Chapter 4: Snape's Multi-Purpose Purifying Potion

When Severus first opens his eyes in this new world, the first things he sees is the full moon.

It's night but the sky is lit up by the bright light of the pale moon and the stars look like stationary fireflies in a cloudless sky.

He wonders if death brings out the poet in him and snorts out loud.

The slight movement however triggers the sharp aches that seize his body instantly and he wonders why he's still in pain. 'Do spirits feel pain?' his foggy mind questions.

He takes a moment to try to think clearly but it's like he's been hit with a Confundo curse and he just can't seem to pull his thoughts together.

'Why does it feel like I've been run over by the Knight Bus?' he questions and instinctively tries to move his arm to search for his wand. He'd just been fighting in a war and all his inbuilt survival instincts shout out loudly to him that a wizard without a wand is a dead wizard, especially in these dangerous times.

His right hand gropes about the ground but it doesn't find anything remotely wand-like and Severus feels too much like something Fluffy the Three Headed Dog chewed and spat out to properly sit up and search.

'Severe magical exhaustion,' his mind diagnoses from where he lies spread out on the ground. He'd experience it before and recognises the sensations but not to this extent. He tries to pull his magic together but it feels like his core has run dry and bits of magic end up seeping back uselessly into the surroundings.

'Maybe even a damaged magical core,' his mind supplies again.

'Perhaps I'm already dead and this is just the brain's last few seconds alive before it shuts down,' he thinks and closes his eyes to welcome the 'next great adventure', as Albus once put it.

Quite some time later, he opens his eyes again to look up at the bright moon and wonders why he still isn't quite dead yet. 'Release me from this suffering already,' he grumbles as his aches start to worsen. His mind is slowly clearing and he misses the numbness it brought as sensations around him start becoming more apparent, along with the pain.

He's in a forest, he realises, as he smells the distinct scent of green growing plants and hears the sound of wind rustling through leaves.

'Am I in the Forbidden Forest?' he questions and he tries groping about for his wand again. Any specimen of wizard-eating magical creature could come upon him and decide that he probably looked tasty enough to feast on as the day's dinner after all.

He finds nothing and gives up with a sigh. 'Perhaps if I just lie here someone will eventually stumble upon me and be kind enough to apparate me to St Mungo's.' He just hopes that whoever who finds him won't be of the Death-Eater sort as they should have already gotten word of his betrayal by now.

He soon hears the cawing of some kind of bird species somewhere close by. 'I hope they don't think I'm carrion before my time,' he absently thinks.

He moves his gaze away from the pale moon overhead to search for the source of the sound and immediately spots a crow, or it could be a raven, sitting on a branch only a slight distance away. It seems to be staring watchfully at him and if Severus' fog-addled mind isn't mistaken, it's studying him with intent.

He wonders if the bird is really a wizard or witch in animagus form.

The bird breaks their silent staring match by hopping off the branch and flying closer.

It lands inches away from where Severus had painstakingly turned his head on the ground to look at the bird.

The bird caws out at him and then speaks, "The healer is on his way."

Severus is dumbstruck for a second and questions his own wizarding knowledge, 'I thought an animagus couldn't speak in animal form?'

His surprise must have been evident as the bird tilts it head to study him again and comments, "You're a strange human."

'You're a strange bird,' his mind immediately supplies back but he doesn't have the energy to voice it out loud.

He hears the distinct sound of the flapping of more birds and looks up to see a couple of black birds, similar to the one perched next to him, flying closer. One hurriedly lands ahead of the rest and Severus is surprised once again to notice that it carries a small sling bag made of white cloth over its black feathered back.

The raven, he can tell that they're all ravens now by the look of their tail feathers, eyes him speculatively for a moment before turning to his previous feathered watcher.

"How is he?"

"From what I can tell he's in pain, healer," says his watcher and hops back to let the other raven get closer.

The other raven, 'The healer,' Severus' mind points out, studies him intently again before rummaging towards the small sling bag he carries.

The other ravens who have landed, Severus notices, are all eyeing the procedure and giving him speculative looks. They're all of different sizes and quite larger than the ones he has ever seen before.

He hears the sound of crinkling leaves and he looks back to eye the 'healer' raven who is fiddling with a bundle of dried leaves that look like some sort of packaging; which is soon deftly opened by a dextrous claw to reveal a white powdered substance.

Severus thinks that by now he might be actively hallucinating. 'Ravens that can talk and act like humans?' he questions his sanity.

"This will help," 'the healer' raven says before sprinkling some of the white powder under his nose. He tires not the breathe it in, his instincts telling him not to trust unknown substances, but it's too late and he's already taken a whiff of it.

Almost instantly his head gets lighter and his eyes start to close. The last thing he notices is his watcher hopping closer and assuring, "You'll be fine."

And then only darkness.

He doesn't know how long he's slept for but by the time he awakens, his body feels the sluggishness of a person who has been immobile for a long period of time.

He's intimately acquainted with the feeling as he's spent enough time recovering from curses and the blasted cursed-mark in Poppy's hospital wing by now to identify it for what it is.

He distantly recalls the memory of being dosed unconscious by a couple of ravens and wonders if maybe Poopy had overdosed him with painkillers and other recovery potions to cause acute hallucinations.

But when he glances about to look for the medi-witch, he realises that he's probably not in the Hogwarts hospital ward, or even at St Mungo's, unless someone had suddenly decided to redecorate; in which case he would plainly commend them for their choice of a very realistic nature-oriented theme.

The walls are made of tree bark, as far as he can tell, and glowing vines cover the walls to provide a soft warm light. It was bright enough to light up the room but also dim enough to allow for his eyes to adjust to the brightness.

He glances down and sees that he's wearing a white robe-like piece of clothing that seems rather Asian in design; he thinks it might be called a Japanese yukata.

'Am I in Japan?' he wonders.

He further glances about the room and soon spots a very familiar bird perched on the bedframe at the bottom of his bed.

It's staring at him intently and he suddenly experiences the feeling of deja vu.

"Do you need me to call the healer?" it asks him.

Severus stares back at it in shock and calms down to take stock of his situation.

He's in a strange place where talking ravens exist. He doesn't have his wand and will probably get himself doused with the white powder again if the bird calls for the 'healer'.

"It's alright, I'm feeling much better," he tells the bird politely. Inwardly he's wondering if he can make a run for it. He can't apparate quite just yet but he has two legs and if he has to use them, he will.

The bird nods and they fall quiet.

They stare at each other and Severus wonders if this is going to be a pattern with them.

He breaks the staring by closing his eyes and pretending to rest but what he's really trying to do is to diagnose his body's condition and to figure out the events that had led him to this strange place.

He tries to probe at his magic and sighs in relief to discover that there's a shallow pool of magic already building up in his magical core. He had been severely drained, he remembers, but from what he simply can't recall.

His body feels lethargic but his aches have mostly faded. His neck however, feels a little sore and his hand automatically moves to touch it.

Almost immediately he is barraged with the memory of the sharp pain of being savagely bitten in the neck by the merciless fangs of a large venomous snake.

'Nagini,' he recalls as fear wells up in his throat. His breaths start coming out in short painful rasps and he blatantly realises that he's about to have a panic attack.

'That's how I died,' his mind reminds him, 'I died, I should be dead.'

The raven across him starts to notice the panic attack for what it is and quickly flies out the open doorway. A moment later, it flies back in with the healer closely following.

Severus holds unto his neck protectively and his breathes remain short and difficult. His hands shake intermittently and he can feel tears pouring down his cheeks.

He'd died, he wasn't supposed to be alive. It had been a fatal wound and he couldn't have survived.

"Human, look at me," a voice croaks at him from outside the cruel memories playing inside his head.

He'd died, he should be dead.

But it feels like he's still there, sitting helplessly on the ground as Nagini painfully bites into his neck again and again.

"Human, look up," he hears the voice again and it sounds somewhat familiar but the memory overpowers him again and he dismisses it.

"I don't think he can hear us," another voice croaks, "I'll just get more of.." the voice says but is interrupted.

"Oh, forget it!" and Severus feels a surge of strange energy before he is engulfed in it.

The memory fades away and he once again falls back into darkness.

He later learns that the raven had cast a sleep-jutsu on him and gets his revenge soon enough.

The bird does look so very fetching in pink feathers.

They tell him that he's in a different dimension.

It resembles the Japan of his world to a degree, when he describes the similarities of the culture he has heard about in his old world, but there are many key differences.

For one, they call the human continent, and there is bafflingly only one habitable continent, the Shinobi continent.

And instead of magic, which he reveals to them by turning his watcher's feathers pink in a show of demonstration, the energy that occupies all living things and is commonly used in this world is called chakra.

However, instead of being in said Shinobi continent, he learns that he is in a pocket dimension of the world; the Lone-Moon Forest of the raven-summons.

They tell him that the pocket dimensions, there are many, are connected to the main human world but humans cannot travel to the pocket dimension without their permission.

If they so happen to do so and come with ill-intent, they would find themselves on the receiving end of very angry animal-summons who would be more than eager to remove certain genetics from the human gene pool.

His watcher, who he finds out is called Kazu, had been tasked to watch over him for the duration of his recovery and stay in the Lone-Moon Forest.

They spend many moments just staring silently at the other from across his bed during the long days he spends in the healing room.

The healing process in itself was long and tiring as he had needed to recover not only physically but mentally and magically. There were nights when he would wake up screaming and fighting off a phantom assailant only to calm down moments later to remind himself that it was only a dream.

The sensation of sharp fangs at his throat usually follows him out to the waking world on many of those nights.

His raven watcher observes him silently during those times but pretends to look away to let him gather himself, and his dignity, before pushing a cup of water his way.

They come to a sort of truce the first time the avian does this.

A month after his stay in the healing room, the healer, who had introduced himself as Kino, informs him that he is physically well and ready to leave. His magic at this point has been slowly recovering and he could probably apparate three times before falling flat on his face, but it's a start.

Mentally though, he knows he has a ways to go.

He had tried to pry as much information about this world from the healer and his watcher during his recovery but there were some questions which they had casually brushed off or blatantly refused to answer, as in the case of his watcher, and he is chomping at the urge to find out.

"The elder will answer you," Kazu croaks out whenever he asks.

The raven then tells him that they will take him to see her when he is physically fit enough to leave the healing room.

And so, a month into his stay in Lone-Moon Forest, he finally leaves the healing room and is taken to the largest tree in the forest.

Severus doesn't think he's ever seen so many ravens gathered together and perched in a single tree.

But then the tree in itself is strange, it's as tall as a small mountain and its branches span out like a fan. The strangest thing about it though is that the tree is a pure white and it gives off a kind of ethereal glow that Severus thinks looks almost magical in nature.

The moon shines brightly above, providing enough light for Severus to make his way across tree roots and stray branches on the forest floor.

The journey here in itself had been an interesting one. He'd sat on the back of a large raven, large enough that it had resembled one of the dragons back in the wizarding world. Kazu had flown alongside them and when the raven had landed in the clearing near the Sacred Moon Tree, it had transformed in a pop of smoke into an average-sized raven.

"Thank you, child," Kazu had said to the raven and Severus had wondered if all ravens could enlarge themselves when they so choose to and how big they could really grow.

The young raven, who had introduced herself as Suzu, had bowed and flown off to sit on one of the branches after Severus had given his own short bow in thanks.

Now standing before the large tree, Severus feels a feeling on unease creep up his spine.

It should have been a loud affair with so many ravens gathered together on the same tree but there was merely silence in the clearing. More worrying however, was the fact that all of the ravens, a few hundred of them by Severus' estimate, were all staring silently in his direction.

It felt like he was on trial and he recalls another time when he had stood before the Wizengamot and pleaded for his life.

Kazu probably notices his trepidation and throws him an unusually kind, "Don't worry," before flying off to perch on a branch close by.

Severus waits in silence as he looks at the many ravens who are openly observing him. He doesn't know what they are waiting for and a small voice in his mind suggests, 'Perhaps they are waiting for you to crack.'

He truly hopes not, but he is prepared to apparate away the moment things go south. He can't perform more power-intensive spells without his wand or with his core so drained but he can at least run.

A few minutes later however, he hears a loud sigh and a voice calls outs, "Someone, please go wake Tsukine-sama."

It follows by another exasperated voice calling out, "Tsukine-sama, the human has come to see you! Please wake up!"

He sees one of the ravens in the middle of the tree shake awake a sleeping albino raven to her right. "Tuskine-sama!" the raven calls again directly into the other raven's ear.

"Huh? What? Is it dinner time?" the pure white raven awakens and looks about drowsily.

"The human is here to see you," the raven tells her gently.

"Oh! The human, yes, the human," the albino raven says before looking down at Severus from her perch.

"Ehem!" she clears her throat.

"Welcome Severus Snape, to Lone-Moon Forest. My brethren and I wholly welcome you to our home," she says with a bow and Severus instinctively bows back politely.

"I hear you have questions for me?" she asks.

Severus nods and asks, "Do you know why I'm in this world?"

He had tried to crack his brain for an answer throughout the past month and all his conclusions point to how he should have been dead and buried back in the wizarding world. He knows he had died, it's a fact that he cannot quite explain but inherently knows. And from what he had recalled, his body had been quite intact, save for the magical drain, when he had first emerged into this dimension.

Additionally, the healer-raven had let slip that the ravens had prepared a human-sized healing room months before his arrival and that they were unsurprised with his sudden appearance into their pocket dimension.

He'd tried probing for more information but the two ravens around him had merely told him to wait for the answers.

He eyes the white raven and impatiently and waits for her to answer.

"Magic sent you here," the raven simply answers.

Severus pinches his nose in irritation and bites out, "I know that there was magic involved but why am I here?" he'd concluded early on that the cause of his drained magic must have had something do with him being transported to this dimension.

"Because magic sent you here," the raven repeats and Severus holds back the need to start cussing.

"But . why?" he repeats with deliberation, patience waning. He wonders if he should be more respectful of the elder but he was never quite known for being a polite and respectful man.

"Because you are needed and because you need it," the raven says with a small nod.

Severus is taken aback by the answer and presses for more details but the raven repeats the same line.

"What am I needed for and what do I need?!" he finally raises his voice in ire.

The raven cocks her head before answering, "You will have to find out those answers for yourself, for that is part of your journey," she tells him and Severus wonders if the raven is purposely being difficult or if she just doesn't know the answer is merely giving him lines that sounds like something Albus would say to young trusting children.

He keeps trying by asking the same question again but the answers remains the same and in the end, he is left with more questions than answers.

He soon gives up and tries asking, "How did you know to expect me? I can tell that you knew I was going to be here."

Tsukine tells him, "Ravens are masters of the dream-world and the inner-mind. As the priestess of the clan, part of my duty is to look at the dreams of others; those of the past, present and the future. I saw your arrival in a dream."

He gets no more answers and it frustrates him.

Soon he rages out, "Why won't you tell me anything?!"

He glares at the assembled birds on the white tree and feels only burning frustration. He was thrown alone in this strange world, left almost defenceless and he had already died once. Why was he even here? There is nothing for him here, no one he knows and nothing around is familiar.

He has never felt so alone in his life, not even when Lily had broken their friendship. He's a stranger lost in a different dimension with no answers on why he's there or how to even get home.

The white raven gentles her gaze and tells him, "Because you're not ready for the answers."

"Then when will I be ready?" he questions back, his fingers clenched tightly. He looks at the raven, reading that there will be no forthcoming answers and something gives way in him.

"Then what do I do now?" he shouts out at the assembled ravens, anger burning brightly in his chest.

But suddenly, he's surprised by the feeling of an added weight on his shoulder.

The white raven had flown over from the tree to land on him.

"Are you angry? Frustrated? Upset?" the bird asks, tilting her head at him.

"Of course I'm angry!" he shouts at her, spittle flying.

"You've been angry your whole life. With your father, your schoolmates, your best friend, the mentor you had to kill and the cruel man you had sworn to serve," she tells him.

He freezes in surprise.

"But most of all Severus, you've been angry at yourself," she says, looking into his eyes and Severus finds he cannot look away.

He doesn't know what to do, standing before this all-seeing raven who seems to know his life story. Chills run down his spine.

"You've built walls around yourself made of anger but the walls merely hide all the hurt you've experienced. You've never trusted anyone and you've only ever relied on yourself, even when there have been those who had reached out to you," she continues and a picture of a red-haired girl with green eyes flashes through his mind.

They stare in each other in silence and Severus suddenly feels vulnerable in front of the other's red gaze.

After a moment she asks, "Severus Snape, do you need our help?"

He feels his anger slowly slide away to be replaced with confusion but he answers with a, "Yes?"

The raven nods.

"You might not be ready to hear some of the answers to your questions but we will always give you help should you need it. Severus Snape, welcome to the clan of ravens," she tells him and bows.

He lowers his head to her return, feeling quite lost at what had just happened. She notices his confusion and caws out in laughter.

"Come, let me tell you of the history of our clan," she says to him and flies towards the tree. She lands on a stone rock leaning against the tree and indicates for him to sit by her.

He walks towards her, feeling awfully perplexed.

He sits by the stone and a moment later, he feels another raven land on his shoulder and turns to see Kazu staring back at him.

"I told you not to worry," Kazu caws at him.

He spends the rest of the day listening to the elder talk about the origins of the ravens and the history of the world that they are in.

Looking back, he realises that this is the very moment that laid the foundation of trust between him and the ravens, although he didn't quite see it for what it was at the time.

The ravens bring him into their fold like he is one of their own.

They visit him daily, in the small tree house they had made for him, with offerings of sweet juicy fruits from the forest.

They teach him to recognise the plants around him and often they take him up on their backs, in their enlarged forms, and fly him around the pocket dimension. He enjoys these flights as he observes the world from up on high and is always eager to go on more.

The gentler ones always fly at a steady pace but the more excitable ones tend to perform daring aerial manoeuvres that leave his stomach dropping in alarm. Regardless he knows that they won't drop him and he enjoys all the flights.

Kazu shows him about the forest and brings him to the most delightful places; sprawling plains, hidden waterfalls, picturesque meadows and all sorts of places he thinks Severus might enjoy. Almost every day is an adventure and there isn't a moment where he doesn't enjoy their sarcastic banter; no other raven quite matches their level of pure snark.

Kino shows him how to produce the medicine the ravens use and he often follows behind the healer into the forest to gather the ingredients. The healer-raven tells him that he envies his opposable thumbs when it comes to collecting and producing the various herbal remedies.

At night, when the sun sets and the Lone-Moon Forest truly comes alive, he heads towards the sacred white tree and sits under it to listen to Tsukine sing about the stories and legends of the world that they are in. He wants to make a joke about the croaking of ravens but he can't seem to do so as the priestess has too lovely a voice for him to mock.

He wishes he could though, he really does.

He tells her that out loud in one of his dreams when she comes to visit him.

She has a tendency to appear now and again in his dream world but she is mostly polite enough to make her presence known before entering into his dream.

He doesn't stop trying to get straight answers from her but she keeps mum.

The rest of the time they spend looking at Severus' past in the wizarding world as he walks through familiar streets and castle corridors with the white raven on his shoulder.

He still feels a sense of homesickness but knows he cannot do anything about it. Tsukine tells him that she doesn't have the ability to send him home but the answer to his problem might one day be found.

Slowly but surely, he wakes up less and less from nightmares of serpents and sharp fangs.

Five months into his stay with the ravens is when he finds out the darker side to their world.

He's in a small clearing practicing his magic.

Tsukine had freely given him a white feather, a bag of ash from the sacred tree and a silver ring and told him to go forth and 'be magical'.

He'd taken all of it and pondered on what she might mean, when it dawns on him that he might need a wand.

He looks at the ring though, and question why she had given him that instead of a tree branch.

Kazu had looked at him and asked, "Does it have to be a pointy stick?"

And that brings him to where he is now, instead of a wand, he had found a way to embed the white feather and the tree ash into the silver ring. It now however shines white instead of silver.

He practices his magic with it as often as he is able to without draining his core. He's only able to store a quarter of what he once could but he's slowly getting there.

It's awkward at first to practice magic using a ring but he has since gotten used to the new wrist movements for different spells.

He throws out an 'Incendio' at the small pile of twigs at his feet and a merry fire forms.

"Might be good to roast some mushrooms," Kazu calls out from a nearby tree.

Severus throws him a look and thinks about pink ravens. He could do it wandless even, it wouldn't take much magic.

Kazu eyes him eyeing his feathers and starts to say something before he is interrupted by a shout.

"Hurry, bring her to the healer!"

They both turn towards the source of the voice and see a few ravens fly overhead, heading towards the healing rooms. A smaller raven is carried on one of their backs.

"What's happening?" Severus asks.

Kazu looks at him and shakes his head sadly. "It's the wasting disease," he tells the man.

"Wasting disease?" he asks and the raven tells him that the source of all the water in this dimension has been slightly contaminated. It usually doesn't affect the healthy ravens but the weaker children sometimes catch the wasting disease.

It's called the wasting disease because the victims who catch it often waste away, they grow thinner and thinner, and then die.

"And you're all not doing anything about it?" he questions.

"We've tried everything," the raven says, frustrated. "And unless you have a solution for banishing all of the world-eaters from this world there's nothing anyone can do," the ravens states.

'World-eaters,' Severus thinks about with a small chill running up his spine. He'd heard about them from Tsukine and wants nothing whatsoever to do with them. He hopes to peacefully die of old age never having had to deal with any of them.

"Where's the source of the contamination?" he asks.

"The Moon Spring, it's our sacred pool and the source of all water in this dimension," answers the bird.

"Can I see it?" he questions and Kazu gives him a surprised look.

"It doesn't look contaminated," he says as he sees the clear pool. They're on the highest mountain in this pocket-dimension and although it should be snowing, it's warm instead and plants grow abundantly all around.

"It used to glow as bright as the moon," the raven tells him.

"I see," he says and tries to picture a glowing pool of water.

An idea strikes him but he isn't sure if it will work. He looks towards the bird and says, "Let me try something."

He scoops a bit of water into a bottle he transfigures from a fallen leaf and turns back to the bird.

"Let's go back," he says and Kazu gives him a strange look before enlarging, Severus had been surprised by his size at first when he first sees his enlarged form, and taking off with the human on his back.

Weeks later, after many experiments and journeys back and forth the different parts of the pocket-dimension, Severus emerges from his wooden house and with triumph and exclaims, "Eureka!"

*Multi-Purpose Purifying Potion*

- Moon-tree bark (grated, 20g)

- White-spotted moon leaves (crushed, 15 g)

-Glowing yellow river fungus essence (10 ml)

- Clear Moon-River crystals (powdered, 5 g)

It takes many barrels of the potion, along with many helping beaks and claws, to completely purify the sacred pool.

'It really does glow like the moon,' Severus thinks to himself, admiring his handiwork.

The ravens around him are happily cawing out in celebration and the little raven that had been sent to the healing room many weeks ago laughs joyfully from where she perches on his shoulder.

"Thank you, Severus-nii!" the child, Suki, calls out exuberantly. He had healed her a week ago by pouring a vial of the purifying potion on her which quickly cured her of the disease.

"Guess you're a hero," Kazu tells him from his other shoulder with a laugh.

'A hero,' he thinks, he'd never been anyone's hero.

But it certainly felt good.

Tsukine looks at him with a knowing look in her red eyes and caws out a laugh.

The festive mood lasts for a week and Severus avoids berry sake for the foreseeable future. He's had quite enough of it throughout the last week to last a lifetime.

The ravens tell him that they've spread the word to the other pocket dimensions and orders for the purifying potion are pouring in, it seems that Lone-Moon Forest wasn't the only place suffering from contamination from the world-eaters.

They pay him heavily in gold and precious gemstones for his trouble and Severus wonders how he'd spend all of it in his lifetime.

'Perhaps I'll buy a country,' he thinks, 'and get everyone to call me King Severus.' He had been under the influence of too much berry sake at the time so he really couldn't be blamed for his nonsensical thoughts.

Kazu however had reminded him that he had said it out loud the next morning and cheekily referred to him as, "Your Majesty", all throughout that day.

He'd turned Kazu's feathers a glorious royal purple the next day in retaliation.

Six months later Severus decides that it's time to leave the Lone-Moon Forest in search of a way home.

Tsukine tells him that he should be able to find the answers to his questions in the Shinobi continent and remains mum about what she's seen in her dreams.

'The future is always uncertain and there are many paths' she tells him when he questions her why.

He's learned a lot from her in the year he's been with the ravens and understands more of what she says now. Some answers have to be sought on one's own.

He thinks that the one raven he'll miss the most is Kazu, his partner in snark, but is prepared to say goodbye when Kazu lands on his shoulder and says, "If I leave you alone you might just end up researching about potions till you forget to feed yourself," and joins him on his travels to the Shinobi continent.

They wave the others goodbye and in a puff of smoke, Tsukine sends them off with a jutsu.

Severus opens his eyes and sees grasslands and hills in front of him.

Kazu takes off from his shoulder to the open sky to scout out the lay of the land and Severus thinks of an old wizard with half-moon glasses.

'I guess it's time for the next great adventure.'

Years later, Severus wakes up one morning to the familiar knocking on his window. He waves a hand and a raven flies into the room.

"I'm back, the clan sends their greetings," says Kazu as he settles unto the bedframe by his head.

Severus looks up at the raven and the raven looks down at the human.

"Welcome back," he says with a smile.

"Today's special is berry ice tea at the tea house," he tells the bird.