Author's Note: Written for the Week 2: Spin Me A Tale challenge

I love writing speculative works on how we experience death and time, and so this is a work that I hope will span the gap between what we scientifically know about the process of dying (the brain is flooded with intensely pleasurable hormones to ease the way into death), and our perception of time therein.


The House of the Mind

'Look at me…look….my purpose—I—No!' Darkness cinches tightly around his throat, spreading outward with icy fingers. The searing pain is a faint, almost cherished memory; a memory of knowing that there will at least be more time to feel something.

The deep thrumming of a massive clock is slowing in his chest, and he wills it onward with a vague terror at the silence that will come with its stoppage. It still moves sluggishly, and yet it hits erratically as though unwinding with frightening speed.

'This can't be it,' he thinks, vaguely aware that he no longer has context for the words.

His limbs are growing numb and heavy as his mind unspools, and he sinks down, down into nothingness.

Light falls upon him and his eyes snap open.

It is far away, but it is warm, and beacons him to come to it. He has no sense of time, no feeling of up or down, but he wills himself forward nonetheless. Slowly, as if in a dream, he feels his body materialize around him, his legs moving slowly through the darkness as though it is viscous, even though he feels no resistance whatsoever.

The deep ticking of a massive, unseen clock surrounds him, keeping time with his steps. The light grows warm and pleasurable upon his wretched and skeletal frame, and he careens out of the darkness like a half-starved wraith.

"Let's get you out of those sopping clothes, Severus," a kind voice says, wrapping him in a soft blanket, and he is small again, looking up at his mother, whose eyes are shining with love, the lines of worry he vaguely remembers no longer etched on her face.

She wraps him up, swinging him into her large, protective arms, and he sees his father, a pipe in his teeth, rolling up his sleeves and running ahead of them to draw a bath in the claw-foot bathtub at the end of the hall. The hallway around them is painted a cheerful yellow, and the bright blue blanket crinkles snugly around him.

Severus is lowered slowly, and the blanket and sopping wet clothing are suddenly gone and he is up to his shoulders in sudsy water, his mother handing him a rubber duck for him to play with. He does so with glee, pretending to make himself into a fearsome wizard by packing the suds on his face like a snowy beard. His mother laughs and claps at his antics and he sees his father pull out a camera to take a snapshot. Something about the camera seems wrong, newer than it ought to be and he frowns a little, but then his mother makes a funny face and he is soon lost in the joy of the moment, splashing and warm and loved.

A blink and he is tucked snug in his bed, a small light illuminating the far wall and making a cozy glow in his little room. There are toys and a small desk, and a window upon which the rain gently patters and rolls. He is warm and satisfied, even though he cannot remember the moments between the bath and being here in bed. He clutches his teddy bear to his chest and whispers dreamily into its fur, his head growing heavy and thick with sleep.

His head snaps up and he is running with joy in his heart. There is the sharp and vivid scent of green and growing things as he runs pell-mell through the overgrown meadow after a girl with shining red hair. He tags her and she squeals with delighted frustration, turning on him and chasing him. Another child darts out of nowhere with light hair and eyes and a conspiratory smile.

"Can't catch me, Lily!" the new boy cries out.

"Or me! Or me!" Another girl, her hair in dark ringlets, squeals as Lily veers away and tries to tag her. He remembers, then. These are his friends. There are at least eight, including Lily, and they are inseparable. Each day they run to the edge of town and play in the greenery of the forest and meadows. They make mud pies and hide in the hollows of trees and play at being fae children. There is a fierce joy in belonging, and he savors it even as he runs and runs, the whoops and hollering of his friends blending into a primal joy beyond words.

At last, tiring of their game, they all tumble down onto their backs, lying back with heaving chests as they watch the clouds roll through the blue sky above. The trees ring the meadow in a circle that feels comforting, as though they are tucked away from anything that might harm them. Severus closes his eyes.

"Come on, Sev!" Lily takes him by the hand and they sneak up the stone stairs, the Disillusionment Charm shimmering over the both of them. Her hand is warm in his, which takes away from the bone-chilling cold of the night. Then, they are suddenly there, standing at the top of the Astronomy Tower. Lily points to the telescope she's set up as a gift for her best friend.

"Look, Severus," she says, a mysterious glint in her eyes. "Take a look."

He walks carefully towards the golden apparatus, which must have taken Lily ages to lug up from the Astronomy classroom, and looks through it to see something that takes his breath away.

"It's your star." Lily squeezes his hand. "I've been looking for it for ages, and it took me forever to get the arithmancy right to triangulate its location."

"My star?" Severus pulls away, his puzzlement greater than his fear of heights. "But I see two orbiting around one another."

Lily laughs, her eyes narrowing into mischievous fox-like slits. "Oh?"

"Yes, it doesn't make—"

Lily's lips are cold against his, but they warm considerably a moment later, and Severus nearly forgets to breathe as she goes down from her tip-toes and stares at him, pupils blown wide.

"What if I told you that it was my star?" she says shyly, and his mind is blank for a moment before the words hit him.

She curls against him in the cold and the dark, and her heat might as well be that of her star as it whirls above them. It is this night that he knows their fates are entwined forever.

He blinks, and it is fall. They are wearing cozy sweaters in the warm autumn light as they crunch through the crisp fallen leaves on their way back from Hogsmeade together. They are in high spirits- the combination of warm clothing and crisp breeze makes Severus feel as though he is full of possibilities, all of them good. Lily's gloved hand is in his, and she is telling him a hilarious story, her braids bouncing against her back in rhythm to their steps.

"Open wide, Sev," she says, and his eyes roll back in his head as she pops the chewy caramel candy into his mouth.

Their friends join them at the castle— Brix and Bryce, two Hufflepuff twins who are always concocting some interesting magical experiment or other, Tulla, a Ravenclaw who is from Haiti and whose interest in studying is only rivaled by her obsession with anything to do with creating new and exciting potions. Cliff is a Gryffindor who is built like a tank with a personality like a golden retriever, but he means well, and he's better at baking than any Hufflepuff to the point that he is basically considered an honorary member and can come and go as he pleases to the kitchens. Together, they build a little enclave of sorts in the Room of Requirement, in which their curious minds can run as far as they need to without getting into trouble. The Room seems to cater to their every whim, giving them a space to study and relax, while also providing a full potions laboratory and spell-absorbing walls for rogue test spellcraft gone awry.

Severus gets the feeling that time is speeding up and the days blur together, but there's a warm and happy feeling inside of him, and he is content, knowing that he is safe and loved, that he is not alone. While he is not unrealistic and knows that he and Lily do have disagreements like any other friendship or relationship, her devotion matches his in equal measure.

He blinks and he is curled against Lily's naked body, his bare skin pressing against hers as they move together in a rhythm that opens up a hot and aching need in his soul. She gasps against his neck, nibbling at the sensitive flesh there, and he moans, seeking her lips with his own. There is something building between them, larger than magic and fate, and his body knows long before his mind does that they will reach it together. The light fills his head, and he cannot think, cannot speak. He is aware that they are making noises that are more animal than human, but they feel right, and there is something happening as her body clamps down tightly on him, and all he can do is let go of himself and let her draw him into him again and again and again.

He blinks.

He is brewing something in a cozy shop, one that looks exactly like the apothecary he's dreamed of owning since he was a boy. It is bright and well-ventilated thanks to strategically placed skylight windows, but every ingredient and tool is exactly where his muscle memory remembers it being. He moves through each aisle of brewing tonics and tinctures with the practiced grace of long-created habit, and he finds himself looking up to see Lily's fox-like eyes curled in mirth and excitement.

"Severus!" she cries out, and he goes to her, feeling himself melt into her embrace as she throws her arms around him. "We've finally done it! The shop is ours—for keeps!"

He has a sense of years passing, of the birth of children, of warm moments by his wife's side, of cold and stormy nights at the apothecary made cheerful by the bluster of friends and family and visitors and apprentices. Each pleasure and kindness stuffs him fuller and fuller with the joy of a life well-lived. His parents have a thriving garden center business and visit often. They live long and happy lives. The children and, later, grandchildren, add joy to his life in equal measure. Sometimes he wonders what he did to deserve such a life, a life of friendship and love and all good things. He hears of instabilities in other countries far away, of wars that others fight, but it is comfortably removed from any conflict in his own backyard, and the small angsts and struggles of normal life only add to the satisfaction he feels when they are resolved peaceably.

He is old and gnarled, looking out into the garden with Lily's head on his shoulder, when he remembers another, more painful life as though it is a dream.

"Sometimes this life feels like a dream that I didn't deserve, Lily," he croaks out, savoring the warmth of her body and the autumn apple scent of her hair.

"It's not about what you deserve or don't deserve, Sev," Lily replies, pragmatic as ever. "It just…is and I, for one, am deeply grateful for it."

"But—" He frowns, shifting to look into her eyes through his rounded glasses.

"But…you'd rather be miserable? You'd rather have a life where we weren't together?" Lily's eyebrows are raised, and he realizes he's being ridiculous.

"No, but—"

"Touch me," she says, and places her hand over his as he cups her cheek. He knows each line intimately and feels a deep gratitude for each year they've been together. "Don't I feel real?"

"Yes, of course," he says, stroking her skin.

"You deserve happiness, Severus," she says, kissing his knuckles. "We all do."

The sunset seems to go on for forever as they rock in the swing together, and Severus knows that Lily is right. Somewhere, in the back of his consciousness, he can sense that the internal clock that had ticked from the moment of his birth is slowing to silence, and there is a wretched and skeletal version of himself lying cold and broken on a dirty, forgotten floor. But that husk is no longer his concern. Only this golden hour in the twilight of his happy years matters.

"After all," he muses, squeezing Lily's hand and basking in the golden light, "what else is happiness but a life well-lived?'