PG for nasty themes mummification

PART I

Severus Snape, former god incarnate, watched, emotionless, as the jackal-headed Anubis prepared Harry Potter's body for the Afterlife. Bast and Thoth stood at opposite ends of a marble altar supporting Harry's dead body. He stood on the corpse's left side, across from the Advisor of Embalming.

"Prepare the canopic jars, Cousin." Anubis said to Thoth as he cut into the dead flesh.

Bast leaned over and addressed the potions teacher. "Ra's ka shall be recycled in one day's time after his current form expires, so we are pressed for time. The body will not be dried in its usual manner, as Ra will immediately assume it once it is wrapped and placed in its carpophagous. The innards shall be the only things removed. Ra has no need for them. You have felt how the Divine fires shrivel them."

"But why must we mummify him at all, if he'll be occupying it in less than a day?" Severus asked.

"The wrapping of the body is a sign to Harry's ka that it is time to leave for the Afterlife. Amulets, which you will place in the linen strips, will be necessary for him to cross over safely. Mummification is also a sign of high respect to the deceased, especially if the ritual is performed by Anubis Himself. It is the greatest honor." Bast answered him. Snape nodded grimly, his eyes affixed on the surgical wound. He shut his eyes when Anubis sliced through the muscle tissue, and turned away entirely as he started removing the organs.

Bile rose in his throat. He had killed in the name of Voldemort and Dumbledore, slaughtered dozens with a single curse. He had only ever seen three disembowelments, and none of them had he vomited over.......the nightmares were bad enough. But his student was cold on a slab, a young man he had known since he was eleven, one he had taught, guarded, trained, made peace with. Something about watching Harry Potter's intestines get drawn out just sickened him to the point of physical illness.

"Severus, please prepare the iron poker." Thoth murmured, busy with Bast at filling the canopic jars. Snape picked up a long, thin rod of metal with a slight pointed hook at the end, and placed it over the flaming coals of one of the fire bowls. It grew red-hot very quickly, and he gingerly handed it to Anubis with a anti-burn spell coating his hand.

"My thanks, Severe One. If you felt squeamish about the gutting, I do not feel that the emptying of the skull cavity will be a more favorable experience for you. I suggest, for your stomach's sake, that you wait in the adjoining antechamber to your immediate right. Thoth, please tilt his chin back, I'd rather not break his whole nose...." Snape heard no more of Anubis's words as he left the embalming chamber at a run, desperate to get away before he witnessed his former colleague's brains be poured out of his nostrils.

Harry rested in a incorporeal euphoria, only vaguely aware of his consciousness. He had no sensation of a body at all, no eyes, nor ears, nor mouth, nor fingers, which he dimly thought of as odd, since he had never heard, seen, tasted, or touched so many things at once in his existence. He felt like a substance slightly more viscous then air, as compact as an atom, yet as wide and expanding as Dusk's twilight cloak, travelling on a lethargic air current.

He heard the peal of a beautiful bell in the distance, and as it echoed, the sound got louder and closer, and soon it made his ethereal ears ache. The cold current carrying him was forced to part around his form and travel on, and he realized that he was locked in place.

"Arise, Harry Potter, for I wish to speak with you." Harry pulled himself from his encasement, though he didn't know how, since he didn't seem to have muscles, and faced his captor. A beautiful, ebony-haired woman with a large, four-pointed star adorning her ceremonial crown stared back at him, her lapis lazuli eyes bored into his form.

"I am Sopdet, Lady of the guiding light of Sirius, protectress of the wandering, aimless souls who have lost their way. You have another holding, Sun Lord, and it is not in the land of the Dead. Please come with me." The goddess extended her right hand, and Harry noticed for the first time that she held a silver bell in the left, her fingers pressing the clapper firmly to the inside. It was a necromancer's bell, a weapon to bind and control the dead. He found that he could not resist her hand.

"I mean my lord no harm. I have much to show you." As tendrils of his gossamer soul wrapped around her fingers, a form of flesh and bone emerged. His heavenly Self morphed into the semblance of his human form, and he stepped from the waters of the Dead to walk with Sopdet.

"Have you never noticed your many connections to the sun, my king? You were born under the guardian Leo, the most courageous and outgoing of the constellations. Your destiny, as a Leo, is ruled by the sun, you are part of His domain. He has the power to influence the things that happen to you. Do you not remember how euphoric you felt when in the air on your broomstick, the sun warming your face, dazzling your eyes? It was Him, He who dwelt dormant in another, awaiting his true vessel, the one who had the inner strength and fortitude to sustain His Self within it? Ra's former self had protected you time and time again, unconsciously saving His future skin, so to speak. Everything leading up to NOW has been orchestrated by my lord Ra....You." She pressed a finger into his chest for emphasis.

"He set into motion the rising of the Dark Lord, your birth, your parents' births, the death of your godfather- one of my personal vessels. He orchestrated every tiny detail. When he was reborn as Severus Snape, He deliberately forgot who He was, His infinite power He hid in Himself, only to be awoken by His true vessel, and at that time transferred to said body. He tired of His holiday through human history. He has things to tend to here, like the problems Seth is igniting, and Sekhmet's plot of war on Man." Sopdet explained.

"That's all well and good, but why are you holding me back from my Afterlife? Ra has my body and my power now, can't I rest again?" Harry's earthly temper smouldered within him. The river behind him beckoned, and he found it strenuous to try and focus on anything else.

Sopdet bowed slightly, and gripped him by the shoulders. "My lord does not understand....YOU are Ra. What he had stored in Severus Snape was his full power, his memories, and his knowledge. YOU are his soul, without past power, past remembrance, or past knowing. He knew that the two could not exist together without destroying the flesh instantaneously, which is why only when your earthly body has died and been prepared for your full power, will you be able to resume it. Consider this a short holiday, as your ka shall be called back very soon. You shall not have your eternal rest until the heavenly bodies fall from the sky and the earth is thrown into perpetual sleep."

Harry shook away from her, his anger flowing from him in bright green tendrils. "Why are these things never easy with you people!? I just want to rest, maybe visit my parents and Sirius, frolic in the sky with Hedwig and watch out for Ron and Hermione's first baby. That's all.....I just want to rest." Sopdet frowned at him, her right hand moving to clasp her bell's handle.

"You shall have none of these things, my Lord. You have not fulfilled the purpose Mother Earth gave to you. Only when She dies shall you be free to rest your weary bones. Bell of Binding, ring true to my lord's ears so that He may remember Himself!" The goddess swung the bell in a high arch, and the piercing note reverberated in Harry's head a thousand times over. The sound brought forth crystal clear pictures to his mind's eye......the sun, blinding and hot, encircled him so that his vision blazed and would have blinded him, had he mortal eyes. The light covered a water-covered earth with no plants or trees. From the light's rays came the first spark of photosynthesis, and from that tiny speck of life, came everything. He watched as minute creatures evolved and reformed, and split from their cousins into new ones. They swam out of their nests of primordial ooze to crawl onto land and form legs. He saw one breed of dinosaur break into many separate descendants.

All at once, a cloud of celestial dust blocked his vision.....and a he could not see his creations. He felt many lives fade while the meteor's smoke shrouded his view. When it cleared, the large dinosaurs he had witnessed coming to life were all buried skeletons, strewn across a frozen wasteland. He wept for the creatures he considered his children, and his tears condensed into storm clouds and caressed their corpses with snowflakes.

Not too long after, the Great Ice began to melt, revealing plants as his rays warmed the earth. Animals of the mammal variety dominated Harry's infinite sight, and what remained of his reptilian children came out of their frozen state to absorb his light.

The earth circled before him......he touched every surface. He was not a physical part of the world, but he was one with it, like a man to his loyal lover, working together in a natural, graceful pattern for the benefit of each other.

He saw hairy, humanoid shapes emerge from the forests and woodlands of the unified landmass, and marvelled at them. 'So this is where humans started.....' he mused, descending the skies to walk amongst his former body's ancestors.

He walked with them, observed their habits. They began travelling in groups, choosing life-long mates, using tools for chores, and with body language, grunting, and instinctual understanding, communicated with each other in a way Harry perfectly understood.

He noticed that their appearances changed with time......the hair remained, but thinned from the wooly coat to a fuzzy outer layer of summer clothing. Their foreheads enlarged, and their fingers adapted to be more flexible for the new uses they had found for them.

His memory jumped forward, and he was standing in the center of an enormous, elaborate room. He realized that he had built the room himself, and that the people surrounding him were his children. The torch brackets and fire bowls were unlighted, yet the walls and faces of the others practically glowed with an unknown light source. He glanced down at his hands and realized that HE was the light, his skin a beautifully warm, sun-golden radiance. It finally sank in with that look.

He was the sun. He was Ra. Yet, he was still Harry...just Harry.

His consciousness soared down into his body, and he gasped, air filling his abandoned lungs. His skin was glowing.

Sopdet bowed down on her knees and laid herself prostate at his feet, her star-crested helm brightly reflecting his own luminescence. He huffed and pulled her up.

"I see your point, now. It's bloody annoying that I can't help that I have no control over these things, but I'll go back, when they call. Anything else?" he asked Sopdet quietly, soaking in the fact that he was addressing one of his many children, the goddess who had watched over Sirius when he walked amongst the living. The thought of his long-dead godfather still stirred up melancholy thoughts. 'It will be many a millennia before I get to see him again.'

"Many things I could say to you, my lord, but you shall know them all in due time. Rest now, while you can. I will come for you when they call." Sopdet rang her bell, and Harry sank back into the water current. He didn't flow with it, merely floated in one place, content for the time to simply feel Death's soothing caress pass around and through his body.

PART II

Bast walked quietly into the antechamber where Severus paced, his black hair swaying into his face as he moved. "We are ready for you." she said, stopping him in his tracks as she gently took his arm. "Come."

He said not a word, merely followed her into the large tomb where Harry's cold body lay naked and still on the altar before his sarcophagus.

"We shall wrap him, but your task is to place the amulets." Thoth informed Snape, presenting a reed basket, full of beautiful, precious carved stones to him. He selected a beetle-shaped wedja1 from the bunch. It's obsidian surface looked slippery and smooth, and Severus could just make out an intricately carved message inscribed on it's wings.

"What does this say?" he asked the gods, holding the beetle up to their eyes.

Thoth ran his finger down the inscription. "This is a heart scarab, placed over the sacred organ to keep the heart from testifying against it's master. The saying is from 'The Book of the Dead'....'my heart of my mother, my heart of my father, my heart of my earthly being; Do not stand against me as witness beside the lords of the ritual; Do not say against me, 'he did do it,' about my actions: Do not make a case against me beside the Great God.'"2

Thoth handed the scarab back to Snape. Instead of placing it over Harry's un-beating heart, he slipped it into his pocket. "He will not be needing it." Bast bristled, but Thoth placed a large palm against her shoulder.

"How do you know his heart? His immortal soul may depend upon this token!" she growled, still subdued by Thoth's hand.

Snape locked eyes with the goddess. "He is of pure conscience. He needs no stone protector."

"You dare defy....." she began again, but Thoth gave her a withering look. Snape glared, his right hand pressed firmly against his pocket where the scarab lay.

"Very well, Severus, if you deem it necessary. None can do this but you."

Over the next five hours, the three slowly and meticulously wrapped Harry's cold corpse in linen bandages, Snape placing the appropriate amulets in their places and muttering the prayers Thoth and Bast recited to him. In no time, Harry was fully sealed in layers and layers of cloth strips.

"We have reached the final step, Severe One. Let us place him in the sarcophagus." Thoth whispered, as he moved with Severus and Bast to heft the deadweight. Harry was laid into the solid gold casket, a bright beacon of clean white in the dark and death-scented room.

"What now?" Severus grunted, as he leaned lightly on the gold framework of the coffin, hand still placed on Harry's still chest.

"We wait." Thoth murmured in reply, closing the sarcophagus lid tightly. Bast signed a spell of protection over it, and turned to her uncle.

"For what, exactly, are we waiting?"

Thoth was quiet for a moment, with a pensive gleam in his beady Ibis eyes. "I have no idea."

"Well, peachy."

Parts III and IV should be up relatively soon, if I don't get bogged down with Life.

1. wedja: Egyptian stone talisman

2. excerpt from "The Book of the Dead" section 1 A.