AN: Chapter two is, alas, quite on the short side. But I felt Sev's little moment was the best place to finish this little portion!
This is entirely and completely dedicated to Beloved-Stranger (who's chocolate will soon be feeding my addiction!) and who both reviewed, and Beloved-Stranger (mmm chocolate) and HansGruberForever who favourited this. YOU MAKE ME HAPPY AND MY PLOT BUNNY LATCH ON TO MY LEG AND NOT LET GO!
This is completely un-betad and fresh off my brain. I don't own diddly squat except Alexis and, I just realised, Freya.
"Hello, Severus," he said, dusting off his robes as though this were the most normal thing in the world. "Alexis has informed me that you appear to be suffering from amnesia." Neither pair of blue eyes twinkled.
Severus began to shake. The woman, Alexis he had called her, rushed over to him and hovered, her hands clenched tightly to her chest. She looked at Albus with worry pinching her cheeks. Albus, in the flesh, his hand normal … he looked healthy. Severus looked down at his hands, the ones that had held the wand and had killed him, too. Whether knowledge or wand, he wielded the death of those close to him.
"Alexis, dear," Albus began. "Would you give us a moment? I believe this conversation should be between Severus and I for now." He smiled kindly to take away some of the sadness in her eyes, but she nodded and obediently walked out the door. She took a last glance at Severus as she shut the door. He couldn't read her expression.
Albus lowered himself into the chair to the left of Severus and steepled his fingers. "Now, Severus, why don't you tell me what you remember?" he asked. Brown eyes met ocean blue. Severus looked away first.
"I am dead, this can be the only explanation," he rasped. He moved his still-shaking hands into his lap.
"Why would you think that, Severus?"
"You are dead, I am dead, this is the afterlife."
"But I am very much alive, can you not see that?" Severus' lips drew back into a grimace.
"I killed you after you begged me to do it, I know just how alive you are not," he replied. Albus blinked in surprise. "The Dark Lord had me killed, and I died on the floor of the Shrieking Shack."
"I cannot say I follow you – you say you killed me and that I had asked you to do it. What were the circumstances?" Albus leaned forwards, and Severus noted faintly that he still smelled of lemon drops. There was no sweet undertone of death.
"You were injured finding the horocruxes." Albus looked faintly alarmed. "I did what I could to halt the decay but it would not stop for ever. Malfoy, that stupid child, was going to … you wouldn't let your death taint him so you begged me to kill you, to leave his child's heart unburdened with murder!" His voice had raised, his hands were clenched on his knees, but he would not look at Albus.
"Then you are not the same Severus I have watched grow to marry his childhood sweetheart," Albus said flatly. "You have arrived, somehow, in a place where an entirely different set of events have occurred, and you have taken residence in the body of a much loved man who has never experienced the kind of torture you have." The rush of anger died and Severus' hands began to shake again.
"Then I am not dead, and this is not the afterlife." He felt deflated. All that effort wasted. He couldn't even die properly.
"You are not dead, but I fear our Severus is," Albus said. "Alexis informed me he had retired with a headache. I am no medi-wizard, but I do know that two conscious cannot inhabit the same entity – one must have departed prior to, or have been forced out by, the second conscious. I believe the former to be the instance in this case." He paused and looked at Severus, face drooped with sadness. "I would not wish this on Alexis of all people." The aged wizard looked all of his years as he watched Severus, and all Severus could feel was a distinct feeling of being … well … he wasn't entirely sure what to call it. It was disappointment and bitter resentment mixed with an utter failure.
There was no Lilly. There was no happily ever after for Severus.
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