Confused.
He was confused.
Had he survived the war somehow? What happened with Hogwarts and the war? Who won? Why his neck didn't feel funny?
It couldn't be the light side, because they would have torn him limb from limb. No-body knew he was still working for them and they wanted him dead even before he killed Albus.
Had he killed Albus? Why he killed Albus?
It was the dark side? Was it Bellatrix?
Albus? Albus is alive? Did he learn how to fly too?
Severus knew how to fly?
Albus was both older and younger.
Why he had two Albus in his mind, and one of them hugged him as a child? He hadn't been hugged by Albus as a child, he was certain.
Or was he?
He could remember being in Slytherin, and he could remember being in Hufflepuff. He could remember having friends, being Regulus brother, but he could remember only having Lily for a friend.
How it was possible? Was he a seer? Had the war, the pressure and the constant danger blown his mind? Could he be more pathetic?
How he could recall Lily kissing him when he was 12? Time travel?
Was it his dying mind playing tricks? Had he been transferred to hell, and he was condemned to living that awful life again and again?
He could see it clearly, his mother yelling at his father, accusing him of cheating, and then a fight.
"you have balls Eileen, when all this time you were seeing that Lord Black lover of yours"
Lord Black? Why mother saw Arcturus?
Fight?
There wasn't a fight. There never was a fight, only Tobias talking with his fists and Eileen cowering.
Then Eileen had brandished her wand, but being pregnant, not using magic for a long time made her spells weak. The incarcerus didn't last.
Wasn't her wand broken when he was in second year?
Why mother was pregnant? Severus didn't have a sibling.
Did he have a sibling he didn't know of?
By merlin did they gotten a hold of his unknown sibling? Were they torturing him for information?
Why was he in a hospital then?
Or was he in a hospital? Was he in Azkaban for all the crimes he had committed? Had he been scheduled for the kiss?
Kiss. Lily kissed him?
He could hear Frank and Fabian.
Were they not dead?
"He is in shock"
Shock of what?
Blood? There was blood?
" His father killed his mother and then himself right in front of him, he lost his sister he was so much excited to meet" Petunia? What was she doing here!
Was Harry Potter thick?
Wait sister?
Bull shit. He did not have a sister, Tobias died of liver cancer and his mother hanged herself.
Sister?
There was blood everywhere.
He could hear himself shouting.
Stop!
There was a vague notion of a phoenix in his head, a phoenix who had saved Zaal and Rostam.
Green eyes.
He was screaming in Sylwan's house, and there was a flash.
Emerald. He had a phoenix? Since when?
Why didn't she come?
Em?
There was no sound.
--
"Let me go!"
"Let me go you bastard!"
And again, she knew it to be futile. He wouldn't let him go.
"Please, he is calling, he needs me"
Silence.
"You are out, isn't this enough?"
The man with mismatched eye colors only stared.
"Please I'm begging you. He has lost enough"
"No, he hasn't "
The man, Gellert answered.
" He has more to lose"
The bird, phoenix tensed. After all this man was the most powerful wizard alive, and he had all the reasons not to hold his end of bargain.
She remembered a time, she was so angry, angry of trusting another wizard and being burnt, turned to an object for a ritual that didn't even need her blood. He wanted all of them burn.
And yet she didn't know the ritual's name for the first thing.
She had traveled around the world, and gained little. much much little info. When she had returned to England for one last time, she had met Fawkes.
Fawkes who was angry too. His master had only made one friend, and that one friend killed him. It got more interesting when emerald, then carried some other name, met Severus Snape.
The Severus Snape who was the child of the man who had disfigured her.
They both didn't know what to do, both wanted him dead, and they couldn't. Fawkes reluctantly admitted maybe he wasn't that much at fault, because Albus was dying of a curse and he was a spy. They both feared that without him, the light side would fail and Voldemort win.
"There is only one man we can turn into"
And that had been the way it all started. With her and Fawkes and Gellert.
" You remember those days, do you? Those dark days when air smelt of blood and earth felt heavy from dark spells. You wanted time, you wanted time to prevent it, and I gave it to you"
He had. Clocked her in a spell so complicated that left the man drained. She had to find Severus Snape, and they could – three of them, Fawkes was a bit of a two goody shoes to join- embark a journey through time to rescue the wizarding world.
The wizarding world, because Voldemort had at that point, killed off many of the magical species, people who would be parents of a brilliant magical child somehow, and polluted the earth with inferis and dementors.
Irreversible. Even if the light side won, magic would die out eventually. Earth's magic wasn't separate like its continents, you couldn't impact on China's magic without it having an effect on Europe.
Earth's magic was infected, and it would die in time. Give or take a century.
Three people for redemption, Gellert had joked. The three of them had done their share of stupidity and had blood on their hands.
Unfortunately, Gellert died before Emerald could reach Severus, and Severus died – murdered- before she could explain anything. The spell activated and they were both thrown back in time.
Severus was not supposed to turn to a child, or Emerald to a baby bird. Their memories was not supposed to return half and half.
"I trusted Albus to be wiser, and the world to stop acting mad and what happened? I could not imagine a more horrible fate. I don't even have half my memories!"
Their memories had scattered. Gellert said he was the only thing standing between Severus and madness.
"who do you think is guarding his mind against his memories when he is but a child? I am throwing all my power, and using the connection we have so he could last a while. His mind is essentially a child's yet"
The Severus of the future had been so damaged nothing of him survived, the memories transferred, maybe more like latched themselves on this version of him.
"but the infant.."
"she had to die"
Gellert said that there wasn't a sister in the other timeline, and they had fucked up things enough that they had made a space-time anomaly. This anomaly , along with the botched ritual of Noir didn't mean anything good.
"they will start remembering"
And Emerald thought it was true.
Maybe she shouldn't have come to Nurmangaurd to check on him again. Maybe she shouldn't have trusted the man, this younger version of Grindlwald and helped him – flashed him- and his companion out of the cell.
"it would be a month, or two when the guards come to check on us"
And she had been weakened by the flash, and then easily trapped. She begged him to let her go and save Severus, if not all of his family just the baby.
" we have mocked up time so much, regardless of the problems it makes in our way, the boy would never leave her. I saw him dropping out of Hogwarts, even leaving the country to take care of his sister. He would claim the Prince fortune and leave Britain. If he had a young child in his care, he would never put himself in danger"
But it was not fair.
"he is suffering!"
He didn't care. Sylwan and Gellert were searching for a horcrux, or a way to destroy them in a castle in Germany. Emerald had not option but to wait.
"Em?"
She cried for the first time since she came back in time.