They were on the edge of a lake. Nobody seemed to be watching them, though Anakin could hear excited shouts, cheers and booing from a game going on somewhere in the distance.
Anakin could remember Padme teaching him to swim, when he was staying with her on Naboo. He'd grumbled about sandy beaches, and the way his new prosthetic hand didn't paddle the water properly the way his flesh hand did, and the way that sand and salt and bits of water-weed had got into the workings of his hand, which he had needed to take off, and take to pieces with a combination of his good hand and the Force, in order to be able to clean and repair it. But when he had got the hang of fitting properly waterproof webbing over his robotic hand, he had enjoyed swimming, and – yes – it had been relaxing, fun in a different way from flying.
The lake in this wild, windy country, with the expanse of green grass and purple-flowered, honey-scented shrubs above it, looked much chillier and less inviting than the beach Padme had taken him to. Looking down at himself, Anakin saw that he, like Severus, looked around fourteen at this point. He was still young and whole, and by this time he was noticeably taller than Severus. The wind ruffled his hair, making his padawan braid flick damply against his cheek. Severus's long black hair was too lank and greasy to move around much.
They slipped their robes off and stepped, bare apart from their underpants, into the icy water. Severus handed Anakin half of a fistful of slimy green weeds, keeping the rest for himself, and gestured to him that he should eat them. Anakin began to munch, grimacing at the taste and texture.
'You're too trusting,' Severus said, brusquely but without malice. 'I could've been trying to poison you, for all you knew.'
Anakin wondered whether he had been poisoned. He couldn't breathe – no, please, not again! – and he could feel his body transforming. He sensed something invisible slicing his neck open on either side. Severus, who had eaten the remainder of the weed, now plunged into the water, and Anakin copied him.
Evidently, the herb had changed them into water-breathing humanoids – and pure water-breathers like the Chuhkyvi of Aquaris, rather than amphibians like, say, Gungans. Anakin took a deep breath of the cool, sweet-tasting water through the powerful gills on his neck, until his vision cleared and he could check what shape the rest of his body was. He was still humanoid, and his hands were still hands, but webbed, and his feet ended in long webbed fingers as well. He waggled the digits on all four flippers, flexing the webs between them. He had forgotten how good it felt to have fingers and toes and in the short time that he had taken shape as a boy standing beside Severus in the dream up until now, he hadn't really had time to notice. Severus's face, beside his, quirked into an amused smile at his astonishment – though Severus probably thought he was surprised at being able to breathe underwater.
He seemed happier and more relaxed, here in the water, than Anakin had ever seen him, whether as the small boy crouching behind a bush in the park, the adult man standing over the battered remains of Darth Vader, or the small furry creature who still distrusted the strange Darksider even if he didn't entirely remember why. Ani decided to think of him as Sev, here. Probably he didn't even remember, here, where Ani had come from, or he wouldn't be willing to be friendly. It was a pity they didn't go to the same school. They could have been good friends. Maybe they could, here, for as long as this dream lasted.
'Look out!' Sev called to him. 'Grindylow!'
'Grindalid?' repeated Ani, confused. But the creature Sev was pointing to was humanoid, not a many-armed worm like the Grindalids. It was smaller than the human boys, with sharp horns and long, thin fingers.
He wondered how he and Sev were talking. They didn't seem to be speaking Basic, or Huttese, or any language of air-breathers, and yet he could understand it. Why didn't air bubbles come out – or why didn't he get a mouthful of water, for that matter – when he spoke? Perhaps they were speaking through their gills? Or perhaps they were communicating telepathically, and it only seemed as if they were speaking out loud.
They dived deeper, to a point where a normal human wouldn't be able to see in the water. The herb must have adapted their eyes to see in low light, as well as allowing them to keep their eyes open in comfort.
Sev led the way down to a city of beings with fish-tails, who looked much more familiar than the Grindylow. On a school trip to the Holographic Zoo of Extinct Animals on Coruscant, Ani had once seen a holographic exhibit of a group of Mon Calamari mermen carrying bone spears, hunting a krabbex. Merpeople had been extinct for a long time, in his universe: the population of Mon Calamari was made up of the Mon Calamari people themselves, the Quarren, the Whaladons, and the Amphi-Hydrus. But these unmistakeably were merpeople, all the same.
They greeted Sev cheerfully, obviously recognising him, and he introduced them to his new friend Ani. A mermaid and merboy around their own age came forward, gesturing at the necklaces of pebbles and snail-shells they wore around their necks. Sev smiled and opened one hand – Ani hadn't even noticed that he was clasping it – to reveal two necklaces of colourful translucent beads. The girl picked one of the necklaces up, holding it to her gills as if to smell it. When she didn't detect any scent, she took a few of the beads into her mouth to suck on.
Sev, amused, shook his head and gestured to the pair to put the strings of beads around their necks. They did so, and handed over their own pebble-and-shell necklaces in exchange. Sev put one on and gave the other to Ani. The young merfolk guided the human boys to explore the city, but after a short while, Sev warned, 'We'd better go now – the gillyweed will be wearing off soon.'
As they swam up, the water grew lighter around them. They were nearing the surface, and Ani could feel his gills starting to weaken and his hind flippers turn back into normal human feet – still good for swimming, of course, but not as good as proper flippers would be.
He felt a cold, claw-like hand grab at one ankle and then the other. Turning, he saw another Grindylow, which was evidently trying to drag him down. He kicked as hard as he could to free himself, and heard a yelp of pain, as the Grindylow swam awkwardly away with the fingers on both hands bent out of shape at what looked like a painful angle. A second Grindylow, which looked as though it had been planning to attack Ani as well, contented itself with nipping him sharply on one arm before swimming off to comfort its friend and bandage the injured hands with water-weed.
Ani felt somewhat guilty – after all, if they looked after each other, these must be sentient creatures, and he should have mind-tricked them instead of resorting to violence. Master Obi-Wan would be disappointed in him. Still, these natives had made an uprovoked attack on him, and he had seen Master Obi-Wan and other Jedi deal out much nastier and more permanent injuries. 'You're lucky I didn't have a light-sabre!' he called. For some reason that he couldn't quite remember, the taunt made him wince, as if he had personally experienced what it felt like to have a limb lopped off with a lightsabre, and what it felt like to have to cope with not having that limb, and phantom pains in the limb that was no longer there and itches that you couldn't scratch, for the rest of your life. But he hadn't, of course. He looked down at his webbed hands and feet. Changed in form, but definitely still there.
He managed to pop his head above water just as his gills gave out, and took a deep breath of air. Sev, treading water beside him, gave him a quick glance to check that he was unharmed before walking to the shore.
'What do we do with the necklaces?' he asked, as they towelled themselves dry. 'I know it's important to socialise with people from other cultures' (there were a lot of lessons about this at the Jedi Temple, about how Jedi, as guardians of peace throughout the galaxy, needed to learn sufficient diplomatic skills to behave appropriately in any world), 'but we aren't allowed personal possessions in the Jedi Order, and certainly not jewellery.'
'Well, boys don't exactly wear jewellery round here, either,' said Sev. 'I'm giving this to Lily. Have you got a girlfriend?'
'No – I mean, not exactly. I've got a friend who I wish would be my girlfriend, but I only met her for a few days and it was five years ago, and she's a grown-up. She's probably forgotten me by now. But I think about her every day.'
'I wish Lily would be my girlfriend, too,' said Sev. 'We used to be best friends, but – we were sorted into different Houses, here, and she's got other friends now. It's different from when we were the only two magical children in our town.'
'Do you have other friends here, too?' Ani asked. He hadn't been good at making friends himself, since he'd come to the Jedi Temple. All the other trainees his age had known each other since they were toddlers, so they thought he was weird and babyish for still remembering his mother and his friends back home and missing them. And having to go to remedial education classes with the little kids, to catch up on all the training he had missed, had been even worse, because it was so embarrassing and frustrating being nearer the size of the teachers than of any of the other younglings.
'Sort of,' said Sev. 'There are people from my House that I hang out with. Lily doesn't like them, so she doesn't want me to be friends with them. But she's busy with her friends who don't like me, so we don't get to spend much time together. She promised to come swimming with me today, only the match was switched from Hufflepuff versus Ravenclaw to Hufflepuff versus Gryffindor, so she said she had to be there to support her House team, but mainly it's just 'cause she fancies the Gryffindor Keeper. And he's a complete git! She doesn't even like him, she just fancies him. And he fancies her, too, but I don't think he could really love anyone except himself.'
'Maybe we can be friends,' suggested Ani. He didn't feel like a Jedi teenager as he said it, but more like the person he used to be when he was a little boy who had never met a Jedi and had been a much nicer person.
'Maybe,' said Sev. 'But you're not going to be here for long, are you? Where are you from, anyway?' he added. 'I know you're not from here, and those aren't Durmstrang or Beauxbatons robes. Are you from Ilvermorny?'
'No, the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.'
'Jedi? What's that?'
'It's the sort of wizard I'm learning to be.'
'Where's Coruscant?'
'A Core planet.' Wherever they were now must be a long way out on the Rim, if Sev hadn't even heard of it.
'You're from another planet?' Sev looked at him hard, as though trying to decide whether he was telling the truth. 'Outta sight!'
'It is from here.' They might just about be able to make it out in the night sky, though.
'Are you here for long?'
'I don't know. But if I can't stay long this time, I'll come back, if you'd like.'
'That'd be good. Come when there's another Quidditch match – nobody takes any notice if we slip away then. I'll meet you by the lake again then. Even if it's a Slytherin match,' he added, though with a note of regret.
'Do you swim here a lot?'
'Yes. I'm the only one who does. Most Mudbloods – Muggleborn students - are frightened of the merpeople and the Grindylows and the giant squid. And a lot of Pure-bloods don't know how to swim. But I went to a Muggle school until I was eleven, and all Muggle schools have to teach swimming, just like wizarding schools teach you to ride a broomstick. Some schools have swimming-pools of their own. Ours didn't. We had to walk to the public baths once a week. Even when it was pissing down with rain or snowing or hailing,' he added, with a mixture of distaste and pride.
'When you brought the necklaces, why did the merpeople try to eat them?'
Sev grinned. 'Last time, I brought them some Muggle sweets. Sugar necklaces from Woolworth's. They're like air-fresheners for merpeople – you take one out of the wrapper and as soon as it's wet, it starts making all the water around you taste sweet. Or smell sweet – it's the same thing, really, for a water-breather. So they were just testing whether these were the same sort of thing. These plastic beads came from Woolworth's, too.'
'What's the giant squid like?'
'Oh, it's not too bad when you get to know it. I tried drowning myself here, once, and it threw me back to the shore and offered me three wishes.'
'What did you wish for?'
'To meet someone whose life was even more crap than mine.'
'Did it get answered?'
'Dunno. Are you him?'
Ani considered. He'd been born a slave and hadn't had the chance to go to school at all until he was nine – and he certainly hadn't been born on the sort of planet where children who weren't from rich families got to learn to swim, and where rain and snow were so common that people even complained about having too much of them. And when he'd started his Jedi training, it had been hard being the only person his age just starting, instead of arriving on Coruscant with another Force-sensitive child whom he already knew from Mos Espa.
But on the other hand, he had a sense that Padme probably did like him enough that they might meet again as grown-ups and be friends then, even after having not seen each other for years, while this Lily didn't seem to want to spend much time with Sev even when they went to the same school. And in his early years, even as a slave, he had always known that his mother loved him and would do all she possibly could to protect him, whereas Sev looked like someone who could never be sure that anyone liked him. So maybe it balanced out. He shugged. 'Dunno. Maybe.'
The shouts from the distant crowd suggested that the Quidditch match was drawing to an end. 'I'd better go,' Sev said. 'See you around?'
'If you want.'
As young Sev walked off, Anakin could hear adult Severus's voice. 'Will I remember this when I wake up?'
'You do not have to,' Anakin said. 'You can remember as much or as little as you choose. If you want to remember a dream about swimming and merpeople, but leave me out of it, you can. Or remember nothing, but wake feeling refreshed.'
'I think I will forget it,' said Severus. 'Remembering enjoying spending time with you would be much too embarrassing. I must admit, though,' he added generously, 'you weren't nearly as repellent a child as I had expected.'
Author's note: I borrowed from Whitehound's fanfiction, particularly Sons of Prophecy (the sequel to her splendid Mood Music, in which Snape and a Muggle shaman become friends while escaping from Death Eaters together), and her short story The Memory of Water, the idea that as a teenager, Severus Snape liked to explore the lake at Hogwarts and made friends with the mermaids. Whitehound's stories can be found on this site.
The story of teenage Sev's encounter with the giant squid comes from E. H. Smith's trilogy of stories Marks and Scars,Without Enchantment and No Great Magic, though in Smith's stories, Snape only uses his wishes decades later as an adult. This series, set in an AU in which Snape was not involved in Dumbledore's death (which of course doesn't stop him feeling guilty about not having been able to save Dumbledore's life) and where he survives the Battle of Hogwarts, is one of my favourite crossovers between the Harry Potter universe and the Vorkosigan universe, though it can take some tracking down. I first encountered it on a Vorkosigan fanfiction website, from which it disappeared before eventually reappearing on FictionAlley. If it has moved again by the time you read this, I strongly recommend Googling it.
