DISCLAIMER: I am making no money off this, and this site isn't either. This is purely fan-fiction written by a weird person who has absolutely nothing better to do than write this stuff. I don't own Harry Potter, Hogwarts, Snape, etc. J.K.R. does.
By the way, this story is written based on a prompt by my friend, is-a-palindrome. We actually both wrote a short story on it. Only mine got longer, for some reason. She posted her own version; look for it!
I have recently taken an interest in severely revising this story. This is the second edition of this chapter.
Chapter 1
After King's Cross
"Take--it--take--it," Snape gasped, attempting to stop the blood rushing from his neck half-heartedly with the back of his hand. If only Remus Lupin were here now, to lick the wound--the last of the Marauders would enjoy lapping up the blood of their long-cursed enemy. It would be a fitting epilogue to their measly existence, to have the weakest-willed of their brood, the most monstrous of the monsters, be the one to survive them all.
Good. The Granger girl had conjured a flask and Potter had collected the memories. Well, there's one more rotten job done.A wave or relief, cool and rich as sweet strawberry wine, penetrated his features and soul. He felt a reluctant pang of regret seize him nonetheless. It's Lily's son I'm looking at. Likely for the last time. If only I had been able to do more for him. Now, though, he had no more opportunity to do so.
He had to see the boy's eyes--no, forget that Harry was only her boy, they were her eyes all the same--and so he grasped at the teenager's sweat-ridden shirt with desperation.
"Look--at--me," he whispered, his coal eyes cornered those jade-green ones of Potter--no, not of Potter, of Lily. Just once more. One last image of her, through the blasphemous image of her son.
Intending to say something, his lips moved hesitantly, but the words did not come. In my dying breaths, it seems, eloquence fails me. Words always have been my advantage over others, but now I see how useless they really are. I commend those who never broached the study. Puts things rather into perspective. Conscious of pain seeping through his body, Snape felt his muscles turn completely limp--I've never felt so helpless--and his hand fell to the ground.
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .
He generally became aware of a certain serenity surrounding him, tranquility. Everything is so--so silent. I believe the pain has dissociated from me; that's auspicious. Peace and quiet--could be worse. But now is going to probably be my first glimpse of whatever I'm going to have to deal with for eternity, be it unending darkness, light, or a fourth-dimensional world. Hang on, Snape, you're about to have an encounter with destiny. With this nervous anticipation, Severus opened his eyes.
It startled him that he was upright; he had somewhat assumed he would be parallel to the ground amidst a claustrophobic darkness, even though logically he knew he could not be buried in a matter of minutes. He stood in a train station, King's Cross by the look of it. An oddity indeed. There's no other people here.
A train with a single coach sat patiently before him, neat, clean, and intact. It resided at a vacant boarding place Severus had never heard of, 38 113/365. He saw it was stuck neatly between 38 112/365 and 38 114/365, the numbers continuing up or down either way as far as his eye could see. Inexplicably, he drawn to the train, feeling as though he ought to board the coach without any feasible special reason to do so. The physical urge to step towards the coach was inconsolable.
He understood quickly, being a rather intelligent man, and the notion was not so frightening. It was May 2, 1998—113 days (he confirmed this with some mental math) since his last birthday on January 9th. 113 days out of a full year, or 365. If it were a leap year, it very likely would read 114/366. The 38 was accounted for in that he had completed 38 full years in his life cycle so far.
This was no uncanny coincidence. He knew there was no other alternative. This is solely my boarding station, unless someone else with my birthday and deathday dies in the next few hours. How neatly organized they must be in heaven, and what a hell heaven must be if one is a particular aficionado for entropy. Not as though he had such predilection when it came to disorder; he preferred neatness in his potions laboratory, and that spread to the rest of his daily habitat. Nevertheless, at once, he felt an inordinate fear of ascending into the coach.
There was not much he could do to fight the impulse which forced itself upon him. Unconsciously, he while he pondered had been walking, and now quite unreasonably he found himself at the coach's entrance entrance. He barely snapped his limbs into his own control before his foot lighted upon the rung of the cold silver stairs. What, am I no longer master of my own self? He had not realized that he was advancing on the coach until now, and he shivered as he withdrew his boot. However, as presently, he came nearer and nearer to boarding, his mental faculties raged.
I suppose if I walk backwards, I'll just be walking forwards, like Alice in the looking-glass world. He tried it, and found instead that he could operate himself in the usual fashion, devoid of any tricks. When he cared to move forward, he did so, when he cared to move backward, he did so, and when he cared to move sideways, he did so. Thus assuaged, he strode angrily to the vicinity of a bench along the unmarred brick wall and planted his derrière upon it firmly. To his surprise, the blind impulse to board the train slackened, and he settled into a more easy state of mind.
"I see you're resisting." A soothing female voice spoke to him as though from a dream. He was not so astonished, but merely looked about him in an annoyed manner, searching for the source of the voice. As he expected, he could not determine its whereabouts. "Don't worry, you're not the first, and certainly not the last."
He fidgeted.
"I've laid off the automatic-directionary spell, never fear. I just employ it to save my time, so I don't have to pay attention to as many people at once. Saves a bit of breath, so I don't have to explain why you're here to everyone who dies, if you know what I mean. The stupid ones usually never even know that they were encouraged, so to speak, and it only befuddles them if you give a crap enough to explain. 'I'm dead?' they ask, with such pain and confusion in their eyes that it thoroughly disheartens one, 'I'm dead? Then why am I here?' And it just pains one too much, really, to have to explain that, yes, that motor did crack their skull, or their darling niece did poison them for their money, or some such other reason that they'll never comprehend."
Snape nodded curtly. "I take it that you're a fellow cynic. What do they call you?" he asked, neither particularly interested nor uninterested.
"'They' calls me alternately 'bitch', 'mother earth', and 'La vie en rose', the former especially when drunk, but am probably better known to you as Eve, with your however-vaguely-Catholic upbringing."
A bitter gasp—of amusement? Of disgruntlement of her vast knowledge? Of mere recognition?--escaped from the strangling confines of Snape's lips. "Eve. Ah, but they relegated you to the beastly job of greeting departed souls, I see? Taken over for Kharon?"
"The River Acheron, the River Cocytus, the River Phlegethon, the River Lethe, and the River Styx all dried up one by one in the 1000s, when we started using oxen and carts. Rumor has it they were just moved, but it's not my place to need to know. But, you know, I like my job," admitted the entity, "for it's better than being beyond La-Bas."
Snape wondered what she meant by that.
"At least, that's what I hope. I've never been beyond the horizon. La-Bas is the afterlife beyond life, but it's beyond the horizon. Adam died before me, you see, and I guess he actually went to La-Bas. I wouldn't know for sure. I died in childbirth from a kid the bastard impregnated a month before his own demise, and so at the time didn't have the energy to move. Now it's a lot easier for women in the same position as me—I made sure of that at least—and now you folks have it very easy. You come here, and your old wounds are instantly healed. You don't need to walk to La-Bas; you've got yourself your own personal private train. I imagine soon we'll be updating to a limosine; those are truly beautiful, I believe. Though, of course, I don't know what happens after what currently is the train, though I've heard many a good hint. The Bible itself tells us that there are only two ways: heaven and hell. I don't know from experience. As far as I know personally, La-Bas is the end of the line. The division in the track--if there is one--is beyond it."
A properly blood-curdling scream erupted from somewhere down the long stations, and Snape visibly started. Eve sighed resignedly. "Ah, but there's another one in the 38 chapter who's having trouble. I'll be back in a jiffy, just sit for a moment and we'll talk some more."
There was no visible sign that she was gone, but soon Snape heard her soothing voice again, rather far away, too muffled to discern her precise words.
Immobility immediately brought him to that slightly dangerous occupation known as thinking. This thinking session was predominantly an abridged memorial autobiography, a certain revisiting of memories from over the course of his life. Images of his early years, with an Irish-descended alcoholic for a father, a weedy and weepy mother who was permanently retired after a failed attempt at show-biz, and a brat of a squib sister who got her way any day for no reason at all. Visions of sugar-filled days with Lily Evans danced in his head, days before Hogwarts was anything but a beautiful dream, days before Potter and his rogues were the locusts to his existence. Modalities of work, of studies, of time spent poring over his cauldrons in the dungeons, of classes, of teachers, and of himself as a teacher.
Then, very suddenly, he came to the realization that he did not want to go to La-Bas, where he would learn if he was to dwell in heaven or hell for eternity. He could not be dead; he was stupid to have allowed it. Why did he let himself die, when he had so much life to be lived?
How was he, a fine, capable wizard, to succumb to whatever fate resided for him within the coach? He had work to do still in the world. He was brilliant, a genius! Not only so, but he was a capable, eager brilliant genius that would stop at nothing to accomplish his ends, and in this persistence he was definite rarity among those of a higher mind. He had an enormous contribution to mankind he had not yet fulfilled, he realized. So many of his ideas he never had expanded upon, never had explored, and now he was required to disappear from the likes of humankind forever, to some realm unknown. In this realm unknown, of course, he had no idea if his work would be capable or even necessary. He had been brought up with the notion that God had all answers, since he was an all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipotent being. (This omnipotency rather frustrated Snape, actually; this meant that God was likely observing him now, and the entity was probably laughing in his chair at the tumoltuous emotions flowing through the cursed man's veins.)
"Eve?" he asked suddenly, wondering if she would hear while so far away from him.
"Yes, what is it?" Her voice was loud again, and she was rather annoyed. "I'm rather busy at the moment."
"Does God have any need for scientific experiments and inquiry?"
Her tones were amused. "You'll probably not find him to be exactly what you imagine," she declared. "Though, I imagine--"
She was abruptly interrupted by a second scream. "I'm really very busy with this other 38; I'll be back in a moment."
I guess if I end up going to heaven--which is by a slim chance indeed--there won't be much need for study and research, considering the fact that the most knowledgeable expert will be close at hand. This depressing thought brought a frown to his face, though this was indeed not a foreigner to grace it. His disgruntlement augmented as he also remembered, And based on my innumerable vices (including but not at all limited to) avarice, anger, uncleanliness, taking the lord's name in vain, a lot of lying, hate, abuse of power, lack of mercy . . . The list was truly endless. How had he even thought allowing himself to die was worthwhile—I'm so crooked at this point, I really ought not to have even considered death as an option. It must be a monster indeed who qualifies for hell if I'm not accepted into it! If this inevitability is what results from death, by Merlin, I don't want it!
"Severus, board on Platform 38 and 113/365. Severus, please board."
The returned voice of Eve was detached and almost malignant. Snape could not feel anything more than a sense of dread as he looked at the coach. Hell: eternal fire and brimstone and all that tosh. Probably the Marauders will be there, too, only I'll be tied down so they can throw stones at me.
"No," he said, unsure if the woman who had unseeingly spoke to him would even hear, "I refuse to comply. I'm not going." He stood abruptly, steadfast, glaring. He would fight, fight against the cards that fate had dealt him so cruelly, fight to the death--oh, what a hideously ironic term.
Her tone changed in an instant. "Oh, right, yes. You're still recalcitrant. And not very talkative, either?" She asked this hopefully, but Snape's sullen stare brought her to sigh again. "Oh, please don't make me go through the usual rigmarole."
He still gave no response.
"I seem to have no choice. All right, Severus, you have lived a full life. You have done well, and died courageously. You fought to the end. Accept this, and come to rest in peace."
The words, taken as though neatly from his epitaph, spooked him. "I refuse," he said, gravely.
The voice sighed again. "Do I need to--" it began, but upon meeting Severus' stony glare, decided, "Yes, I do. Oh, I wish you were a talker, but so often your kind are the broody sort. I do so long for someone to talk with as opposed to to. Well, I hope you get what you're asking for."
The next moment, two visions broke into the station. One was Dumbledore, tall and absurdly strange as usual, but Severus noted the distinct lack of gray on his hand. The curse from Marvolo's ring was gone.
The other, to Severus' astonishment, was her: Lily.
Needless to say, Severus' first instinct was to tear towards the latter first. He would not have been above throwing himself at her feet. Her bemused smile, however, made him think, and he instead stared stolidly. Unsure what to do with her, he instead turned to Dumbledore.
"My dear boy." The old man raised his arms expectantly, evidentially desiring to embrace Severus, but the younger man refused to move. Dejected, Dumbledore lowered them again, tut-tutting sadly. "I see you still are upset at me," he murmured, "And rightfully so. I don't deserve anything better from you, Severus. I don't know why I expect anything more."
"Don't mind me," Severus replied darkly, neither retreating nor advancing. "You did what was for the common good. You even sacrificed your life for the common good. Let's not talk about this any more."
"Then—then about what do you want to talk about?"
Severus' eyes, trained on the geezer until this time, drifted cautiously to glance at Lily. Seeing that she--the ghost, the spectre, the hallucination, the mirage!--was staring at him expectantly, he hurriedly turned a glare towards his undeserving boots.
"Don't mind me," the old man chuckled, glancing at a clock above Severus' platform sign, "I'm expecting someone else in a few moments. She's here for you." Albus stepped away in his most gracious manner, walking away down the long line of platforms.
Only when Dumbledore was out of earshot, Lily faced Severus. A complacent smile still played upon her lips.
"Severus, my poor dear friend," she said wistfully. She stepped towards him cautiously, as though approaching a dead animal. Like a dead animal, Snape made no move. She took another stride towards him, and he again stayed, silent and austere. Then she lost all sense of propriety and leaped to his side, throwing her arms around him in a warm embrace.
"I'm glad you came back to our side in the end," she whispered, a whirl of emotions pulsing through her body. Severus felt her acceptance, her love, and welcomed it wholly.
"Were . . . were you watching from here after you left earth?" he asked, gently placing his arms around her in what felt like more than a platonic embrace. Lily pulled away gently and shook her head. Merlin, he loved how her hair whipped across her face, how it shone in the misty light of the station.
"No," Lily said, a bit quietly. "I was not watching you."
She gestured to the bench that he had vacated, and the pair seated themselves. "You see," she began slowly, "Even in this realm, our powers are limited. Only with his" (she spoke as though recalling a holy deity whom Severus assumed reigned over the dead) "express permission may a man or woman see a person in the lower world. I was allowed only to watch my son in the Viewer, no others." Severus again took the assumption that Lily referred, by 'the Viewer', to some enchanted object in the land beyond this station.
But she was only watching her son. Does that mean she saw life through his eyes, or does that mean that she saw his life objectively, like an angel on his shoulder? He began to worry that all of his efforts to preserve the boy's life had, perhaps, been for naught.
"I helped your son a great deal, I think," he stated, more than hinting at his unique position. Lily, however, did not catch his bait, and it soon became clear that she knew not of his especial purpose.
"I know you did, Severus, and I am eternally grateful, though at some times you might have been slightly kinder, I gather. But Dumbledore has watched you, and he has explained your role in helping Harry. But he did not explain to me one thing—why did you do it? Surely you did not do it merely to atone for that chance slip of the tongue that I scorned you for years ago?"
This was too much for Severus. He rose fiercely, his body palpitating with ire and despair.
"Lily, what are you saying?" he asked, voice growing hoarse. "Do you even understand--?"
"Do I understand what?" Her voice was damnably calm and collected, which was the utter opposite of Severus' own nerves. Death was by no means an easy ordeal, and coming to understand that his life's goal had been completely worthless so soon after it--why, it's damned irritating!
"You obviously don't know," he blurted, hurt and angry.
"Don't know what, Severus?" Not even the smallest iota of impatience could be detected in her tones. "As you yourself would tell me, 'Enough with the word games!'"
Biting the inside of his lip until he drew blood, Severus made a wholehearted attempt to quell his rising blood pressure. "Lily," he began slowly, "We met at a very young age. We were the best—the very best—of friends. We attended school together, spent hours upon hours in each other's company. No one understood it, but we never questioned it. We were an odd pair, I'll grant—me, the studious and rather snappish Slytherin, and you, the light-hearted and optimistic Gryffindor—but we got on wonderfully together. Beauty and the Beast, you might say. Until I had the misfortune to make some bad friends, whose ideology blinded me for a brief period. Did—did you ever—well--" He felt deucedly awkward. "Did you ever—miss me, after we went our separate ways?" Bloody infernal ass, that's not what you were going to ask! But I suppose we have all eternity to sort this out, so may as well take it slowly.
Lily nodded, rather too quickly for his liking. "Yes, Severus. Of course I missed you. I missed you dreadfully. James was never too keen to talk about anything but me and Quidditch, as you well know, and I rather wished you were still around to discuss—or, rather, tell me about—what new fascinating things were going on in the academic world. I bought the magazines we used to get in the library, but it never was the same without your constant annotations."
"You know that's not what I mean!" exclaimed Severus hotly, unable to control himself despite the fact that all rationality demanded that he play his cards carefully.
"Then what do you mean, Severus?" asked Lily, her even tones producing the least therapeutic of effects upon Snape. "I think you're being very confusing right now. Go on, you've got something on your mind that you've got to spit out. Get on with it, I'm listening, I'm right next to you, I'm not going to disappear if you speak your mind."
He snarled. "Damn you, Lily, did you ever care for me more than as a friend?"
Finally, he had pierced her Achilles' heel, given her something she could not refute so easily. Her eyes grew wide at the prospect, wide with horror and—though he may have imagined it—disgust. Regaining her composure quickly, however, she shook her head in denial.
"No, Severus, I don't know where you got such an idea. Did you?"
If she had stopped at the word 'idea' he might not have lost it, he maintained later. As it was, though, that added 'did you?' rankled the deepest roots of his long-established stoicism, ruffled them and then chopped them from the base of his stem. He was vulnerable, bare, above ground.
That woman has always been the ruin of me.
Without even anticipating it himself, he fell to the ground in heavy sobbing—sobs that had plagued his life since her death, that had resounded in his heart for almost minute of every day, that had never before shed before anyone but Dumbledore. These poured from him in more grief than he had ever imagined. Lily had never guessed--had never even thought! She would never know what sacrifices he had made, what prices he had paid, for her and her alone.
My entire life has thus been in vain.
In his distress, prostrate upon the ground--a gentle touch, that of a moth landing on a nocturnal-blooming flower, grazed his shoulder.
"Severus, what did I say? Did I—"
Here he stood again, his face contorted in piteous rage, "No! No! Bitch! Leave me! Damn you; I hate you! I hate you! Oh Merlin, help me--"
The tears could not cease their flow.
Lily watched him, too pure to condescend to his level and lay on the floor. Instead, she bent her knees gently, stooping to comfort him.
"Severus, please explain. Nothing can be accomplished through tears and misery--do be rational!" Her voice held a tinge of annoyance, and almost of urgency. Severus could not pretend happiness at will, however, especially not when he had been devastated so deeply as then.
"I--I devoted my entire life to your memory. I never could forget you, Lily. I did everything for you, though through your son. Everything! And you never even guessed, not even when you were alive-- damned cursed bitch!" The words spat from his mouth in an attempt to sound hateful, but utterly did not succeed. Instead, they only more clearly revealed the intensity of his emotions to her. Pityingly, never angry, the woman of his continua veneration watched over him. Though irked at her sympathy, he made an effort to be more reverent as he went on, "Lily, I've loved you my whole life. From the moment I met you—saw you--and you never knew how much I gave for you, Lily. You never even knew until that I loved you. I lived my whole life for you, and you alone."
Then a gasp of surprise broke his rambling. Lily, King's Cross Station, Platform 38 113/365, all were disappearing slowly into the mist.
"What's happening?" he croaked with alarm, putting out his arms until he resembled a sort of table. The visions began to fade away, gently, more and more hazy and indistinct.
"Oh Severus," he heard Lily's fading voice call, "No man may be sad in the kingdom of heaven."
He heard Eve's melancholy reprise: "No man may be sad if they're off to La-Bas. Sorry, Severus, but this is what protocol demands . . . "
A whirling, twirling sensation seized him, and he was reminded of Dorothy and Toto stuck in a tornado in the middle of Kansas. A few minutes of this nauseating spinning, and then he was back again—staring at the dreary ceiling of the Shrieking Shack, cold and alone. There was no sign of any other rational being anywhere.
Unsure what had just happened to him—had Eve, Dumbledore and Lily been a dream? If not, then why was he back?--Severus attempted to sit up. He was expecting the experience to be a painful one due to his injuries. However, despite the blood he had lost, he found it easier than even in his prime state. The reason for this did not puzzle him for long, however. Although he had felt himself rise to his feet, his body had not physically lifted.
What remained on the ground was his lifeless corpse amid a pool of his long-shed, now congealed blood. Severus Snape had become a ghost.
What damned good luck I seem to have.