The night had settled upon the body of Severus Snape faster than that of falling asleep. And with this notion, he valued it privately.
"Look… look at me…" He had said to Harry Potter before he slipped away. His insides had slowly grown cold, as if from the waist up, he'd slipped into icy water.
Severus Snape had never really been afraid of Death. Somehow, even in life, it had always been a part of his past, present, and future. Severus had felt as if he'd always lived in the shadow of Death. He felt bound and enslaved most of his life, never had he felt truly free, until now.
They had been Lily's eyes, precisely her eyes. All he had wanted was to see her eyes one more time. And he had. He was done with this life. He could go.
But something nagged at the back of his mind. Something that felt uneasy and restless. Here, as he took his last breaths, blood pooling in the back of his throat, he suddenly had a vision. There was a young girl wandering through the wood, she seemed lost and began looking around at her surroundings. The scene blurred momentarily before the girl pulled her cloak more tightly around her and began walking deeper into the wood. She kept her hood up until she reached a small clearing where the canopy of trees gave way to soft sunlight. Pulling down the hood, bright red hair spilled out and a soft face appeared. The girl looked down at the ground, curious as she found something interesting. She fingered the ground for a moment before pocketing something small and dark. She walked a small distance, before settling down in the grass and pulled out the object.
Severus could not see what it was but saw that the young girl held the object in her hand before clutching it to her chest. She closed her eyes as lips began murmuring something but Severus could not hear. She couldn't be more than eight but she seemed to be conjuring magic as if she were already learned.
Lily…. It must be Lily… he thought as the girl continued her chant.
Severus felt as if he could only relish this last hallucination as he died. It was all he had, and it would be all that he ever had. But suddenly, the girl opened her eyes and stared Severus directly into his soul. His mind flipped and the scene began dissolving.
"Again…" The girl murmured as if at the end of a tunnel. "Again…"