Last chapter...
Severus tries to die like a good canon-compliant boy, but finds himself swept away into a reality where he's the father of 3 mini-mes, and married to a pregnant, scone-making Hermione who wears tiny shorts and offers wand-retrieval services in the shower.
Clearly he's hallucinating.
Probably.
Two - Fairy Godweasley
Severus made it nearly to the end of the drive before his legs lost their momentum. To be fair to his legs, however, he'd been transported to a strange dimension of sprawling detached single homes and well-manicured shrubbery. The poor, skinny lad from the bowels of midland industrial England - who still lived sullenly tucked into the base of Severus's skull - recoiled in horror. He may have even flailed to some degree.
"It's a buggering cul-de-sac," he groaned, eyes as large as dinner plates.
This wasn't just middle-class felicity; this was upper middle-class hedonism.
"Morning, mate! Nice jim-jams. Football. Classic." Severus rotated himself towards the jovial greeting, unnerved by the sight of Ronald Weasley standing next to him.
Casually eating an apple.
Wearing a tartan leisure suit.
And monk straps.
Double-buckle.
"Good morning, Mr. Weasley." Really. What else was one supposed to say whilst preoccupied having a bit of an existential crisis. "Do you know, am I wealthy?"
The red-head lowered his apple and considered the cul-de-sac, mini-manors, and the excess of horticultural grooming. "Yeah, I reckon; good for you, sir."
"Morning, Severus!" A man's voice interrupted them. Snape felt a chill crawl up his spine, and he turned slowly. He was wrong. This was hell after all.
As bold as you please, Harry-fucking-Potter strolled across the grass surrounded by a passel of crotch-goblins. Three of them. The largest of which was yet another offering in the - apparently - never ending line of Potter clones. The smallest one was a female with red hair and Lily's eyes.
I do not need this shite. Severus sighed inwardly, scrubbing at his face.
Like Granger, Potter was clearly somewhere in the range of his early 30s, his hair as stupidly chaotic as ever - did the idiot not own a comb? Unlike Granger, however, the man was at least properly dressed in some sort of smart muggle uniform with official looking badges and a tie.
"And what, pray tell, are you supposed to be?" Severus demanded, crossing his arms.
It was as though they were back in potions class, and the boy had been asked to recite the top ten uses of flobberworms. Potter blinked, then settled hard on confusion. "Er-"
Severus sneered. "Don't strain yourself."
"Well, obviously, he's a police officer, silly!" Huffed the girl. For his own sanity, Snape refused to acknowledge her.
"Lily!" The bespectacled numbskull corrected his child. "That was disrespectful, apologise to your Uncle Severus."
Lily. Of course its name was Lily. This was, after all, his personal hell.
The girl apologised, pouting. Severus angled himself to block his view of her.
"What do you want, Potter?" He hissed.
The Boy-Who-Lived-To-Torture-People-With-His-Eerie-Children blinked some more. "Er - well, I'm just dropping the kids off. You know. As I do. Every morning?"
Severus raised an eyebrow. "Are you asking me if that is what you do every morning? I assure you, Mr. Potter, I have better things to occupy myself with-"
"I'll just take them in then, shall I?" Harry interrupted, looking a touch skittish. "And leave you to - ah - whatever it is you're doing standing by yourself in your drive wearing pyjamas."
"Standing by myself?" Snape scoffed, watching the bane of his prior existence corral the mini-Potters to the door. "Has the fool gone blind in his old age?"
"Eh?" Weasley squinted, then resumed gnawing on his snack.
"How could he miss you, his most bosom of brain-dead chums, standing here in that ostentatious get up?"
"Oh!" The ginger menace grinned. There was apple peel stuck in his teeth. "Yeah, yeah, right - well, it's like this: you're the only one who can see me." Weasley's tongue began to fish around for the errant piece of peel.
A heavy weight settled in Severus's gut. "So, I am hallucinating - or have I gone fully mad?"
"Nah, mate, you're the full ticket." The tongue retired behind its teeth, and one grubby finger was employed to take over picking at the apple debris.
Despite himself, the dark haired man barked out a laugh. "You cannot possibly be suggesting that this-" he flopped his arms and hands around to vaguely encompass the cul-de-sac nonsense, "-is real!"
Ron snorted and flicked the little bit of peel off his finger. "Of course it's 'real', what sort of shabby outfit do you take us for?
"Us? Who is us?" Severus hissed. "Are you saying I've been abducted?" Was it possible? Was this some sort of elaborate ruse? They would have had to have saved his life somehow, kept him unconscious until now - how did they manage Granger and Potter? Polyjuice combined with an ageing charm?
"Abducted? Like hell, mate!" Weasley managed to look genuinely offended. "This here is a quality Glimpse. The full sensory experience! Your very own little bubble of Possible Reality, complete with all the necessary trappings; job, family, friends-" the red head gestured grandly to himself, "-charming, handsome, support staff."
Severus blinked. "Possible Reali-" He shot the dunderhead his most cutting sneer. "Mr. Weasley, there is nothing possible about this 'reality' you and your cohorts have fabricated, no matter how you choose to 'glimpse' it!" He advanced towards the masticating moron, dressing gown billowing in the morning breeze. "I demand to be released and my wand restored to me immediately-"
"That's not how it works, alright?" The ginger buffoon muttered something about 'ruddy ingrates'. "You're on the clock now, mate. A Glimpse is a Glimpse, and there's no going back until the time is up, you follow?"
"No." Severus growled. "I most certainly do not follow-"
"And here you were supposed to be a clever one," Weasley scoffed.
Snape bristled like a cat.
The idiot held up his hands in a defensive gesture. "Alright, it's like this: you went off and got yourself dead, yeah? Normally that's a one way ticket to beyond, and rightly so. But sometimes, there's folk that do things before they die, you know? Special things - great, big, bleeding, heroic things." He paused, narrowing his eyes at his captive audience. "You following now?"
"If I fetch you a road map, Mr. Weasley, do you suppose you might arrive at your point?"
The idiot made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl. "Listen here, Snape, you earned yourself a pit stop in between life and death. Because you had a shitty life, and then had the nerve to be a dutiful, self-sacrificing bastard, alright?" He narrowed his watery blue eyes. "Don't have a ruddy clue how that came about, seeing as you're kind of an arse, but you did, so just-" he huffed and flapped a hand at the house "-I dunno, enjoy it, or whatever?"
"A pit stop." The dark haired man narrowed his eyes.
"Yeah." Weasley shrugged. "Pit stop. Glimpse. Pause. Peek. Interlude - whatever you're in the mood to call it, it's the little bit of reality in-between that's just for you."
Severus took a moment to be surprised at the breadth of the imbecile's vocabulary. "Interlude? My, my, Mr. Weasley, a word with three syllables?"
Ron's countenance darkened and he dropped his apple core at Severus's feet. "I'll just be off then."
"No, wait!" Snape cried. "My wand, where is it? What have you done with it?"
"Sorry, mate, no magic here," shrugged the red head with a cheeky smirk, "insurance reasons, or some such; terribly perilous business, magic - you understand."
Severus's guts turned to liquid. "Merlin," he breathed, "am I a-a-"
"Muggle?" Weasley suggested, leaning forward with a Dumbledore-worthy twinkle, "why yes, sir, yes you are."
The dark haired man felt a weakness in his knees, and allowed himself a bit of a wobble. "So - I am trapped in an alternate reality where I am married to Hermione Granger. With three-and-a-half children. AND, I live next to Harry Potter. AND, he drops his highly controversial brats off at my residence every morning. AND, I'm a muggle." It was like the plot of some cheesy 80s film.
Weasley nodded thoughtfully while gazing at the Granger-Snape residence. "Reckon that about covers it, yeah."
Severus felt a migraine coming on, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "And how long is this - reward - supposed to last before I am allowed the dignity of my death?"
"Dunno." Weasley shrugged. "Depends on yourself - Oi! Look smart, mate, here comes your missus."
"What are you doing out here, Severus?" She'd changed into something blessedly demure, and wrangled her bushy hair into a plait.
Thank Merlin for small mercies.
"I am going mad," he replied with unabashed honesty.
"Well, that explains the state of poor Harry," she murmured, smoothing her palms over his dressing gown. "Do you know, he took himself off out the back garden?"
Severus froze, undecided if he ought to shove her off. Politely, of course; she was - apparently - his wife, after all. "Sensible of him," he managed to croak at her while he waffled.
For some reason, the daft bint smirked at him. "Harry is eminently sensible."
"And frightened of men in pyjamas, apparently," he replied, remembering to be amused at Potter's expense. "Pride of the force, that one."
Hermione hummed and then promptly decided to be horrifying by pressing her face into his poor neck. She inhaled. Deeply.
Severus held his breath.
The shreds of his dignity piped up. Oh yes, my good man, because it's so much less pathetic to be afraid of one's wife.
One rather lecherous little noise later, the woman leaned back, letting her smirk turn feral. "And don't you suppose for one moment that you're forgiven for abandoning me to wash my own hair, tease." She goosed his bottom. "There will be retribution."
"I - ah -" Oh, well said, Severus; that will send her running for the hills.
The lascivious creature struck again with another peck to the lips. "Do try not to be late for work, sweetheart, you know it makes you cross when you feel rushed."
Severus narrowed his eyes at her and pulled together a fearsome sneer. It was a shame she hadn't stuck around to notice it, however. These females of his really did seem to enjoy telling what would make him cross. Well! He'd show them a thing or two about it, wouldn't he?
"That's not good for your teeth, man, grinding your molars like that." Weasley commented.
"Piss off, Weasley," he snapped.
The red head rolled his eyes. "Right. I'll just be off then, best of luck to y-"
A wave of panic hit Severus between the ribs. "Wait! Mr. Weasley, you cannot simply abandon me here like this!"
The ginger snorted. "Yeah, yeah; successful career, big fancy house-"
"That is hardly the-"
"Brilliant, nubile wife who fancies climbing you like a tree-"
"Mr. Weasley!" Was this shitstain going to make him beg?
The pitiless gaoler clasped Severus's shoulder. "It's a hardship, mate, but I feel like you'll pull through, eh?" With that - apparently rhetorical - question, Ronald Weasley disappeared.
"Fuck," Snape hissed at no one in particular.
Suddenly 'Grandad Granger' alighted from the house surrounded by miniature, babbling humans. A mixture of his and Potter's offspring, it seemed, following the coffee-stealing loon to the next door drive where sat a very practical looking vehicle.
"Bye, daddy, have a lovely day!" One of the imps called to him, waving. He squinted. The harridan.
Severus ignored them and swooped back up his drive towards the house, slamming the door behind him as the children began squabbling over the front seat.
Blessed silence.
Severus leaned against the wall, letting himself slide down to the floor. He cradled his head in his hands and breathed slowly and deeply.
Pull yourself together, man.
Was Weasley telling the truth? Was this all some sort of strange, intrusive, post-death karma expenditure? He didn't want to believe it, of course. It would be vastly more convenient if this was an elaborate abduction scheme. Or hell, for that matter.
At least then I wouldn't be a muggle.