So you skid into the afterlife still on fire, but somehow you get your leg back so it's all quite all right, really. What you weren't expecting to see, however, was another version of yourself. He looks quite dignified in his black robes. You do not. Because you are wearing blue jeans and a button-down shirt in very muggle style. Also, because you are still on fire, but to be honest that seems like a minor quibble at this point.

The other-you is bleeding from his neck. You ask if it was Nagini.

"Yes, actually."

Both of you say in unison: "Always hated that damn snake."

You laugh. The other-you doesn't even crack a smile. You take this as a sign that maybe he is just not quite as jolly about being dead as you are, or maybe not quite as on fire as you are, to be honest, it is getting rather hard to tell.

"How did you…?" The other-you asks, gesturing to you in a vague way. You understand immediately what he means, and reply that it's a long story. Then you consider. Sure, it's a long story, but you've now got all the time in the world, now, haven't you? You tell this to the other-you, and you laugh again (he does not laugh at all).

You wonder aloud where somebody can get some vodka in this damn place, then decide no time is better than the present to start in on your tale.

It all started, see, because you cared too much. That's been your hamartia, your tragic fatal flaw, that brought you down into this Aristotelian fallen hero status all over the midwestern United States. You had just been too damn clever.

In another universe, the also-you would decide that, opportunities and logic be damned, he was a wizard and was going to stay a wizard. A very sensible solution, right up until having one's throat gnawed on by a giant snake, anyway.

But you? Oh no. Not you.

You had the feverish idea to do this spy thing properly.

And there are few things more foolish or terrifying than that.

So you borrowed Dumbledore's old service revolver (as per required by all in service in the Great War, back when Voldemort wasn't a household unmentionable) and wholeheartedly abused the magical constraints of the Room of Requirement, and honestly you're still not sure how the room managed to fit a traffic obstacle course in it but you were thankful for the chance to learn to drive anyhow. Not that you admitted it at the time. Everything was muggle and hideous. Everything was filth you had to shower off at the end of the day.

Until the day you couldn't, of course. You weren't really sure what had happened, not until you saw the newspapers the next day, but Pettigrew (that rat) had given you a sly look and it set your teeth on edge. So you bolted. The trap sprang shut just behind you but by then you had apparated out into the wilderness to find the fifth cache of supplies - passport, cash, plane tickets, enchanted checkbook, and, lucky you, Dumbledore's service revolver.

Then you stopped being Severus Snape entirely.

What quite frankly alarmed you was how easy it was. Like flipping a switch. Severus Snape died back at Hogwarts, and Mykola Lytovchenko took his place.

You liked being Mykola Lytovchenko, to be perfectly honest. Mykola Lytovchenko could give soulful, mournful eyes at the immigrations officer. Mykola Lytovchenko could get a job as an honest day-laborer. Mykola Lytovchenko smiled and laughed at their jokes about 'damn wetbacks stealing our jobs' to show he was not like the ones they despised. Mykola Lytovchenko even had a date with the foreman's spinster sister coming up next Friday, set up after three rounds of beers and half a game of pool in the local bar after they'd all finished framing that house. Mykola Lytovchenko could blend into the midwestern background with minimal fuss. But maybe most of all, Mykola Lytovchenko didn't have to grade term papers, which you appreciated most of all.

But then you had to go and get yourself shot, didn't you?

[[ Author's Notes: I really have no idea what's going on here. So consider this a fairly oddball story - a curiosity, if you will. Chapters will be painfully short but I'm hoping to keep up the pace in writing them fairly frequently. Hopefully you enjoy but if you don't, that's fine too: I recognize this is a big break from my usual style. ]]