know," he murmured when she pulled back to look at him. That comment earned him a smack on his shoulder.

"Of course I do, you...oh, you're so infuriating sometimes!" Hermione sniffled and hugged him again, crying harder. Somewhere inside the flat he could hear Ron's voice.

"...can't believe you left him alone after that!" he was shouting. There was a pause; presumably the person he was arguing with was replying. "You can't know that for sure! What if he - "

"Harry," Hermione pulled away from him and took him by the hand, "come in. Ron's going to be so happy to see you."

Remembering the last time Ron had seen him face-to-face, Harry wasn't so certain. "Uh, I'm not sure that's the best idea..." That earned him another smack, this time to the stomach.

"Don't you even begin that nonsense, do you hear me? We've been worried sick over you, and if you think I'm going to let you leave your best friend in a state, thinking you're...oh, Harry!" For a moment, Harry thought she was going to hug him again, but instead she turned and dragged him toward the kitchen. "Ron! Ron, Harry's here!"

What Harry saw nearly shocked him to tears. There was Snape, sitting quite comfortably at Ron and Hermione's kitchen table, sipping tea while Ron towered over him. The anger left him quite abruptly when he saw Harry standing in the doorway with Hermione.

"...Ron."

"...Harry."

"All right?"

"...Could be better." And then Hermione was moving out of the way, and Ron looked like he was going to punch him but pulled him into a bear hug instead and Harry felt worse than he had in his entire life for hurting his friends the way he had. And Snape sat at the table and sipped tea as though nothing was happening and Harry suddenly found that to be the most hilarious thing in the world and he chuckled.

Ron pulled away abruptly and looked at him intently. "You're not...?"

"No," Harry replied. "It's not that. Just..." And the next thing he knew he was crying and he couldn't believe it, because he did not cry in front of other people but he couldn't seem to stop the tears no matter what he did. And it was in that instant that Snape looked up and met his gaze and finally, finally Harry understood and knew without a shadow of a doubt that things would get better. Because he had his friends - his family - and, strangely enough, he had Snape as well, and that was all he would need.

Again, C&C would be much obliged.