The first thing Severus Snape noticed was that he was relaxed. It took him a moment to recognize the feeling, as he had not experienced it in a very long time - decades, it seemed, and probably was so. The second thing was that he was lying in an almost indecently comfortable recliner which was tipped all the way back. It was all black leather except for a bright red something he could see out of the corner of his eyes. The third thing was that he was noticing very few things. This was alarming. He was a spy, he thought vaguely, unsure of how he knew that, and spies were supposed to notice things. But his brain felt sluggish (there, a fourth thing) and he could not get it moving.

'Severus Snape?' A woman's voice interrupted his thoughts. He sat up quickly, or rather, pitched his shoulders upward in a vain attempt to shift his weight away from the soft black leather.

'Not a big fan of core work?' The bright voice said again, a touch of laughter present now. The sound of amusement triggered something in Severus' mind and he glared at the ceiling (there was a ceiling. Fifth thing), a hot wave of embarrassment and anger rushing over him. He blinked, confused. Why was he so upset?

'Don't be concerned,' the chipper voice went on. 'This is normal procedure for cases like these.'

'Cases like what?' Severus asked, and was pleased to find he could speak.

'Oh, lives of suffering, humiliation, fear, anguish, loathing - both towards self and others - , guilt, general angst, and misery,' the woman said cheerfully. 'Often ending in a painful and anticlimactic death.'

'Ah.'

'We've removed all of your memories and drugged you quite heavily. The transition can be a distressing one.'

Severus didn't say anything for a long moment, processing this. They couldn't have entirely removed his memories, he thought. Clearly there was something left for him to react so strongly to her joke. The realization pleased him. Awful though his life sounded, it had been his own. And his brain had to be recovering if he was having realizations. Even as he thought this, he had another: he was dead. That was... he would sort out how he felt about that later.

Something was still bothering him, though, and Severus frowned. 'And drugged you quite heavily,' the woman had said. The word 'drug' sounded off, both familiar and strange, like he had heard it before but it didn't mean anything.

Severus' mind was slowly beginning to pick up momentum, and he decided to try noticing more things. He turned his head to the right. There was a wall. It was a hideous shade of purple, and the paint was cracked and peeling where it met a scuffed wooden floor.

He turned his head to the left. The view was identical on this side, save for the woman whose voice he had been hearing. She was neither tall nor short, fat nor skinny, and her face was perfectly unremarkable under a cap of short brown hair. Severus hated her on the spot. Perhaps it was her amusement at his expense, or cheer when describing the wretched life he had apparently led, or perhaps it was the fact that her perfectly unremarkable face was set in a bored expression. How dare she, Severus thought furiously, another inexplicable wave of anger hitting him. She raised her eyebrows as his face contorted with anger.

'Either Sara did a sloppy job on the memory wipe again or you're just an unpleasant person,' she informed him, her voice still pleasant. Severus frowned harder.

'Could be both, I suppose. Great.' She did, in fact, sound like she thought it was great, though her face remained blank and distant. Severus opened his mouth to ask a question. She held up her hand.

'I need to explain the process before the drugs wear off more. I am going to return your memories slowly, starting with the worst. If you handle it poorly, you'll be drugged more before I continue. Then - '

'You're a Muggle,' Severus interrupted, pleased with himself for figuring out why 'drug' should register so strangely. He was a wizard.

The woman muttered something that sounded like 'Sara, do your fucking job properly.' For the first time, her tone was not chipper.

'Yes, yes, I am a Muggle. Now - '

'Why - '

'Do not interrupt!' she snapped. She stood up abruptly and went to a door that had not been there a second ago. There were voices Severus couldn't make out, then the woman came back inside, looking smug. Severus stared at her for a moment, wondering, then felt a haze creep over his brain until he felt as slow and useless as he had upon waking. His head fell back and he dimly registered her voice.

'Now,' she said brightly, 'where were we? Ah, yes. After your memories have returned, we'll have a go at trying to get you able to move on. That may take some time, so you needn't worry if it doesn't happen right away...' her voice droned on, Severus slipping in and out of consciousness.

Then something began to creep into his mind. There was a test, and a lake, and a small group of boys sprawled under a beech tree, and in spite of his muddled brain and the still missing pieces of memory, dread and horror rose in him. Then there was a redhead girl and she was shouting and he snarled at her and a small part of him said it wasn't real, it was the past, but the rest of him was caught again in the regret and anger and humiliation. His limbs jerked in the recliner.

It was over at last, it wasn't over, now there was a voice saying, 'he killed her. The boy...' he didn't listen further. A snakelike face and red eyes, fear, so much fear, voices shouting in a rundown old house, the growl of a werewolf, a snake and teeth sinking into his neck - he spasmed again, the fog was lifting and the pain grew sharp and clear. Severus heard the woman say, 'it's all right, they'll be better now,' in that perky voice, and he nearly screamed with rage.

She was right, though, the next wave of memories were less agonizing, though still unpleasant: lonely evenings in his rooms, teaching classes of ungrateful brats, the sight of Harry Potter, conversations with Dumbledore, and here, for the first time, was a feeling other than pain.

Severus' mind was close to being clear now, and he experienced fully his time with Lily, the focus he had felt bending over simmering cauldrons, the satisfaction of perfecting a new spell. These were over too quickly. Bitterness surged in Severus as he opened his eyes.

'How are you feeling?' the woman asked. He slanted his eyes toward her, trying to communicate in his glare just how little he had enjoyed the past - he didn't know how long it had been. It couldn't have truly been as long as his lifetime, but it felt like it. She just smiled benignly.

'How are you feeling?' she repeated.

'What is the point of this?' He demanded to know.

'Of what?'

'You know what!' he snapped, his irritation rising.

'I'm afraid I don't. The point of giving you your memories back? Taking them in the first place? Dying? Death? Life?' With every question Severus' frown deepened and the faint smirk on her face grew.

'Removing and returning my memories in this fashion,' Severus bit off. 'Would you like me to be more clear?'

'No, that's fine,' she said easily. The woman sat up straighter and folded her hands in her lap.

'Most people, when they die, have their whole life flash through them. They see, hear, and feel everything again, and once it is over, the way they feel about their life affects whether they move on or wait around a bit longer. Of course, some take the third option and become a ghost, but they are not relevant to our discussion.' She waved a hand dismissively. 'Many are reasonably content with how their life turned out and their souls immediately move on and are at peace. Others take longer to come to that point and may require assistance. Then,' she cleared her throat and continued, 'there are those like you, whose lives, as I mentioned, have been - '

'Miserable, awful, very bad. You don't need to run through the whole list,' he growled. She merely smiled.

'Experiencing that all in one rush leaves the recently dead in a deeply traumatized state wherein it would be virtually impossible to feel positive emotion about one's life and therefore move on. So, we - '

'Who's we?'

'Seize your soul before you have the chance to undergo the process,' she continued as though he had not spoken, 'make it lethargic and anesthetized, take your memories, and return them gradually and in worst-to-best order to give you the best chance of moving on.'

Severus sat quietly for a long moment, his mind trying to sort everything out.

'I really must ask again,' she continued, and the false cheer was back, 'How are you feeling?'

Overwhelmed was the first thing that popped into his head and Severus frowned. He detested feeling overwhelmed, it was usually a sign that the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Memories from his life sat like a dull, bitter stone in his chest, threatening to drag him down. He tried to distract himself with more questions for her - who was she? Who had developed this process? - but just as he was opening his mouth to ask them, he heard his name and the world spun rapidly.

When it stopped, Severus realized he was in the Great Hall, hovering over a scene it took him more than a few seconds to process. Hundreds of people clung to the edges, watching the center of the Hall with a mixture of morbid anticipation and fear. Dead bodies littered the floor, including that of - he gaped in shock - Bellatrix Lestrange.

All of that faded in importance almost immediately, however, when he saw Harry Potter and the Dark Lord circling each other, wands drawn. Potter was talking, and Severus scowled when he realized it was his voice he had heard, spilling to the Dark Lord and everyone around them his greatest secret, his most private feelings. Loathing for the black-haired boy boiled up in him. Had I wanted the whole world to know this, I would have told them myself, Severus wanted to shout at the boy.

Potter was still talking and the Dark Lord was responding, but Severus listened with only half an ear, instead scanning the faces of the gathered crowd for their reaction. He felt a familiar twinge of resentment when he realized that no one seemed to care, too busy watching the conversation taking place. He returned his attention to the two in the center just in time to see them raise their wands and shout spells. Sickeningly familiar green light flashed and doubled back with a bang, a wand flew high into the air, and the Dark Lord crumpled.

Severus blinked, and blinked again. The people watching were shouting and embracing, the boy was standing there alone and triumphant, and Severus blinked, a strange jumble of feelings washing over him.

The world was spinning again and he was back in the ridiculously comfortable chair. There was a cup of water in the tacky red plastic cupholder, and Severus drank from it mindlessly, too far out of his mind to remember to only drink what he was sure was safe.

The woman looked entirely unconcerned about his brief disappearance.

'How are you feeling?' Severus was going to kill her, he really was.

'I have just witnessed my private feelings shared with everyone who knew me. including the Dark Lord. How do you think I am feeling?' She contemplated him with a raised eyebrow.

'You are a terribly self-absorbed man, Severus, have you realized that about yourself?' He glared at her, though really, it was less satisfying when she didn't flinch like his students used to do.

Severus returned his gaze to the ceiling.

If he were being truthful, his rage at having his love for Lily exposed to the world was pale in comparison to that odd jumble he had experienced upon witnessing the Dark Lord's death. Severus had never been a very introspective man and it was difficult for him to examine it, pull it apart and try to understand.

Relief, he decided, that was there. An odd sense of letdown. Irritation, that it had been the Potter boy who killed him, even though Severus had known it would be that way, and even more irritating, a grudging sort of respect for the boy. And... he frowned, almost not recognizing the emotion for it had been such a long time since he had felt it. Triumph. Pride, even. He had done it, felled the man he hated and feared, who had killed the woman he loved. It strengthened even as he recognized it, and suddenly a doorway appeared beside the recliner.

Severus stared at it. It looked perfectly ordinary except for the fact that it was standing in the middle of a room and was filled in not with a door, but with a large piece of paper painted to look like a sun-dappled forest. The woman rose from her chair and came to look at it.

'Oh good, they changed the scenery. I was getting bored with the beach.' She turned to look at Severus and for the first time a smile of genuine delight and warmth crossed her face.

'That went much faster than I had anticipated,' she said. 'I'm very happy for you. Step through when you're ready.'

'What is on the other side?' Severus asked, his guard raised as if anticipating the Dark Lord would come lunging out. She tilted her head.

'I don't know for sure,' she admitted. 'Some have said peace, others nothingness, still others joy.'

Severus raised an eyebrow.

'People have returned?'

'Not truly. It is more... when those they love need them most, they are pulled back to this - ' she waved her hand around the room 'in-between place, where the barrier between living and deading is thin.'

'Deading?' Severus asked, not sure if he had heard her correctly. She nodded.

'What can they do here?'

'It varies depending on the situation. Once we had someone try to send a message to their loved one by disrupting the TV airwaves and broadcasting their favorite episode of I Love Lucy instead of the evening news.' Severus blinked at her. He barely understood half of what she had just said.

'Either way, it didn't work, so don't try it. Now,' she said briskly, 'I should leave you. Enjoy your eternal rest.' She left the room quietly, giving the doorway a lingering look.

Severus rose from the recliner and stood in front of the doorway. Surely it cannot be this simple, he thought, eyeing it suspiciously. He reached out a hand cautiously and poked at the paper. It yielded slightly at his touch and he pressed harder until it ripped. Nothing happened. Severus extended the tear and peered through.

There was nothing on the other side. Not nothing in the sense of an empty room or an open field, but an absence of something. Severus felt he should be terrified of the void. Instead a sense of peace washed over him. He tore the paper entirely, leaving a hole for him to step through.

The last thing that Severus Snape noticed was that from the outside, the void smelled like lilies.