The earth was cold, the air damp with moisture. His fingers brushed something soft and smooth, his face laid upon the ground, sprawled ungracefully in the ghastly death that Lord Voldemort rewarded him for his 'loyal' services. Yet, he stood startled beside his broken body. It wasn't much, he'd admitted, but it was what he was since birth, and he disliked seeing his mortal shell contorted from Nagini's foul venom.
'Well, well,' he poked his own shoulder and amusedly discovered that his finger went right through. Then he frowned.
'Oh, to keep Peeves and Headless Nick as my eternal company...' serving no other need than a habit, Severus pinched the bridge of his nose in trepidation. What is he to do now, brew wispy potions in his afterlife?
Resigned towards eternal damnation, he looked around the chamber which he had met his demise moments ago. Both Voldemort and Nagini was gone, rushing to whatever the Potter spawn threw at him, no doubt. Boy was a pain in his neck, but Gryffindor's spirit run true, at least. Lily would've been extremely proud. A pang in his heart belied his one-sided commentary with himself.
'Lily...'
"Sev!" he turned, 'it couldn't be'. Lily, curls and smiles, exactly the way he met her once when they were young children, he explaining to her and 'Tuney' about the wizarding society. There was the light in her eyes that had haunted his dreams, waking and sleeping ever since, of one with pure heart.
"Come on, Sev!" the child tugged his hand, and he found that the fingers that grasped Lily's eagerly is as small as hers. He checked the rest of himself, his favoured black robes was gone, replaced with the Muggle clothes they all wore before they entered Hogwarts. He was wearing a grey sweater with NYC emblazoned on it and blue jeans, and he noticed that hers was a simple white T-shirt and pink pleated skirt.
"I am to haunt these walls a child?"
"No silly," giggled Lily.
"Why do you linger, here, Snape?" a voice called out from nowhere and everywhere. He immediately sought the source of this new voice.
"Hey Snape!"another cried out. There was the bane of his existence, James Potter, also a child waiting at the end of a tunnel made of light, 'now, where did it came from?'. Lupin, his wolfish grin, Sirius Black, despite being embodied as a child, his rackish appeal did not diminish one bit. All young children with gaiety and joy radiating like a lone lantern in the darkest caverns.
'Oh, I could just puke.'
He stood there like a statue, unsure of what to do. To linger with the familiar or move to a marshmallow land which does not appeal to him?
He hesitates...
A ghost wind teased the tendrils of his hair, and swirls slowly around him.
He hesitates...
A soft caress touched his face, and he saw Lily's forest green eyes beseeching, the same eyes that he last saw with his mortal eyes.
"Come with friends, Sev."
He took one last look at Severus Snape that was, and walked hand in hand with Lily Evans, into laughter and light.
----