Fandom: HP
Title: Reflexes Got the Better of Me
Author: hana-akira AKA rurichi
Character: Severus Snape, Marauders
Genre: Angst, Friendship
Rating: 19+
Warning: OOC, AU, timetravel, Fem!Severus, MWPP era
Prompt: Fem!Severus and timetravel. Inspired by nyet khan's story In the Breaking.
Summary: She doesn't care if it's impossible. Fem!Severus, OOC, AU, timetravel with a twist, MWPP era.
A/N: So I've got this kink for a female Severus Snape and timetravel, so sue me.
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I. In the beginning
—
The first thing Severus Snape wakes up to after he supposedly dies is to the pervading sense of wrongness.
It isn't from the yellowing wallpaper in the bedroom he is in, nor is it from the cracked ceiling above him that looks deceptively cleaner than it should have been, if only because he instantly recognized it as the same ceiling as the one in his old bedroom at Spinner's End—the same one that was supposed to be falling apart. It isn't even from the little detail that he's no longer in the Shrieking Shack or even from the fact he's no longer bleeding everywhere or that he couldn't particularly remember how he got from the place he had been to the place he where he was now.
It's from the reality that he felt pain that told him that he was still alive despite how hard he'd tried and that he now had a female form. Alive in a younger version of his own body reminiscent of the one he was in when he was eleven except that it was evidently female. Deceptively so that he/she could feel the soft curls of his/her short hair on his/her head, the softness of curves of his/her prepubescent and undeveloped girlish figure.
(And it's wrong. This body is all wrong. Wrong, wrong. Everything is wrong—)
What had happened came unbidden and unwanted in all of its memorable glory.
The Dark Lord and him in the Shrieking Shack talking about the Elder Wand. Nagini suddenly attacking him. Him bleeding all over the floor, his throat torn open. Immense and intolerable pain. Potter, Granger, and Weasley staring down in shock and horror at his body. Desperation to get Potter to look at him, to look at his memories.
Lily's green eyes. Lily's green, Avada Kedavra eyes. Staring, blurring. Wavering. Crumbling.
(No, not Lily's—Lily was dead so her eyes were dead, too. Potter's? Potter was crying for him? Impossible—)
Except that it wasn't. Improbable, perhaps, what with all that he had put the boy through for six years, but not entirely impossible. Either way, he wasn't supposed to be alive. That he remembered. He had prepared for his death. Everything was supposed to be in place. His death was supposed to push the Boy-Who-Lived over the edge with the unforgiving truth and cruel reality. To get the boy ready to become the ultimate sacrifice, the lamb led to the final, bloody slaughter.
(And it hurts, doesn't it, Severus? It hurts to be proven wrong, to be told that you were not right. That your belief and faith were misplaced. It hurts, doesn't it? You wholeheartedly trusted Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore and he lied right to your face.)
He had failed, though. Failed, and miserably at that since he could still feel phantom pains of a bite that was no longer there, proof that he was still very much alive. Breathing. Existing.
What a disappointment.
(Once more, bleed for me. Suffer for me. Prove that you are the better person—that you are braver, stronger than all of this. Protect her son, and someday, someday, you will be—)
Figures—promises spoken were never worth the amount of air it took to utter them. At least not the ones that were made to him. Typical.
(You were wrong, Albus. You were wrong, Voldemort. You were wrong, but neither the living nor the dead have any shame, nor any remorse or even an ounce of regret. Magic and power and longing—did you see the trail of innocent blood or did you just ignore it?)
Was it really so horrible of him to wish that the boy would stay alive? That Potter would have the thought to at least run? Eighteen years of protecting/saving/rescuing the boy and all to arrive at what? To Harry Potter's unexpected death?
(Didn't you promise you would save him? That he would at least live even though his mother is dead? So why—)
Hadn't he tried? Hadn't he tried his best? Why was it, then, that he had so spectacularly and disastrously failed?
No matter. He'd just make sure to change it so that the nightmare of the future that was supposed to come never did. It would end before it even had a chance to begin.
Severus Snape was still a young girl lying on a bed in an old bedroom. Timetravel should have been impossible. She didn't particularly care if it was. Her eyes watered.
Everything was still wrong.
