The last thing Severus ever saw were Lily's eyes. Though they were embedded in the face of the man he had hated and the boy he had sworn to protect, they were still her eyes, green as forest pools, green as jealousy. But jealousy was irrelevant now, because Severus could feel the world grow more distant. There was darkness creeping up around him, drawing him down deeply into its embrace. He let himself be borne away, and prayed that there could be such a thing as mercy for those like him.
Severus woke wide-eyed and frightened, trembling in the dark. His gaze slid wildly about the room, trying to determine where he was—he looked up and recognized the spider webbing of cracks on the ceiling. This was his room. His room, from Spinner's End, the house where he had grown up.
It had only been a dream.
"Home," he whispered, the noise barely escaping his vocal chords, but his voice sounded strange to his own ears, tongue moving clumsily around his teeth. His mouth tasted of copper. He swallowed, but the cloying film didn't go away. Water. He needed water. With some effort, he untwisted himself from his thread-bare covers. But his attention fixed on the one quilt that wasn't shabby and worn.
He stared at it, for a second not remembering it. When he did, an unexpected emotion caught at his chest. Lily's mother had made it for him, had worked on it for the better part of a year. It had been a birthday gift. It was one of the most precious things he owned. He didn't know why, then, the sight of it made him feel bruised inside, tender. A single sentence floated through his mind. I never meant for Lily to die. "It was only a dream," he whispered. But even as the words crossed his lips, he remembered cradling Lily's body to his chest, weeping bitter tears into her ember-bright hair, prostrating himself in front of a man with half-moon glasses, a long white beard, and a look of utter sorrow. He remembered blackness burnt into his skin, a snake and a skull branded there forever.
Severus dropped the quilt on the bed and darted for the bathroom. Though he hurried, he trod lightly over the floor and was careful to be quiet with the door, because it wouldn't do to wake his father if the man was home yet. That would be a lashing or a lecture, depending on his degree of drunkenness. If he woke his mother—well, that would be even worse.
Severus made it to the bathroom and flipped on the light, praying that it would work. The wiring in Spinners' End was unreliable at best and outright dangerous at worst. He had wondered, sometimes, if it was because of his magic, if his magic might have leaked over and tweaked the flow of electricity. But Lily had told him that her lights always worked, so Severus attributed it to lazy electricians. After a few moments and much indecision, the light flickered on, and Severus turned toward the grimy mirror, frightened by what he might see. He came nose-to-nose with his own reflection, sallow-faced and too skinny, lank-haired and hungry-eyed. The knots in his belly loosed and he grinned in purely reflexive relief, even though his reflection was nothing to smile at.
But at least this reflection was still that of a child and not that of a haggard, tight-lipped man who seemed as though he couldn't remember how to laugh.
"It was only a dream," he murmured, watching his reflection's mouth shape the words. "It was only a dream, it was only a dream." Maybe if he said it enough, he could forget the aching intensity and raw heartbreak that he remembered now, that he hadn't known before he'd gone to sleep the night before.
"Severus? What are you doing up this early?"
Severus flinched and turned around slowly. "I didn't mean to wake you up, Mum. I'm sorry."
Eileen Prince was not a beautiful woman on the best of days. Her face was long, her hair was a lackluster brown, and her mouth was perpetually set in a sulky look, even when she was laughing. She was especially not attractive now, having just gotten up from bed. But though she had dark circles carved under her eyes, a ratty old shawl wrapped about her shoulders, and bare, knobby-toed feet, when she smiled a tired smile at Severus, he felt as though everything could be right in the world.
"It's not so early for me, love. It's nearly five. But why are you awake?"
Severus rubbed his arms and glanced away. It had been one thing to run to his mother when he was a child. But he was eleven now, and to tell her that he had had a nightmare? His masculine pride couldn't allow it. "I drank too much water last night."
His mother arched an eyebrow. "Strange, then, that I didn't hear a flush," she observed. "And when I came in here, you were looking in the mirror."
He had never been able to lie to his mum. He cast his gaze at the floor, trying to think of something to say. She rescued him from his all-too-obvious thoughts of diversions, gently touching him on the shoulder. "I'm going to get dressed for work and make tea. And then you can tell me what has you so wound up."
Severus made the tea. He sat at the kitchen table and imagined creatures out of the scratches on the surface. There were a lot of scratches—almost to the extent that the entire tabletop was one big scratch—and so there were a lot of creatures that he could imagine. But then his mother came downstairs in her work uniform and he had to cease imagining for the time being. She cradled her mug in one hand and reached across the table for one of his with the other. "So what's this about then?"
Severus hesitated. Relented. Hesitated again. But his mother surely wouldn't make fun of him, especially not if he didn't call it a nightmare. "I had a dream."
Eileen waited.
Severus drew in a shaky breath, and his grip on his mother's hand became tighter. "It started with the train ride to Hogwarts. It—the train—it looked exactly like you'd told me, all red and gold, with the lettering on the side. We went with the Evanses in their car because you'd received notice that the Floo system at the station was going to be down for repairs. Lily and you and I sat in the back. Petunia didn't come, even though Mrs. Evans wanted her to.
And then we got to the station, and went to Platform 9 ¾. Lily caught her jumper on something and ripped it near the hem. She was upset but you told her the house elves would fix it for her. Then we said goodbye and got on the train."
Severus didn't know why he was telling his mother every little detail. Normally he prided himself on his concise storytelling, but there had been a weight to this dream that he wasn't comfortable carrying by himself. Normally, he would have told Lily instead of his mother, because his mum already had too much to think about, working two jobs to counteract her husband's worthlessness. But Lily was too central to the plot of the story to tell, and she might pick up on the fact that Severus' dream-self had been so desperately in love with her that he had died in order to redeem himself to his memory of her.
He drew a breath and continued. "A few hours into the train ride, these two boys came into the compartment with us. One of them had ridiculous puffy hair and glasses, and the other was wearing a shirt with a band name on it. They'd come in to talk with Lily, not me, but I got into the conversation anyhow when they mentioned Houses. They both wanted to be in Gryffindor, like Lily. They were all really excited about it. But then the boy with the glasses asked me what House I wanted, and I said Slytherin. And—he just got angry. He tried to convince me that only evil people went to Slytherin. I got mad and insulted him, and we started yelling at each other so loud that one of the prefects made them go back to their own compartment.
When we finally made it to Hogwarts, we didn't take carriages like you said. We went on boats across the lake. One boy almost fell in. Then we were all put in a corridor waiting.
Lily was Sorted into Gryffindor with the two boys from the train. I went to Slytherin. After that, I didn't really have Lily anymore, except for a few classes and some study times, and those boys became my enemies."
Severus swallowed and looked down at the table. "I started to hate Hogwarts because of them. And there was a Dark Lord coming to power. Lily abandoned me, and I joined him. Lily married one of my enemies and had a son. She died because of information I had given to the Dark Lord." His breath was getting faster. "There was a prophecy—her son was the only one who could defeat the Dark Lord. I swore allegiance to Dumbledore and took the Potions position at Hogwarts to keep her son safe, because I owed that to Lily. Then I saved him several times and I made him hate me, and then I died protecting him."
"Oh, Severus." His mum stroked the pad of her thumb across his knuckles.
"No, but there's more, Mum. It was like it actually happened. That's why I was looking in the mirror, to make sure that I was still me."
He looked up to see her studying him. "It was probably just a dream," she finally said. "The Princes never had strong Seer blood." She squeezed his hand and let him go, getting up from the table. "Are you anxious about going to Hogwarts? It's in a week, that might be why."
"No," Severus snapped, and immediately felt awful. "Sorry, but, it's just, it didn't feel like a dream. I know what dreams feel like."
Eileen nodded. "We'll have to wait and see, then. We do need to go to Diagon Alley soon, for your supplies. Maybe Saturday…" She trailed off, slipping her wand from her sleeve. An apple floated over Severus' head. "Tempus," Eileen said firmly, and glanced at the numbers that drew themselves in thin air. "Severus, I've got to run. Your father came in a few hours ago, you won't want to be in the house when he wakes."
Severus nodded. It was the natural progression of things—Tobias Snape gets drunk, Tobias Snape sleeps it off, Tobias Snape takes out his hangover on any bystanders. "I'll stay at Lily's house," he promised, then paused. "Or maybe I'll stay at the library."
Eileen kissed his forehead, handed him an apple, and ushered him up the stairs to get dressed. When he came down, she had taken the Floo to her job cooking breakfast at a popular wizarding café, after which she would change into her robes and act as the secretary of a small, struggling wizarding legal firm.
Severus finished his apple and slipped out the front door, not bothering to lock it; they had nothing of value. He would go to the library today, he decided. Maybe he could bury himself in the smell of ink and paper and forget about the memories that weren't his but that were pervading every crevice, every nook and cranny of his mind. Maybe he could forget about them for a little while, and then maybe he could pass them off as nothing more than the figment of an overactive imagination.
It was worth a shot.
