The explosion of war hits my ears as soon as my feet slam against Mother Earth. Rubble and debris was scattered everywhere, houses were on fire, and a water main had been cleaved open and erupted water from its crater high into the sky. My eyes were drawn like flame to oxygen at the dark huddles of the dead, their facelessness sucking me into their silence. To my left I hear a quiet laugh from Lord Voldemort who stood breathing in the battle in a demure way, drinking in the ecstasy of death like a honeybee to a flower.

And then I see a face that had its own magnetism to it. A face that squeezed adrenalin into my veins; the opportunity to have revenge is sweet after all. I raised my wand to the distant, bloodied form of Sirius Black who was talking to someone whose back was to me and aimed. As the spell careered forwards he dived towards the figure in front and as they yelled in shock I hear her voice, I see long red hair so unlike what it was a mere hour ago in my dream.

Lily was here. The fully reality of the situation hits me like a bomb and as she turns around and takes us in, I cannot even read her expression. Her wand free arm is clutching at her ribs in such a way as if she cannot breathe and I instantly know how injured she is. Her face is covered in soot, dirt and blood so much so that she's almost unrecognisable. She looks much older and much more beautiful than I had ever seen before or remembered. But then I see a kind of hatred on her soft pretty features of the likes I've never encountered previously. She raises her wand to Voldemort and screams.

'AVADA KEDAVRA!'

The moment of fiery revenge dissipates to an icy weight. Lily was going to be killed by Voldemort, I couldn't watch it happen. Malfoy and I advance on Black whose teeth were bared with a kind of ferocity. As killing curse after killing curse starts to overwhelm him I see the pathetic desperation in his face.

Why did he ever think he was better than me?

All of a sudden as he dodges one of my curses his foot connects with a piece of rubble and he stumbles and falls. But before I could strike the final blow to the man who'd made my life a misery, the Prewett brothers bound forward out of nowhere and my attention is diverted. Other Death Eaters start to join the fray until it's only a matter of time before it will be over for all of them.

But then without warning in my peripheral vision I see something that takes me out of my own present. A Death Eater standing a little away suddenly shoots a jet of light above Lily who was still fighting Voldemort. I cannot feel relieved that she has somehow survived the duel as the chimney of the house and half the roof abruptly explodes. The bricks and mortar starts to fall like rain down upon her.

Her head turns left and for the first time in years Lily is looking straight at me. Without warning as if she was actually speaking the words across the way to me at that very moment, I can hear her words ringing in my head.

'You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine.'

My new cloak and mask feel like the robes of a King as I kneel in front of Lord Voldemort. My white arm is held in his hand as the onlookers of other Death Eaters encircle us in complete silence.

'Do you Severus Snape, give your life to the service of the Death Eaters?'

'I do.'

I raise my wand and point it at her.

'Do you hereby swear you allegiance to your master Lord Voldemort above all others?'

'I do.'

The spell blinded me as it sailed and hit her squarely in the chest.

'I now announce you Severus Snape, Death Eater and servant to me that only death shall dissolve. Let your life time of service…begin.'

At Voldemort's last hiss of his sentence, he touched the tip of his wand to my forearm where on contact my skin burned black and morphed into something I'd never seen before or imagined. Through the haze of pain, I looked up into the livid scarlet eyes and saw the leer of a smile on the skull like face.

Why was Lily not moving? A tsunami of panic rampaged through my veins. I needed to help, I needed to save her, but I couldn't. My breath wouldn't come, my eyes were blown wide, I was about to see the love of my life die in front of me.

But then there was a crack. Through the dust, debris and spells I saw the white gold wedding band on their left hands join together and it feels as if a bright white spot light is scorching my eyes shut. James Potter and his wife disappear and escape death as half the house collapses down onto thin air.