Gently Into the Good Night
Disclaimer: I don't profit from fanfiction.
A/N: I was always moved by the Grey Lady's story in Chapter 31 of Deathly Hallows, especially since I saw parallels with Snape/Lily, and I wanted to explore it in fanfiction. It's taken me a while to get around to it, but here we are at last. :)
The title is inspired by Dylan Thomas' poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," in which the narrator urges his dying father not to submit to death, i.e. to "rage against the dying of the light." I, however, am taking a slightly different approach to the matter.
--
A month after he took the job at Hogwarts, Snape woke in the middle of the night to find the Bloody Baron staring at him from the foot of the bed.
"Did you wrong her?" the Baron asked in a sepulchral voice.
It didn't occur to Snape that this was the first time he had ever heard the Baron's voice, or that the Baron usually didn't make social calls at two in the morning.
"The headmaster didn't see fit to inform me that spectral oversight was one of the benefits conferred upon the Heads of House," he snapped, sitting upright.
"You might want to cast Silencing Spells over your chambers. This isn't the first night you've talked in your sleep."
"Duly noted." Snape passed a hand over his brow, which was unsurprisingly, beaded with sweat. Discomfited as he was, he realized that the Baron hadn't accused him of screaming. His nightmares certainly warranted the occasional bloodcurdling yell; he doubted that anyone could dream what he did and get off with only talking in their sleep. It would seem that the Slytherin ghost had an unexpected knack for tact.
"She must be at peace, wherever she is. The things you say would be enough to placate even the most vengeful spirit."
"Enough," Snape hissed. "Occupy yourself with Peeves. Since when did you concern yourself with the living?"
The Baron sneered. "I've just chased him away from this part of the dungeons. Peeves tends not to mock the Heads, and you have quite a presence, but I thought it best to be safe—even your frightening demeanor might not be enough to stop Peeves from parroting your nocturnal whimpers. Please, Lily, I said I was sorry…"
Snape stared at the Baron in a mixture of shock and rage.
"A final word of advice: When you die, move on. There's no point in becoming a ghost over a broken heart. The afterlife doesn't mend shattered organs."
Slowly, Snape's expression shifted from shock to calculation. He saw the Baron's bloodstains in a new light.
"What was her name?"
The Baron looked taken aback, but he answered: "Helena."
As he turned to drift through the wall, he added, "You would know her as the Grey Lady."
--
After the Battle of Hogwarts, the Baron was satisfied to see no sign of Snape's ghost anywhere. He floated through the castle, oblivious to the bodies newly laid at rest in the Great Hall, or the mourners clustered thickly around them. He only had eyes for one person.
He found her at the Astronomy Tower, looking sadly down at the wreckage of the grounds. In her hand he saw the mangled remains of a tiara, which she had rescued from the burning Room of Requirement. Ghosts didn't, after all, fear Fiendfyre.
"You helped save the Wizarding World."
"Hardly," she said disdainfully. After centuries of self-loathing, it was difficult for the Baron to see that the brunt of her disdain was aimed at herself, and not at him."I played the most minor of roles."
"It's the second time you've had a hand in killing a Slytherin." He strove for a darkly humorous tone, but he was sure he only sounded petty and mean-spirited.
The Grey Lady broke her gaze away from the bloodstained grounds and the uprooted morass of the Forbidden Forest.
"This must be the most you've spoken to anyone in centuries," she said.
"The only reason I became the most silent of the ghosts was because you wouldn't speak to me. What words did I have for anyone else?"
Silvery tears welled up in her eyes, breaking through the dam of the disdain and reserve she had worn as armor. "Cast off your chains, Baron. The years have washed away your sins."
He extended a pearly white hand to her. "And your sins do not exist in your mother's eyes—or mine. Let me take you to her, that I may fulfill the promise made to her a thousand years ago."
"After all this time?" she whispered, hardly daring to believe in such steadfastness when she herself had been so perfidious.
And like another Slytherin before him, the Baron said, "Always."
The ruined tiara clattered to the ground.
--
The next year, the Heads of Ravenclaw and Slytherin noted with some curiosity that the Bloody Baron and the Grey Lady had disappeared, and neither the Fat Friar nor Nearly-Headless Nick knew what had become of them. But when Harry Potter visited in the fall to hang Severus Snape's portrait in the Headmaster's office, and Nick told him of the ghostly disappearances, Harry merely smiled knowingly.
Nobody noticed when, after dinner, he slipped upstairs to tell Snape's portrait the ending of an old love story.