Chapter Two

It was the last day of June, in the year 1974, and a black-haired boy was sitting in a compartment in the Hogwarts Express, wondering if he would make it off the train in one piece.

The thin, spindly boy, looking younger than his fourteen years, sat huddled alone in his compartment on the train. Gorgeous green countryside was flying past him outside, had he troubled to turn his gaze to look to see it; but his back was pressed up against the window so he could keep a watch on the door on the compartment. His wand was in his hand, and it would stay there until he was safely with his Aunt Lobelia.

His aunt. Hah. He rather would have stayed at Hogwarts, but that wasn't possible.

He shifted to get more comfortable, but never took his eyes from the compartment door.

His mother and father were supremely mismatched, to put it mildly. It was only the fact that no one else would have had either of them, in either of their worlds, that had brought them together in the first place. They had, he had guessed, never got on well, and from what he could tell his birth seemed to have made things even worse between them. Mother loved him and tried to protect him as best she could, but Father was, at best, a drunken beast, spending his evenings at the pub and coming home reeking of sweat and bitters, taking out his frustrations on his "ugly wife" and "stupid brat" – or sometimes his "stupid wife" and "ugly brat".

One evening last January, shortly after the "ugly brat" had gone back to Hogwarts after the Yuletide holidays, his father finally went too far. But his mother lived just long enough to make sure he didn't survive her for very long, or without a great deal of pain. Her older sister took in her son, and had vowed to scrub off any Muggle residue that might exist on the lad.

In truth, she didn't have much scrubbing to do, as young Severus had already rejected anything having to do with his murderous father and his world. His father had worn his hair short; Severus wore his long, after the wizarding fashion. His father thought that wizard's robes were for ponces, and were little more than fancy nightgowns; Severus made a point of wearing his school robes around the house, and even outside in the Muggle world once he'd mastered the Disillusionment Charm.

Even so, Severus knew, without having to be told, that Aunt Lobelia resented his very existence. Every time she looked at him, she was reminded her that her beloved sister Eileen, so talented and sweet if a bit plain, was dead at the hands of a Muggle brute.

He drew up his feet beneath him on the seat, resting his chin on his knees; he was tired, as he hadn't slept well the night before. But he wasn't going to risk lying down to sleep, not even with the door to the compartment locked and warded. Not so long as any of the Marauders were within fifty feet of him.

But he thought that, just so long as he was facing the door, he could risk a sitting cat nap.

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Carefully rising from his seat, Severus gathered up his school books and listened to the hubbub outside his compartment. The train was finally in London at King's Cross, but the conductors had not yet given anyone permission to exit the train. Most of the students were milling about the carriages, their school robes stowed away, impatient to leave.

Severus cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself. With luck, he could be off the train before Sirius Black or any of the other Marauders had spotted him. He took a deep breath, then opened the door of the compartment and joined the milling crowd.

Down the length of Severus' carriage the students swept, chattering and happy, talking about plans to meet over the summer or to take shared vacations. Nobody noticed the huddled blur among them as they all spilled out onto the platform.

Coming from the enclosed railway carriages of the train, Severus was as always struck by the sudden change in atmosphere. The carriages of the Hogwarts Express had carried within them the relatively cool, clean and dry air of the remote corner of Scotland where Hogwarts and Hogsmeade were located. In contrast, the London summer air was warm and sooty and moist, and Severus had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from giving away his presence with a loud cough.

He saw his aunt at the far end of the platform, a tall stick of a woman draped in widow's weeds, holding herself apart from the rest of the crowd as if she feared catching some sort of disease from them. She held an ebony-handled wand in one hand, which she had disguised by mounting a pair of spectacles at one end to turn it into a lorgnette. She was holding it up to her eyes and peering through the spectacles as if she were a particularly ill-humored crow.

Now was the most dangerous part. He had to remove the Disillusionment Charm and get to his aunt before the Marauders spotted him.

Severus moved halfway down the platform, then looked around himself in a wide, sweeping arc. There were several persons in the immediate area, but no signs of Black, or Potter, or of their hangers-on.

"Finite incantatem," he whispered.

There was a slight shimmer about him, and the blur that had surrounded him vanished. Quickly, he put away his wand. He looked around one more time –

Several shouts, from several different directions. They had apparently found him.

Severus cursed himself for not having his wand handy.

The air around Severus crackled with magic as the various spells hit home, the force of them sending him gasping to the platform floor. It looked for a moment as if he were dipped in a glowing rainbow.

Suddenly, as he lay on the warm concrete, he felt himself shimmer again, as if going under the Disillusionment Charm one more time. But he noticed that he wasn't the only thing shimmering: the platform and the crowds were now getting somewhat fuzzy, as if he were looking at them through a fogged windowpane.

There were voices, but they were less distinct as well, and fading even as the platform itself was fading:

"Didn't mean for this to happen–"

"His fault for being in the way –"

"If only Lestrange hadn't thrown that counter-hex towards us–"

"Circe's ghost, he's beginning to fade!"

The voices receded further into the foggy murk. Severus felt the concrete recede as well, as if he were floating away from it into the fog.

So this is what it's like to die, he thought, in a detached sort of way. Odd, this. Shouldn't there be more pain? Or any pain? Though they say if you're hurt very badly, it overloads the nervous system, so you can't feel it anyway...

His body started to spin as he floated through the murk. Slowly, at first, but with growing speed. He had the sense that he was traveling a very great distance.

The murk was now taking the shape of a tunnel, with Severus at one end and a point of light, small at first but growing steadily, at the other.

I hope I don't meet my father in the afterlife, Severus thought as he was carried along. Mum, yes, but not him. Good-bye, life...

The light was almost upon him. He shut his eyes tightly, braced himself for whatever lay behind the light.

He felt a burst of something – and a sudden rush like a wind –

– and found himself flat on his back on a patch of warm ground.

This probably isn't the afterlife, then, he told himself, right before he passed out.

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It was the sun that brought him around.

The warmth of it was delicious on his skin, almost painfully so; it was a stronger sun than ever he'd felt before in his life. There was a humming sound in the distance, the sound of something mechanical; other than that, the only sounds besides the beating of his heart and the whispers of his breath were coming from the wind rustling whatever plants were near him.

Before he started to get up, before he even opened his eyes, he took a quick inventory of his condition. No real pain, just a little dizziness. Strange, that – he'd been hit with a volley of hexes, any one of which should have done something to him, such as shortening his legs or lengthening his nose or making him itch uncontrollably. But as far as he could tell, he was unmarked. The spells had all apparently cancelled each other out, for the most part...

Severus tried a few deep, lung-filling breaths, to see if he'd broken anything inside his body during the fall. No sudden jolts of pain occurred, so that was all right. He flexed the muscles in his arms and legs, one at a time; no pain in any of them, either. The strap of his book bag was still on his shoulder; a quick search with his hand showed that the bag and its contents had apparently survived intact, so his school trunk, shrunk to fit, probably had survived as well.

Finally, he dared to open his eyes, slowly and cautiously.

He found himself staring up into the bluest sky he had ever seen. Infinite blueness, with not a cloud to be found. Small green bushes grew all around him, their leaves rustling softly in the wind. The mechanical sound was getting louder, more distinct; Severus thought it sounded like a Muggle engine of some kind.

It was still morning, whereever he was – the sun was still climbing in the sky - but already it was getting too hot for him and his woolen robes. He tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea and dizziness overtook him, and he fell back down again.

The mechanical noise grew closer, ever closer.

And then, suddenly, it stopped.

A soft thump, then the thudding of shoes against soil. Someone was running towards him...

The face of a man, seamed and sunburned, loomed over Severus' head. The man was looking down at Severus with what appeared to be genuine concern.

"Well, I'll be a dirty bird," he said. The man's voice had a strange accent, both flat and twangy at the same time. "Are you okay, son? What happened to you?"