After about an hour of shaking the hands of the bereaved and counseling with them, Harry threw on his invisibility cloak once again. Exhaustion was quickly threatening to overtake him, and he desperately wanted to find Ron and Hermione and then sleep for as long as he could, but he forced himself to keep going for something he knew he must do first. Carefully, lest the invisibility cloak should slip and he would be once again swept into the wave of the crowd, he made his way to the Headmaster’s Office.
When he reached the seventh floor, he found the stairs leading up to the moving spiral staircase to be completely destroyed, so he made a detour to a shortcut he knew. Even through his weariness, Harry could not help noticing the utter destruction of his surroundings. The entire wall on this side of the castle was threatening to cave in, and all of the pictures that were still hanging were shattered and their inhabitants looked chaotic. There was evidence of both desolation and celebration within their painted scenes. On the left wall a picture of an austere woman with dark hair whom he had seen many times coming up to this office, dined gaily upon an overturned table with companions who had joined her in an escape from their own, more seriously battered frames. He spotted Sir Cadogan flying from frame to frame yelling obscene curses, and was sincerely glad of the invisibility cloak's protection. He stepped carefully over the fallen gargoyle guarding the entrance.
“Er- ” he said. “Can I go up?”
“Feel free,” the gargoyle groaned, without bothering to seek the source of the voice (Rowling 747). When he reached the door, he took off his cloak. He raised the brass knocker and rapped three times upon the door dully. Harry did not really expect anyone to answer. In fact, if he was quite frank with himself, he knew there was a good chance that Snape had been killed by Lord Voldemort’s spell. To his utter amazement, however, a moment later the familiar cold voice wafted out at him.
“Enter.” Nervous but determined, Harry opened the door and closed it. He glanced around. Several of Professor Dumbledore’s spindly instruments, as well as a few darker things that Snape had imposed upon the room after his death, were lying about the room in odd positions. Like the rest of the castle, it looked as though someone had overturned this room and shook it several times. The old portraits of famous headmasters and headmistresses were either broken or were completely shattered. When the inhabitants of the portraits which were still intact spotted Harry, they ran into their neighbor’s frames and started whispering to one another excitedly.
Snape was standing in front of the midnight blue curtained windows on the room’s east side. There was a deep gash on the side of his left cheek and it looked as though Lord Voldemort’s dragon had eaten through a large portion of his robes. He turned.
“Potter!” he exclaimed. Without hesitating, Harry took a deep breath and forced himself to look straight into Snape’s cold dark eyes.
“I just wanted to say, professor, that I’m really grateful for everything you’ve done for the Order.” Snape’s dark eyes glittered, but he said nothing. “The Order couldn’t have accomplished half of what it did if it hadn’t been for you,” Harry plunged on, “and I know I couldn’t’ve- ” He paused in spite of himself. His feelings about Snape were complicated. He knew the Order owed a vast part of its success, and he maybe even his life, as much to him as to Albus Dumbledore. He desperately wanted to thank him for all he had done, yet his greatest instinct told him that such would only serve to fuel Snape’s hatred towards him. After all, the sacrifices he had made had been for Harry’s mother, he reminded himself, and it made no difference that he Harry now knew about those sacrifices. Harry looked back at Snape. His arms were crossed squarely over his chest and he was observing Harry narrowly.
“Yes, Potter,” he said softly. The dark eyes in his sallow face were glinting oddly and his mouth was twisted slightly, into what looked like it could be either a sneer or a grimace, Harry couldn’t be sure which.
“I- ” But Harry found he could not continue. He did not know what to say. Snape had been his greatest protector for years, excepting Albus Dumbledore, and Harry had never known about it for the primary fact that he didn’t want Harry to know. Yet this did not stop him from being grateful, and extremely touched, for the sacrifices he had made for Harry in the name of his mother. He had hated James, yet he had stayed true to her memory, and, without meaning to in the bargain, had become the Order’s prime asset next to Dumbledore. It was because of him, as much as Dumbledore, that he was able to bring Lord Voldemort to his knees, and, ultimately, survive. The fact that he had done it without anyone’s knowledge only made his work more admirable, and caused Harry to feel ashamed of how he had always behaved towards him. No words were adequate enough to express all of this.
Harry looked at Snape again. Snape still did not speak. The corners of his lips were turned up a bit more, and the twist on his mouth looked a little less like a sneer. With a start, he suddenly realized that Snape was giving him a thin, tight-lipped smile. He was put in mind of the only time he had ever seen Snape smile. That had been two years ago when he had been in his office for an Occlumency lesson, and he had accidentally blurted his suspicions that Snape was receiving inside information from Lord Voldemort’s supporters. He had given him a small smile of satisfaction. There was a similar look on his face now, however, it seemed a little more- what was it? It wasn’t happiness exactly, Snape wasn’t capable of true happiness. Rather, some of the darkness on it seemed to have faded. What struck Harry most was that there was no semblance on it of hatred or disgust.
“Thank you,” he said simply. The smile on Snape’s face became even more pronounced. Shocked, but nonetheless pleased, Harry returned the smile. He glanced once more at the portraits in the room. His eyes caught on Albus Dumbledore’s picture. He was sleeping peacefully in an untouched frame, however Harry could have sworn he had only just feigned sleep. Slightly bemused, yet proud of himself and feeling as though this had gone much better than he expected, he left the room to go find Ron and Hermione.