Fic Post: Original Sin, Part 1
About a million years ago lovely, patient accioslash won a fic from me in an auction and since I am a dreadfully slow writer on my own, I have only recently finished it. Being the gracious gal she is, she's letting me post it! Several lovely artists helped make the finished product a bit more hot visually interesting, so when they post their artwork, I will point to it from here.
The amazing veridari posted art for it over here!
Title: Original Sin
Author: DementorDelta
Length: Approx. 15,000 words
Summary: Leave it to Harry Potter to interfere in every aspect of Severus Snape's life-and death.
Warnings: Slightly blasphemous
Author's Note: Written based on a prompt submitted by accioslash, to whom this is lovingly dedicated. Beta read by the always helpful isidore13.
Original Sin
Severus Snape had never expected to go to heaven.
Even if he'd ever set any store by the droning of the church's teachings he'd been subjected to as a boy, he'd seen too many things as a man that had convinced him that rather than a Supreme Being in charge, there was no one stirring the cauldron of humanity.
Should such a Being manifest in the afterlife, Snape did not expect to meet him at the rumored Pearly Gates. His soul had been fractured and mended too often to have hope of gaining admittance to that realm even had he desired it. Heaven sounded dead boring anyway. Probably nothing but endless harp playing and halo polishing. Gryffindors perhaps would find such an afterlife satisfying but no Slytherin worth his school tie ever could. Besides, Snape knew he looked dreadful in white.
Something wafted across the tip of his nose, making it twitch. Why did death have to be so ruddy ticklish? And why did it have to smell like a train station?
"Ah, Severus," said a voice that sounded suspiciously like--
"Albus?" Snape's eyes flew open. The old man squatting beside him looked well for being a year in the grave. He twinkled even in death. "I never thought we'd end up in the same place." Snape pulled himself up from whatever concrete he'd wound up on. Aside from the vapor of invisible trains, the place reeked of blood. Snape looked down at himself. Oh, all that blood belonged to him. "Where the devil are we?"
Albus Dumbledore looked around the cathedral-like place with childlike glee. "Apparently in King's Cross Station." His beard dragged along Severus's blood-stained coat as he looked up at the skylights. "A bit after my time though. I suppose if you'd arrived here first it would look like a dungeon."
Snape had put a hand to his ruined throat. His fingers came away crimson but it appeared that the bleeding had stopped. Considering the amount of blood on his clothes, it looked like he had rather more outside than inside.
"First?" he asked with a frown. "Who else--?"
"You've just missed Harry," Dumbledore replied, looking not at all put out that Potter-for whom they'd both sacrificed so much--was as dead as Severus and himself.
"Potter? But I just saw him!" exclaimed Snape. The idiot boy had-providentially-shown up right when Severus wanted him to pass on the memories Snape thought he needed. Potter had always had the devil's own luck, but it seemed that luck had run out. "He was fine!" Snape protested, wiping gore off his hand, trying to find a place on his clothes that wasn't already wet with it.
Albus looked sad and a bit concerned, offering a bit of his own spotless blue robe. Snape shook his head and found a relatively dry spot on his trouser leg to wipe his hand though blood still clung to it.
"You were a long time dying, my boy," said Dumbledore, looking sadder.
Disgust rose up in Snape's stomach, bile so fetid it would surely have poisoned him if he weren't currently deceased. "Then it was all for nothing. The damn fool boy went and got himself killed despite all we--"
But Albus was twinkling again and this time, rather than being confined to his eyes, Snape was alarmed to note that it was more of an all-over twinkle.
"Harry very wisely chose to go back and finish the nearly impossible task we set him," Dumbledore said, "I imagine he'll come out all right. It is your fate we're here to discuss."
"My fate?" Snape said, startled. Even the reassuring presence of his old friend couldn't keep away the cold shiver of dread at what awaited. Surely this railway apparition of Potter's wasn't his final destination? Snape was certain he was not bound for any fate that included harp music and halo polishing. "My fate was sealed when I--" He glanced uneasily at Albus, grateful that the Killing Curse left no traces to accuse him now.
"You still haven't forgiven yourself," Dumbledore said, shaking his head.
Snape's head jerked up. "Or you for making me do it," he sneered, glad to be on familiar footing.
"I assure you, it was quite painless," replied Dumbledore, as though Snape had merely trod on one of his feet. One long-fingered hand reached out-his wand hand-miraculously restored and whole from the blackened ruin it had been the last year of his life. He reached over and touched the blood at Snape's throat. "Unlike your own near death."
"Near?" Snape asked, disconcerted when the blood that came away on Albus's fingers turned silvery and vanished.
"Very near," Dumbledore replied, rubbing his fingers together where the blood had been. "Another few minutes and I doubt anything could be done."
Snape's eyes narrowed. Had this place, wherever it was, for Snape knew quite well that it was not a train station, turned Dumbledore or his shade, barmy. Or at least barmier? "Done?"
Albus nodded as if it was all perfectly clear. "Done. I only wish I had the power to send you back hale and hearty, but no man can do that."
"I'm not going back," Snape said, pulling himself up straighter, though his fingers got bloody again when he rightened himself. "I deserve whatever--"
"Well, not back exactly, but...on." Dumbledore's eyes were kindly again and Snape remembered what power they had to make the world seem cozy and warm and every problem solved with tea and a sherbet lemon. Albus patted Snape's arm. "I only wanted to see you again, Severus, to thank you for all you did for me. And for Harry."
There was another smudge of blood on Albus's hand that seemed to twinkle itself before vanishing while the blood soaking Severus's clothes was as clammy and wet as ever. "I'm not selfish enough to keep you from what must be," he said, and again Snape felt coldness grip his spine.
"Where are you sending me?" Snape asked, determined not to show the fear that was chilling his insides.
Albus smiled and at least his twinkle was confined to his eyes alone. "Oh it isn't where I'm sending you, dear boy, but where you are being taken."
Snape's nose itched again and he realized the mist had gotten heavier, wafting between himself and the old man, obscuring Dumbledore from sight. His last thought, as the mist seemed to flow inside him, was that he could not shake the feeling that this was, somehow, Potter's fault.
~~**~~
Snape knew, before opening his eyes, that he was flat on his back and naked. Not the curse-the-first-nurse-who-comes-in-to-check-on-him sort of naked but grass-prickling-on-arsecheek sort of naked.
Had he dreamed Albus and that infernal train station up? Had it all been some sort of trauma laced with guilt dream and he was now truly about to begin servitude in the fiery pit of the underworld? He drew in a deep breath. The air did not smell of sulfur and brimstone. It smelled of-Snape sniffed again. Hyacinth. And roses. There may even have been some tropical orchids.
He kept his eyes firmly closed. A trick then, to lull him into complacency before the gates of the fiery furnace were cast open and--
Someone groaned.
Someone who wasn't Snape.
Snape's eyes flew open. Overhead was a painfully blue sky. He-they--were lying face up in a lush meadow. Three feet away lay the prone-and utterly naked-form of Harry Potter.
"Fuck," Snape said aloud, hoisting himself upright.
Potter too was stirring, pushing up off the grass, looking down at his unclothed body. "Not again," he murmured incomprehensibly, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. He started to fall back when he caught sight of Snape. "Not you too."
Potter's hair was in a ridiculous disarray, the glasses askew again as he pushed up to his feet, buried ankle-deep in white asphodel flowers. Resolutely Snape kept his gaze from lingering anywhere it shouldn't, which was just about everywhere since the only thing on Potter was those dratted glasses. Snape was having a bit of a struggle getting to his feet while trying to keep his back to Potter. "Prof--" Potter began then he broke off, staring at something coming through the trees at the edge of the meadow.
Something large. And darker than Voldemort's heart.
At first it looked like the shadow of one of the trees, its movements like a ripple of shadow over sunlight. Then it detached itself from the trees, moving through the field in an ominous glide that seemed to leave the swaying flowers untouched. It cast no shadow. Snape forgot his own unclothed state, his own deceased-ness and the fact that he had no wand, grabbing for the staring boy.
"Get behind me, Potter," Snape commanded sharply, jerking Potter and his nakedness behind his back. The thing seemed to trail darkness behind itself, like heat distortion off a road.
Potter's arm rose straight up, fingers stretched out as if there was a wand clenched in his fingers. "Expecto Patronum," he cast. Even though he had no wand, a silvery light burst from Potter's outstretched hand, forming into a silver stag that charged the flowing darkness.
"That's no Dementor," Snape said, trying to keep himself between Potter and the man-shaped darkness.
"Of course it--" began Potter just before his mouth dropped open. Snape turned to see the silvery stag slowing its charge directly in front of the dark form. One bone white hand reached out of the black robes to stoke the top of the stag's head. The stag shivered and disappeared in a burst of silver mist.
"Those don't work on me," the thing said, closing the space between them in several long strides over the softly waving asphodel. "Cute though." It was holding something in the other hand, something that seemed at once a part of the swirling vapor-like robes, yet solid on its own.
A scythe.
"Dementors can't talk," Potter said, pressing against Snape's back, trying to wriggle out of his grasp, peering over Snape's bare shoulder to get a better look.
"This isn't--" Snape began, still trying to keep Potter away from it..
"There has never been a Dementor here," the creature said, waving the scythe. Three armchairs appeared in the middle of the meadow, green with hyacinth blossom embroidery. One was much larger than the other two, since the creature towered over them. The creature seemed to re-form backward, filling and spilling out of the largest armchair, the long black robes pooling over the grass and flowers. The grass did not whither, nor did the cheerful white blooms darken and die.
"Where exactly is here?" Snape asked, releasing Potter's arm, pointedly not sitting down. The black sleeve stretched out over the arm of the largest chair and a hand, all bone and no flesh appeared, twice the size of a man's.
No one spoke for a moment. Potter seemed to have gone mute, which seemed like such an improvement Snape himself was loathe to break the quiet.
"It's the only place I could think to bring both of you," the creature said, its voice like the echo of an ancient spell. It gestured again toward the two armchairs facing his own.
"Sit down while we sort this out."
Snape took a step closer to the chairs, suddenly uncomfortably aware of his lack of formal-or informal-attire. "May we have some clothes, please?" he asked stiffly.
"Oh, right," the creature said, sounding a bit apologetic. A pass of the scythe and trousers and simple cotton shirts appeared on them both. Snape tugged down the hem of his shirt and saw a leafy design. He frowned. A fig leaf.
"Most amusing," he said, glancing at Potter now that they were both decently clothed. There was no leaf on Potter's shirt but a jagged lightning bolt.
"Sit down, please," the creature said, "you've both had a hell of a day."
Keeping his eyes on the creature, Snape sat down. Once he was in it, he thought the armchair might be the most comfortable thing he'd ever sat in, should he let himself relax back into it.
Potter followed suit, looking as uneasy as Snape felt. "I'm dead, aren't I?" he said, slumping in the chair. "Again."
The certainty of the boy's despair hit Snape forcibly. He wanted to go back to that wretched train station and strangle Albus's shade or spirit or whatever he had been. Snape didn't want all of it, all the sacrifices beginning with Lily's, to have been for nothing.
"Not...exactly," said the creature, moving two bone fingers negligently over a piece of hyacinth embroidery. A deep black cowl obscured its face, or whatever lurked beneath the flow of darkness that was its robe. "I know, crazy, right? You're either dead--" The skeletal hand lifted and drew a line straight across its own throat, "Or not. Usually." It shrugged.
Snape and Harry shivered at the same time. It was Snape who recovered first. He leaned forward in his chair. "You already have me. Let Potter go."
"What? No!" cried Potter with unnecessary vehemence.
"I've already let him go once," said the creature, making another of those negligent gestures with a bony finger. "Right, you were out of it, Severus, unconscious, life ebbing away, lying in a pool of your own blood for all that time--"
"Stop it!"
Potter's outburst startled both Snape and the creature. He'd gone pale, fingers gripping the arms of the chair. Potter had always been a bit squeamish but even Snape didn't want to hear the rest of the details of his death himself. He remembered the amount of blood soaking his robes in the train station. There hadn't been any blood when he'd appeared here, nor any gash on his throat.
"It was supposed to be me," Potter ground out, "let the professor go."
The shadowed cowl swerved back toward Severus. "You see my problem."
"I don't see anything of the sort," said Snape, hoping his glare would keep Potter quiet. "I was mortally wounded--"
"Technically it's only mortal when I say it's mortal," the creature pointed out.
"I took a Killing Curse," Potter put in, unhelpful, even in the afterlife.
The bony finger shifted toward Potter. "You faked that."
"Then why is he here?" asked Snape wishing Dumbledore had spent a bit less time apologizing and a bit more filling him in on what happened after the snake Nagini had attacked Snape.
"There's been an interdiction," came the sepulchral reply. "I'm not allowed to take either of you until this is settled."
Snape frowned. "A what?"
"I know, crazy, right? Been a while since I've had one. I had to look it up myself."
Beside him, Potter leaned over and spoke quietly to Snape. "Death has books?"
Until then Snape had been avoiding thinking of the creature by any sort of name. "Harry offered up his soul in exchanged for yours," Death explained.
"What? He most certainly did no--" In his outrage, Snape had jerked his face in Potter's direction. Potter's head had dropped and he was avoiding Snape's gaze.
"Not." Snape sighed. Of course he had.
"Very noble, really," Death said, as if in consolation.
"He's like that," Snape said, watching Potter's mouth thin in anger.
"It wasn't fair what happened to you," he burst out.
Snape snorted. So did Death.
"There isn't anything fair about what happens to any of us," said Snape in only slightly less withering tones than he'd intended for the image of Lily had sprung into his mind.
"Fair or not, I let Harry go and I can't claim him again until his time is up. Again. And I can't claim your soul, Severus, because Harry interceded for you." The flowing shroud rippled in a shrug. "Crazy, I know."
"I didn't mean to," Potter mumbled. "I mean, I did tell you-your body-that it wasn't fair and that my mum wouldn't have wanted you to end up that way."
God, the boy was thick. Snape turned back to Death. "Everyone says ridiculous things like that." He clasped his hands together, laying them on his chest in a dramatic pose, rolling his eyes heaven-ward. "Oh, if only it had been me," he wailed in patently false tones. He flung his hands apart in a disgusted gesture.
"Not everyone means it," Death said solemnly, "And hardly anyone has also been dead and come back once already." He sighed, like wind through a graveyard. "And not everyone is kneeling over you right as I've come to collect your soul. So I had to take you both until we get this sorted out."
Death stood up. Snape too scrambled to his feet. Beside him Potter followed suit, looking wary. Or confused. On Potter it was difficult to tell.
"How do we sort it out?" Potter asked. The armchairs had vanished as soon as they stood up. Fortunately the clothes remained.
"You stay put," said Death, as its long pale fingers wrapped around the scythe. "You'll be safe here."
"Safe from what?" Snape asked, though he suspected Potter was about to ask the same question.
The cowl shifted and for a moment there was the bone-white flash of a fleshless skull. "From me."
Without another word, the creature vanished. Snape wasted no time whirling on Potter. "What were you thinking?" he snarled.
Potter seemed to appreciate neither his whirl nor his snarl. "You're alive," he said, his smile toothily similar to Death's.
"No, you idiot, now we're both dead," replied Snape, willing his gaze to lift from Potter's seemingly boundless cheer.
"I don't feel dead. I feel great." He was stretching, looking around at the endless expanse of meadow and trees. "Bit hungry though."
Snape had to admit the boy looked half starved. Wherever he'd been the last year had obviously not had the benefits of Hogwarts's kitchens.
"Where are we, do you reckon?" Potter asked, looking around.
"What matters is how we get you back," said Snape, studying their surroundings with more care. The meadow seemed to stretch as far as they could see, with a forest easily larger than the Forbidden Forest to one side. Further away there seemed to be a long row of bushes stretching out in either direction, paralleling the forest.
"Which way?" Potter asked, studying both their options, as it seemed unwise to remain out in the open where it was certain there was no shelter or food.
He was by no means finished with the subject of Potter's ridiculous sacrifice but it seemed prudent to get the boy out of sight before he caught the attention of some other universal entity bent on his destruction. Things like that always seemed to happen to Potter.
Potter sighed as they both swung their heads, reviewing the, to Snape, equally desolate options. "Wish he, um, Death, had been a bit more specific."
"Considering he is contemplating how best to harvest our souls without destroying the balance of the universe, I would not be too keen to see him return," Snape returned.
"Did he say all that?" asked Potter, blinking. Snape merely glared at him. Trust him not to understand the nuances of their predicament.
"This way," Snape decided, turning toward the forest. He took a few steps before he realized Potter hadn't moved. He stopped and turned around.
"Why that way?" Potter jerked his head toward the hedge. "That way looks closer. And hedges might mean other people."
Snape had not even considered that there might be other people--or souls-near. Having got used to being dead, he wasn't sure he wanted to meet anyone in a similar state.
When Snape didn't say anything, Potter spoke again, "People might mean food, and I'm hungry."
Snape too was feeling peckish though he would never admit it because he was fairly certain dead people didn't get hungry and he wasn't ready to face the fact that they might both be alive and stranded wherever this was. Before he could reply, however, there was a low rumble, almost as though the earth was trembling, though he felt no vibration. He started to tackle Potter to the ground but before he could take more than a step something shot out of the ground between them. It was so close to Potter that it knocked him off his feet. The silence that followed was full only of Potter's cursing as he felt in the grass for his glasses.
Where there had been only level ground--and briefly three armchairs--now bloomed a thick leafy bush, no taller than Snape's waist.
"Don't touch it," Potter cried out as he jabbed his glasses back on. For Snape had indeed reached out to touch the closest branch--a branch that was heavy with fruit.
"Do you like peaches?" Snape asked, fingertips brushing the fuzzy fruit, confirming what his eyes told him were perfectly ripe peaches, despite the fact that they were on a bush and not a tree.
"Love them," Potter replied, brushing himself off as he got back to his feet. Before Potter could protest further, Snape plucked one and bit into it. "Don't eat that!" Potter called in alarm. Juice exploded over his tongue, so delicious it would have made him feel glad to be alive if indeed he had been alive. He waited to see if he would fall over dead.
Potter too was staring at him in anger and alarm, until Snape tugged another luscious peach loose from the bush and held it out to Potter. "I believe you were hungry," he said, tossing Potter the peach when the boy simply stared at it. Potter lifted it to his nose first--ha! as if that nose could detect half the poisons Snape's could--then bit into it. His must have been as ripened to perfection as Snape's had been. Snape finished one and two more besides. Potter's moans of culinary satisfaction were nearly obscene.
"That was really stupid, you know," Potter said, sucking his third pit before tossing it over his shoulder. "Eating one like that. What if it had killed you?"
"We're already dead," replied Snape, turning back toward the line of trees. This time Potter trudged alongside him without protest. When they looked back, the peach bush had vanished.
The forest was much closer than it appeared, more a series of sylvan glades than a true forest. The air smelled lush and alive, scented with the acres of flowers blooming beneath their feet. There were streams and waterfalls winding through the trees and expanses of soft grass and moss bordering the hedgerows.
"It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen," Potter said, quite unnecessarily for this was easily the most beautiful place on earth, looking both virginal and unspoiled, yet designed seemingly to be admired. Potter had stopped, closing his eyes. "I smell strawberries," he said, taking deep breaths.
Snape smelled them too and the scent made his stomach clench in hunger despite the feast of peaches.
"And honey," Potter went on, his lashes resting against his cheeks.
"We mustn't let our guard down," Snape warned, scanning the landscape for signs of habitation.
"I never had mine up," Potter said, opening his eyes. "Let's see if we can find those strawberries. I'm hungry again."
He was off before Snape could issue any warnings about staying together but not far as there was a patch of perfectly ripened berries around the next bend of the stream. "I'll test them this time," Potter offered, biting one so juicy that it dribbled down his chin. The rapturous look on his face was definitely not mesmerizing. Then, without warning, he made a choking noise and clenched at his throat, cheeks puffing out as though he was about to be sick, eyes bulging wildly.
Automatically Snape reached where his wand would be inside his robes, if he had a wand, or robes. His heart was racing as he tried to think what to do---and then Potter burst out laughing, no longer looking like he was about to expire at Snape's feet.
"You should see your face," he said, finishing off the apparently non-poisonous berry.
"Oh, very amusing," Snape growled, sitting down rather suddenly in the soft grass, turning his back to the still chuckling whelp. "Good thing I didn't waste my life trying to protect you."
The chuckling ceased but Snape didn't turn around. He could hear Potter moving behind him, polishing off the entire berry patch no doubt while Snape worked up a really first-rate sulk. A shadow crossed over him and there was Potter, his t-shirt stretched out in front of him like a basket, laden with strawberries.
"I'm sorry, sir," he said, plucking up the fattest berry and offering to Snape.
Snape huffed, thinking of refusing, but it would be mad to refuse food when they had no idea if this lush bounty would continue. Between them they ate every single strawberry, leaving Potter's shirt spotted with juice. "I think you should tell me everything that happened after I--" Potter's face looked bleak but Snape forced himself to continue. "After I died."
Potter had drawn up very close to him in order to share the strawberries. He nodded in agreement but it took him a moment before he started speaking. Parts of it Snape could have predicted but most of it was as wildly improbable as fiction, so of course it must be true. He tried to picture Hogwarts as it must look now but found that somehow more difficult to accept than his own demise.
"I didn't want to leave you like that," Potter said, after recounting the horrific events that followed. "But I had to finish--" His nervous gaze found Snape's.
"Yes, yes, carry on," he said gruffly. The tale was more harrowing than Snape had expected. No wonder Potter was hungry.
"You say you saw the headmaster?" asked Snape.
"In King's Cross Station," Potter said, sounding wistful. "I thought for a moment about...about going on but there was still so much to do."
"I had a similar experience," admitted Snape. "Just after you left, apparently."
"It was good to see him again, wasn't it?" Potter asked, staring out across the emerald green hillocks.
Snape nodded wordlessly, not certain Potter would notice. A strand of hair blew into his eyes.
"I wanted to bring you back myself," Potter went on, coming to the end of his tale. "I didn't want the Aurors or the Death Eaters touching you, not after everything you'd been through." He shifted beside Snape, nearly brushing his shoulder, and looked down at his hands. "I heard someone moving upstairs," he said. "I thought it might be--" He cleared his throat and shook his head. "Well, of course it couldn't have been you. I ran up the stairs but I didn't see anyone. Just..."
"My body?" Snape concluded, when it appeared Potter, who could recount besting the most powerful dark wizard in a century with a breezy recitation of blithe facts, choked on seeing the condition of Snape's corpse.
Potter nodded. "I kneeled down beside you, and took your hand. It was cold. I tried to tell you that it was all right, that we'd...we'd won. But it didn't feel like we'd won, not with you--" He jerked angrily. "It wasn't fair! That I got to come back, to make a choice there in King's Cross but you didn't."
Snape didn't bother to point out that life, and apparently death, was never fair.
Potter rubbed the back of his neck, leaning against Snape's shoulder now. It should have been hot with the sun out, even down here amongst the leaves but it wasn't. The grass was cool and a gentle breeze blew across their faces. "It wasn't fair," Potter murmured and he grew silent. After a while Potter leaned more heavily against his shoulder and Snape realized he'd fallen asleep.
"So, you see my problem," came a voice at Snape's other shoulder. He started hard enough to wake the young man but Potter slumbered on. Death was sitting beside Snape, its long black robes stretched out against the turf. The cowl was angled so that it appeared empty and full of shadows. Death waved the scythe vaguely. "He's got this saving people thing. I know, crazy, right?"
"I don't see the problem at all," Snape growled, resenting having to be still enough not to wake Potter and having Death be so bloody difficult. "Send him back."
"I did. He came back-for you." The cowl shifted as though Death was rolling whatever passed for its eyes. "Stubborn."
"He always was," agreed Snape. The untidy head on his shoulder sighed in sleep.
"I'd come to collect you," Death explained, taking up Potter's tale. "He rushed in--"
"He's always doing that," put in Snape, brushing the hair away from Potter's forehead, purely so it wouldn't tickle his nose and wake him up at an inopportune moment.
"Started going on about how unfair it all was."
Snape and Death shook their heads at the foolishness of the young.
"Send him back while he's sleeping," suggested Snape.
The cowl shook, a clear negative. "Said he didn't want to live if you were dead."
"He says stupid things like that all the time," Snape huffed in exasperation. He thought a moment. "All right, send me on then. Wherever I belong. Once he realizes I'm gone, he'll go back willingly enough."
There was a rippling beneath the ebon robes as Death stretched out its legs. "If I send you on, he's vowed to go with you. Once your souls leave this realm, there's no going back."
"But I'm dead," protested Snape.
"Technically you were very, very close to death." Another roll of the cowl. "Little dee death. Makes all the difference. I know, crazy, right? But that's how it works."
Potter mumbled in his sleep, his temple rubbing against Snape's shoulder.
"We--" Snape began, aware of how galling it was to be a 'we' with Potter. "We can't just...just stay here? Wherever we are?" It came out as a question despite his intentions.
"Mmmm." The non-committal noise was, in its own way, more troubling than a refusal. "You'll be taken care of here." Death said, not taking the hint to tell Snape where 'here' was. Death waved toward two nearby trees. Vines and branches grew and entwined, stretching, shifting, forming a hammock. Leaves fell onto it, fusing to make a blanket and pillows. Another wave of the scythe and Potter shifted beside him, raised up on unseen hands, drifting over as if under the Mobilicorpus spell, settling gently into the hammock. "Fed, cared for and safe," Death went on.
"But?" asked Snape impatiently, belatedly aware of the folly of becoming impatient with Death.
"Well, it's not really living, is it?"
As silently as he had come, Death was gone, leaving Snape bereft of both Potter and Death.
"He doesn't look much like me."
The voice, a woman's, startled Snape so much, he realized he must have fallen into a doze. "My God," he said, as though actually in the divine presence.
The woman standing over Potter's hammock laughed merrily. "Not God. Just Lily."
Snape scrambled to his feet, never taking his eyes off Lily lest she too vanish as creatures did here. "He--he has your eyes," he admitted grudgingly as she reached out to stroke the hair off Potter's forehead, much as Snape himself had done earlier. She frowned at the scar. Snape stopped on the other side of the hammock. "God, Lily," he said again because there was something reverent in the moment. "It's good to see you."
She looked up, her hand still stroking through Potter's hair. Her smile went through him like a sword.
"I don't...deserve to see you," he said, suddenly ashamed of nearly everything he'd done in ways he'd never imagined before. He turned his face away, telling himself he deserved it if she vanished.
"Oh, Sev, you're still such a drama queen!"
His chin jerked back around, mouth gaping too much to form a reply. He was saved the ignominy of a reply by Potter's sibilant sigh.
"You protected him, didn't you?" she said, ignoring his proclivity to sputter, gazing down at her son. "I bet you didn't want to." Snape turned his face away, hating that he couldn't face her again. "You never could lie to me."
"I never had to before," Snape replied.
She reached out and tugged his hand into hers. He could feel an urgent pulse in it. "You'll take care of him, won't you?" she asked, searching his face. "Here, and wherever else you're going?"
He started to explain that wherever else they went, it would not be to the same place, but she went on. "I can't stay long, not in this form."
"You've only just--" Snape started to protest, clasping her fingers more tightly.
"This place is for the living," she explained,looking more urgent when he didn't reply. "Promise me you'll take care of him."
His mouth parted, to give what answer he knew not, when his fingers clutched at nothing. Lily was gone. He glared down at the blissfully unaware Potter, his lips slightly parted in slumber, wondering what he would have told his mother. After a moment, he cleared his throat, addressing the trees. "I would like a hammock too, please," he began, "And not--"
As before vines and leaves swirled, weaving together to form a hammock between two trees, practically touching Potter's hammock. "Not too close to Potter's," he finished futilely. He crossed round to it, testing the hammock vines with one finger. "I'll need a pillow," he said. Leaves fell. He crawled in and tried to think of Lily's face but it would not come into focus before he fell asleep.
He and Potter were still dead when he woke up. Unfortunately they were also entwined in one hammock. Snape jerked awake, looking down to make sure the treacherous trees hadn't stripped them both naked in their sleep. His movements woke Potter.
"What are you doing?" he asked, peering up owlishly at Snape. "I mean, I don't mind, of course, but I never thought you--"
"Of course I didn't," Snape sputtered, glaring overhead and the quiescent trees. "It was the bloody trees."
Potter had the cheek to laugh. "The trees, right." His hand slid off Snape's fig leaf design, stretching in the magically expanded hammock. Before Snape could sputter any further, Potter was disentangling their limbs. "I'm starving."
By the time Snape slid out of the extra-wide hammock, Potter was making a mess of himself with another patch of strawberries that most certainly had not been there the night before.
"My God, you have got to try these," insisted Potter, when he noticed Snape maneuvering out of the hammock. He held out a strawberry the size of a small apple. Snape took it, sniffing it cautiously.
"I've been thinking," Potter said, an activity that never boded well for Snape's peace of mind. "Since we're sharing the afterlife and everything, whether I ought to be allowed to call you Severus."
Snape's glare was his only reply. Potter blanched at the force of it that at least assured Snape that some things never changed, despite being deceased. Snape bit into the strawberry and nearly expired again from sheer deliciousness.
"Right, Professor Snape it is," Potter babbled.
Snape managed another glare, but not before he had another bite.
"Professor Snape, sir, Potter said, handing him several more berries from the pile he'd plucked. The both glutted themselves on the plump berries then explored the crystal clear stream to drink. "Which way?" asked Potter, scrabbling back up the mossy bank, and dusting off the backs of his trousers.
Snape stared at him blankly. Conversing with Potter was always like being dropped onto the other side of the looking glass. "Way?"
"To go exploring," Potter explained, looking both right and left as if looking for a signpost to the Emerald City.
If Snape hadn't been thinking nearly the same thing, he would have suggested a direction. He didn't like having Potter a step ahead of him so he wrinkled his nose and did what he did well--he balked. "Why should we do that?"
Potter laughed, loud enough to compete with the rushing waters of the stream at their feet. "What else is there to do? Sir? Unless you'd rather spend all day in the hammock?"
Damn it, did being dead give Potter some sort of wisdom he had lacked in life? Snape got to his feet, dusting of the backs of Death's idea of comfortable trousers and looked first toward the thickets then toward the unvaried open field from whence they had first appeared yesterday. "This way then," he said, as if he'd meant to go exploring all along. Since they hadn't penetrated very far into the orderly brush, the field was quickly under their feet. Now that Snape wasn't distracted--or as distracted--by being dead, he noticed that the grass was interspersed with white and yellow asphodel blooms among the other flowers. Something about that stirred in his memory, but he couldn't quite place--
"How far do you think it is?" asked Potter, bending to sweep up one of the white blossoms between his fingers.
"Where what is?" Snape growled, the thought skittering away before he could grasp it.
"Whatever's out there," Potter said, twirling the bloom between his fingers. "Heaven or, I don't know, hell, I suppose."
"You aren't going to hell," Snape replied, scanning the unbroken horizon. What looked like a low row of hedges ran in both directions as far as they could see. Instead of talking, he kept walking. For some inexplicable reason, Potter kept bending over to pick an occasional flower as they walked, twisting the stems together. They were in an open field and the sky was lit,yet no sun shone overhead, just a layer of brightness that never quite faded, even under the trees. More flowers joined Potter's erstwhile daisy chain, long enough now to dangle from around his shoulders, trailing into the grass.
"What if this is heaven?" asked Potter, after plucking up a long stemmed carnation. Snape stopped so abruptly he caught the end of Potter's flower chain.
"This is not heaven," he replied, glaring at Potter before they started walking again.
"How do you know?" Potter asked, skipping several steps to catch up to Snape. "I mean, it could be. It's nice."
"Because it isn't heaven," Snape repeated, even less patiently. He waved one hand vaguely at the vast empty space. "Heaven would be more crowded."
Another flower joined the foliage rainbow while Potter digested this. "What if heaven is whatever you want it to be?" he asked, looping the ridiculous flower chain around his neck.
"I doubt either of us would choose to spend eternity with the other," snorted Snape. He stopped again and spun to face Potter. "The main reason it cannot be heaven is that I am in it."
Even Potter's mental facilities could follow that logic. He frowned, something he did with nearly his entire body. "Why don't you think you're going to heaven?" he asked.
"The things I've done--" began Snape.
"For the right reasons," argued Potter. Even in the afterlife Potter was going to argue with him.
"Not everything," Snape countered, surprised by the young man's vehemence.
"Oh, so, you drowned kittens just for fun or something?"
"I can't believe I'm arguing theology with an idiot!"
Potter's outrage was palpable. "I am not an idiot! I saved you, didn't I?"
"My point exactly."
They had stopped walking during their row, ankle deep in flowers. Potter was huffing at him, blowing his fringe over the infamous scar. Just as quickly, his gaze veered off over Snape's shoulder. Snape feared the prickle of awareness that preceded another appearance by Death. When he followed Potter's gaze, however, they were quite alone among the flowers.
"Does it look like we've walked any closer to that hedge?" Potter asked, when Snape scowled at him.
Snape turned around in an entire circle. The hedge appeared just as far away on the horizon as it had when they'd begun their walk. The forest too, looked just as nearby as it had when they'd first appeared here. "We've walked--" Snape began with a frown.
"Hours," Potter took up, fingering the flower chain. "I did one flower about every twenty paces and there are--"
"Hundreds of them." Grudgingly he looked at the flowers curling over Potter's fingers. "Perhaps not such an idiot as all that."
Potter huffed again but the sound carried typical Gryffindor mockery--that is, not much. "Thanks. Looks like we aren't meant to leave. At least not this way." They turned back toward the trees by unspoken mutual consent and were back where they started within half an hour.
Feasting on peaches so sweet Snape did not mind swiping up the juice that dripped down his chin, he sucked his sticky fingers clean. Ever restless, Potter was coaxing nuts to fall from a tree, which here, required no more magic than a wish. The shells even fell away as he shared the bounty, once more washed down by the purest water Snape had ever tasted.
Not unexpectedly, they quarreled after lunch.
"Through," Potter insisted, pointing deeper into the forest.
"Around," countered Snape, gesturing to the visible demarcation between field and forest.
"We've already seen that this place could go on forever," argued the brat. "If we go through it, at least we might see where we are."
"With no way to find our way back," retorted Snape.
"Back to what?" Potter flailed a bit but must have sensed that Snape was wavering. There was something about that field he didn't like, and walking around the forest line would keep it forever in view. "You know Death can find us, no matter where we are."
Snape was certain it was a coincidence that a chilly wind swept through the glade just then and made them both shiver. "We follow the stream," he insisted and Potter, looking ridiculously pleased, nodded. He made no more flower chains while they walked.
On to Part 2
The amazing veridari posted art for it over here!
Title: Original Sin
Author: DementorDelta
Length: Approx. 15,000 words
Summary: Leave it to Harry Potter to interfere in every aspect of Severus Snape's life-and death.
Warnings: Slightly blasphemous
Author's Note: Written based on a prompt submitted by accioslash, to whom this is lovingly dedicated. Beta read by the always helpful isidore13.
Original Sin
Severus Snape had never expected to go to heaven.
Even if he'd ever set any store by the droning of the church's teachings he'd been subjected to as a boy, he'd seen too many things as a man that had convinced him that rather than a Supreme Being in charge, there was no one stirring the cauldron of humanity.
Should such a Being manifest in the afterlife, Snape did not expect to meet him at the rumored Pearly Gates. His soul had been fractured and mended too often to have hope of gaining admittance to that realm even had he desired it. Heaven sounded dead boring anyway. Probably nothing but endless harp playing and halo polishing. Gryffindors perhaps would find such an afterlife satisfying but no Slytherin worth his school tie ever could. Besides, Snape knew he looked dreadful in white.
Something wafted across the tip of his nose, making it twitch. Why did death have to be so ruddy ticklish? And why did it have to smell like a train station?
"Ah, Severus," said a voice that sounded suspiciously like--
"Albus?" Snape's eyes flew open. The old man squatting beside him looked well for being a year in the grave. He twinkled even in death. "I never thought we'd end up in the same place." Snape pulled himself up from whatever concrete he'd wound up on. Aside from the vapor of invisible trains, the place reeked of blood. Snape looked down at himself. Oh, all that blood belonged to him. "Where the devil are we?"
Albus Dumbledore looked around the cathedral-like place with childlike glee. "Apparently in King's Cross Station." His beard dragged along Severus's blood-stained coat as he looked up at the skylights. "A bit after my time though. I suppose if you'd arrived here first it would look like a dungeon."
Snape had put a hand to his ruined throat. His fingers came away crimson but it appeared that the bleeding had stopped. Considering the amount of blood on his clothes, it looked like he had rather more outside than inside.
"First?" he asked with a frown. "Who else--?"
"You've just missed Harry," Dumbledore replied, looking not at all put out that Potter-for whom they'd both sacrificed so much--was as dead as Severus and himself.
"Potter? But I just saw him!" exclaimed Snape. The idiot boy had-providentially-shown up right when Severus wanted him to pass on the memories Snape thought he needed. Potter had always had the devil's own luck, but it seemed that luck had run out. "He was fine!" Snape protested, wiping gore off his hand, trying to find a place on his clothes that wasn't already wet with it.
Albus looked sad and a bit concerned, offering a bit of his own spotless blue robe. Snape shook his head and found a relatively dry spot on his trouser leg to wipe his hand though blood still clung to it.
"You were a long time dying, my boy," said Dumbledore, looking sadder.
Disgust rose up in Snape's stomach, bile so fetid it would surely have poisoned him if he weren't currently deceased. "Then it was all for nothing. The damn fool boy went and got himself killed despite all we--"
But Albus was twinkling again and this time, rather than being confined to his eyes, Snape was alarmed to note that it was more of an all-over twinkle.
"Harry very wisely chose to go back and finish the nearly impossible task we set him," Dumbledore said, "I imagine he'll come out all right. It is your fate we're here to discuss."
"My fate?" Snape said, startled. Even the reassuring presence of his old friend couldn't keep away the cold shiver of dread at what awaited. Surely this railway apparition of Potter's wasn't his final destination? Snape was certain he was not bound for any fate that included harp music and halo polishing. "My fate was sealed when I--" He glanced uneasily at Albus, grateful that the Killing Curse left no traces to accuse him now.
"You still haven't forgiven yourself," Dumbledore said, shaking his head.
Snape's head jerked up. "Or you for making me do it," he sneered, glad to be on familiar footing.
"I assure you, it was quite painless," replied Dumbledore, as though Snape had merely trod on one of his feet. One long-fingered hand reached out-his wand hand-miraculously restored and whole from the blackened ruin it had been the last year of his life. He reached over and touched the blood at Snape's throat. "Unlike your own near death."
"Near?" Snape asked, disconcerted when the blood that came away on Albus's fingers turned silvery and vanished.
"Very near," Dumbledore replied, rubbing his fingers together where the blood had been. "Another few minutes and I doubt anything could be done."
Snape's eyes narrowed. Had this place, wherever it was, for Snape knew quite well that it was not a train station, turned Dumbledore or his shade, barmy. Or at least barmier? "Done?"
Albus nodded as if it was all perfectly clear. "Done. I only wish I had the power to send you back hale and hearty, but no man can do that."
"I'm not going back," Snape said, pulling himself up straighter, though his fingers got bloody again when he rightened himself. "I deserve whatever--"
"Well, not back exactly, but...on." Dumbledore's eyes were kindly again and Snape remembered what power they had to make the world seem cozy and warm and every problem solved with tea and a sherbet lemon. Albus patted Snape's arm. "I only wanted to see you again, Severus, to thank you for all you did for me. And for Harry."
There was another smudge of blood on Albus's hand that seemed to twinkle itself before vanishing while the blood soaking Severus's clothes was as clammy and wet as ever. "I'm not selfish enough to keep you from what must be," he said, and again Snape felt coldness grip his spine.
"Where are you sending me?" Snape asked, determined not to show the fear that was chilling his insides.
Albus smiled and at least his twinkle was confined to his eyes alone. "Oh it isn't where I'm sending you, dear boy, but where you are being taken."
Snape's nose itched again and he realized the mist had gotten heavier, wafting between himself and the old man, obscuring Dumbledore from sight. His last thought, as the mist seemed to flow inside him, was that he could not shake the feeling that this was, somehow, Potter's fault.
~~**~~
Snape knew, before opening his eyes, that he was flat on his back and naked. Not the curse-the-first-nurse-who-comes-in-to-check-on-him sort of naked but grass-prickling-on-arsecheek sort of naked.
Had he dreamed Albus and that infernal train station up? Had it all been some sort of trauma laced with guilt dream and he was now truly about to begin servitude in the fiery pit of the underworld? He drew in a deep breath. The air did not smell of sulfur and brimstone. It smelled of-Snape sniffed again. Hyacinth. And roses. There may even have been some tropical orchids.
He kept his eyes firmly closed. A trick then, to lull him into complacency before the gates of the fiery furnace were cast open and--
Someone groaned.
Someone who wasn't Snape.
Snape's eyes flew open. Overhead was a painfully blue sky. He-they--were lying face up in a lush meadow. Three feet away lay the prone-and utterly naked-form of Harry Potter.
"Fuck," Snape said aloud, hoisting himself upright.
Potter too was stirring, pushing up off the grass, looking down at his unclothed body. "Not again," he murmured incomprehensibly, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. He started to fall back when he caught sight of Snape. "Not you too."
Potter's hair was in a ridiculous disarray, the glasses askew again as he pushed up to his feet, buried ankle-deep in white asphodel flowers. Resolutely Snape kept his gaze from lingering anywhere it shouldn't, which was just about everywhere since the only thing on Potter was those dratted glasses. Snape was having a bit of a struggle getting to his feet while trying to keep his back to Potter. "Prof--" Potter began then he broke off, staring at something coming through the trees at the edge of the meadow.
Something large. And darker than Voldemort's heart.
At first it looked like the shadow of one of the trees, its movements like a ripple of shadow over sunlight. Then it detached itself from the trees, moving through the field in an ominous glide that seemed to leave the swaying flowers untouched. It cast no shadow. Snape forgot his own unclothed state, his own deceased-ness and the fact that he had no wand, grabbing for the staring boy.
"Get behind me, Potter," Snape commanded sharply, jerking Potter and his nakedness behind his back. The thing seemed to trail darkness behind itself, like heat distortion off a road.
Potter's arm rose straight up, fingers stretched out as if there was a wand clenched in his fingers. "Expecto Patronum," he cast. Even though he had no wand, a silvery light burst from Potter's outstretched hand, forming into a silver stag that charged the flowing darkness.
"That's no Dementor," Snape said, trying to keep himself between Potter and the man-shaped darkness.
"Of course it--" began Potter just before his mouth dropped open. Snape turned to see the silvery stag slowing its charge directly in front of the dark form. One bone white hand reached out of the black robes to stoke the top of the stag's head. The stag shivered and disappeared in a burst of silver mist.
"Those don't work on me," the thing said, closing the space between them in several long strides over the softly waving asphodel. "Cute though." It was holding something in the other hand, something that seemed at once a part of the swirling vapor-like robes, yet solid on its own.
A scythe.
"Dementors can't talk," Potter said, pressing against Snape's back, trying to wriggle out of his grasp, peering over Snape's bare shoulder to get a better look.
"This isn't--" Snape began, still trying to keep Potter away from it..
"There has never been a Dementor here," the creature said, waving the scythe. Three armchairs appeared in the middle of the meadow, green with hyacinth blossom embroidery. One was much larger than the other two, since the creature towered over them. The creature seemed to re-form backward, filling and spilling out of the largest armchair, the long black robes pooling over the grass and flowers. The grass did not whither, nor did the cheerful white blooms darken and die.
"Where exactly is here?" Snape asked, releasing Potter's arm, pointedly not sitting down. The black sleeve stretched out over the arm of the largest chair and a hand, all bone and no flesh appeared, twice the size of a man's.
No one spoke for a moment. Potter seemed to have gone mute, which seemed like such an improvement Snape himself was loathe to break the quiet.
"It's the only place I could think to bring both of you," the creature said, its voice like the echo of an ancient spell. It gestured again toward the two armchairs facing his own.
"Sit down while we sort this out."
Snape took a step closer to the chairs, suddenly uncomfortably aware of his lack of formal-or informal-attire. "May we have some clothes, please?" he asked stiffly.
"Oh, right," the creature said, sounding a bit apologetic. A pass of the scythe and trousers and simple cotton shirts appeared on them both. Snape tugged down the hem of his shirt and saw a leafy design. He frowned. A fig leaf.
"Most amusing," he said, glancing at Potter now that they were both decently clothed. There was no leaf on Potter's shirt but a jagged lightning bolt.
"Sit down, please," the creature said, "you've both had a hell of a day."
Keeping his eyes on the creature, Snape sat down. Once he was in it, he thought the armchair might be the most comfortable thing he'd ever sat in, should he let himself relax back into it.
Potter followed suit, looking as uneasy as Snape felt. "I'm dead, aren't I?" he said, slumping in the chair. "Again."
The certainty of the boy's despair hit Snape forcibly. He wanted to go back to that wretched train station and strangle Albus's shade or spirit or whatever he had been. Snape didn't want all of it, all the sacrifices beginning with Lily's, to have been for nothing.
"Not...exactly," said the creature, moving two bone fingers negligently over a piece of hyacinth embroidery. A deep black cowl obscured its face, or whatever lurked beneath the flow of darkness that was its robe. "I know, crazy, right? You're either dead--" The skeletal hand lifted and drew a line straight across its own throat, "Or not. Usually." It shrugged.
Snape and Harry shivered at the same time. It was Snape who recovered first. He leaned forward in his chair. "You already have me. Let Potter go."
"What? No!" cried Potter with unnecessary vehemence.
"I've already let him go once," said the creature, making another of those negligent gestures with a bony finger. "Right, you were out of it, Severus, unconscious, life ebbing away, lying in a pool of your own blood for all that time--"
"Stop it!"
Potter's outburst startled both Snape and the creature. He'd gone pale, fingers gripping the arms of the chair. Potter had always been a bit squeamish but even Snape didn't want to hear the rest of the details of his death himself. He remembered the amount of blood soaking his robes in the train station. There hadn't been any blood when he'd appeared here, nor any gash on his throat.
"It was supposed to be me," Potter ground out, "let the professor go."
The shadowed cowl swerved back toward Severus. "You see my problem."
"I don't see anything of the sort," said Snape, hoping his glare would keep Potter quiet. "I was mortally wounded--"
"Technically it's only mortal when I say it's mortal," the creature pointed out.
"I took a Killing Curse," Potter put in, unhelpful, even in the afterlife.
The bony finger shifted toward Potter. "You faked that."
"Then why is he here?" asked Snape wishing Dumbledore had spent a bit less time apologizing and a bit more filling him in on what happened after the snake Nagini had attacked Snape.
"There's been an interdiction," came the sepulchral reply. "I'm not allowed to take either of you until this is settled."
Snape frowned. "A what?"
"I know, crazy, right? Been a while since I've had one. I had to look it up myself."
Beside him, Potter leaned over and spoke quietly to Snape. "Death has books?"
Until then Snape had been avoiding thinking of the creature by any sort of name. "Harry offered up his soul in exchanged for yours," Death explained.
"What? He most certainly did no--" In his outrage, Snape had jerked his face in Potter's direction. Potter's head had dropped and he was avoiding Snape's gaze.
"Not." Snape sighed. Of course he had.
"Very noble, really," Death said, as if in consolation.
"He's like that," Snape said, watching Potter's mouth thin in anger.
"It wasn't fair what happened to you," he burst out.
Snape snorted. So did Death.
"There isn't anything fair about what happens to any of us," said Snape in only slightly less withering tones than he'd intended for the image of Lily had sprung into his mind.
"Fair or not, I let Harry go and I can't claim him again until his time is up. Again. And I can't claim your soul, Severus, because Harry interceded for you." The flowing shroud rippled in a shrug. "Crazy, I know."
"I didn't mean to," Potter mumbled. "I mean, I did tell you-your body-that it wasn't fair and that my mum wouldn't have wanted you to end up that way."
God, the boy was thick. Snape turned back to Death. "Everyone says ridiculous things like that." He clasped his hands together, laying them on his chest in a dramatic pose, rolling his eyes heaven-ward. "Oh, if only it had been me," he wailed in patently false tones. He flung his hands apart in a disgusted gesture.
"Not everyone means it," Death said solemnly, "And hardly anyone has also been dead and come back once already." He sighed, like wind through a graveyard. "And not everyone is kneeling over you right as I've come to collect your soul. So I had to take you both until we get this sorted out."
Death stood up. Snape too scrambled to his feet. Beside him Potter followed suit, looking wary. Or confused. On Potter it was difficult to tell.
"How do we sort it out?" Potter asked. The armchairs had vanished as soon as they stood up. Fortunately the clothes remained.
"You stay put," said Death, as its long pale fingers wrapped around the scythe. "You'll be safe here."
"Safe from what?" Snape asked, though he suspected Potter was about to ask the same question.
The cowl shifted and for a moment there was the bone-white flash of a fleshless skull. "From me."
Without another word, the creature vanished. Snape wasted no time whirling on Potter. "What were you thinking?" he snarled.
Potter seemed to appreciate neither his whirl nor his snarl. "You're alive," he said, his smile toothily similar to Death's.
"No, you idiot, now we're both dead," replied Snape, willing his gaze to lift from Potter's seemingly boundless cheer.
"I don't feel dead. I feel great." He was stretching, looking around at the endless expanse of meadow and trees. "Bit hungry though."
Snape had to admit the boy looked half starved. Wherever he'd been the last year had obviously not had the benefits of Hogwarts's kitchens.
"Where are we, do you reckon?" Potter asked, looking around.
"What matters is how we get you back," said Snape, studying their surroundings with more care. The meadow seemed to stretch as far as they could see, with a forest easily larger than the Forbidden Forest to one side. Further away there seemed to be a long row of bushes stretching out in either direction, paralleling the forest.
"Which way?" Potter asked, studying both their options, as it seemed unwise to remain out in the open where it was certain there was no shelter or food.
He was by no means finished with the subject of Potter's ridiculous sacrifice but it seemed prudent to get the boy out of sight before he caught the attention of some other universal entity bent on his destruction. Things like that always seemed to happen to Potter.
Potter sighed as they both swung their heads, reviewing the, to Snape, equally desolate options. "Wish he, um, Death, had been a bit more specific."
"Considering he is contemplating how best to harvest our souls without destroying the balance of the universe, I would not be too keen to see him return," Snape returned.
"Did he say all that?" asked Potter, blinking. Snape merely glared at him. Trust him not to understand the nuances of their predicament.
"This way," Snape decided, turning toward the forest. He took a few steps before he realized Potter hadn't moved. He stopped and turned around.
"Why that way?" Potter jerked his head toward the hedge. "That way looks closer. And hedges might mean other people."
Snape had not even considered that there might be other people--or souls-near. Having got used to being dead, he wasn't sure he wanted to meet anyone in a similar state.
When Snape didn't say anything, Potter spoke again, "People might mean food, and I'm hungry."
Snape too was feeling peckish though he would never admit it because he was fairly certain dead people didn't get hungry and he wasn't ready to face the fact that they might both be alive and stranded wherever this was. Before he could reply, however, there was a low rumble, almost as though the earth was trembling, though he felt no vibration. He started to tackle Potter to the ground but before he could take more than a step something shot out of the ground between them. It was so close to Potter that it knocked him off his feet. The silence that followed was full only of Potter's cursing as he felt in the grass for his glasses.
Where there had been only level ground--and briefly three armchairs--now bloomed a thick leafy bush, no taller than Snape's waist.
"Don't touch it," Potter cried out as he jabbed his glasses back on. For Snape had indeed reached out to touch the closest branch--a branch that was heavy with fruit.
"Do you like peaches?" Snape asked, fingertips brushing the fuzzy fruit, confirming what his eyes told him were perfectly ripe peaches, despite the fact that they were on a bush and not a tree.
"Love them," Potter replied, brushing himself off as he got back to his feet. Before Potter could protest further, Snape plucked one and bit into it. "Don't eat that!" Potter called in alarm. Juice exploded over his tongue, so delicious it would have made him feel glad to be alive if indeed he had been alive. He waited to see if he would fall over dead.
Potter too was staring at him in anger and alarm, until Snape tugged another luscious peach loose from the bush and held it out to Potter. "I believe you were hungry," he said, tossing Potter the peach when the boy simply stared at it. Potter lifted it to his nose first--ha! as if that nose could detect half the poisons Snape's could--then bit into it. His must have been as ripened to perfection as Snape's had been. Snape finished one and two more besides. Potter's moans of culinary satisfaction were nearly obscene.
"That was really stupid, you know," Potter said, sucking his third pit before tossing it over his shoulder. "Eating one like that. What if it had killed you?"
"We're already dead," replied Snape, turning back toward the line of trees. This time Potter trudged alongside him without protest. When they looked back, the peach bush had vanished.
The forest was much closer than it appeared, more a series of sylvan glades than a true forest. The air smelled lush and alive, scented with the acres of flowers blooming beneath their feet. There were streams and waterfalls winding through the trees and expanses of soft grass and moss bordering the hedgerows.
"It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen," Potter said, quite unnecessarily for this was easily the most beautiful place on earth, looking both virginal and unspoiled, yet designed seemingly to be admired. Potter had stopped, closing his eyes. "I smell strawberries," he said, taking deep breaths.
Snape smelled them too and the scent made his stomach clench in hunger despite the feast of peaches.
"And honey," Potter went on, his lashes resting against his cheeks.
"We mustn't let our guard down," Snape warned, scanning the landscape for signs of habitation.
"I never had mine up," Potter said, opening his eyes. "Let's see if we can find those strawberries. I'm hungry again."
He was off before Snape could issue any warnings about staying together but not far as there was a patch of perfectly ripened berries around the next bend of the stream. "I'll test them this time," Potter offered, biting one so juicy that it dribbled down his chin. The rapturous look on his face was definitely not mesmerizing. Then, without warning, he made a choking noise and clenched at his throat, cheeks puffing out as though he was about to be sick, eyes bulging wildly.
Automatically Snape reached where his wand would be inside his robes, if he had a wand, or robes. His heart was racing as he tried to think what to do---and then Potter burst out laughing, no longer looking like he was about to expire at Snape's feet.
"You should see your face," he said, finishing off the apparently non-poisonous berry.
"Oh, very amusing," Snape growled, sitting down rather suddenly in the soft grass, turning his back to the still chuckling whelp. "Good thing I didn't waste my life trying to protect you."
The chuckling ceased but Snape didn't turn around. He could hear Potter moving behind him, polishing off the entire berry patch no doubt while Snape worked up a really first-rate sulk. A shadow crossed over him and there was Potter, his t-shirt stretched out in front of him like a basket, laden with strawberries.
"I'm sorry, sir," he said, plucking up the fattest berry and offering to Snape.
Snape huffed, thinking of refusing, but it would be mad to refuse food when they had no idea if this lush bounty would continue. Between them they ate every single strawberry, leaving Potter's shirt spotted with juice. "I think you should tell me everything that happened after I--" Potter's face looked bleak but Snape forced himself to continue. "After I died."
Potter had drawn up very close to him in order to share the strawberries. He nodded in agreement but it took him a moment before he started speaking. Parts of it Snape could have predicted but most of it was as wildly improbable as fiction, so of course it must be true. He tried to picture Hogwarts as it must look now but found that somehow more difficult to accept than his own demise.
"I didn't want to leave you like that," Potter said, after recounting the horrific events that followed. "But I had to finish--" His nervous gaze found Snape's.
"Yes, yes, carry on," he said gruffly. The tale was more harrowing than Snape had expected. No wonder Potter was hungry.
"You say you saw the headmaster?" asked Snape.
"In King's Cross Station," Potter said, sounding wistful. "I thought for a moment about...about going on but there was still so much to do."
"I had a similar experience," admitted Snape. "Just after you left, apparently."
"It was good to see him again, wasn't it?" Potter asked, staring out across the emerald green hillocks.
Snape nodded wordlessly, not certain Potter would notice. A strand of hair blew into his eyes.
"I wanted to bring you back myself," Potter went on, coming to the end of his tale. "I didn't want the Aurors or the Death Eaters touching you, not after everything you'd been through." He shifted beside Snape, nearly brushing his shoulder, and looked down at his hands. "I heard someone moving upstairs," he said. "I thought it might be--" He cleared his throat and shook his head. "Well, of course it couldn't have been you. I ran up the stairs but I didn't see anyone. Just..."
"My body?" Snape concluded, when it appeared Potter, who could recount besting the most powerful dark wizard in a century with a breezy recitation of blithe facts, choked on seeing the condition of Snape's corpse.
Potter nodded. "I kneeled down beside you, and took your hand. It was cold. I tried to tell you that it was all right, that we'd...we'd won. But it didn't feel like we'd won, not with you--" He jerked angrily. "It wasn't fair! That I got to come back, to make a choice there in King's Cross but you didn't."
Snape didn't bother to point out that life, and apparently death, was never fair.
Potter rubbed the back of his neck, leaning against Snape's shoulder now. It should have been hot with the sun out, even down here amongst the leaves but it wasn't. The grass was cool and a gentle breeze blew across their faces. "It wasn't fair," Potter murmured and he grew silent. After a while Potter leaned more heavily against his shoulder and Snape realized he'd fallen asleep.
"So, you see my problem," came a voice at Snape's other shoulder. He started hard enough to wake the young man but Potter slumbered on. Death was sitting beside Snape, its long black robes stretched out against the turf. The cowl was angled so that it appeared empty and full of shadows. Death waved the scythe vaguely. "He's got this saving people thing. I know, crazy, right?"
"I don't see the problem at all," Snape growled, resenting having to be still enough not to wake Potter and having Death be so bloody difficult. "Send him back."
"I did. He came back-for you." The cowl shifted as though Death was rolling whatever passed for its eyes. "Stubborn."
"He always was," agreed Snape. The untidy head on his shoulder sighed in sleep.
"I'd come to collect you," Death explained, taking up Potter's tale. "He rushed in--"
"He's always doing that," put in Snape, brushing the hair away from Potter's forehead, purely so it wouldn't tickle his nose and wake him up at an inopportune moment.
"Started going on about how unfair it all was."
Snape and Death shook their heads at the foolishness of the young.
"Send him back while he's sleeping," suggested Snape.
The cowl shook, a clear negative. "Said he didn't want to live if you were dead."
"He says stupid things like that all the time," Snape huffed in exasperation. He thought a moment. "All right, send me on then. Wherever I belong. Once he realizes I'm gone, he'll go back willingly enough."
There was a rippling beneath the ebon robes as Death stretched out its legs. "If I send you on, he's vowed to go with you. Once your souls leave this realm, there's no going back."
"But I'm dead," protested Snape.
"Technically you were very, very close to death." Another roll of the cowl. "Little dee death. Makes all the difference. I know, crazy, right? But that's how it works."
Potter mumbled in his sleep, his temple rubbing against Snape's shoulder.
"We--" Snape began, aware of how galling it was to be a 'we' with Potter. "We can't just...just stay here? Wherever we are?" It came out as a question despite his intentions.
"Mmmm." The non-committal noise was, in its own way, more troubling than a refusal. "You'll be taken care of here." Death said, not taking the hint to tell Snape where 'here' was. Death waved toward two nearby trees. Vines and branches grew and entwined, stretching, shifting, forming a hammock. Leaves fell onto it, fusing to make a blanket and pillows. Another wave of the scythe and Potter shifted beside him, raised up on unseen hands, drifting over as if under the Mobilicorpus spell, settling gently into the hammock. "Fed, cared for and safe," Death went on.
"But?" asked Snape impatiently, belatedly aware of the folly of becoming impatient with Death.
"Well, it's not really living, is it?"
As silently as he had come, Death was gone, leaving Snape bereft of both Potter and Death.
"He doesn't look much like me."
The voice, a woman's, startled Snape so much, he realized he must have fallen into a doze. "My God," he said, as though actually in the divine presence.
The woman standing over Potter's hammock laughed merrily. "Not God. Just Lily."
Snape scrambled to his feet, never taking his eyes off Lily lest she too vanish as creatures did here. "He--he has your eyes," he admitted grudgingly as she reached out to stroke the hair off Potter's forehead, much as Snape himself had done earlier. She frowned at the scar. Snape stopped on the other side of the hammock. "God, Lily," he said again because there was something reverent in the moment. "It's good to see you."
She looked up, her hand still stroking through Potter's hair. Her smile went through him like a sword.
"I don't...deserve to see you," he said, suddenly ashamed of nearly everything he'd done in ways he'd never imagined before. He turned his face away, telling himself he deserved it if she vanished.
"Oh, Sev, you're still such a drama queen!"
His chin jerked back around, mouth gaping too much to form a reply. He was saved the ignominy of a reply by Potter's sibilant sigh.
"You protected him, didn't you?" she said, ignoring his proclivity to sputter, gazing down at her son. "I bet you didn't want to." Snape turned his face away, hating that he couldn't face her again. "You never could lie to me."
"I never had to before," Snape replied.
She reached out and tugged his hand into hers. He could feel an urgent pulse in it. "You'll take care of him, won't you?" she asked, searching his face. "Here, and wherever else you're going?"
He started to explain that wherever else they went, it would not be to the same place, but she went on. "I can't stay long, not in this form."
"You've only just--" Snape started to protest, clasping her fingers more tightly.
"This place is for the living," she explained,looking more urgent when he didn't reply. "Promise me you'll take care of him."
His mouth parted, to give what answer he knew not, when his fingers clutched at nothing. Lily was gone. He glared down at the blissfully unaware Potter, his lips slightly parted in slumber, wondering what he would have told his mother. After a moment, he cleared his throat, addressing the trees. "I would like a hammock too, please," he began, "And not--"
As before vines and leaves swirled, weaving together to form a hammock between two trees, practically touching Potter's hammock. "Not too close to Potter's," he finished futilely. He crossed round to it, testing the hammock vines with one finger. "I'll need a pillow," he said. Leaves fell. He crawled in and tried to think of Lily's face but it would not come into focus before he fell asleep.
He and Potter were still dead when he woke up. Unfortunately they were also entwined in one hammock. Snape jerked awake, looking down to make sure the treacherous trees hadn't stripped them both naked in their sleep. His movements woke Potter.
"What are you doing?" he asked, peering up owlishly at Snape. "I mean, I don't mind, of course, but I never thought you--"
"Of course I didn't," Snape sputtered, glaring overhead and the quiescent trees. "It was the bloody trees."
Potter had the cheek to laugh. "The trees, right." His hand slid off Snape's fig leaf design, stretching in the magically expanded hammock. Before Snape could sputter any further, Potter was disentangling their limbs. "I'm starving."
By the time Snape slid out of the extra-wide hammock, Potter was making a mess of himself with another patch of strawberries that most certainly had not been there the night before.
"My God, you have got to try these," insisted Potter, when he noticed Snape maneuvering out of the hammock. He held out a strawberry the size of a small apple. Snape took it, sniffing it cautiously.
"I've been thinking," Potter said, an activity that never boded well for Snape's peace of mind. "Since we're sharing the afterlife and everything, whether I ought to be allowed to call you Severus."
Snape's glare was his only reply. Potter blanched at the force of it that at least assured Snape that some things never changed, despite being deceased. Snape bit into the strawberry and nearly expired again from sheer deliciousness.
"Right, Professor Snape it is," Potter babbled.
Snape managed another glare, but not before he had another bite.
"Professor Snape, sir, Potter said, handing him several more berries from the pile he'd plucked. The both glutted themselves on the plump berries then explored the crystal clear stream to drink. "Which way?" asked Potter, scrabbling back up the mossy bank, and dusting off the backs of his trousers.
Snape stared at him blankly. Conversing with Potter was always like being dropped onto the other side of the looking glass. "Way?"
"To go exploring," Potter explained, looking both right and left as if looking for a signpost to the Emerald City.
If Snape hadn't been thinking nearly the same thing, he would have suggested a direction. He didn't like having Potter a step ahead of him so he wrinkled his nose and did what he did well--he balked. "Why should we do that?"
Potter laughed, loud enough to compete with the rushing waters of the stream at their feet. "What else is there to do? Sir? Unless you'd rather spend all day in the hammock?"
Damn it, did being dead give Potter some sort of wisdom he had lacked in life? Snape got to his feet, dusting of the backs of Death's idea of comfortable trousers and looked first toward the thickets then toward the unvaried open field from whence they had first appeared yesterday. "This way then," he said, as if he'd meant to go exploring all along. Since they hadn't penetrated very far into the orderly brush, the field was quickly under their feet. Now that Snape wasn't distracted--or as distracted--by being dead, he noticed that the grass was interspersed with white and yellow asphodel blooms among the other flowers. Something about that stirred in his memory, but he couldn't quite place--
"How far do you think it is?" asked Potter, bending to sweep up one of the white blossoms between his fingers.
"Where what is?" Snape growled, the thought skittering away before he could grasp it.
"Whatever's out there," Potter said, twirling the bloom between his fingers. "Heaven or, I don't know, hell, I suppose."
"You aren't going to hell," Snape replied, scanning the unbroken horizon. What looked like a low row of hedges ran in both directions as far as they could see. Instead of talking, he kept walking. For some inexplicable reason, Potter kept bending over to pick an occasional flower as they walked, twisting the stems together. They were in an open field and the sky was lit,yet no sun shone overhead, just a layer of brightness that never quite faded, even under the trees. More flowers joined Potter's erstwhile daisy chain, long enough now to dangle from around his shoulders, trailing into the grass.
"What if this is heaven?" asked Potter, after plucking up a long stemmed carnation. Snape stopped so abruptly he caught the end of Potter's flower chain.
"This is not heaven," he replied, glaring at Potter before they started walking again.
"How do you know?" Potter asked, skipping several steps to catch up to Snape. "I mean, it could be. It's nice."
"Because it isn't heaven," Snape repeated, even less patiently. He waved one hand vaguely at the vast empty space. "Heaven would be more crowded."
Another flower joined the foliage rainbow while Potter digested this. "What if heaven is whatever you want it to be?" he asked, looping the ridiculous flower chain around his neck.
"I doubt either of us would choose to spend eternity with the other," snorted Snape. He stopped again and spun to face Potter. "The main reason it cannot be heaven is that I am in it."
Even Potter's mental facilities could follow that logic. He frowned, something he did with nearly his entire body. "Why don't you think you're going to heaven?" he asked.
"The things I've done--" began Snape.
"For the right reasons," argued Potter. Even in the afterlife Potter was going to argue with him.
"Not everything," Snape countered, surprised by the young man's vehemence.
"Oh, so, you drowned kittens just for fun or something?"
"I can't believe I'm arguing theology with an idiot!"
Potter's outrage was palpable. "I am not an idiot! I saved you, didn't I?"
"My point exactly."
They had stopped walking during their row, ankle deep in flowers. Potter was huffing at him, blowing his fringe over the infamous scar. Just as quickly, his gaze veered off over Snape's shoulder. Snape feared the prickle of awareness that preceded another appearance by Death. When he followed Potter's gaze, however, they were quite alone among the flowers.
"Does it look like we've walked any closer to that hedge?" Potter asked, when Snape scowled at him.
Snape turned around in an entire circle. The hedge appeared just as far away on the horizon as it had when they'd begun their walk. The forest too, looked just as nearby as it had when they'd first appeared here. "We've walked--" Snape began with a frown.
"Hours," Potter took up, fingering the flower chain. "I did one flower about every twenty paces and there are--"
"Hundreds of them." Grudgingly he looked at the flowers curling over Potter's fingers. "Perhaps not such an idiot as all that."
Potter huffed again but the sound carried typical Gryffindor mockery--that is, not much. "Thanks. Looks like we aren't meant to leave. At least not this way." They turned back toward the trees by unspoken mutual consent and were back where they started within half an hour.
Feasting on peaches so sweet Snape did not mind swiping up the juice that dripped down his chin, he sucked his sticky fingers clean. Ever restless, Potter was coaxing nuts to fall from a tree, which here, required no more magic than a wish. The shells even fell away as he shared the bounty, once more washed down by the purest water Snape had ever tasted.
Not unexpectedly, they quarreled after lunch.
"Through," Potter insisted, pointing deeper into the forest.
"Around," countered Snape, gesturing to the visible demarcation between field and forest.
"We've already seen that this place could go on forever," argued the brat. "If we go through it, at least we might see where we are."
"With no way to find our way back," retorted Snape.
"Back to what?" Potter flailed a bit but must have sensed that Snape was wavering. There was something about that field he didn't like, and walking around the forest line would keep it forever in view. "You know Death can find us, no matter where we are."
Snape was certain it was a coincidence that a chilly wind swept through the glade just then and made them both shiver. "We follow the stream," he insisted and Potter, looking ridiculously pleased, nodded. He made no more flower chains while they walked.
On to Part 2