Part 3 – The Dragon
But if I know you, I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once
The way you did once upon a dream
– Sleeping Beauty
"So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings."
― J.R.R. Tolkien
"Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again."
– Tori Amos
Prologue - Float
She was dreaming.
No, she was in a dream world.
But, it wasn't that either.
Was she dead?
She didn't think so. Having been mostly dead once before, she remembered the way that felt … it didn't feel like this. That had felt like floating through air, heading towards the most beautiful light she'd ever seen, past the blackness flecked with copper that she'd wanted to escape into.
This felt odd, like she was underwater, moving through thick liquid with her hands tied behind her back.
There was light up ahead, but it wasn't the kind of light that made her think it was the end of things. That light had been also been welcoming and warm, almost like Severus's touch was whenever they made love.
Severus … she knew that name. Memories of sad, hopeful black eyes came to her … then the eyes were no longer sad, they were calm and happy, at least as happy as he'd ever let on to be.
If she were able to she would have smiled. She loved that man - she always had and she always would.
The moth and the butterfly would always fly together, in the end ...
Severus … and who was she?
Names came out at her from the thickness around her. Was she Serena Black or Lia Selwyn? Amelia Stanfield came to her mind as well … then Lia Snape.
That was who she was. Lia Snape.
And Severus was, and always had been, her husband.
Where was she now? And where was he?
Nothingness surrounded her, though the light was close, closer, so close it was almost in reach. She could see a face peering at her through it, though it was veiled with something that looked like mist. She saw dark green eyes, though they didn't look like Harry's …
Who was Harry?
Maybe it didn't matter.
She was drawn back to those incredibly dark green eyes, the color of the leaves during the summer. A face came to focus, a kind face surrounded by frizzy, brown hair, but it wasn't Hermione …
She smiled. She knew that name. Her best friend – the sister she'd always wanted.
But who was this, this odd woman whose eyes looked ten times larger than a normal woman's eyes, thanks to an enormous looking pair of glasses that perched on her face? She was so shiny, like the new, rebuilt school.
She remembered the old school, remembered who she was when she first walked through the halls at eighteen, looking for the dark man her mother had told her to seek out.
Professor Severus Snape.
Her husband.
Hogwarts.
France.
America.
Memory suddenly crashed into Lia's mind, and she wordlessly screamed into the liquid around her.
She remembered everything.
"Float, dear girl," the woman in the light said. "Concentrate and float. Free yourself from the physical body. Free your mind from its confines. You are stronger than you think. Free yourself."
The woman's voice was so odd, lilting and soft, but Lia concentrated on the words as though her life depended on it.
Maybe it did.
She focused on breaking free from the bindings, then realized that they were only in her mind. Her hands were free. The thick around her became thin, and she floated out of it.
But not to the light, not that light. It was there after all, but she ran from it and back to the real world.
No, she'd never go to that light.
Floating free, completely free, she sailed past the statues and the water, through the chasms and corridors.
Lia wasn't dead, not hardly. She was fully aware that she was very much alive.
But she was moving past her useless, corpselike body, trying to find a way to bring everything back together once more.
A/N: Not mine, no money (obviously). Let's go try to find the happily ever after, sort of.