Severus hated how little his subconscious had made him. His feet dangled off the edge of his chair in the lobby of St. Mungos, unable to touch the ground. Like a child.

People kept staring at him. He wasn't sure if it was his shabby muggle clothes, his apparently deeply infected and grotesque eye, or the fact that the disowned half-blood Prince was showing his face in polite society that drew everyone's attention to him, but whatever it was, he hated it.

He scowled back at everyone who so much as spared him a glance, injecting as much hatred and distain as he could muster into his glare.

It was not very effective. He got a mixture of scandalized looks and patronizing smiles, with nary a scent of fear.

Merlin, just how young was he?

He looked down at his hands, trying to gauge their actual size and how long it'd been since his feet had been able to touch the floor.

He already had the little scar on his right thumb. He'd been seven or eight when he'd nicked it on their old, manual lawn mower while cleaning it.

He couldn't think of any other scars to check for, without looking under his clothes, but he felt at his face under the pretence at prodding at his eye.

His nose hadn't been broken, yet. At least, not that time. It was still large on his face, but it wasn't crooked, as far as he could tell, and there wasn't that odd lump on the bridge of his nose that had never gone away.

It had been around his eleventh birthday when his father had punched him there, the distinctive crack still echoing in his ears, and the sickening crunch of it making him flinch whenever he thought about it.

It was funny, really. He had withstood countless rounds of torture curses with relative stoicism, but that visceral horror he'd felt as a child when his father had disfigured his face never failed to make him squirm.

He wondered if his mind would force him to relive the event in all it's life-like glory.

"Severus, stop that," his mother scolded, grabbing at his wrist. "You'll just make it worse."

Severus huffed. He wished this hallucination would end, already.

It had already lasted longer than he would've thought, transfixed on this single day. He remembered every moment from waking up in the attic to sitting here next to his mother, waiting to be seen.

No missing time. No gaps. No blending together of scenes as his brain jumped from moment to moment.

That was odd.

He pinched his arm, hard, just in case. It was a long shot, considering that the pain from nagini's venom hadn't shocked him awake, but it was worth a shot. Anything to get out of this waiting room.

Nothing.

Focusing hard, he tried to take control of the hallucination and make himself float above his chair.

Still nothing.

This wasn't a lucid dream then, or if was, it was a particularly stubborn one.

It wasn't a straight memory, either. He knew for a fact that he'd never been taken to a healer for an eye infection at the age of nine or ten.

Wait.

Nine was the age he'd been when he'd first met Lily.

Even if this was a fever dream, a dying spasm of regurgitated nonsense, Severus didn't want to screw that up.

What day had it been, when Severus had first introduced himself to her in the park?

He couldn't remember.

What would happen if he picked the wrong day?

He was aware of the butterfly effect theory, but something so small wouldn't make that big of a difference, would it?

…How much of a difference would this newly inserted Healer's visit change?

His father would be furious, he knew that much. He'd take it out on both him and his mother.

If he wasn't eleven yet, Severus didn't have a wand.

That was a daunting thought.

He did not want to endure his father's wrath all over again.

What if his father did permanent damage?

What if he exacerbated whatever was wrong with his eye?

It didn't matter. This was just a dream. A dream that didn't behave like a dream.

He shook his head. There was no point dwelling on it. He was sure to fade into oblivion soon enough.

At least the pain had finally started to fade. His eye still throbbed, but his neck was merely a tingly, prickly pain rather than the full-blown agony that had overwhelmed him in the shack.

He desperately wished that waiting to die wouldn't be so boring.