A/N-I'm really not sure what to do with this. I've been thinking about writing a fic for this for a while now. I wrote little notes on it maybe a year ago, but never got around to actually writing a fic until now. I'm not sure if I'll be writing more, so this is more of a test than anything.
This is not compliant for the Little Nightmares II game, as it wasn't out when I started writing this, and I'm too lazy to rewatch or replay anything.
Fair warning- I took sleeping meds before I wrote this, and I'm getting too tired to read it over, so I apologize for any spelling or grammar mistakes. Feel free to correct me in the comments.
-Moth
--
Severus Snape feels as though he should have known better. His instincts- sharper than most, almost animalistic- usually warn him before incidents like this.
Their new Defense teacher didn't like him. A Gryffindor, with too many prejudices, and too much affection for the Marauders' pranks, he really shouldn't have expected anything else.
Now, with nowhere to run, and only Lily to defend him, he was stuck being used as an example for their 5th year class for some grey potion that, fundamentally, was rather similar to the pensieve. Pulling you into someone's mind, it was legilimency for someone that never bothered to actually learn it, and they were supposed to be testing the defences of their minds.
The man, trying and failing to conceal a smirk, casts a spell against Severus' temple, pulling a long yellow wisp from his mind, before stirring it into a cauldron, tinting the liquid golden, divvying the potion into viles and handed out to each of his waiting classmates.
It wasn't long before yellow fills his vision, before fading into the familiar greys of the Maw, the eerie moans of the ocean and whistling wind filling his ears, before his senses are assaulted with a familiar, overwhelming panic.
Squeezing his eyes shut and attempting to calm his breathing, he's left gasping at the realization that he was now in his younger body, before control his control slips as terrorfearpanic fills him.
Six's wild eyes flick around at the unfamiliar people- they were too tall, too big, too many, too much. Fear winds in her chest like a snake. She runs.
--
Lily Evans feels like she could have protested more. She knew this was a bad idea. If there was one thing she knew about Severus, it was that his childhood was horrible.
She'd been so curious, as a child, when another kid moved to town. Ms Eileen insisted the small, mute boy was her son, but Lily had never seen him at the school before, and she was certain she would have noticed someone who never spoke.
After gaining his friendship, when little Severus started talking, she learns- Eileen had adopted him just over a year before they'd met, back when "Severus, the mute boy," had been "Six, a hungry child," and that she had taught him to read and write before signing him up for the school she worked for.
With time, Severus revealed more about himself. He had magic- information that came with knowing she had magic- and that before Eileen, he'd lived somewhere different. Somewhere off. Severus tells her that Eileen believes it to be some sort of alternate universe, filled with people that were "hardly human."
The nightmarish world he described was something she didn't like to think about, and something he didn't like to talk about, but he'd recently mentioned using the place and its inhabitants as a basis for his Occlumency. She wished his memories didn't have to be so unpleasant, but if anything, they provided good protection against mind attacks.
Now, stuck in her friend's mindspace, watching as the only guide they had succumbs to the feeling of being immersed in his worst memories, stuck in a body that had never felt right. Watching as he ran away from them, leaving her stranded on the Maw with people who had no idea what they'd just gotten themselves into.
As the footsteps of her tiny best friend fade into nothing, she stares around her at the room she'd found herself in. Severus truly hadn't been lying when he'd said everything was massive.
