„You fucking humans, you." Slowly, but steadily Snape's brain got a grip on itself. He felt nice. Warm. Fuzzy. And something else, a feeling, he couldn't quite pin down yet.
"All you do is destroy and kill, murder, slaughter and rape, abuse and hate." The voice was nice, too. It was a female voice, with a nice deep timbre in it. He could listen to it for hours.
"The fucking world wars weren't enough for you lot, no, you little 'special' magic-wankers had to make some wars of your own."
The feeling was pleasant in his bones but utterly foreign to his mind.
"All the lives lost or destroyed." There was so much hurt in her voice. "Why?"
Severus felt strangely compelled to give an answer although he didn't have much of one.
"And why do I still care?" Exasperation now coloured every syllable in her sentence. He heard a dry chuckle. "You." On word, so full of stealth. "You, would you be stupid enough to relive the wars?"
He now knew, what the feeling inside him was. He felt safe. For the first time in his life.
"Relive torture of body, mind and soul, sacrifice a peaceful death, just for the slight chance of relieving the misery for others."
Lily.
"Maybe righting your wrongdoings. But far more certainly just experiencing all your losses for a second time."
Lily, Lily, Lily.
"She is here, you know. And she has forgiven you. Death does that with people, they get all sentimental and understanding. Shifts your perspective if you're able to see everything. If you just want to re-join with her, you just have to let go of your past. Just die."
No.
"Ah, yes. You were never able to do that, were you?"
There was a pause filled with pure nothingness.
"You're a first, you know", her voice was silent now, contemplating. "To accept my offer. Your guilt must be quite strong. Albus Dumbledore, he refused."
The warm feeling began to drip out of Severus like liquid out of a sponge being squeezed tighter and tighter. The liquid was a dark, crimson red.
Red eyes. Staring at him. Daring him to lie but ultimately trusting him. Completely. Pain in his throat. The Weakness, coming with blood loss, a chilling pretaste to death. Red eyes boring into him. Lily. Death.
He was shook in the world of the living by harsh, calloused hands. They were buried in the front of his T-shirt he currently was wearing. His father was yelling something about Severus being a little girl for crying in his sleep. And yes, Severus' throat felt raw. Severus brought his hands up to desperately cling to his father's arms, whose harsh features now had a grim sort of satisfaction etched into them, whilst still shaking his son so hard that Severus head bobbed forth and back.
Finally, he threw Severus back on his little bed and growled lowly: "Don't you dare make so much noise again."
Severus came out of his stupor when the door closed behind the bulky man's back. What just happened? His head hurt. Normally, when he had dreams like that, the injuries didn't linger into his awakened state. And he was certain to be awake now. Even though he was in his childhood room. Even though, when he looked down his body, he had the lanky composition of a teenager. He noticed that his breathing had quickened and slammed his Occlumency shields down. They were quite useful like that. Protecting one, from one's own thoughts. And feelings.
So… think, Severus. What happened? He stretched himself out on his bed and stared at the ceiling. Someone offered you to send you back in time. And here you are… He rose out of his bed to look at his desk, 7th year books, a quick glance out of his window revealed bald trees and snow slush on the streets. It seemed safe to assume that it was, indeed, not summer anymore. He remembered now. He had spent Christmas in Malfoy manor. And New Year's Eve. And then gone home. One could stand only so much of the famous Malfoy charm. He had arrived at night, nobody had noticed him. He noted his closed trunk on the floor. He bend down, opening the buckles of his trunk. Everything was still in there, still unpacked. He closed his eyes. He had just arrived. The next day… It had been early. He had searched for his mother.
Like in trance, he opened his door, and repeated his actions from so long ago. Searching the house, all the while staying clear of his father's cheerful presence. It had been strange that his father should start his drinking so early, that he had been so violent. Normally, this kind of behaviour was reserved for the late evenings, maybe afternoons. What he'd just seen came back to him. The face of his father violently shoved itself in front of his eyes. There had been tear strains. Severus paused with his hand on the doorknob for his parent's bedroom. He didn't want to open it. But he couldn't stop himself either. He watched his right hand turning the knob and then, slowly, pushing the door. It squeaked. As the gap between wall and door became marginally larger, it revealed an unmade bed. The sheets laid dishevelled on the mattress, one of the pillows had fallen down. Grey walls. Stained. With strains of mould. A lonely lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. And then, finally, the door was open. And Severus saw. The window. An overthrown stool in front of it. The dark silhouette blocking the light. His hands were shaking, and his back was drenched in sweat. There had always been this useless little hook in the ceiling of his parent's bedroom. As he was younger, Severus always wondered (loud, to the displeasure of his father) what this mysterious piece of metal was doing there. His mother had explained that people stored things like that. That this room probably hadn't always been a bedroom. Maybe a pantry. Or anything. That such a hook in the ceiling could be very useful. It seemed like the silhouette in front of the window swayed silently.
He turned around and ran for the bathroom. As he vomited into the loo, he noticed distractedly some pieces of carrot in this green-brownish mess. It seemed to go on and on forever until he noticed that he was merely dry-heaving now. He tried to calm himself and raised a still shaking hand to flush his puke away, and set there, for a moment, on his knees. It still stank of sickness in the small room and he somehow was standing in their corridor now and stumbled on.
It was raining. He didn't know where he was. The shaking hadn't stopped. His fingers had an interesting colour of violet, he noticed. The chattering of his teeth was quite loud and the goose bumps on his bare arms were almost violently prominent. It was funny, his fingers didn't seem to comply to his wishes anymore. He had his whole focus on trying to form a fist with his left hand (quite a difficult task), when he suddenly heard a cold but familiar voice. He looked up, confused. And saw Lily. He tried to smile but that didn't seem to work either. It was a nice hallucination.
The raining had gone away now. The cold also. He was sitting on a sofa, wrapped into a blanket and someone had placed a mug of tea in front of him. He stared at the hot liquid, wrapped his hands around its container. It hurt, the temperature gap between his cold fingers and the hot mug. But he didn't mind.
"What happened, Severus?" Her voice was there, again. He looked up, and smiled at her form in the doorway to the kitchen.
"Severus?", she sounded concerned and a bit impatient.
He wracked his brain. What did she want from him? "I'm sorry, Lily."
"What for?", her face immediately hardened.
"F-for everything.", his jaw chattering hadn't stopped completely: "For calling you th-that word." For getting your son killed.
She looked confused now and set herself on an armchair in front of him. "Severus", he looked up into her green eyes. Oh, how he had missed them. "What happened to you? I find you in nothing more than jeans and T-shirt, sitting in the snow in front of my house, almost freezing yourself to death. And…", she put one of her hands forward and touched his skull behind his left ear, her fingertips red, when she draw her hand back: "You're bleeding?" Severus remembered now. When his father shook him, his skull had connected to the wall briefly. It hadn't seemed important then.
"I fell.", his voice felt rusty from his lie: "It's nothing." He still looked into her eyes and suddenly felt the urge to tell her the truth: "Mum died."
Her reaction was immediately. She sat back, her eyes big and wide: "What?", it came out soft, disbelieving. "How?"
He swallowed and turned his head, looked out of the window, out on the small backyard the Evans possessed. It was bleak and empty, only a big crow sitting on the bald hedge. He focused his eyes on the black bird.
"She", he moistened his lips with his tongue: "She" his voice broke. He started again. "It was suicide." The bird now combed its feathers with his beak.
He startled and almost spilled his tea, when he felt a warm touch. He looked disbelieving down. Lily had laid her right hand on his left forearm. It was a long time ago that someone had initiated well-meaning human contact with him. His whole body was tense, his knuckles white around the mug of tea. He forcefully reminded himself that this was Lily, and she would never hurt him. Unless of course he deserved it. He allowed himself to relax gradually. She smiled sadly at his reaction but left her hand on his arm. He looked away. Her hand helped.
They sat like that for quite some time, in companionable silence.
The doorbell rang. Both of them flinched violently, Severus even jumped a bit. Lily excused herself to answer the door. Severus nodded, and played with his wand. Drawing it had been a reflex, after working for one year with the Carrows. The black wood shined in the light of the overhead.
There seemed to be a lot of people in the corridor, four or five, Snape's brain immediately estimated based on the noises. Having them all stuffed up in the small corridor should give him a slight fighting advantage and the backdoor should supply him with an amiable retreat option. He immediately scolded himself for these kinds of thoughts, Lily would certainly not mingle with a bunch of hostile individuals, being always vigilant had been his past, or his future, however you wanted to look at it.
But then he heard a familiar laughter composed of four separate ones; a shrill, nervous one, a quiet chuckle, and two self-assured howls of pure mirth. Mixed, for all the worse, with the giggling of Lily. He was up and at the backdoor before his brain had even formed a conscious thought. Stopped was he only by a quiet "Sev" from behind. He turned around and looked at Lily, who now stood in the middle of the living room. "I… I had invited them over, because mum and dad are visiting Tuney and the house is a bit lonely without other people. I mean, I originally only wanted to invite James but you know…"
"Lily", he interrupted her softly: "You're rambling again."
"Oh", she blinked: "Yes."
There they were now, standing in the nice, little, cosy living room of the Evans, Severus right next to their Christmas tree. They stared at each other, longing for their familiarity lost and at the same time willing the last pieces of it to go away.
"I'll", Severus swallowed and turned to the door. "I'll just go."
"It's still raining."
He laughed cynically: "Believe me, I'll manage. It is by far not the worst that has ever happened to me."
His swift exit left Lily no time to reply.
