Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter...honestly...other wise I wouldn't have had such a hard time writing Severus. HONESTLY...WHY IS HE SO HARD TO FREAKIN WRITE!!!!!!!!!!!

Out of the Mouths: Protector

Dedicated to Jocelyn

KayFay

Abby knew the instant he crossed the threshold into the playground at Godric's Hollow even though the entrance to the gated facility was at her back. She barely acknowledged the hazy gray sky give way to dark rainclouds and vivid red playground sets. She only swung higher on her swing, confident in her own domain, and waited for him to notice her. Eventually they all did.

Severus Snape had a strange kinship with playgrounds. It was unusual for a man of his age, though he was still fairly young at twenty two. However, Severus had met Lily at a playground, and since that date had remained a highlight in his life, he was sufficiently distracted to miss the fact that he wasn't alone in the playground. When the hair on the back of his neck rose, he silently cursed himself for losing himself so much to his thoughts. If years of DADA hadn't taught him constant vigilance, then his short time serving his Lord had.

"Are you a bad stranger?" a voice broke the silence and Severus turned to face the interruption. He felt his face turning into a threatening scowl as his onyx eyes fell on a short freckled brunette.

"Well, are you?" the girl repeated when he said nothing. His glare obviously needed to be worked on, since the brat was immune to a stare that had crumpled older and wiser men.

"No." he finally said, turning away from her, a clear sign that this conversation should be over. The girl nodded, and turned to watch the sun setting. She started pumping her legs to get the swing moving, but abruptly stopped and looked at him.

"Well, then what are you doing here?" she asked. Severus restrained the need to whip out his wand and Crucio the girl to insanity or death, whichever happened first. He had come to this cursed place in memorial of the only woman he had loved, not to be interrogated by idiotic children who didn't know that they should mind their own business.

"I hadn't realized I had to have a motive to be here." He said his tone cool and annoyed. The girl frowned, and looked at him from narrowed eyes before shrugging. If she sensed that he was annoyed she didn't respond to it. Instead he found himself catching eyes with her.

"Why are you here?" The girl's voice was forceful, but strange. Severus vaguely noticed that everything around him had turned gray, but all he could focus on was the girl's big brown eyes. Consumed in her eyes, Severus didn't even notice that he was telling the girl his life story. He told her about his abusive father who had always hated him for being the son of a witch. He told her about his mother, crushed by the more forceful personality of his father. He lingered on how he met Lily and Petunia, and how Lily had been his first friend. His account of the elation he felt on being accepted into Hogwarts was accompanied by the depression he felt on being bullied, ignored, teased, and hated, even by his own house. So caught up in her brown orbs, Severus didn't realize that he was crying as he told of how he joined the Death Eaters and how the love of his life had died and he was now at the site of her death.

"I'm sorry." Severus' trance was over, and he blinked as the grayness around him faded away into brilliant and vibrant colors. He stared at the girl in horror. How could he have told her that? How could he have told someone he barely knew so much about his life? And the person was just a child, barely more than eleven.

"How…how…why…" Severus stuttered, and then wished he could recall the stutters. But the girl didn't laugh; she merely stared at him, studying.

"You told me because you needed to tell someone. And it's easier to tell me, I'm a child and you'll never see me again. If you told someone you'd see everyday then you'd always feel awkward. So now I'm going to give you advice, because you look like you need it. My mom always said that when you meet someone that really changes you, affects you, I guess, sometimes things go sour. Sometimes you move away, or you just stop talking, or they die. But you can't just sulk there because you're dishonoring their memory. They left you a legacy, and you're just letting it sit and rot. My mom says that when someone dies there's the stuff they leave, like money and junk that no one really wants. But they also leave behind their memory, the affect they had on someone. So to really pass on their legacy you have to show that to someone else. Teach them, affect them the way that special person affected you. It's always romantic to say you'd die for someone, but I always thought it was much harder to live for someone, you know?" The girl turned at her. Then she smiled faintly.

"I'm sorry about this." Severus suddenly felt as if something wrong was going to happen. The girl looked altogether too morose.

"Once upon a time, there was a neighborhood and in it was a playground. And all the little kids used to play in it, because it was a safe neighborhood. But one day a man came by. And he was a bad man, and he used to watch the children play. And one day he called to one of the pretty girls, a little girl named Laurie who was special but not very street smart. He called her to come out of the playground, and she was going to follow him, but one of the kids was a little smarter. She'd seen this guy look at the kids and she didn't like it. Maybe she was brave, but most likely she was stupid, so she sent the kids home to get help and confronted the man by herself." The girl looked down, almost as if she was going to cry, and Severus found himself paying more attention to the story as the color faded from the world around him.

"But bad men like that aren't scared of little girls, they like them you know. So when she went after him, he only laughed and he…I guess nobody believed the kids when they said that a bad man had come. It was a safe neighborhood you know. Because nobody came." Severus could see now that the girl was crying. "It wasn't fair you know. Knowing that nobody was going to help you, knowing that you were going to die and it was going to hurt because you're only eleven and who the hell is afraid of eleven year old kids anyway. But I promised that this neighborhood would be safe, and that no one would ever know what it feels like to die alone." The girl looked up at Severus, defiance in her eyes. He suddenly knew that this was the point of the story, this was important.

"Nobody's going to forget about me again Severus Snape. Except for you. You'll forget and that'll be okay because you're a good guy even though you've done bad things. But your life isn't over yet. You don't have to keep screwing up just because you did it once. I should know." The girl smiled at him.

Severus stared at the slide structure in front of him, its vivid blood red a start contrast with the dark sky. He had come here to mourn Lily, but too many people had crowded the house and he had felt uncomfortable in the crowd. He'd come to the playground and sat on the swing and…

Severus shook his head in frustration; he couldn't remember what had happened; only that he suddenly had a purpose. Lily was gone, and thus, he should have no reason to exist, but that wouldn't be what Lily would want for him. She'd have wanted him to fall in love, have a child, and do good in this world. He wasn't sure about the first two, but he knew how to do the last one. Without a second glance at the playground around him, Snape disappeared to Hogsmeade, where he was sure he would be able to find Albus Dumbledore.

Abby was slightly surprised when she found the grey warming into color for the second time that day. But soon surprise turned into annoyance as she recognized the feel of the magic that summoned her.

"I see you're still here, Abigail."

"Why are you here Albus?" Abby hissed, refusing to turn to face the damned headmaster. She heard the steps that carried the headmaster over to the swing set, and the creak of his bones and the iron as he sat down in the swing.

"I believe you had a chat with an associate of mine, a mister Severus Snape. Do you recall?"

"And if I did."

"I'm surprised you left him alive. That's a great accomplishment for you, Abigail; maybe this means you'll be moving on soon."

Abby snapped.

"Why are you so upset? I gave you a spy and I left him alone. Now do me a favor and leave me alone!" Abby screeched at him. Albus blinked, not looking at all flustered by her outburst.

"I merely wondered how you did it Abigail, no need to yell." Abby glared at him, her eyes showing that she was buying none of this.

"When you can hypnotize people and bring them into the afterlife, forcing them to tell you the truth is child's play."

"Yet you left him alive."

"He's a good man."

"I would agree. However, you're right. I didn't just come to discuss Severus. I believe that your attachment to this place is unhealthy. It is time for you to move on into the afterlife Abigail." Abby's face blotched red in anger, and for the first time in several years, the ghost stood up from her swing.

"Leave now." She hissed, her hand pointing dangerously at Albus. Albus held his hands out and merely looked at her.

"You don't know what it's like Albus, knowing that you were going to die, protecting some stupid little girl who deserved to be as dead as the only people she talks to. No one saved me, Albus. I sent those kids home and told them to get their parents and no one saved me. So I died! Dead, gone, there's no coming back, and all I could think of was why didn't anyone save me? No one else deserves to die knowing that no one is going to save them. Not at eleven. And now you come and preach to me to move on. You don't know what it's like knowing that those stupid, insignificant people could save you, and yet they don't even realize what's going on. They still don't know about the murders and the little children." Albus paled.

"What have you done Abigail?" He said, horrified. The girl smirked, one he had seen too many times on a similarly angry child.

"Nothing they didn't deserve Albus. Now leave, before you become my next victim." Albus watched the ghost vanish out of this plane of existence, back into the gray world of her personal hell. Albus shuddered, and pulled a lemon drop from his sleeve to calm his nerves.

As Albus headed to pay his respects at the Potter gravestone, he left his box of lemon drops on the tombstone of one Abigail Nolan, eleven years old, witch, ghost, and protector…of a sort.

I'm dedicating this fic to Jocelyn...because she encouraged me to post this...otherwise it probably wouldn't be up here. This is actually the second draft of the story...I thought that in the first one Severus was too OOC and so I changed him to make more angsty...hehehe

Okay, so Abby is my brainchild...and I love her...bonus points for anyone who guesses who she reminds Albus of.

PLEASE REVIEW! (And if you do...tell me what you think of Abby...and if she's a murderer or not...)