Rated 'M' for mature subject matter
Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Harry Potter or any characters therein, and I would like to thank JK Rowling for gifting us with such amazing creations that inspire the imagination!
Summary: A journey back to undo what should not have been. Part II of my story The After. SSxLL. Romance/Spiritual.
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The After part II
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Chapter one—Redux of Eight
He awakened slowly to consciousness feeling weighted… and aged. The first sensation Severus Snape registered was the lack of light. The next was the feel of cool, comfortable sheets surrounding him. He inhaled. The smell was at once familiar—drafty, damp, old—the smell of parchment and wood smoke, bedding and his own personal scent.
He was in the dungeons of Hogwarts, and he—wait a minute. He was in the dungeons?! Severus jack-knifed in bed, simultaneously grabbing his wand under his pillow and casting lumos. Yes, he was indeed in his dungeon quarters.
He looked over at his desk calendar and paled.
It was a week to the day that he was fated to kill Albus.
Severus closed his eyes on a groan, wishing he could be anywhere, anyone else. With a breath, all of the old memories and feelings came rushing back: the look of pleading on Albus' face, the blazing green light of the Avada, the soul-deep feeling of self-loathing and disgust. All of it there for him to remember; all of it he would be compelled to re-live again.
How was he going to be able to do this—repeat it all again? He was alone. The most reviled man second only to the Dark Lord himself in the Wizarding World.
He inhaled deeply and pushed the wayward emotion down. It would not help him now. No, now he needed to plan. He would be forced to kill Dumbledore in a week's time. Severus thought of the fate that awaited the wizard in the after.
Hell.
There were many times over the years that he had gladly wished him there, had cursed and berated him for his manipulation, his machinations, his secrets and plans. But after experiencing it first hand, Severus knew he would not wish hell on his most hated enemy. Not even Tom Riddle himself, and that was saying something.
What could Dumbledore believe of himself that he would condemn himself to eternal damnation?
For that matter, how does one choose to go to hell anyway?
He wished, for the first time but surely not the last, that he had asked more questions , gotten more answers from Luna.
Luna.
Severus closed his eyes and inhaled deeply remembering the smell of her sun-drenched skin and cherry-blossomed hair, the feel of her quickening and pulsing around him as he embedded himself deep within her softness, the cradle of her warmth. And how she would give tiny, breathless gasps each time he thrust—No!
Not in this reality.
Here, she was his student and he her professor. They were not equals. She would not remember him. And this was yet another sort of hell. He snorted. Yes, the celestials in all their infinite wisdom saw fit to allow him to keep his memories—all of them—and yet, she could not, would not remember.
Not until after.
Oh, how the thought made him ache. He heard a small sound of despair, and realized with a start that it was coming from himself; to have her so near and yet be so unattainably far.
He thought about the whole sordid mess; he had chosen the life of Severus Snape for a reason.
But why?
He dove into memories of his past lives to find the answer.
His previous life—life eight, the first attempt before the life of Severus Snape— had been spent as a monk in Medieval England. Sworn to a vow of celibacy, Severus had found sanctuary and structure among the day-to-day goings-on of the monastery. He had spent his days writing and drawing; his nose pressed to the page, huddled as close to the tallow candle-light as the vellum would allow.
He had not had magic.
He had seen her once; a woman and her babe requesting sanctuary. She had the child pressed to her breast, her hair the color of spun gold.
He had instantly fallen in love with her.
But those were dangerous times, just as dangerous as— and even more barbaric than— the atrocities committed by the Dark Lord presently. And the monastery refused to house her, refused to protect her and the babe.
Going against his vow to God, his vows to his brothers, Severus snuck out of the monastery and went to find the woman. He found them huddled under an old oak tree. The woman was starving, the babe seeking sustenance from a dry well.
He remembered her eyes, so luminous, so poignant with suffering, and he had shown her the abandoned thatch cottage that belonged to his brothers.
And daily, Severus had brought her food, brought the babe milk. But for the case of the babe, it was too little, too late. She died two weeks into his care. The woman, however, was stronger, and through his sustained nourishment, she began to quicken back to life.
Severus drew breath, coming back to himself, unready, unwilling to remember the rest.
Did he not have a good memory of life spent with Luna? He pushed himself to remember further back, more.
In life seven, they had been partners in the future: a future where magic was rendered obsolete in the face of humanities' technological advancement. Human's individual life spans were equal to, and perhaps longer than, the average wizard's. He was magical. She was not. And yet, they had taught each other so much in the realms of quantum vs. magical physics: two halves of the same whole.
They had accomplished much towards furthering humanity as a species. The debates they had—so spirited. How he would explain that magic was innate in all of them, some more gifted conduits than others; and how she would counter that magic is just science as of yet unexplained. And how she would kiss him in frustration as he would quote her own facts back at her, and how she would show him that even she was capable of manifesting an outcome through the shear will of wanting it to be so.
In that life, they had lived in marital bliss for decades, Luna following Severus through the veil when he died naturally in his sleep as an old man, her synthetic heartbeat syncopated to stop with his.
Those thoughts comforted him, the good times.
Severus blinked. That was the future. A great span of time into the future.
And yet, here he was in the past…humanity's current present. Time, it seemed, didn't matter in the after. History really was a mystery as it could be revisited and revised again and again. The present and future all constructs within the arena.
And this.
This is why she lectured him.
Shaking his head, Severus thought about what he knew to be true regarding the after, the celestials, and his place within it.
Item the first: He was on life eight. Upon the death of Severus Snape, he completed life eight and graduated to life nine—which was to have been the same as Luna, his soul's twin or other half.
Item the second: Luna came back in an act of foolishness, or desperation pending on the point of view, to help him accomplish his goals for life eight so that he could move on to the next one without committing suicide and having to complete this life over. Luna successfully completed life nine and was supposed to graduate to a higher plane of existence which possibly would not have included his own. She was not thinking of their possible separation, but instead was thinking of the state of his soul.
Which led him to…
Item the third: The suicide she had dreaded did not happen. But hell did—a worse fate.
Severus' soul chose to go to hell. But why? What really did he know of hell? Focusing, he recalled what Lily had said in the after: You must understand that Hell is not a place one is assigned to go to when one dies... It is a place a soul chooses to go: a kind of greater all-encompassing punishment that lasts eternity. Once the soul believes it belongs there, there is no coming back.
Okay, so what did that really mean in his case?
Luna had rescued him, but wait—was that right? She had insisted it had taken them both—him to recognize and want to leave, her to locate and extract him. So he had recognized he didn't belong in hell. He had wanted to stop the torture; he had wanted to leave.
Which had in turn redeemed his soul.
But what of Albus?
Putting away his mental factsheet, Severus' jaw hardened as he thought of what he would have to do in a week's time.
In a week's time, he would be consigning Albus Dumbledore to hell. He couldn't do it, not knowing the fate that awaited him in the after.
And so, Severus mentally prepared another list.
Item one: Find some way to convince Albus his soul does not belong in hell.
Severus snorted and closed his eyes. How in hell was he supposed to do that? Even to him, it sounded woo woo out there ,and Severus Snape did not do 'woo woo'.
Item two: Collect the bits of the Dark Lord's soul that remain undestroyed.
He searched his room. The urn Luna had given him was not there. But wait, there hidden under the bedclothes. Flicking a wrist, he turned them back to reveal the silver container. Picking it up, he hefted it once again. It was heavy—dense; its properties unknown to him as it was made out an alchemical substance distinctly unfamiliar.
He examined it closely. It was some kind of alloy metal. white. There were markings in a strange language—it looked almost like sanskrit, perhaps farsi? Grabbing his wand, he cast a revealing charm on it, unsurprised when it yielded naught. He tried a translation charm, and as he watched, the words on the urn changed but were still incomprehensible. Examining it further, he saw no other recourse but to try and open it manually. Casting a low-level protection charm on himself, he tried to pry the lid. It wouldn't budge.
Item Three: Figure out how in hell the damned urn was supposed to work.
Setting it down, he resolved to contemplate the mystery of the urn at a later time.