Very many things seemed harmless, their vileness exaggerated, as long as they were distant, as long as they happened to someone else. With a great bit of annoyance and anger, Severus admitted that having one of the Necromantic gifts was one such thing.
Being able to receive messages from outside the mortal world had seemed boring and ordinary enough to him before. He'd never considered it an asset in Avery, like Voldemort had, and he realized now that it was due to the fact that he'd never heard of a message from someone he'd known, or sent to someone he knew.
A ghostly letter from Dumbledore, apart from the morbid question it stated, shone a new light on the matter. Before that point, those who were gone were actually gone for Severus: unreachable, irreversible. Dead. But now his whole world tripped and turned upside down. If Dumbledore could reach out to him just like that, then so could James Potter, Lupin? All those unnumbered victims of the war, including his ownvictims? Maybe Voldemort, and even Li—
No, better not even go there.
At first, Severus obstinately refused to even consider the implications of this. Then his pragmatic side (with a big dash of self-defence instinct) finally kicked in, and there was no more denying that something had to be done. It also occurred to him that his obnoxiously variable health of late might be attributed to his new talent.
The question of 'what have you done' also remained on the agenda, even though for the life of him, Snape couldn't remember doing anything that could have led to... that.
St. Mungo's archive was his first stop on the road to finding out the real state of things. Luckily for him, it was a quiet, boring place, managed by a quiet, boring witch in her hundreds, who didn't even deign to question his assumed identity and his contrived reasons for needing the access.
Unluckily for him, the entire field of Wizarding medicine looked like a scientific swamp, inhabited by old slugs and leeches. His record was blissfully brief. Arrived in a state of coma, severe damage to this and that, compromised bloodstream. A list of potions administered and a death date, with a certificate copy. Not a single word about whether his heart had stopped and started beating again in the process or whether a Reversed Transition had been registered. The brevity of details was understandable; no one took notes in the rush of war, and later they were all made futile by his 'death', but it still irked him.
Longbottom it was, then.
The prospect of seeing Longbottom ordinarily would have made him furious, except that this time, it did not. Deep in his heart, in its most obscure corner, Severus harboured a profound feeling of gratitude towards Alice and Frank's child for chopping the blasted serpent's head off. A few years ago, George Weasley had invented a way to duplicate pensive memories, and his Memories of War series, a tribute to the other half of the Weasley tandem, had been a hit since. Neville Longbottom had been one of the first to give material and consent to share his moment of glory with the world. Snape had gone as far as having a small blue bottle with a memory copy owled to him. He'd been telling himself that it was merely his typical interest towards any work of genius, but, oh, how overwhelming was his satisfaction at seeing the snake's head fly off its body, spattering the clots of vile, black blood, the body itself quivering in its last, hopeless convulsions.
Surely Neville Longbottom had a few redeeming qualities, and the visit shouldn't be so bad.
Looking up Longbottom's address, Severus realized that he was still living with his hag of a grandmother.
After that, if there were any of those redeeming qualities left in him, they dissipated as soon as Snape showed up one day on Neville's doorstep.
Of all the possible reactions, Longbottom shrieked like a teakettle and started rubbing his eyes. Severus was absolutely in no mood for the poor sod's insecurities to rear their ugly head at that very moment.
"Oh, do hold yourself together, Longbottom. I'm not a ghost or an apparition. Neither am I dead," Snape said, trying to hold on to the last vestiges of his suddenly extinct patience.
Longbottom seemed to calm down, though he started hiccupping.
"Apparently, you're neither of those things, Professor, ik-ugh. Though judging by the way you look, you could be any one of them or all three put altogether."
Snape willed a small smirk to stay inside.
"I'm not your Professor, either," he rumbled in a reconciliatory tone.
"Um... I suppose, I should ask you what brings you here, but—"
"But you would much rather know why am I not dead like everyone else thinks I am?"
"In a word, yes."
Severus had always liked frankness. It was this simple straight-forwardness that had always appealed to him in Gryffindors, and suddenly Longbottom's slightly cowed stance and wary eyes didn't matter that much.
"Are you going to make me talk over the threshold, or did your grandmother let you live 'til almost thirty without instilling at least a modicum of politeness in you?"
"Oh, sorry, sir. Come on in. Grandma is... She's ill, you see. I moved here to take care of her."
"How noble of you, Longbottom," Snape said, but his remark lacked its usual share of sarcasm.
After answering to a loud yell from upstairs (which Severus by no means would say was coming from a person in their sickbed) that a friend had come over, Longbottom had gone to the kitchen to make tea, and Snape had had a few minutes to look around.
Augusta's abode hadn't changed over the last twenty-odd years or so. It was still a queer mix of old things—and they weren't old in pleasant, antique way, just a plain shabby kind of old—and decades of family heirlooms strewn about here and there.
Very soon, Longbottom's boyishly gangly form emerged from the kitchen. He was carrying two steaming cups of tea. Placing them on a teetering coffee table that had seen much better days, Neville folded himself into a chair across from Snape and raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Severus sighed and tried to summon up some of that disdain which had allowed him to disregard the sentiments of the likes of Longbottom while he had been working at Hogwarts, but couldn't find any. A decade of being left alone and not having to deal with children and their puerile idiocy had mellowed him. So many things had changed. And once more, he only noticed them when it concerned him directly. This thought placed a crease between his eyebrows. But after all, it was he who'd be asking for a favour. No big deal in obliging the boy's question.
"This is not to leave this room, Longbottom. I faked my own death for obvious reasons," Severus grumbled.
If Neville found said reasons not so obvious, he didn't say anything, to Snape's sheer relief.
"I assume you didn't come here to thank me for saving your sorry arse, sir," Longbottom said, but there was no bitterness or malice in his voice.
"No." That same sincerity and straight-forwardness worked well with Gryffindors, and expectedly, Neville smiled at that.
"I didn't suppose so."
Good. Snape took a sip of his tea to gather himself for the words to come. It tasted disgusting. Apparently, some things never changed, and Longbottom's bungling inadequacy, when it came to mixing ingredients, was one of them.
"I have to ask you something, Longbottom."
Neville said nothing and gave a curious look instead, so Snape just went on.
"When you... when you dragged me out of the Shack..." He paused and took another sip—to hell with its horrible taste. "Do you remember if my heart ever stopped? If I stopped breathing? Even for a minute? Maybe they mentioned it at St Mungo's?"
Neville narrowed his eyes somewhat, as if trying to gorge gauge the reasons behind Snape's questions.
"You kept looking at me almost all the way to St Mungo's. You just stared, right through me. I don't think you were actually seeing me, but you stared, like if you had stopped, you'd slip. No, Professor, you didn't die. At least not in my hands, not for a second."
"Are you sure?" Snape asked automatically.
"You didn't make a Transition, sir. Not that I know of," Neville said firmly.
It slightly poked Snape that he'd use that word. No, the term and the knowledge itself were quite common. But not common enough for someone as timid and dim as the Longbottom he'd known to suddenly grab onto it as if he were as sharp as a good Slytherin.
"Fine, then. That's all I needed to know," Snape said and rose to leave. "And thanks," he added, after a minute pondering.
"Are you a Necromancer now, sir? Is that why you're asking?"
Damn nosy Gryffindors.
"Why I'm asking is none of your business."
"Of course not. My mum... was one."
That got Snape's attention.
He turned around and hoped that his face looked inviting enough for Longbottom to elaborate.
"Not that she ever really boasted about it. But Dad and Gran knew. And Dumbledore. I suppose that was one of her assets in the Order."
Snape thought of Avery and almost cringed hearing that. Voldemort and Dumbledore, fighting for causes that were mutually exclusive, and yet both having more similarities than Snape wished to know of.
"When she was eight," Longbottom went on, "a Grindylow child played with her in the lake and... well, their games are a bit too crass for humans. She wasn't breathing when my grandfather dragged her out. After that, she could receive messages from dead people. She could also tell if someone she'd known had died. Or if someone had died in this or that place. And she could find... bodies. I don't know much. Gran does, though. But one thing I'm certain about: it didn't take her ten years to grow some balls and start asking questions."
On the one hand, the off-handish remark had made Snape flare his nostrils in fury, but on the other, he was glad that Longbottom's sharpness only stretched so far as to think Snape was a little bit of a coward.
What little scraps Snape had gleaned from a few related texts in his own library stated unconditionally that the ability manifested almost immediately. So, either he was an exception, and his Transition had gone without being noticed by Longbottom or St Mungo's staff, or he was made a Necromancer a couple of months ago. And if that was the case, it had happened without his knowledge. Or consent.
He'd made a swift exit before Longbottom had had any delusions about paving his way towards chumminess with his former and formerly terrifying professor.