A/N: My exams are finished, my fic is finished - what am I going to do with my life? Oh yeah, everything else I've been putting off for months...

Thank you so much to those who have reivewed! You are all wonderfully awesome!

A Matter of Perspective

Ahhh. It's good to be home. Not that galloping around a human's head wasn't bags of fun, mind, but it certainly is nice to not have to worry about being ripped to shreds in copious amounts of agony.

I would describe my home to you, if I could, but human minds are extremely simple and you would probably be unable to process the appearance of such an Otherworld, so I won't bother.

I've spoken to the others who told me all about their own adventures, about the Malfoy who had finally realised us Ifacaucins still existed and had decided to use us in their own little war. It would have been quite exciting, come to think of it. I almost regret missing that potential experience, one side or the other.

So Balder, the light, is now on equal footing with Höder, the dark. Neither has the upper hand, at least where we are concerned.

I hope you're happy.

It's what you wanted, wasn't it? For it all to be on even footing? For there to be no unfair advantages? Seems like it was all ordained, doesn't it? Well it wasn't. It was planned. Not by me, of course, I hardly even get the memos. But by others who are that much higher in the hierarchy of our people. Not even Daedalus knew, but then again, he's still very young.

You know what they say, 'the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.' It may be misquoted, but it's true. So it is therefore lucky that Ifacaucins are neither mice nor men and due to this very fact the plan proceeded flawlessly.

Humans. So predictable.

Just as a brief aside, I was amongst 372 Ifacaucins who were able to return home to Ifurin. What? You think that we're so heartless our leaders would leave 372 Ifacaucins stranded in your world? Please, who do you take us for? You?

Since returning, I have watched several times the goings-on of Hogwarts. Not because I care, of course, just because I'm curious.

Immediately following our return to Ifurin Severus fell into a deep sleep. I suppose you could call it a coma, really, but sometimes that's just semantics. During this time, he began to mend the broken walls in his mind and replace all the memories to where they should be. Or where he wanted them to be. Re-wrapping some, rearranging others, re-chaining the Drecchen. Re-establishing old beliefs and superstitions. It is these, I suppose, that keep a human sane. Even when they're wrong.

I have to say, Daedalus did quite a number on him, but the Efreet, as I have mentioned, is young and inexperienced. Now if I had been given the task of finding the key in Severus' mind, the repair job would have taken years. As it was, the human managed it within a month. The first lot of memories he lost, though, are gone for good. Those had fallen into the Forgotten without being cocooned and had dissolved like a tube of Berocca in Pepsi. There were a fair few months there too, and gaps like that are difficult to cover. He did it like only an expert spy can.

Very convincingly.

I've not entered back into his mind, obviously, but I would put my money on his barriers being even stronger than before. Kind of like the fire of London, really. Burn it to the ground and watch it grow with proper foundations and logistical planning. I watched London burn. It would have been fun but for all the smoke. I could hardly see a thing.

Albus has hidden the amulet of Ingvild. I suppose he's kept it in case we come back, although if I have anything to do with it, that won't happen. Daedalus firmly believes there will be a time, but if this is so, please do not take up his offer of legal advice. The boy has more of a penchant for manipulation and subsequent chaos than I do, and that is indeed saying something. The way Albus hid it is quite ingenious, really, and I don't think any Witch or Wizard will ever find it where it is. To be perfectly honest, though, I'm not sure how safe a muggle safety-deposit box is from other muggles, judging by the frequency they're broken into in films. But I suppose we'll just have to see…

My amulet, my home for quite a number of years, is currently being prepped for display by the 'Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan' at the British Museum. It has been the centre of several muggle papers debating its purpose, and even the subject of several newspaper articles. The name Aha'niheshka will live on in the land of the humans, and the thought makes me quite smug.

Daedalus never had a specialised amulet. So there.

The children, pustules of inconsequential life forms as they are, told no one about their time spent in their Professor's head. I would have, if I were in their position. There are definite gloating possibilities available. But even when Severus returned to teaching, they said nothing. Even when he resumed his normal, snarky presence in potions class and yelled at Neville for being an imbecile and snorted at Hermione for being a know-it-all and outright insulted Harry and Ron in the corridors, they said nothing.

I have to admire their resolve. I would have popped him one.

Neville even kept the commotion in the corridor with McGonagall a secret from the other three, never mind anyone else. Well, except his parents that is. Humans do like to get things off their chest.

Except maybe Hermione, who also has a secret. Harry was right to doubt her when she insisted that she had merely fallen from the bridge and awoken in the hospital wing. Drecchen are, after all, the personification of a terrible memory, and you don't come away unscathed after an encounter like that. But that sordid tale is best kept for another time. I don't have all day to chat, you know.

But they're disappointed, I know that for certain. In just a few weeks they're back to hating him. And that's the way he likes it, because hating is far more preferable than pity. Too bad he doesn't realise that pity's not what's on their mind.

Not that I care, of course.

Still, though, I know him well enough to catch a thought ruminating through his head as he falls asleep at night, and each night it's the same thought. Four small, ill-pronounced words, almost completely detached from the original speaker, which continue to play over and over. He could have gotten rid of them. Chucked them into the Forgotten – the memory's small enough – but I can tell he can't bring himself to do it. He hides them from Albus and even from himself, most of the time, but in the early hours of the morning when he's just starting to drift off to sleep and the Drecchen are making their continuing struggle for freedom, he takes them out of their hiding place and sets them on repeat.

"Hey, 's'all right, mate."

And to top it off, because it's just too glorious not to and when you're already indulging in one childish fantasy you might as well go the whole hog, the ever-so-faint, not-quite-sure-if-it-happened memory of a soft hand smoothing his hair. May he never remember where it came from.

So things return to the way they were. Well, almost. Albus has some pretty impressive defences standing guard around the Potions Professor since the Death Eater's last attack. How he was discovered is also another story, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if those defences were needed; the way some Slytherins look at him now is irksome to say the least.

It was a great idea, though, to send in the bees – Africanized ones, too; probably an extra special hybrid created by the Death Eaters, let's call them A. m. Voldermortius, shall we? It was Lucius who had, after trawling through his father's 'demon' collection, realised that when conjuring a gateway to our World a space would be created within the shield; a space that was unique in that it was not actually part of one world or the other. Which meant it wasn't part of Hogwarts. Which meant it wasn't subjected to the anti-apparation charm. Which meant they could, with the help of their Ifacaucins, remotely apparate ten thousand merciless insects into it.

Unconventional? Yes. Brilliant? Absolutely. If it had worked. Once again; mice and men.

So the bees were sucked into our world. How brilliant is that? Ten thousand little minds to control - they can come quite in handy. I've named mine Bob.

But in Hogwarts the cycle continues. Exams are being set and sat and marked. Teenage romances are rife and chaste kisses are being stolen in the corridors. Essays are handed in too late or too short. The first years are learning to ignore Peeves. And the war is still brewing.

Each day brings them closer and closer to the inevitable. Each day the tension in Dumbledore builds as he puts events in motion that will ultimately lead to one of the greatest battles Hogwarts has ever seen. Or perhaps not, really, because Hogwarts has seen a lot.

But it's all completely inconsequential because I really couldn't care less.

Humans, Wizarding or not, will continue to have their little wars and people will fall and people will not fall, and then there will be peace and then it will start all over again. I know. I've watched it happen.

You even say you've learned from it. You even say 'never again'. But it will happen again. Inevitably, because whatever it is that you will 'never forget' eventually gets forgot and that's really all there is to it.

That and the destabilisation of the economy due to some imbeciles who have their heads too far up their intestines to even recognise the situation.

We Ifacaucins recognise your situations. We just don't care about them.

And now I stand, watching them go about their daily lives. Some scoff, they think I've spent too long with the humans, that I've become soft in the head, moving on a bit with age. Sentimental. I tell them to bugger off. I've seen this far, I have to know how it ends.

Months pass. Years, decades. Centuries. Time moves differently here. And I am still watching. Lowly as they are, they never lose their entertainment value.

And the cycle continues.

Again and again and again and again. Stupid, stupid, stupid humans. If they could only see it from my perspective. But that's what happens when your lifespan lasts for the blink of an eye. There is no time for perspective.

Do you want my advice? I'm going to give it to you anyway. And remember that this comes from someone much older and wiser and infinitely better looking than yourself. A great human, at least by your standards, once said, "Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth."

He obviously had no idea of what he was talking about. But his advice was generally sound. (Well, most of it was. Only a few people should ever attempt to dance or sing. I've watched enough of Britain's Got Talent to know that that's certainly true.)

So. My advice. Are you ready for it? It's not new and it's not groundbreaking, but humans sometimes need things drummed into them as elegantly as a rogue bludger. Well, here it is: are you paying attention? Please do because humans tend to have an attention span that peaks at the age of three. Okay, ready? Check it out – Reality's bollocks. Perception's the bomb. Dr Phil said it a bit differently but I like my version better. Either way, it's true.

Trust me. I'm a Jinn.

And that's it. That's my contribution to your miserable little world and I'm glad to have taken my leave of it. So I bid you adieu and hope that we never cross paths again. Although if we do it certainly won't be my fault so let's just clear that up right away.

Oh, and one more thing.

Don't take life too seriously.

You won't get out alive.

~fin

A/N: So we didn't get another Snape perspective. Nope. His mind's buttoned up too tight for that now. We can't get in any more, I'm afraid.

OMG, I can't believe I'm finished. This has taken an inordinate amount of time to write and post and I am sincerely sorry for it. I promise I will never again begin to post a story unless it has been fully written.

I have learned so much from writing this fic, both from myself and all the lovely reviews I have received. One is to always keep your research, because there's stuff that I wrote years ago based on a lot of reading I did, but I can't trace it back to its source because I can't remember where I put it. Another is writing style. I really need to brush up on grammar and English usage in general. And there's a whole lot of other stuff you probably don't want to know about, so I won't bore you with it.

Just so you know, I'll be going over the story at some point and correcting the grammar and spelling issues that have been pointed out to me. There's still time so if you've picked anything up, (including plot holes) please let me know! This might take a while, though, since I'm supposed to be doing the same thing to my thesis. That I wrote four years ago. Yup...