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.

Chapter 2

"No man may be sad in the kingdom of heaven."

"No man may be sad if they're off to La-Bas."

So there was a heaven behind La-Bas. Lily had thought Severus belonged there. Still, as usual, he managed to botch things up for himself by showing too much emotion. What had he been thinking, succumbing to tears like that in front of the woman he had loved for decades? It would have been better if he began to snog her outright; the consequences for that evidentially would have been less dire than those he by which he was now infected.

I make myself into a infernal ass every time it is most important to not be an infernal ass.

This thought perpetrated a fresh round of tears, as much as he attempted to withhold them. For an hour or more, he lay on the ground, partially in his body, partially out. It felt increasingly like being in the cavity of a very tight log, until Severus exasperatedly withdrew himself from the bounds and lay parallel to his body, letting his ghost's arms drape fondly over the narrow torso of his physical counterpart. It was in this position that Severus fell into deep, exhausted, immobile pondering.

At least I learned one thing from this depressing incident—it's easy to see now why all ghosts come from such miserable backgrounds. (Except the Fat Friar, who seems to be incessantly jolly, but I've thought quite seriously that often it is a mere facade on his part.) But ghosts are almost always the sort of people who died trying to do something and failed, who only succeeded in bringing about their own death, be it self-contrived or a bumbling blunder. Or contrived by an enemy, for that matter. And it is also evident why they always seem so frustrated in literature—they can never carry out their own revenge. That's why Hamlet's father had to appear to Hamlet himself, rather than slay the uncle on his own accord. I suppose it's a punishment for living a crud-infested life, to have a maggot-filled post-existence in the very semblance of life. Merlin, I wish to Hades I would wake up and find this all a dream . . .

Amidst such contemplations, he still could not permanently stop crying. Perhaps Snape had never read Revelation 21:4: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."

Even if he had, Severus should have felt severely disappointed, for the Bible, in his case, lied. He had an ample number of tears in his eyes, but neither the Christian God, Lily under the guidance of that entity, Dumbledore, or even Eve, the mother of man, could wipe them away.

I am unfortunately now aware how one is refused both heaven and hell in one stroke—one merely has to shed tears before the crossroads.

Something else puzzled him, however.

Apparently, Lily thought I was good enough to go to heaven—she, who is so pure and benevolent—and why would they send me back here if my final destination was hell? So I must have been bound to a happier afterlife than I anticipated. Of course, as it is always with me and good things, I managed to lose it before I had it in my hand. The pebble I merely had to ask for, just as I was about to ask, was dropped into the deepest, coldest pond on earth.

He experienced a fate worse than death with Lily's confession of oblivion. He was to live upon earth in the most frustrating of situations, for what he supposed would be eternity.

I can't kill myself now, he mused bitterly, for there would be no point in it. I already am dead.

Nonetheless, he did rise and attempt to bash his head against the side of the shack, though he quickly saw that this had no worthwhile effect. his head simply melted into the woodwork, and he had for a fleeting second several termites in the vicinity of his nose. When he retreated, he saw scars in the boards and walls, which gave him a very distinct feeling of disgust. Those are, of course, from Remus Lupin, the amazing werewolf who managed to make human friends, who managed to beat the stigma of his monsterhood, and even got married to a beautiful Metamorphmagus.

The remembrance made him shudder, and brought forth fresh tears. Interesting thing, these tears. They are not water, are not gas, but of this vaporous material somewhat like the strange mist that I myself am compromised of.

It also occurred to him: I suppose I must be 'an imprint of a departed soul' as textbooks like to call ghosts. The imprint of the departed soul of Severus Snape. The ghost of Severus Snape. Severus Snape, Profession: Certified Ghost.

At this point, he began to feel rather hysterical, and he began to laugh uproariously to himself over this and similar trivialities, his gasping intermittent with fresh rounds of tears.

As he began to calm, he began to explore his new state, trying in vain to feel texture of anything besides his own clothes, body, and saline. It was not without amusement that he discovered his wand disappeared from his physical body, and, instead, in phantasmal form in his own vaporous sleeve. Well, at least I shall be able to do magic in death; that means I can still do potions and defense. Rather useful. For experimentation purposes, he blew a patronus to join him in his misery. It emerged from his wand, hesitatingly, but soon the doe emerged to nuzzle against his leg. This highly animalistic, rather simple motion was more comforting than all the world to Snape: he could still feel the warmth of his patronus even in his ghostly state.

After a time, he banished the patronus, for it reminded him of her, and he could not bear to think about her. Predictably, a minute or so later, he summoned it again, not necessarily for any reason more than comfort. Even though it was only some of his own happiness compromised into a semi-mammalian form, the impression was that the patronus was a caring, loving pet. Snape never had kept a real familiar, due to financial constrictions and an unpredictable lifestyle, but he emotionally cared for the patronus as he would a real animal. As it was, he called her Mrs. McGraw, for no discernible reason except for the fact that he liked the name; it was from a favorite song sung in the pub near his house, and the sound of the rather coarse syllables always somehow appealed to him. Never had the doe been anything more than Mrs. McGraw, and any attempts to re-name her had been for naught.

He said nothing to her as he felt the soft heaving of her sides, therapeutic and regular. The imitation animal had been his sole consolation in many a desperate situation, and Snape felt as attached to her as a child might feel to a particularly favorite stuffed toy.

I am no more than a big grown-up child, anyways. Just like a spoiled kid who's refused a certain toy, the only reason I've always wanted Lily is because I never got her.

The thought, one that had laid dormant for many years, spurred him into anger again. He sent Mrs. McGraw away almost forcefully, smacking away her soft face with the back of his vaporous hand. Feeling mildly ashamed of himself, which made him even more riled, he rose with a vehement air.

The world has got to pay for what it's done to me. No, that's wrong—I've got to pay myself for what I did to myself.

He stepped carefully over his dead body, noticing how the wind of his movement stirred the limp hair of his physical head. Gently, he bent over himself, marveling at how fantastically uglier he was face-to-face than in the mirror. Out of innate curiosity, he drew back his body's eyelids, then quickly shut them again when he saw the cold, trance-like stare of death that gazed back at him. With his finger, he slowly stirred the blood around his body, able to judge the consistency of the liquid but unable to feel its liquidity. It's almost as though I am wearing a set of gloves, so I cannot perceive texture. This frustrated him immensely.

Severus had obviously plenty of sorrow on his mind, and he had cried to the point where his eyes might have slipped from their sockets amid the saline. If Revelation had spoken true, Severus would not have cared a bit when Lily admitted her fallacy and inadequacy. He should have felt numb, immune to the pain; he may even have found the whole thing dearly amusing. Instead, his heart ripped to shreds and his very soul tore. Revelation did make one correct prediction, however. Former things in Severus' past had definitely passed away, things like appreciation, trust, and even love. Replacing them now came the bleaker senses of hopelessness, suspicion, and hatred.

He had found himself so close, close to eternal bliss, happiness, the jubilation and joy he had never experienced on Earth. He had touched her, had felt her embrace, had heard her words. He had only needed to step onto the train, he realized, and he might have reached the eternal paradise within which he so wished to dwell.

Damn those Gryffindors! Damn them all!

How did they, his tormentors, his closest enemies and friends, manage to always do things right? He certainly never managed to do so. Even this, even just getting into heaven--he failed.

This, Severus decided, this can not possibly get worse. A public spectacle of his loss, a tribute to his awkward, despised life: he had no more value than a rotted pumpkin. The remains of a pumpkin that the cook had disliked the sound of when she rapped it with her knuckles. A pumpkin left outside on the back porch, to shield the other plants behind it with its shade, whether it wanted to or not. A pumpkin that withered beneath the incandescence of the sun, that fell victim to the frost. A pumpkin that no one ever bothered to carve out, to cut fascinating shapes into, to illuminate with a candle at night. A pumpkin that neither found itself placed in the seat of honor on the front doorstep nor admired. In some ways, while contemplating this analogy, Severus decided that, after all, only a week after Halloween the carved pumpkins began to get moldy and sag, while those yet intact could remain useable for many days longer. Yet usefulness and glory scarcely ever go hand in hand, and, after all, few pumpkins never scrape the grandeur of turning into a jack-o-lantern. Severus knew only the few triumphs of a so-dubbed 'useful' pumpkin.

With a sudden angry fervor, Snape stood over his own dead body, loathing in his phantasmal eyes. Fire seizing him, he made a motion to stamp out his body's face with his ghostly boot, attempting to disfigure his deplorably ugly visage, to smash it and crush it to a bloody pulp. To his greatest irritation, he found he could not do this. When he kicked, he could not do it any harm; indeed, the corpse refused to move. Throwing things at it proved to have a better effect, and so did knocking over an old cabinet on top of it, but anything that involved his own hands refused to incur any injury to the body.

I suppose this is to restrict the violence that ghosts can wreak across the world when they come back, hell-bent for revenge, he mused sulkily, moving back the prostrate cabinet to see how well his ends had been achieved. Things were much lighter to carry in this state of senselessness, and he supposed he would be able to lift a small Muggle car if he wanted. As it was, he moved back the large cabinet without any effort, and was pleased to see the grade of damage done to his corpse. But a little sorry at my hasty reaction he thought dispassionately, staring down the thing. He had somewhat expected that, somehow, his nerves would still have some connection with his physical presence, but it seemed that they were completely detached.

Denial, anger, and depression had all been broached by Severus' psyche by this time. Acceptance was on the verge of occurring, to conclude his stages of grief, but it would be a difficult stretch attempting to counter-act the combined anger and depression.

He eventually fell asleep there in the Shrieking Shack, curled in the corner like a lost child under a bridge or stoop.