Author's Note: This is a story I wrote for my friend Rosie, the Captain for Pride of Portree. She's having a tough time right now and is missing a loved one, so I decided that it's a good time for a certain dark wizard to visit her…

The Dreamer's Door

You don't remember falling asleep. That's ok, though. It hurts to remember.

Grief makes time move strangely. It lurches forward, hiccuping and skipping like a needle on a warped record. Always playing the same song.

Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.

Your heart is being squeezed in your chest by invisible fingers, tightening until you can bear it no longer and you want to scream, but nothing comes out, which is almost worse than screaming.

You can't think about it any longer or you will surely go mad.

You raise your head and look around you. You're on a train, which is odd, because you don't remember getting on it. It is clean and shiny and smooth, exactly how you imagine the trains of the future would look like if no one rode them.

And it is empty. Nearly.

He sits across from you. He's taller than you imagined he'd be, and far thinner. At first, his black cloak makes you think of something more frightening and skeletal, but he carries no scythe and his pale flesh covers his bones just fine, though you can see his collar bones poking out from the folds of the dark robes he wears.

"I've been waiting for you," he says, and his voice fills you with an almost hypnotic resonance, as though it speaks to your very soul, "Come, sit beside me for awhile."

His face is relaxed, kindly almost, though his dark eyes and hooked nose give him a fearsome appearance. You move with marked hesitation, but soon you are seated beside him and you can smell the hint of sandalwood and mint on his clothing, and hear the steady breaths he takes as regards you with eyes as dark as coal.

You want to ask him if it hurts. To die. To be gone. But then you realize that this is silly.

He's not real after all. None of this is.

"A very infuriating man who smelt of lemon drops once told me that just because something happens inside of your head, it doesn't mean that it isn't real," he begins, staring out at the blurred landscape beyond the windows of the train, "After all, what are dreams but a journey you take inside of yourself, don't you agree?"

You nod and cast your eyes at your feet, feeling somewhat self conscious next to him. After all, you've written about him before and part of you feels almost voyeuristic now that he is sitting so close to you.

"If you will permit me," he says, and you can hear the small smirk in his voice, "I shall be honored to stay with you until you reach your stop."

You nod again, feeling as though your tongue has swollen up in the back of your throat, making speech impossible.

"I was bitten, you see," he says ruefully, pointing to his throat, which seems to be unblemished, "By a godawful venomous snake. As far as methods of dying go, it was a bloody terrible one. Lots of blood and gasping and no dignity whatsoever."

You look up at him, studying the way his brow furrows and the way his jaw works up and down as he speaks. As you notice the minutiae of his movements, it breaks each of his actions down into a million separate parts working together seamlessly like a symphony of cells working towards an intended purpose.

You really want to touch his hair, but you don't dare.

He turns to look you and quirks up one side of his mouth in amusement.

"Interesting," he says, "You haven't said one word, yet you've got me running at the mouth. I would say that is quite impressive, quite impressive indeed. So then, do you know who you're going to visit?"

You open your mouth to answer and pause when you realize that you don't remember.

Not remembering makes the anxiety pool in your belly and you frantically try to think of exactly who is waiting for you at the end of the line, but his face eludes you, a fuzzy haze where a face should be. You worry, then, that you are forgetting. Forgetting someone who was precious to you, someone whose memory you promised never to forget.

"I apologize," he says mournfully, breaking you out of your reverie, "I have upset you with my probing questions. It doesn't matter where you are going. I have all the time in the world, after all. I knew that you needed me, and so, here I am. I have lost much in my own life, and while I can never understand your loss, I do understand the feeling."

You tell him about the horrible feeling in your stomach, the aching nausea that fills you from your toes to your forehead at the thought that you have forgotten something so important, and he places his hand on your knee so softly that you almost would not believe it was there if you closed your eyes.

"My mother died when I was in my final year at school," he says bitterly, his eyes meeting yours with an intensity that makes you instinctively want to look away even though you cannot, "She simply wasted away and we never found out why. There was no money for a doctor. My father saw to that with his drinking habit. I never got to see her one last time, either. She'd been buried a week by the time I returned to Spinner's End one final time. By the time my father was hit by a drunk driver on his way home from one of the many pubs in town-irony of ironies that was-I was so busy being a Death Eater that I hardly noticed. His drinking buddies apparently got enough together for a pauper's burial and made the arrangements. It was only when I received the deed to the house from the solicitor that I knew he was truly gone forever."

You find yourself placing your hand over his, perhaps in a show of solidarity at empathizing about his loss, even if it happened long, long ago.

And then, as though a switch has been turned on, you remember.

Everything.

And the heat and light in your head swells and you screw your eyes shut because they're burning with the loss that fills you.

You feel his hand squeeze your knee as a soft chord of notes plays over the train's loudspeaker, and he hands you something soft, a handkerchief, and you wipe your face gratefully, embarrassed that he's seeing you this way, but somewhat relieved as well, for you know that he knows exactly what you are going through.

And that makes everything just a tiny bit less impossible to bear.

"Your stop is next," he says softly, the warmth of his hand squeezing reassuringly on your knee, "I promise, I will be with you until the end if that is what you need."

You nod, fresh tears still leaking from your eyes and running down your cheeks. You dab at them with the handkerchief, which is made of the softest white linen you've ever felt in your life, and you do your best to compose yourself.

The train slowly comes to a stop and the doors hiss open with a pneumatic whine.

"He's been waiting for you," Severus Snape says, and you stand, hearing his robes rustling as he stands and shadows you, knowing he's staying close as you exit the doors and walk out into the sunlight, "For in dreams, anything is possible."

You stop and turn around to thank him, your voice soft but strong, and you tell him that you feel blessed to have met with him.

He smiles sadly and before you realize what he is doing, he's wrapped his arms around you in a comforting hug, and for just a moment, you let yourself believe that everything will be ok, even though you know you're not quite there yet.

"I hope to see you again," he says as he releases you, his mouth quirked upward in a snarky smile, "If only for your utterly rousing conversational abilities."

You find yourself cracking a smile despite yourself, and he steps back onto the train, his hand raised in a stiff and stationary wave as the doors close and the train flies onward towards its next destination.

Before you stands a lake with a thousand flowering trees. A bench overlooks the water and a familiar person sits there, waiting for you.

You take one step and then another, closing the distance between you. And your heart soars as he turns to wave in greeting and you realize that no one ever truly leaves you.

It is merely a matter of dreaming it so.