Eleven years in the past.
He had to tell the boy.
It was of paramount importance that he could pass all his knowledge, all his dark secrets on to the boy.
He must know! He must!
He could feel life running out of him, like water trickling down from a wet sponge, only to be soaked up in his black robes. With every heartbeat more blood was pushed out of his veins.
Severus knew all about the manifold magical qualities of blood; he had studied every book that had ever been written on the subject. He knew that his own magic was seeping out of the deadly bite wound that the Dark Lord's snake had inflicted on him.
The boy knelt down on his side, his friends with him. There was shock and horror in their faces. He had been so sure that they would be relieved to see him die, to see him slain by his own master's cruel hand.
He tried to speak, but merely his lips trembled. No words came out of his mouth. The boy bowed his head down, tried to catch the words.
Severus tried harder, and this time was able to produce a tiny whisper.
The boy understood.
His eyes were locked on Severus' gaze when he took his wand to extract his schoolmaster's memories. With the tip of his wand, he poured them into a phial that one of his friends pressed into his hand.
Severus looked into his eyes. He decided that he wouldn't look at anything else until death washed him away. He has her eyes, his mother's eyes. The same green, vivid eyes, just a bit of sadness in the corners.
"Forgive me", he wanted to say, "forgive me, Lily, for all I have done to you. I have sinned against you, and there is nothing I could ever do to atone for all my transgressions."
Lily took his hand and all pain seemed to go away.
He could hear voices, but the words made no sense.
"Professor! Professor…"
But Lily and I aren't at school, he wondered. We're at the playground. It's the summer holidays.
There was this one day when he had stolen a kiss from her.
When his lips no longer touched hers – so warm, so soft – he was sure that she would slap him in the face and would never speak to him again. But if he hadn't kissed her then, he wouldn't have dared it in a thousand years.
Lily's hand was half-raised and Severus waited for the slap that never came. Her bottle-green eyes were furious, sparkling, and Severus' heart thought it would burst.
Lily just turned on her heels and stomped away.
She was so mad at him that she didn't speak with him for an entire week. But still she would come to the playground every afternoon and meet him there in the treehouse where they would read in Hogwarts, A History or Advanced Potion-Making. She broke her silence to tell him that he was crazy trying to brew the Animagus Solution.
"It's plain stupid to try and do something illegal, Severus!" she said, and her eyes were sparkling again. "Besides, if you don't brew it correctly, you might kill yourself!"
"I know that I can do everything properly!" Severus answered.
"Yeah, whatever." Lily shrugged. "Are there any biscuits left?"
Severus handed her the small box with the biscuits his grandmother had made. His grandmother that he was forced to live with since –
An icy chill ran down his spine despite the burning-hot weather.
Lily spoke to him again, that was all that mattered.
Only during the bright summer afternoons in the treehouse Severus was happy, only when Lily was with him. She was the first thing that he thought of after he woke up, and the last thing he thought of before he fell asleep. The afternoons with her were the only thing that made him endure one horrible day after the other.
He was only a thirteen-year old boy, but he knew that his life depended on Lily. He would be lost without her, and therefore he could never allow himself to loose her. Even if this meant that he could never kiss her again.
"Professor!"
"Need to help him" –
There were hands on his body, shaking him. Hands without people attached to them.
Lily's green eyes.
The smell of biscuits.
Please don't leave me!
The hard planks of the treehouse.
It's getting dark early today…
There was pain, but it went away quickly.
There was blinding light, but soon his eyes adjusted to it.
There was disorientation, but then his senses kicked in and he could tell where up and down were.
Instictively he grabbed the chains of the swing on which he was sitting.
He was on the playground from his days as a teenager, only that his feet as a grown-up now touched the soil under the swing.
The swing next to his squeaked and he looked up.
Lily sat on it, her feet dangling above the ground.
She looked exactly as old as the day he had last seen her – expect that she wasn't dead.
Or was she?!
"How – how is this possible?" he blurted out. "Am I dead?"
Lily smiled. "Yes, silly."
"But this is our…" Severus stopped. There was no "our"; there had never been an "our".
"Our playground," Lily completed the sentence for him. "I haven't been here in quite a while."
"This place can't be real."
"But it is, Severus. Don't you smell the grass and the wet sand over there?" Lily pointed at the sand box. "Can't you see our treehouse? Doesn't this feel real?" She briefly put her hand on his lower arm.
"Why are you here?" What Severus meant was: why are you here with me?
"Because I asked to be alone with you after you've come over."
"Over to what? I don't understand." A horrible thought formed in his mind. Had Lily asked to see him before he was brought to hell? To purgatory? To eternal damnation?
Had she decided that this would be his ultimate punishment, to see her once more before he would suffer for his crimes eternally?
"I wish to thank you for all the things you did for Harry. That's why I'm here. And because I thought that you might want to see a familiar face over here." Lily smiled sadly. "You would have had every right to hate me after I let you down so badly and took James' side. Instead you protected Harry and sacrificed your life to protect him. You have become a great man, Severus."
Severus stared at the ground. He didn't know what to say.
Lily leaned over and kissed his cheek.
When Severus was younger, he would have turned red and this peck on the cheek would have been everything he dreamed of. He could feel that he still loved Lily, loved her a lot, but now that he was here with her, his kind of love seemed to have changed with the years.
He continued to stare at his feet.
"There are others who want to welcome you." Lily smiled again, and it confused Severus. He couldn't image that there were people who would want to see him. "Are you ready?"
Severus shrugged.
Lily laughed and took his hand, and a door appeared right in front of their eyes.
Lily opened the door and led him through it into a huge white hall that looked like a brighter, shinier, unearthly version of the Great Hall of Hogwarts, only without the house tables. But the floating candles were there, and the tapestries and the marble mosaic floor.
Several people were standing or sitting on the steps of the dais.
The first one who moved was Albus Dumbledore. He looked so much younger than he had in life, but it was unmistakably him.
"Albus!" Severus felt the urge to run towards Dumbledore, but then he came to an immediate halt.
The joy of seeing the headmaster only lasted for brief seconds.
Guilt, unbearable guilt, washed over Severus and brought tears to his eyes, knocked the air out of his lungs, and forced him down on his knees when the older man stood before him.
Severus buried his face in Dumbledore's robes and cried.
History repeated itself, only this time he didn't confess that it was his fault Lily was dead, but begged forgiveness for killing the man who had been more of a father to him than his own.
"Forgive me, forgive me," Severus moaned, feeling unworthy of even kneeling in the dirt before this great man.
"Severus, look at me. Please, look at me." Albus' hand tried to lift Severus' head, and when Severus wouldn't look up, Albus knelt down in front of him.
"It is I who must beg your forgiveness, Severus," Albus said and almost forcefully took Severus' hands in his. "I was the one who asked you to kill me. I asked you to sacrifice so many things because I could not do them myself. I am the one who needs to be forgiven."
He cried on Dumbledore's shoulder until there were no more tears left. Back then, when he had mourned Lily's death, there had been nothing left in him but numbness. The same numbness that had carried him through the rest of his life. Now he actually felt relieved, relieved of all the burdens that had weighed him down, crippled him from the inside.
When Albus and Severus got up, there was a hand that gave a handkerchief to Severus to wipe away his tears.
"James!" Severus' heart jumped in an echo of all the bad feelings that had been between them; and while he was still shocked that he had a heartbeat though he was dead, James started to speak.
"Severus, I don't know how to begin to say how deeply I regret that I've been such an asshole when we were at school. Everything you did for our son… You saved his life. I owe you a lot." James's eyes met Severus's only briefly.
Lily appeared on her husband's side. "Let us know if we can do anything for you. Literally. Just think about us, Severus, and we'll know and come see you."
Severus said "Okay" though he was sceptic that this would really work.
Hand in hand, Lily and James left through the Great Hall's gates.
Another person who had come here to meet him was Sirius Black.
Sirius stepped towards Severus and extended his hand. "Thank you for all the things you did for Harry. If you are willing, I would like to put aside our differences."
Severus hestitated, but then he nodded and took Sirius' hand. What else was there to do? Go on and hate each other? Makes no effing sense. We're dead…
"See you soon," Sirius said, smiled politely and left through the same door through which Severus had entered.
Then there was only one more person left. Severus couldn't remember if he had ever met her. She didn't seem familiar.
Albus led the young woman towards Severus, and when she stood before him he realised that she had a strong resemblance to Albus.
"I'd like to introduce you to my sister Ariana," Albus smiled.
Ariana – she couldn't be older than seventeen, eighteen – surprised Severus by hugging him. "I heard so much about you, and I saw you with my brother so often that it almost feels like I know you already. I've been looking forward to meeting you." She grinned.
"H-hallo," Severus stammered.
"Why don't you come live with Albus and me for a few days before you've adjusted to being dead!" Ariana suggested and beamed. "I'll show you everything and I can help you set up your own house! I imagine you would want to have a laboratory for all your potions… and a library perhaps. I know how to get that stuff, just let me work my magic."
Albus had never mentioned his sister, so Severus wondered: "How long have you been dead?"
"Oh, just one hundred years or so." Ariana linked her arm with Severus. "I promise you'll like it."
He loved going on picknicks with Ariana. She knew so many fantastic places and she shared them openly with Severus. She also spent a lot of time introducing him to the mechanics of this world.
Worlds? Spheres?
Severus did not yet know how to call the different places that he had visited with her. But he had quickly picked up on how to imagine himself standing in a meadow or in the kitchen downstairs and then simply appear at that place. Some people like Lily prefered to think of a door that would lead them to their destination, others like Ariana simply thought about where they wanted to be and it happened. Both ways came naturally to Severus. The only thing that he had trouble with was creating food with his mind. Complete meals always tasted a bit off when he conjured them, so most of the time he thought of the ingredients and then cooked whatever he wanted. He enjoyed cooking, it was very similar to potion brewing. Ariana, who never troubled herself with cooking, kept him company while he was cutting vegetables or stirring a sauce, or she went outside to the garden to set up the table for them.
Usually it was only Severus and Ariana who ate together because Albus spent most of his time at a sunny place where nothing but a swimming pool was. He just lay on his air mattress and did nothing but read one book after the other. Severus had tried that for a while, but then given up on it out of sheer boredom.
But he had come to realise that he immensely enjoyed gardening with Ariana. She had a vast knowlegde not only of pretty flowers, but also of herbs and funghi that were used for potions. Hour after hour went by while they lined out herbes, trimmed bushes and cut off dry twigs under the warm sun.
He and Ariana had visited Lily and James two days ago. It was awkward to sit on a sofa in a house that was almost identical to the Potter's house in Godric's Hollow where he had found their bodies, and even more awkward that he had to behave like a grown-up person around James Potter. All they had ever done was fight – and now they had tea and cucumber sandwiches together.
Lily and Ariana had been good friends for quite a while. Because they were friends of her brother Albus, Ariana had helped Lily to come over and to find James who had died minutes before his wife. She had helped both of them to settle into a huge sphere that looked so much like Godric's Hollow.
Severus assumed that Ariana had been the one who had created the Godric's Hollow sphere after she had died. He hadn't yet found out how she had died, only that she had died as a young girl – the topic had never come up, and it didn't feel right to pry.
Ariana was very friendly and showed him many places that she liked or had created for herself. They often had picknicks on a flowery meadow in the mountains. They talked for hours while they sat on some rocks in a little stream nearby and made bets who of them could keep their feet longer in the icy water.
Again they visited the peaceful valley in the mountains.
Again they sat on the rocks and their trousers were rolled up and their feet were dangling in the cold water.
Ariana caught Severus's ankle between her feet and held him there. At the same time she told him how much she liked this place because it was so majestic, beautiful and quiet.
Not once did she bring up the fact that she touched him, well, not really inappropriately, but still very intimitely.
Severus wasn't used to so much closeness, but he liked that she took the initiative. He liked the touch of her warm ankle in the cold water. He wasn't sure yet in which way he liked Ariana exactely, but right now he was very much willing to give them a try.
A few days later, Ariana asked him to meet someone who had come to the Dumbledore siblings' house. Severus nodded absent-mindedly and made sure all the fires under his cauldrons were extinguished or kept under control by containment spells before he followed her downstairs.
When Severus entered the living room, he saw a young brown-haired girl sitting on the sofa. She looked plain with her long braids that fell over her flat bossom. Only her sharp nose drew some attention. Her red-and-white chequered dress looked like a costume from another time, just like her buttoned-up white blouse and her knee-length socks. The girl's hands rested on her lap and her fingers twitched a little as if she was forcing herself not to wring her hands.
"Severus, my boy", the girl said while Severus still wondered who she could be.
All of a sudden a hard knot formed in his stomach and a chill ran over this body. This voice, the mild accent – there was only one person who spoke like that.
"Grandmother", Severus heard his own rasping voice. He knew that the dead were able to choose their own age and looks, but still he was unable to grasp what his eyes saw on the opposite site of the coffee table.
The girl nodded and bit her lower lip self-consciously.
This can't be. She's never been self-conscious about anything. All she's ever been was cold and inapproachable. This isn't her, can't be her!
Severus felt Ariana's finger slip into his. Or was he the one who had sought the touch of her hand? He wasn't sure.
"Severus, I…" the girl – his grandmother – made another attempt to speak to him.
I don't want to hear what she has to say, I don't want to be here! Shut up, just shut up!
Severus forced himself to utter the words: "Say what you have to say."
The girl told him that she whished that she had been able to see how miserable his childhood had been. That she wished that she had believed him. That she hadn't called him an ungrateful little liar when he told her what had happened. That she wished that she hadn't been too blind to see that her own son beat his wife and his child.
Shut up, shut up, you evil old hag!
Severus tried to listen, tried to stay in the here and now, tried to concentrate as hard as he could on Ariana's warm touch.
How dare you tell me that you regret what you did? How dare you lie to me like that?! How can you say you're sorry –
The anger became overwhelming, became stronger and stronger until Severus's long buried hatred boiled over.
"SHUT UP!"
The words lingered in the room.
Severus slowly became aware that he had jumped up on his feet.
The girl stared down on her lap, her head hanging and her shoulders pulled up as if she expected to be slapped. "I'm sorry that I upset you so much by coming to see you", she said faintly. "I- I just came to apologise. I'll leave you alone, I promise. You won't hear from me again." Her eyes flickered up, searching for his face, then she got up and hurried out of the room almost in a run.
Severus sank down on the couch and remained there motionless while Ariana showed his grandmother out. His hands were curled up into hard fists. He was afraid that if he tried to unclench them, his fingers would shake. He didn't want Ariana to see him like this.
But Ariana came back, no matter how hard he wished that she wouldn't, and sat down at his side. "Are you okay?" she asked and gently rubbed his back.
Severus didn't move, couldn't speak.
Before today, everything had been fine. It had felt so good to be finally welcome somewhere. He had literally left everything behind that had haunted him in life. He hadn't thought about anything bad for weeks.
He was shocked that he hadn't even thought about what had happened with Harry and Voldemort after his death. Suddenly, panic flooded his body.
What happened? What happened, I need to know –
Harry can't be dead, right? He would have appeared here, he would be with Lily and James if he had been killed!
"Severus! Severus, look at me!"
Severus flinched when he realised that Ariana held his face between her hands. "You're shaking", she whispered.
A sob forced its way out of his chest.
Ariana simply closed her arms around his body and pulled his head against her shoulder.
Severus couldn't tell why he was crying exactly. Shock because his grandmother had visited? Relief because Harry and all those other students of Hogwarts were still alive? That his death had not been useless? Because of the realisation that, yes, he was dead?
Ariana kept stroking his back until he stopped trembling. It was very soothing to be hugged by someone who really wanted to hug him.
Nervousness was added to the chaos of Severus' feelings when he thought that Ariana would surely notice that his heart was racing so fast because she touched him.
"You-know-who isn't able to come here", Ariana assured him, her breath warm on his cheek.
That stuff about Harry and Hogwarts… Did I say that out loud? Severus wondered.
Ariana continued: "Those who killed so many people like him, they are torn apart and kept somewhere else. He can never come here."
Something between them changed and Severus now had the strong feeling that Ariana was the one who needed the hug more than he.
Ariana whispered: "I wouldn't want him to appear here either."
Severus didn't dare to ask who he was.
What do you think about our trip to the past? Let me know!
For the next chapter we will return to Sirius for Hallowe'en.