The usual disclaimers stand guard.
Based on "Possession" by Sarah McLachlan and a myth about Land's End.
I would really thank my wonderful beta ProfessorWannabe for all her help and hints.

When I close my eyes

He was standing next to the ruins of a magical place. The landscape was dreary, consisting of stones, rocks, a few puny bushes and patches of grass. The wind was whipping coldly and without mercy.
He could hear the sea waging its endless war against the ragged rocks; he walked to the edge of the cliff. The air was heavy with the smell of the sea. He looked down. The seaspray surged washing over the rocks. He could feel the sea's unrelenting severity.

Unrelenting severity, his lips curled. This was his very own and most prominent trait which was even manifested in his name.
He gazed at an invisible spot on the grey, washed-out horizon. Dusk was approaching; darkness would conquer the land quickly because at this time of year, the day could not withstand the might of the night. It was his season; dusk was the time of his birth – it made this place magical all the more.

He licked his lips, tasted the salt and closed his eyes while the cold wind had its way with his hair. A particularly sharp gust of wind penetrated even the heavy fabric of his heavy woollen cloak.
He merely stood there, listening to the power of the elements, allowed them to work their very own brand on magic on him. The rhythm of his heart slowed considerably. It did not take long for him to hear it.

A bell.

He heard the lament of people from a different time. Then, quietly but drawing nearer, a familiar voice filled with yearning. He shuddered.

"Severus, my Severus. I can feel your warmth. Are you here now? I have missed you, missed you so much."

He registered a profound coolness that was rapidly taking hold of his insides, travelling to the outside, surrounding him and caressing his skin.

He sat bolt upright, realizing right away that it was cold and dark. His hand was shaking slightly when he reached for his wand.

"Lumos!" he said the word more loudly than necessary in the hope of weakening the intensity of the dream, but his voice had sounded oddly unreal. He felt as though two realities had been mixed and were now separated by force, albeit not very effectively so that some of the dream's tendrils and remnants were still sticking to the here and now.

Snape pointed the wand at the candleholder, which was standing on the table in the middle of the room. He spoke the spell; the five wicks ignited immediately. The flickering of the flames gave the illusion of motion where there was none, but Snape did not notice it because he buried his face in his hands for a few seconds. His hands had stopped shaking, but his mind was still reeling.

He had been there again. The place he had not visited for two decades – except in his dreams. He knew from experience that he would not find sleep anymore tonight, so he got up and made himself a cup of coffee. If he were not able to sleep, he would at least be fully awake. Now he felt as though cobwebs were keeping him from forming one clear thought.

While he was waiting for the water to run through the filter, he walked to his bookshelf. In the corner of his eye, he thought he had seen some movement. He turned his head, but he could not see anything. The flickering of the candles and his strained nerves must have caused the illusion. Irritated with himself, Snape walked back to the small stove and waited for the rest of the water to make its way into the pot of coffee before he poured himself a large cup. For a short moment, he considered grading the Third years' essays, but some part of him struggled steadfastly against going near his desk, instead he stood at the dungeon window and looked up.

It was a beautiful night, it was still cold but one could sense the first subtle indications of the approaching spring. The air would be milder soon and the nature would be reawakening from its state of hibernation. Flora and fauna would come back to full life. Just then, Snape had a feeling of foreboding.

You will not live to see it.

Instinctively, he blinked and the irrational shadow of foreboding was gone.

He stood by the window for a long time. Every now and then, clouds covered the pale face of the moon.
Snape watched and listened, drank the warm coffee in measured sips. He allowed the tranquillity to sink in, embracing the blanket of silence into which Hogwarts was tucked now.

Severus Snape loved the night more than any other time of the day, mainly because the majority of all loathsome creatures were asleep. The days were always filled with disturbing quantities of unrest brought about by cheeky adolescents, the nights however were his secret sanctuary. This was the reason he found perverse satisfaction in prowling the school after curfew – to hand out detentions to those who dared disturb the sacred hours.

Right now, he wished for the world to stop turning because everything was perfect. It was cool, his mind was not clouded anymore, the night was delightfully peaceful and the coffee left a pleasantly bitter aftertaste in his mouth. Right now, he found himself in a rare state of an almost blissful equilibrium.
Then it happened without a warning.

A cool breeze caressed his cheek. Someone whispered his name He started, reinvigorated his senses and tensed as though expecting an attack. Several minutes passed in which Snape barely allowed himself to breathe.

Nothing happened.

He forced his body to relax again, somewhat irritated about being a victim of his own imagination for the second time that night. Had he fallen asleep standing at the window? His mind gave a very quiet but nonetheless very firm veto to that thought.

Excessive imagination had never been one of his problems. Up to now, Snape had been calling five infallible senses and a very reliable sixth sense his own. Moreover, the sixth sense was just sending out another warning, which made the hair on his neck stand on end. Instinctively, his grip on the warm cup of coffee tightened. He could smell salt and the sea, felt an ice-cold wind blow through his air, taking away his ability to breathe. He heard the distant sound of a bell, yet around him, he still saw the dungeon, although it appeared oddly two-dimensional and blurry.

A violent jerk went through his body when he tried to move back to the familiar plane of reality.

The cup of coffee felt like an icicle in his hand and his ragged breath was visible against the chilly air. A cape of gruesome, very unearthly cold wrapped itself around his body. Realization struck like a bright, harsh lightning.

She was here.

He let the cup drop when its cold was burning his skin. The cup and the now frozen black contents shattered into thousands of pieces as they hit the stone floor, but Snape did not even notice it. He gasped a breathless No!; and his mind yelled in agony and then shut down.

The cold, the wind, the smell of the sea disappeared instantly. Snape steadied himself by putting one hand to the wall. He was panting heavily; his head bowed towards the floor. Then he felt his stomach rebel and hurried to get into the bathroom.

Minutes later, he was half lying on the closed toilet lid, exhausted and shaking with cold. The bitter taste of coffee and bile was occupying his mouth. A voice told him it would be wiser to go back to bed, but he could not even muster enough strength to give his muscles the respective orders. After a while, his exhausted body fell limply to the side and yielded to the overwhelming demand to sleep.

Snape opened his eyes and gasped. His head hurt, his mind was wrapped in a hazy mist. The cold stone floor only increased his uncomfortable situation. He was freezing and his bladder was filled to capacity.

Slowly, Snape rose and coughed with the effect that his headache and the pressure on his bladder heightened to an almost unbearable point. Mechanically, he went through his morning ritual: He urinated, undressed and climbed into the shower. Some survival instinct caused him to use cold water first, increasing the temperature only gradually.

Half an hour later, he stepped out of the shower. His physical sense of well being had increased significantly after spending almost twenty minutes under the scalding hot shower, but when he wiped the steam from the mirror, he was shocked by his reflection in the mirror.

Last night had obviously drained a lot more of his substance than most of the Death Eater gatherings – undoubtedly, because last night's events were almost impossible to explain, even by wizarding standards.

She was dead.

He knew she had not returned as a ghost. They had often talked about it because back then death had been lurking around almost every corner of the Wizarding world. They had both agreed that becoming a lingering spirit was not an option. They had stood near the edge of the cliff and sworn to each other not to return but to discover the next world and everything it had to offer instead. Laughing, they had pledged to wait for the other in the afterworld. Then Snape had opened his warm cloak and spread his arms, she had snuggled up to him and he had felt her body pressed tightly to his, wrapped in his warm cloak. The kiss that had followed this loving gesture was deeply etched into Snape's memory. In rare, but nonetheless cherished, moments he still feasted on the memory of her soft lips and her passion.

Less than a year after the kiss, she had died in his arms with a smile on her lips and a whispered promise, which had broken his heart and mended it again.

Last night's events must have been caused by stress. This realization did not calm Snape down at all. This term everything was running exceptionally smooth. The few Death Eater meetings were not exceedingly straining because the Dark Lord was still in the stage of planning minutely timed attacks. Snape's instincts told him that the reason for last night's strange events was to be found in depths he preferred not to dive into.

On this morning, Snape ate his breakfast so mechanically that Dumbledore raised an eyebrow in a silent enquiry. Snape ignored him wilfully.

With every passing hour, the minutes seemed to stretch into small eternities. If the students thought that the end of potions lessons could not come soon enough, they would be surprised to know that their teacher also longed for the day to end which had started out so discouragingly bad.

When the last student let the door of the Potions classroom slam shut behind him, Snape did not waste a second to ward the door. He seriously doubted anyone would feel the need to talk to him anyway. Head of House or not, he was in no mood for any kind of counselling. He sighed and did something wholly uncharacteristic: he sat in his chair, closed his eyes and did not move until it was time for dinner in the Great Hall. He dimly noticed that the light grew sparse around him. He heard the faint sound of shoes one floor above him, there was the odd laughter or shouting of a student, but Severus Snape only sat in his chair unable to relax the tense muscles, incapable of banning the pictures from his head.

Dinner oddly resembled breakfast and lunch. Snape ate indifferently, oblivious to taste, Dumbledore's concerned looks and generally everything that happened around him. Snape retired to his office as quickly as he could.

With accusatory urgency Snape's sense of duty made itself heard, so he prepared a large pot of coffee, opened a device which resembled a triptych(1); it showed an orchestra. He requested Beethoven's ninth symphony before he sat down at his desk and began grading essays while the musicians were playing.

It took the first three scrolls of parchment until Snape had found his usual level of concentration, after the eighth scroll his eyes were stinging, one quarter into the ninth scroll the lines were blurring in front of his eyes. Snape put the quill aside. He drank a sip of coffee, rubbed his eyes and restricted himself to listing to the music for a little while. He drank a few more sips and felt his muscles relax at last. He closed his eyes to concentrate before resuming his task. When he opened his eyes, however the breath was knocked out of his lungs. It was as though a fist had hit his solar plexus with full force, for a second everything blacked out. He gripped the table and gasped.

The letters of the essays had rearranged themselves; this was not an essay about the side effects of wolfsbane anymore.

It was a poem.

A part of his brain registered that the musicians were not playing Beethoven anymore. Instead, a seductive and melancholic tune reached his ears. He did not realize his lips were forming the words he did not know before laying his eyes on the scroll, yet the words were alarmingly familiar to him. This poem could have easily been his personal creed. Again, he felt a chilly, salty draught of air.

No!

For some breathless heartbeats nothing happened, it seemed the world had stopped turning. The things in his room appeared to be losing their shapes and shadows. A tremor went through Snape's perception and reality slipped back into its correct position.

He let his gaze roam his office checking carefully whether everything was as it should be. His black eyes were glittering in the candlelight. The musicians were playing Beethoven. The essay insufficiently described the side effects of wolfsbane.

Snape decided to drink Dreamless Sleep before going to bed. Under normal circumstances he was not fond of this potion, but this was a special circumstance therefore he was perfectly willing to take some more drastic measures to ensure a healthy and much needed amount of sleep.

Snape started awake in the middle of the night. At first, he was not able to determine the source for the disturbance of his sleep. One thing was certain: it had not been a nightmare. He listened into the darkness without daring to breathe. There in the dark lay something that eyed him intently. Snape could feel the touch of its lingering gaze. Yes, the gaze was almost tangible – it was dauting and penetrating.

Snape had difficulty suppressing a shudder because he did not know whether some ill-timed stroke of sick imagination was getting the better of him, but it felt as though a pair of black eyes were set on him, only waiting for him to show weakness. Snape's heartbeat quickened. His muscles tensed as he tried to penetrate the darkness that up to now had always been his ally.

Before he could panic, he felt a shift in the atmosphere. Something mysterious was going on here. The heavy gaze seemed to have moved away from him. It was still there but it was steadily getting weaker. Snape knew that no light in the world, whether it be of magical origin or not, would have allowed him to see what was going on in his room now. This battle --it felt like a battle of two unknown forces to him-- was not taking place on a visual plain of existence.
The unpleasant gaze thinned until it vanished completely.

Snape's sense of smell registered delicate particles; his brain processed the information and gave his body the order to relax, overriding his conscious desire to remain alert.

No threat. Familiar.

Snape's heartbeat slowed. Nevertheless, he listened carefully into the room's darkness. He still could not see anything but his nose took over where his eyes could not reach. The air was filled with a subtle presence he could not quite touch. It was protective, familiar, yet oddly cool.

"That's it," a voice said, "don't be afraid Severus. I didn't mean to hurt you. It's been so long – please forgive me…"

He knew the voice well and gave in to it; after all, she had managed to chase the sticky, bodiless gaze away. When his nostrils caught the barely noticeable smell of the salty sea and a faint whiff of her scent, a smile played his lips. He could feel her. After endless years, she was with him again at last. The familiarity of her closeness took the heavy weight of loneliness off him. The emptiness in his chest filled with soothing warmth. His rational thinking became a thin line on the horizon. He only wanted to hold her, to touch her, to love her. Oh, how he wanted to bury his face in her chest!

Snape felt at ease because right now there were no lies, no empty promises – only truth. The betrayals and the pain of nearly two decades were being washed away by her presence. It felt as though past, present and future were fusing, creating a safe haven in which he could rest.

Snape shuddered with pleasure when tiny gentle breezes were caressing his warm skin.

"Severus, oh Severus," the sweet voice whispered again.

"Aurora," he replied with difficulty.

Something soft and cool hovered only milimetres above the skin of his face. With every fibre of his being, he wished her touch could be real.

"I know, love. I know."

"Please …" he sighed, feeling a warm tear escape from the corner of his eye. His arousal throbbed painfully under the blanket.Snape threw back the covers, incapable of any rational thought and quickly rid himself of his nightshirt. Again, he felt a light breeze caress his skin. He squeezed his eyes shut and managed to conjure the image of her body in flesh and blood. The illusion worked, even if he had to restrain his hands from trying to grasp a physicality that did not exist anymore. It was difficult to not try and return her butterfly kisses. He drifted deeper into this wonderfully real dream. A soft groan escaped from the depth of his throat when teeth bit gently into his right shoulder and nimble soft fingers caressed his nipples. A delicious pain followed, caused by cool fingernails scratching both sides of his hips. A hint of a movement seductively circled his arousal. His fingers clawed the mattress convulsively and he felt himself being surrounded by a soft light, a warm, tranquil feeling swept the last vestiges of thought away from him.

This is what dying must feel like if the Hogwarts ghosts had described the process accurately, he thought dimly as he slipped into the realm of peaceful afterglow. His body perceived her scent more readily. The taste of her kisses was occupying his mouth. From far away he heard whispered words without being able to grasp their meaning.

"Warm. So incredibly warm, love."

He wanted to reach out for her but his arm felt too heavy. He did not have the strength to raise it. Her gentle voice recited the poem; he fell asleep when she murmured the last word of it.

The white garb humbly offered by the early morning light,

Set in the mist, feared and out of sight.

The countless windings of the path yet unknown,

Stirring dreams awake that were once not to be shown.

What fate had barred you from seeing is now to be revealed,

Humbly offered to you by the early morning light.

Snape lay sprawled in the sheets. His body was pleasantly relaxed until his surfacing consciousness won the upper hand. He sat upright when he remembered fragments of the dream. A lump formed in his throat. He had drunk a goblet of Dreamless Sleep Potion; so it could not have been a dream. However, it was completely out of question that this ... occurrence had been real. Snape shook his head.

From the physical point-of-view, he felt much better than yesterday. Then he recalled the faint memory of being watched by invisible, evil eyes, which had gauged him.

This memory caused an echo in the very rear chamber of his mind.

My personal chamber of secrets.

When he wanted to get up, he realized he was not wearing his nightshirt anymore. Unwilling to think about it, he pushed this fact aside and went to the bathroom.

He urinated and stepped under the shower, turning the hot water all the way up.

Snape groaned loudly in pain. As he looked down, he discovered scratch marks on his hips -- four on each side. His five senses dulled immediately, shutting out everything around him. The hot water sprayed in the back of his head and his shoulders, ran down his hair in a steady stream. Dimly he felt a low throb in his right shoulder. A bite on his shoulder. It had been real.

Snape swayed dangerously and supported himself by laying both hands on the tiled wall. His breath came in ragged gasps. More and more of last night's fragments were surging to the surface.

Yearning. Warmth. Trust. Sex…

At the same time there was this sombre, throbbing feeling of being drawn to the edge of an abyss.

She could not possibly be here. She could not create such hallucinations. It could only be him. He had to blame himself for all of this.

He felt something creep through his mind. A thought he could not grasp. Slowly and without too much force, he let his forehead hit the tiles, repeatedly as though trying to push the faint idea of a yet unfinished thought to the front of his head. It did not take long for the headache to manifest itself. Snape gave up, having gained nothing but a painful throbbing in his head. He turned off the water and stepped out of the shower.

The bathroom was filled with the steam. Snape wrapped a towel around his hips and made a step towards the mirror. He stopped, turned and opened the small window before making to move to the mirror.

His heart skipped several beats.

The steam on the mirror had turned into a thin layer of frost with a writing on it. A poem he had already seen and which he suddenly also remembered hearing -- recited last night by her voice.

With a very bad feeling, he stared at the lines on his bathroom mirror, hoping they would disappear into thin air or do him the favour of swallowing him whole. Slowly he raised his hand to wipe away the message.

It was a message.

The moment his skin came into contact with the cold surface, he knew what it all meant. Everything was perfectly clear now.
The white garb could have been a wedding dress, but the way it was described, it was a shroud – his shroud. He had no proof for it, but deep inside he knew that Death had set its eyes upon him last night. The early morning light – Eo in greek, Aurora in roman mythology. She had returned as a messenger, she would also happily be his guide to the next world. That's what they had promised each other.

He wiped the frost of the surface and was not surprised to see her face reflected in the mirror. She was as beautiful as she had been. He smiled; she nodded and smiled back.

She wanted him to know about the danger ahead; this was her gift to him. Could he really meddle with fate? Was he allowed to change it? Moreover, if he was allowed to change it, and indeed could change it, … would he want to? She had given him the freedom of choice.

These thoughts kept him occupied on the way to the Great Hall.

He took a few bites, lost his appetite and picked at his food as though the scrambled eggs and the bacon on his plate contained the answers to his questions.

He felt the weight of a hand press on his left shoulder. Dumbledore bent forward slightly. "Severus, a word if you please?"

It was not really a question; it was a request. Snape nodded jerkily, stood up and followed Dumbledore into the Headmaster's office.

Dumbledore motioned Snape to sit down before taking a seat himself. The Headmaster folded his hands on the desk and waited.

Snape knew exactly why he was here but did not attempt to start the conversation. The room was silent except for the sounds of Dumbledore's instruments on the spindly-legged table.

When the Headmaster realized that Snape was not about to say anything, Dumbledore cleared his throat.

"Severus, is there anything you'd like to tell me? I had the impression that of you are little more distant than usual. Ah, maybe 'preoccupied' would be a more fitting word. Maybe I can help you with your problem, for I gather, the source of your preoccupation is indeed a tricky problem."

Snape shook his head. He bit back a remark that at the age of almost forty, he would be able to sort out his problems by himself.

He saw Dumbledore's blue eyes cloud with concern. Snape could not help himself and shielded his mind with occlumency. The Headmaster kept the eye contact for a few more seconds but Snape remained impassive.

"You know that my door is always open, Severus," Dumbledore said in a fatherly tone.

Snape nodded curtly.

All of a sudden, he wished he could tell Dumbledore everything but he felt that this matter required his own decision. After all, this was his life. He truly respected the Headmaster for all he was and most of the things he represented. Dumbledore had been his mentor in the last two decades, but even the best mentor would never be able to replace the loving embrace of a lover, the taste of home and hearth and maybe children.

When Snape left the Headmaster's office, he was smiling.

She had been with him last night, had touched him and loved him. He had let it happen and realized he was now closer to the dead than to the living. As soon as he was conscious of that thought, he felt her presence.

Teaching turned out to be easy, although he would have preferred to sit in his private quarters, to bask in the knowledge of her presence and to talk to her. He wanted to listen to her voice, but he was patient. They still had lots of time, a small eternity and beyond.

In the evening, he heard the bell and the voices from the past. He did not panic this time; he only listened. After a few minutes, he felt a burning pain in his left arm. He had not made the decision yet.

Que sera sera.

He left the castle and walked to the Forbidden Forest, his head held high. The air, the ground and the night felt surreal to him. Distant. At the edge of the forest, he took a deep breath.

She will be there when I close my eyes and that is all that truly matters.

With that thought on his mind, he disapparated to heed the Dark Lord's call.

-End.

1 triptych: picture or relief carving on three usually hinged panels, often found in churches