"It's called Lumen Orbis." Dumbledore said, his eyebrows furrowing.
"Lumen Orbis? Light circle?" Snape queried, keeping his voice low.
"Yes, it's extremely rare. If a person is killed under certain circumstances, instead of becoming a ghost, which is in actuality just a mirror of the body that holds the soul, or leaving the earth, they become a packed energy sphere of the emotions and thoughts that went through their minds as they were dying." Dumbledore spoke carefully, making sure that all of the people in the room understood him.
"So, I'm my thoughts. That makes sense. Which explains why I can think. Of course, how can I think things that are not my thoughts at the time?" Snape wondered.
"Perhaps I should go into further detail. Your soul is trapped inside those thoughts, which is weighing you down. The thoughts are harnessed to the dead body, as they were your dying thoughts. Your soul is, basically, chained to your corpse. Which is why they are doing studies on putting the soul back in the body. The body will not decompose or become destroyed as long as the soul is harnessed to it." Dumbledore explained.
"So, I'm chained to my dead body? No eternal bliss? No eternal torture? No eternal nothingness? I'm stuck here?" Snape said. His orb quivered a bit.
"Exactly. But perhaps you can still teach. We'll simply prop your body up in your classroom and you can stay there." Dumbledore said, one eyebrow lifting tentatively.
"Well, maybe for a day, they'd think I was sleeping, then I'd pop out and scare them! Hahahahaha!" Snape laughed evilly.
"That's why Neville's scared of you." Ron said.
"Ron, Hush!" Mrs. Weasley scolded.
Mrs. Weasley folded her arms. "We will deal with this later. For now, put his body in a chair or something. We need to have dinner! And it won't do to try and eat over a dead body, rotting or not! It just won't do."
"Besides, it'd be really creepy. Eating over a dead Snape… sends shivers down my spine!" Fred commented, to get an angry red color from the orb.
"Whoop, watch out Fred, he's mad!" George said, and his eyes widened as his father and Dumbledore picked up the lifeless body and dumped it into a chair in the other room.
Ginny shivered and sat down at the table. Dumbledore and the rest of the Weasley's followed suit, except for Molly. She placed dinner on the table, and put plates around. They ate, careful not to touch the table. Snape's dead body had been lying on it, after all. Snape noticed this.
"I'm not poisonous you know, you won't die if you touch the damn table!" he growled.
"Severus, watch your language around your students." Dumbledore said, half mindedly.
A grumbling sound was heard from the orb. It floated over and hovered ominously over the table, much like Snape standing and towering over his students. It seemed to be staring at the food.
"Why can I still feel my body?" He said suddenly, and half the table jumped at his voice. Ginny glanced into the other room to see the body slumped forward in the chair, the gruesome slash ever present.
"Because you are still attached to it, Severus." Dumbledore said calmly.
Two days passed, and Severus Snape's body was still in the chair. They had grown semi-used to it.
As it was winter holiday, there were only a few days left until they were to return to Hogwarts. Dumbledore took Severus's body back to Hogwarts with him, and deposited his body in his quarters.
Finally the day came that school started again. The Weasley's all knew about Snape, of course, but none of them had the guts to talk about it. They were so shaken up and disturbed that they couldn't talk about it without going pale.
"Ron!" Harry said, as they met at the school. They started talking about what they had done over vacation. Ron… conveniently… left out the parts that involved the death of their teacher.
When the feast began, Harry and Ron looked over to the teachers table, as they always did. "Hey Ron," Harry said, suddenly looking back to him. "Snape's not at dinner. I wonder why?"
"Mm…" Ron said. He didn't feel he could open his mouth without spilling everything.
When dinner was over, and Dumbledore had cleared the plates, they went up to bed. Next morning classes would start, and Ron shuddered to think of Potions class. They wouldn't REALLY prop up his body in class, would they?
Harry noticed that Ron was considerably pale as they walked down the hall to the dungeon for Potions. When they got there, they saw, not Snape, but Dumbledore!
"Professor Dumbledore? Where's Professor Snape?" Harry said.
"All in good time, lad." Dumbledore muttered. Ron looked around the room and saw a blanket covering something in the far corner, that looked like it could be the body. His stomach flipped over and he hoped that it wasn't. Despite how they weren't as afraid of the body after a while, it still made him nervous. It WAS a dead body, after all.
When the bell had rung, Dumbledore walked in front of the desk.
"Over vacation, something awful happened." Dumbledore said, his voice low. Ron gulped. "Professor Snape had a terrible accident while trying to save someone from the deatheaters."
There were murmurs of confusion around the room. The only one who wasn't saying anything was Ron, who was sitting stiff as a board.
"In this accident, your teacher lost his life." Dumbledore said shortly.
The murmuring stopped. The room sat in stunned silence.
"He has made it clear that he wishes to continue teaching. As a Lumen Orbis. I will leave it to him to explain." Dumbledore said, and left. Ron figured Dumbledore must be in good shape to have been going from his office to the dungeon every period.
The orb popped up from behind the desk, and hovered at the height Snape's head would have been. It was eerie to hear him talk without his body.
"Hello class. If anyone makes any regards to this stupid form I am in other than today, you will get a detention. Now, any questions?" he asked. No one moved. "Good. Now, I am a… a lumen orbis? Yes, that's right, I am a lumen orbis. Basically it means that I am a floating, glowing globe instead of a ghost. Got it? I will continue to teach, and don't think I won't give you a detention just because I'm small and glowing now." He said.
Hermione raised her hand tentatively. "Professor? If you are a lumen orbis, doesn't that mean your old body has to be in this room?"
Leave it to Hermione…thought Ron.
"So it does, Miss Granger." Professor Snape said. Everyone's head turned to the figure in the back with the blanket over it. They seemed to be very disturbed that his body was there.
"Now, to get on with the lesson." And so he did. He went on with the lesson.
No one was really paying attention, though. They were all looking in the corner at the body on the chair. Ron could tell more than one of them wished the blanket weren't there so they could see his body.
The next day was the same. For months it went on like that. People barely paying attention, they were all staring at the body. Eventually, Snape grew tired of it. One day, when they came in, the body was uncovered and slumped over in the desk chair. Ron did nothing, although many people grew quite white, or even looked very scared.
When the bell rang, Snape landed on his desk directly in front of his body. He had learned to move things in his new form, and he managed to pull back his body's head so that they could see the glazed look he had on his face. His mouth was slightly open, his eyes were wide open, and there were drops of sweat on his forehead. The sweat always came, it never stopped although the body was dead.
The class stared at the frozen-in-time death of their teacher. They were all stunned by it. Snape let the head drop, and hefted the hand onto his desk. The gruesome slash was now in plain sight to all the students. Some gasped, and some cried out, but none moved an inch.
He left the hand there. The body was now slumped over again and his had was hanging off the front of his desk as if in some eternal plea for someone to save him. The students saw Snape in a new light. In his death he had taught them another lesson. No one is what they seem, and you may only tell what they were really like in their weakest moments.
"And now you see." Snape said. "So don't let me catch you staring at it during class anymore!"
They all nodded. He explained the lesson, doing little except for resting in the open hand that was stuck out over his desk. They began to work. Of course, Hermione was done first.
She raised her hand into the air.
"Yes, Miss Granger?" Snape said.
"I.. I was just wondering… why don't you heal your body and go back in?"
The orb turned a light green color in confusion, and said. "What? I can't go back in there, It's dead!"
"No, Professor, haven't you heard? Apparently the Ministry had been doing some sort of project, and they found that Lumen Orbis could be brought back into their body if a certain circumstance happened. Basically, you heal the body. Then, when the soul thinks a certain thought, it's different for everyone, but when they think this one thought, they are sucked back in. At least I think that's how it works. You should really ask Madam Pomfrey."
Snape turned a deep blue color. "Are you sure, Miss Granger?" he growled.
"Yes, I'm sure Professor."
The entire class suddenly erupted in applause.
Snape seemed to be turning to face the body, and then the door, and then back to the body. He knew HE couldn't carry it all the way up to the infirmary.
"Ron!" he barked. Ron stood up and walked over. "Help me carry this up to the infirmary."
Ron hefted the body over one shoulder and stood there, nearly buckling under the weight of a full grown man on his shoulder. Hermione and Harry's eyes opened wide at the sight of their friend willingly carrying a dead body, much less their least favorite teacher's dead body up the four flights of stairs to the infirmary.
Ron began to walk out of the room at a snails pace as the orb darted around him.
"Hurry up, Ron!" it kept saying, and Ron would walk faster for a few seconds until again he had to slow down.
"C'mon! Why are you walking so slow, Ron?!" The orb said.
"I'm sorry! This is really heavy, I don't think I can carry it by myself.
Snape seemed to sigh. Then he glowed and said. "Fine, then get someone else to help."
Ron walked back into the room and called to Harry to come help him. Harry followed, looking slightly confused. He didn't know about Ron, but HE certainly didn't want to touch their dead teacher.
Nevertheless, Harry took the feet under his arms, and Ron grabbed the shoulders and they carved their way up the stairs. Soon enough they were in the infirmary. Madam Pomfrey had them lay the body down on a clean table. They did so, and were about to go back down to the potions room, when Snape stopped them.
"Hey! Don't go anywhere! I need you two to carry it back down when she's done!"
They frowned and sat down in the chairs against the wall. Every so often they glanced at each other.
With a wave of her wand, Madam Pomfrey had healed the wound. She got out an antiseptic wipe and began cleaning off the arm and hand of the blood that had been there for weeks.
"Really, Severus, keeping your body in such bad condition, I have half a mind to keep you here until I feel you are competent enough to take care of yourself!" She muttered at the orb which turned a mellow purple in embarrassment. "Sorry…" he murmured.
Ron let a small laugh escape him, before the orb looked over his way and he put on a straight face.
"Severus, I'm going to have to change these clothes of yours, they are filthy! And covered with blood, too!" The orb turned red angrily.
"Now wait just a minute, if you think I'm going to let you dress me, you've got another thing coming!" He growled.
"Hush, Severus! Stop being a baby! Boys, if you would go down into his chambers and bring up some clean robes?"
Ron grinned and stood up. Harry soon followed suit as Snape was left stuttering in the room.
When they came back, the curtains were drawn and Snape was hovering outside of them.
"Where do you want these robes, Professor?" Ron asked. Snape turned a mellow purple.
"Just toss them over the bar, boys! That's it, thank you!" They grinned and sat down again. Soon the curtains were open again and they saw that Snape's body was there, looking very clean and neat. She seemed to have washed his entire body and combed his hair. The orb turned a deeper purple than usual.
"You could've just changed the robes, you know, you didn't have to wash!"
"Oh, be quiet Severus, I've never seen you so embarrassed in my life!"
"Well, I've never had someone give me a bath before!" He growled, fading into red.
"I'm sure your mother did when you were a child. Now, boys, gather this up and take it back down to the room."
They did as she told them, and soon the cleaned body was in the teacher's chair and Snape was sitting on the desk. The class went back to work and the bell soon rang.
He had an hour of free time now, as it was lunch time. Seeing as he couldn't eat, he floated down and rested on his body's lap.
"Why did this have to happen? Why couldn't I have just died like a normal person?" He growled softly.
He heard an odd sound outside the door, and when he floated up to look over his desk, He saw the Weasley Twins, Ginny, and Ron standing in his doorway.
"What are you doing here?" He growled.
"We wanted to talk to you." George said, grinning. They all sat down and started telling them how their father wrote, saying there was a big breakthrough and that he was coming down to see Snape about it. Something about the experiments the Ministry had been doing.
"Really? So maybe they can put me back in this damn body?" He said hopefully.
They nodded, and explained a little about how long it would take their father to get down there, and then they left. Snape sat back down in his body's lap.
"Finally!" He murmured happily.
In a week or so, he looked up to see Arthur Weasley in his office. His kids huddled behind him.
"Severus!" He said, walking up to the desk. "They have found a way to put you back into your body!" He pulled a small container out of his robes. It held a green liquid in it.
"What's that? It looks like slime!" Snape said, turning a sea green color.
"If we put this in your body's mouth, supposedly it'll suck you back in. The ministry gave me special permission to bring it to you since they have no way to test it. Apparently it is supposed to trigger your soul into thinking the key-thought that will put you back into your body."
Arthur pulled the body's mouth open slightly and dumped th contents into its mouth.
I wish I had children of my own… Snape suddenly thought.
Suddenly everything went black. When he woke up, he blinked nauseously.
Wait, blinked? He thought. He looked down to see that he had hands, feet, a chest, he was back in his body!
"I'm back! I'm back!" he said, and stood up. Arthur Weasley smiled broadly at him, and without thinking, Snape pulled Arthur to him in a hug.
The twins, Ron, and Ginny stared up at Snape from behind their father, their eyes wide at the sight of Snape hugging their father.
Snape quickly pushed Arthur away and cleared his throat.
"Erm.. I mean, thank you." Snape said, to Arthur.
Arthur winked at him and nodded. "You're welcome."
Ginny walked forward a bit and looked up at Snape. "What was the thought? Supposedly that is very important."
"Erm.. well, I thought… well, never mind." Snape's face turned a pinkish color and nobody asked him again.
School went back to normal, but nobody ever forgot what it was like when Snape was dead.