Author's Note: Yeah, it's another Time Travelling Snape story. Sorry! None of this is mine. All credit to JKR and Warner Bros.

Summary: Felled and dying fast, Severus Snape uses his final moments to do what he can to end the Wizarding War - by divulging precious memories to reveal the truth. The truth about himself, the full extent of Voldemort's plans. While death seems to claim him at its ease, this is not the end. The fight is not over.

Fever Dream

So, this is the end.

Sprawled on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, venom crept through the veins of Severus Snape and turned his blood to ice. There was no room for doubt nor time to lament the fact that this was definitely the end. His eyes slid in and out of focus, so much so it took several moments to realise another face was looming directly over his own. And even longer to realise who it was. Still preoccupied by his own impending death, he thought it was James Potter at first. His old nemesis come to send him down to hell. But the eyes. Those emerald eyes jolted him out of his gathering delirium, the dots connecting belatedly in his head.

Harry Potter. Alive and still in the fight, it was now or never for the truth to come out. There was no time for lingering animosity. No final insults to give vent to ancient wrongs. Now, only the truth remained and already the first vital memories escaped him in a silver haze. This was the end, but it was time to go back to the beginning.

"Take … it." Stifled, drowning in his own blood, Severus struggled to form the words. "Take … it".

Slowly, at first, but quickly gathering pace, the memories leaked from him. Channelling every last ounce of his ebbing strength into one final effort, he forced the memories out of himself until they formed a heavy pall that obscured the face of the boy gazing down at him. Surely now, that child would have the wit to do what he was asked? Mercifully, the Granger girl stepped into his narrowing field of vision, conjured a flask from thin air and thrust it into Potter's hands. And it was done, at last. He had fought his war.

The pain receded as his body swiftly closed down. Through one final tremulous breath, Severus Snape spoke his final words. "Look at me."

Those brilliant green eyes found him and he thought of her one final time. The darkness washed over him, claiming him at its ease. But it did not matter, so long as those eyes found his.

Out of the darkness, consciousness came dripping slowly. Starting with an unknown source of light that filtered through his eyelids, other senses soon followed. The softness of the thing upon which his head lay, a warmth that covered him from throat to toe and the feeling of the fabric that covered him. Then, his memories. The lunge of the snake, the pain of those razor incisors sinking into his flesh and the dull thud as body hit the ground. He should be dead. But the realisation that he ought to be dead made his still beating heart quicken in his chest. He tested his strength and moved an arm. A furtive movement in which he grasped at the sheet that smothered him. In return, something seized that same hand. Warm and soft, long fingers entwined through his own and squeezed tenderly.

"Severus… Sev, can you hear me?"

Finally, Severus allowed his eyelids to flutter open. As he did so, familiar emerald eyes locked into his own. The last thing he remembered before death was the first he saw on the other side but he wasn't complaining. At least this time it wasn't Harry Potter.

"Lily?"

"Oh! Thank goodness, you're all right."

He tried to sit up, but she released her grip on his hand and gently lowered him back down onto the bed. Slowly, his blurred vision cleared and he saw her properly for the first time. Lily. Her red hair and pale skin, her face crumpled with concern.

"Lily, it's you?"

"I know we've had some falling outs, Sev. But never in a hundred years could I leave you like this." Her brow creased, but she was smiling. He noticed the cloak she was wearing. A black robe trimmed with the scarlet and gold of Gryffindor. That was odd, but his happiness at seeing her overrode any other anomaly he might have noticed. Such as the drapes closed around his bed, clearly a hospital bed.

"Sev," she spoke again, resuming her grip on his hand. "You've been unconscious for days. Do you remember what happened?"

"The snake bit me," he replied, closing his eyes against the memory. The pain he felt was like an echo of the moment of his death, faint and seemingly distant. But not something he felt he could face again. "The Dark Lord. He set Nagini on me … he thought he would master the Elder Wand without me in the way."

Now that they were reunited, he wished they could talk about something else. Anything else. His body felt leaden, his wits dulled by the residue of venom and a dull ache throbbed behind his eyes. All the same, his mind swirled with questions he yearned to ask but lacked the strength to articulate. If this was death, it was very tiring. All he wanted to do was look at her. To see her again, after all these years.

Was this heaven or hell, or somewhere in between? He didn't much care, so long as Lily was in it too. In his life, he had never been certain about what followed death. And he never was the type to seek solace in fantasies of reunions with loved ones in an eternal paradise. But ten minutes into his death, it was already proving to be a vast improvement on what came before. But when he opened his eyes to look at Lily again, her face was pale and etched with a fearful worry. She shook her head, slowly. "What snake, Sev? There was no snake. It was those foghorns of conceit, James Potter and Sirius Black. We all saw what happened."

Now it was his turn to be thrown for a loop. Severus struggled to sit up again but, this time, Lily was even quicker to force him back down. Although his bewilderment was growing, the concern in her expression compelled him to do as she bid. "I don't understand," he finally said. "What do you think happened?"

"I didn't see it all," she said. "But it was after our exam. Down by the great lake, James had you hanging upside down, Black and Pettigrew finding it all highly hilarious. I stormed up to him and demanded he let you down immediately. I – I thought you opened your mouth to say something to me, but that was when you fell. Head first, hitting the ground and…" Lily flinched at her own recollection, looking faintly ill. When she resumed her story, she did so quickly to get it over and done with. "It was awful, you were cold and bleeding, no one could wake you … Potter swears he didn't let you down, that he didn't want you to get hurt. But I'm sure I saw him move his wrist. A silent spell? I could swear on it, Sev."

Mudblood. He had called her "mudblood". And Potter, for all his faults, hadn't let him fall. Everything felt familiar, but this one discordant note in his memory seemed to cast it all in doubt. Slowly, Severus extracted his hand from Lily's grip and turned to look at the palm. His skin was smooth, gone was the large scar of a burn from a hot cauldron he had tried to move several years before. It was all … younger.

"We're not dead," he murmured. "Neither of us."

"Not funny, I thought you were," said Lily, although he was not joking. "The noise you made when you hit the ground-"

"No, I died. He made Nagini do it."

His heartbeat raced and, in a panic, he scrambled out of bed. Wrenching the curtains apart, he found himself in the hospital wing of Hogwarts. But it wasn't real. None of it was real. It was the snake. Even now, he could feel those fangs sinking into his throat. That was what happened. And now he was dead. All of this – the hospital wing, the empty beds and the broad afternoon sunshine spilling through the casement windows – this was all some fever dream. He was thirty-eight years old, but the reflection looking back at him in a mirror he had seized was a sixteen year old. The jolt caused him to drop the mirror, where it shattered on the cold stone floor. Lily let out a startled cry just as an incensed Madam Pomfrey appeared on the ward, barging through a side door.

"Young man, go back to bed this instant!" the matron scolded him, her face stern. She fixed the mirror with a flick of her wand and rounded on him again. "Bed! Now!"

Thirty-eight-year-old Severus Snape somewhat objected to being ordered around like sixteen-year-old Severus Snape. The realisation that Lily had a hold of him again and was gently coaxing him backwards snapped him out of it, stilling whatever cutting reply he had for the matron.

"Madam Pomfrey, he's been having awful dreams about snakes and He Who Must Not Be Named," said Lily. "It has him out of sorts. That's all it is."

"A Calming Draught. That's what he needs."

As Pomfrey turned to get the draught, Severus allowed Lily to guide him back to bed in a fugue state of numb disbelief. All the while, he looked at her. Living and breathing, just as he felt like he was. But that snake was no dream. He had not dreamt twenty years of life after being unconscious for just a few days. It happened. It had all been real. He wanted to tell her, but he couldn't just blurt out twenty odd years in a few minutes and not expect to be treated like a madman.

By the time he was back in bed, Pomfrey had returned with a glass of pale blue potion. Offering no resistance, Severus downed it in one and the effects were immediate. His heartbeat slowed and his shoulders relaxed. A drowsiness stole over him as Lily smiled once more. "I'll leave you to sleep, Sev. You need peace and quiet. But I'll be back in the morning and we can talk properly. I promise."

The draught did its job, soothing him into a state of mental and physical passivity. He breathed deeply and steadily, lending him a semblance of artificial calmness. But it did nothing to dent the reality of his predicament. Those were no dreams. Nagini was real. He had been a double agent in a war. He had been a teacher. Lily was dead. James Potter was dead. Even Sirius Black was dead. The conceited echoes of their foghorns long since receded from history.

Severus must have slept, because he dreamed again. Real dreams. Nagini reared up and lashed her fangs into his flesh, her cold hard scales grating against his skin. Voldemort laughed and Dumbledore was thrown backwards, falling in slow motion from the top of the Astronomy Tower, the green glow of Severus' own killing curse fading to black. The darkness remained, pressing itself around him in a stifling silence. Severus was tiny, his knees drawn up to his chest as he cowered with his hands over his ears. His father's footsteps were slow and measured, the deathly clip of his steel toecaps echoing around the vast stone vault he found himself in. Still black water glimmered in an expanding green haze in the distance. He tried to focus on the green glow. Until the soft whisper of a leather belt being drawn through belt loops, followed by the metallic clinking of the buckle as his father doubled up his weapon of choice. Fear choked Severus; he dared not look around. But his father's footsteps drew nearer and nearer, until the ominous crack of the leather belt jolted him out of his stupor. He lunged forwards, straight into the bitterly cold water. He thrashed around, trying to keep his head above the surface until unseen hands seized him, dragging him down and down until he awoke. Breathless and sweating, back in the hospital wing of Hogwarts. The residue of the dream faded from his mind's eye.

Slowly, he drew back the bed covers and let his feet land softly on the cold tiles. Careful not to wake Madam Pomfrey, he trod carefully across the ward, coming to a rest beside windows overlooking the grounds. A dull, distant pinprick of light emanated from Hagrid's cabin. The endless Forbidden Forest stretched into the foothills of the mountains beyond the grounds and owls circled the stars. Severus watched it all without really seeing, ruminating on the situation he found himself in.

If he wasn't dead, he should be. If this wasn't some post-mortem fever dream he was making up as he went along, then it had to be real. If he really was back in time, then it had to be for a reason. But why? Another thought occurred to him: that Lily and Pomfrey were right. It was the future he thought he had that was the real dream. Nagini, Voldemort, his death … all just a crazy dream that happened after James Potter really did knock him out.

But no. As Severus ran through his life, finding that he suddenly had great gaping holes in his memories. Memories he had given to Harry Potter. He knew he and Lily had been friends since they were small, but he couldn't for the life of him remember how they met. He knew he had been a Death Eater, but the precise moment of his turning was gone from his head. He killed Dumbledore and while he still knew why, even key parts of that were now lost to him. His life redacted, edited out of context. Some key pieces of information missing from a tapestry he could never have invented alone.

Dawn was breaking on the eastern horizon. The treetops limned in a pale golden light. Slowly, Severus rolled up the left sleeve of his pyjama jacket and tilted his inner-forearm toward the light and his breath caught in his throat.

"Shit," he breathed, heartbeat racing. There, on his inner-forearm, the dark mark stood livid against his pale skin. Old scars might have faded, but dark magic followed him wherever he went.

Thank you for reading. Reviews would be greatly appreciated if you have a moment.