Tell Me Where All Past Years Are
--John Donne
In 1976, closer to Litha than Beltane, Severus Snape closed upside-down eyes against his best friend turning him into a victim instead of a combatant in the sight of the school. He swallowed down the froth of soapy spell-bubbles spilling out of his mouth and trying to creep down into his lungs, opened his mouth to stop Lily from taking all his enemies on as her own (even if she was laughing at him), and most sincerely wished himself out of his life. It was a familiar wish for him, one that never quite went away even if he sometimes forgot it for a moment in the grips of one ginger smile or another. Until now, though, he’d always just wished himself into a life where things were better. Today the golden boys who’d nearly killed him or worse not two months ago were declaring that they had no remorse and would never leave him alone. With bitter despair indistinguishable from soap on his tongue, the fear of living in hell forever tight in his chest, he decided that death would also be acceptable if only this would stop.
In 1998, closer to Beltane than Litha, Severus Snape watched a fanged maw open large enough to swallow his head. Though his wand hand jerked up instinctively, he knew that his compliant death would give his killer an unjustified confidence in his powers and his weapons, and so might also give one young idiot an indispensable edge. He controlled himself, but adrenaline loaded his mouth with bitter despair. The certainty hitched tight in his chest that even should the war be won the cleanup would still be an utter Gryff-led botch and leave his nation riddled with corruption and the unarmed and incompetent well-intentioned. In sacrifice, without hope, blessing physiology and occlumency for the shock and practice that muted the ripping-out of his throat, he mused that while there were things he wouldn’t do to stop what was coming, he could count them on one hand.
In 964, closer to Ostara than Imbolc (actually on Ostara, in fact, because you don’t miss the power of an equinox during a major project if you can help it, and if you and your mates have magic you can cope with the soil in March still being a bit frosty), eight hands put aside four staves and, together in sweat and fellowship (and, more or less intention), carried each cornerstone of the school they would build to where it needed to be, creating an outline for their magic and their elf-friends to lace the great stones around. The school, as the four and their friends had all agreed it must be, was to be built on a crossroad of ley lines.
In 1998, scarcely a second closer to Litha, the duly appointed master of Hogwarts, head to all its houses, gave all his blood, more or less willingly, into Hogwarts’ soil. Though he was afraid—no happy warrior he—and nearly drowned in agony and hopelessness, the vast majority of his thoughts were for Hogwarts and Britain.
Something happened, then, though no one had the eyes for it but a redheaded boy who usually chose not to see and rarely understood when Sight came anyway. No silver-gossamer magic was wept, and a green-eyed teen looked into eyes that held confusion instead of purpose and relief instead of the expected hate. The last words Severus Snape’s torn throat rasped were, “It’s all right, Lily, I’d rather.”
This made Harry Potter even more uncomfortable than confused, as if he wasn’t having a bad enough day already. But he’s either nonexistent now or quite busy and working with not enough information (it’s so hard to say what happens to the trailing end when time goes loopy), so best to leave him to it.
In 1976, merely a moment farther from May Day, Severus Snape choked even harder on spell-soap, suddenly more disoriented than wretchedly furious. He had more control than to repeat past mistakes even in an old, familiar nightmare, but was even less willing to be saved than when this brutal stupidity had been real. The last words his throat gagged out through the tickly-drowning feeling of a bubble-blocked trachea were, therefore, “Finite fucking incantata.”
Then he dropped upside-down and bare-legged to the ground, mouth clear, mercifully knocking himself out as his head hit the root of a beech tree.
This perversion of a spell would have baffled everyone, had anyone been close enough to hear but James Potter, who had other things on his mind than the grammar of Gramarye. One shouldn’t insert unrelated words (crude or otherwise) into spellcasting, the noun form was unexpected in several ways, and Snape’s wand was lying yards away on the grass. It shouldn’t have worked at all, let alone ended several spells at once.
But Severus Snape had stopped caring about observing the proper forms of Light magic the moment he learned that using his wand at home would get him expelled, and he was unaccountably never able to leave anyone laughing. So if he’d been conscious enough to care he would have been, all things considered, quite pleased (not to say smug—no, go on, admit it: smug) to leave them bewildered and annoyed.