Author's note
Sorry for the short chapter. It's just that I couldn't split the Epilogue ;-)
Short but intense. So I hope…
That night her physical presence turned ethereal like that one of a ghost. She glided silently among the ravages of death. Deaf to the war's torment as deafened by her own torment. She saw young Potter emerging from a earthly passage hidden in the Whomping Willow's roots and in that very moment she knew Severus needed her. One last time.
She found his body forsaken in the Shrieking Shack, lonely and neglected till the end. She crouched next to him for an incalculable time, refusing to acknowledge that wax mask as the lump of emotions still throbbing inside her. That lump of emotions that had been… Snape.
Casting a Mobilicorpus, she moved him away from the cursed place. She walked by groups of injured. Wounded warriors, outside as much inside. Men, women, youths. All rallying around each other and crying their fallen. Nobody dared utter a word at her solemn gait, her hand squeezing a pale, bloodless one. They simply looked at her with the respectful sympathy brought about by the great leveller.
Severus' memories lead her to the great oak overlooking the lake. She knew that had been his shy shelter as a boy. It would be his shelter again. For ever.
'Diffindo!'
Earth cracked open at her feet, shedding its humid fragrance. Snape's corpse dropped slowly into the hollow and gently lay down on the bottom. Then earth closed mercifully upon him, without leaving trace of the digging spell.
You wouldn't like memorials and pilgrimages. You'd hate hypocrite rehabilitations…
Nevertheless she would leave a mark.
She drew out from her cloak's hidden pocket the black wand that she had picked up in the Shack besides the wizard's lifeless body. She closed her eyes, still smelling the lingering scent of the man's skin on hers.
'Floreumsempra,' she thought and from the bare ground dozens of shoots sprouted, stretching out like long bent limbs and bursting in a blaze of white, shiny petals. Lilies… Lily… Iris. Delicate flowers eternally deep-rooted in him.