It feels cold, when he goes.
It is the feeling of a glass bottle pressed to his eyes, and then, it is an earth-shattering feeling of coldness and and nothing but empty space.
He thinks he knows what this means. It’s what he’d always expected would happen in the end.
He did not do enough. No amount of repentance would ever make up for his sins.
It was not enough. And this was the price he would now pay.
He feels content enough, to sit in this nothingness, a void of non-existence, all alone.
It feels familiar to him.
He is not afraid to be alone. He has been alone for a very long time now.
What is the rest of forever?
But after a moment, or maybe longer, he can’t tell, the nothingness, it starts to form into something else. Like sketches on a page being drawn around him, a picture begins to form.
Moss and grass beneath his feet, birds in a grey sky, pebbles, rocks, and twigs, and then finally:
a willow tree.
He knows this place too, even in death.
He knows this place. He always has. He always will.
He knows now, that his eternity is not to be spent in the quiet loneliness he’s always known. That would be too easy, too simple. The punishment would not fit the crimes.
He will instead spend eternity in his favourite place on earth. The place he’s always come back to in his mind, whenever he started to slip away.
But without the person who made it what it was. Without the person who made it their place.
Without Lily Evans. A never-ending reminder of what it feels like to lose her.
He takes in the sights around him. It’s not beautiful like he remembers it, not without her.
This isn’t his saving grace anymore.
It’s his own personal hell, crafted just for him.
He could not save her in life, so why would he deserve her in death?
This is where he belongs. This is what he deserves.
He takes a seat under a branch and lets his head lay on the grass. But there is not a mop of red hair sprawled around on the grass next to him. There is no soft giggle of a young girl amazed by the magic that he can do.
There is nobody but him.
He sits, and he lets it play.
Every mistake he made. Every thing he could have done differently. It plays on a loop in his mind, the lowest points of his life.
He likes to start with Charity. The look on her face when she saw him there. She thought he was there to save her. The way her face changed as she realized he wasn’t. The way that looked stayed there, even as the light left her eyes.
He goes through taking the mark, the ways in which he grasped for power in his weakest moments by doing the very same thing that was done to him to his students.
He thinks of Draco. The scared look a sixteen-year-old boy's face as his skin was permanently etched with a symbol that would haunt him for all his life the way it had him.
He did everything he could to spare him from it.
But it wasn’t enough.
He sees Minerva, his teacher, his friend, the quiver in her voice when she stepped in front of Harry to protect him from Severus, who was never going to hurt him.
He sees Harry. A boy who grew up just like him, just the way Lily never wanted him to. He had to hold his bravery in the palm of his hand when he should have just been held.
He will have to sacrifice himself. Just like Lily had to.
All because Severus couldn’t keep them both safe.
He always saves Lily for last.
The things he said to her, to make her feel the pain that he was feeling. The way they hold on to one another so close until she slowly slipped from his grasps, all because he started to let go.
The way she lay, dead on the floor in front of her one-year-old son. A woman so full of light so full of love, cold and grey on the floor, all because he hadn’t gotten there quick enough, because he hadn’t saved her. Because he had let her down, like everyone else.
Because he had not done enough.
They play on a loop in his mind as he sits under the tree. The seasons don’t change. The sky never gets brighter. Lily never comes.
For hours, for days, for weeks, for months.
For years.
He sits, and he watches. He does not try to imagine a world in which he had done it right. He doesn’t deserve to know that world.
Time goes slowly and quickly and exists all around him. He has only taken his last breath moments ago and yet decades ago all at once.
This is his forever.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been, when he finally hears her.
He hadn’t been waiting on her. He never she wouldn’t come.
And yet, he hears her.
“Sev?” the voice of a young Lily Evans asks as she peers from around the tree. “Aren’t you coming?
He sits up, for the first time since he arrived, and notices he too, is just a boy. The wrinkles in his hands have faded, his limbs are shorter.
“Lily?” he chokes out, quite certain that he must have entered a new form of hell, one that is crueler than this one. “What are you– why are you here, Lily? In this place?”
She fully appears from beneath the tree now, as young as the day she was when Severus first met her.
“I’ve been waiting on you, but you’re taking an awfully long time. Are you ready now, do you think?”
She takes a seat next to him, her hands folded politely in her lap. He can’t bring himself to look at her, to face her.
And she knows that. She always knows.
She moves to sit in front of him instead. He has no choice now, but to look into her eyes.
The ones he saw before he died. The ones he sees now. It’s been so very long, since he’s seen them without the reminder that they only now lived through Harry. It’s been so long since he’s saw them and only thought, “those are Lily Evans’ eyes.”
“I do not– I do not know what you mean. I don’t know what this means.”
She heaves out a little sigh, her voice small, but she still smiles at him.
“I can wait a bit longer, I suppose. But I do think we’d better be getting home soon.”
He looks at her, confused.
“Lily I can’t– I can’t go with you. This is my forever, here. I don’t even think you’re real.”
Her lips turn downwards in a frown, her eyebrows lower, and she looks at something behind her.
“What do you mean?” she asks, turning back to face him.
This must be his hell, he knows now. To have to tell her, the sweetest and most innocent version of her, how he failed her.
He can hardly get the words out as he chokes on them.
“I could not save you. I-I could not save Harry. Not any of them. I failed, Lily. I’m so sorry I-. I have to stay here.”
It’s like realization hits her, her lips pursuing in as she slowly nods her head.
“My son, Harry,” she begins to say, and Severus feels tight in his chest. He doesn’t think he should be able to feel that in death. “Is at work right now, and his children are at school, I was just visiting. He hasn’t eaten a lick in two days, mind you, too busy apparently to feed his own body, as if he isn’t skinny enough as is. And the only thing he needs saving from is me when I get a hold of him.”
It should feel strange, to hear such a young version of Lily speak of her children and her grandchildren, but here, it makes sense somehow. Like she is both versions of herself at the same time.
But the words don’t register.
He’s quite sure it’s a trick. A sick hell designed game. For him to have to be the one to tell her.
“Lily, I’m sorry– I’m so sorry, but Harry is dead. He was– he was the last Horcrux that Voldemort created. He had to sacrifice– he had to. Lily, I’m so sorry I–.”
“You don’t know?” she interrupts him.
He shakes his head, not sure what she means.
She stands, and holds out her hand in front of him, gesturing for him to take it.
He shouldn’t. He doesn’t deserve to.
But he knows better than to deny Lily Evans, real or not.
She leads him to the other side of the willow tree, grass and broken twigs crunching beneath their feet, and gestures with her hand to a large yellow door.
“You only had to keep walking a little further, Sev. It’s been right here all this time,” she says in almost a whisper.
He turns his head at it, confused.
He’s never seen this door before. It couldn’t have always been there.
But then, he has never been to this side of the tree. He’s just been laying in the grass, all this time.
“I don’t– I can’t, I didn’t–”
“Let me show you something.”
She takes her hand from his, and holds it out flat before him. She waits a moment, watching with him, as a stem grows in between the palms of her fingers, and a white daisy sprouts.
She looks at him, as if to see his reaction to her magic, a bright smile on her face. The most beautiful smile he’s ever known.
She gestures back down at the daisy, and it turns into something new.
A story, one that Severus has never seen before, begins to unfold before him in the palm of Lily’s hand.
He sees Draco Malfoy.
He’s much older now, sitting in a hospital room with a small boy who looks much like him and Lucius. The woman next to him is asleep, a magical aurora around her, but the boys sits on his lap, poking at the potions on the woman’s bedside table.
“What’s that, papa?” the small boy asks, pointing at a potion, almost knocking it over.
“That’s mama’s medicine. It helps her get stronger, so she can be with us a little longer.”
“How make her stronger?” his son asks again.
Draco readjusts his position on his lap, and puts his chin on his child’s head.
“When I was a little bit older than you, I went to a school called Hogwarts. You’ll go there too someday.”
“When I’m big?”
“When you’re big,” Draco confirms with a chuckle. “When I was there, I had a teacher, who was really good at making medicines and potions. He created all kinds of them, and they help people like mama, who are sick.”
“Who his name?” the boy asks, increasingly curious.
“His name was Severus Snape. He was one of the bravest men I’ve ever known.”
“You don’t know him anymore?” his son asks with a frown. Draco shakes his head, and points to his head.
“I’ll always know him. I keep him right up here. He saved mama, but he saved me too.”
“Saved you from what, papa?”
Draco takes in a breath.
“I’ll tell you all about it when you’re big.”
His son smiles, satisfied, and Draco holds him a little tighter, than reaches for his wife’s hand in the bed.
His arm turns to hold her palm, and his forearm is pale,
and blank.
There is no dark mark.
Before Severus can say anything, before he can think, the picture changes again.
It is Harry this time, alive and much older. Much older than Severus thought he’d ever be able to be. Severus’ hand reaches up to his mouth, choking back a sob.
He sits in a nursery with Ginny Weasley, who appears to be very pregnant.
“Albus Ronald?” she asks, her shoulders up in questions.
Harry seems to think on it for a moment, before shaking his head.
“I don’t like the ring to it.”
The nursery is decorated in shades of blue and grey, clouds and brooms covering the walls.
“I don’t think much is going to sound that lovely coming after Albus, dear, he had to have about twenty different names after his for it to sound normal,” Ginny laughs.
Harry laughs too, but stays concentrated in thought. He’s silent for a moment longer.
“Albus Severus,” he says, but he doesn’t state it as a question. He says it as a statement, as a fact, like a puzzle piece that finally fits.
“You think so?” Ginny asks, a bit of a sad twinkle in her eye.
“I want him to be named after someone strong and wise, like Dumbledore was. But I also want him to be named after someone who was brave. Someone who spent decades trying to protect the people that he loved, even until it killed him. Someone who understood love like nobody else I’ve ever known has. Someone like Snape.”
His wife walks over to where he sits on a child-sized chair, and wraps her arms around him, snuggling into him.
“Someone like Snape,” she confirms with a smile and a nodding of her head.
He feels something wet and cold strain down his cheek as the picture changes again.
It shows Minerva, as the Headmistress of Hogwarts. She’s handing out copies of a new potions textbook, not the one “Advanced Potion Making” that Snape had taught out of. It’s a different one entirely, with a new cover, and new author.
“The Arts and Subtle Craft of Potions, written by Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape”
A student flips through it after it’s handed to them, and Severus sees illustrations of directions he has made before, but only ever for himself. Minerva smiles as the student flips through it, and takes a book from the pile, looking over it proudly. Her fingers trace over his name, and her expression turns solemn for a moment, as she looks to the sky and whispers something to herself before her expression turns joyful once more.
More pictures flood by, clips of conversations from his former students, his former classmates, all saying his name.
It is all light. Nothing feels cold. They speak of him with smiles. They speak of him as a hero, as someone who was brave.
When the picture finally stops moving, Lily clasps her hands together once more, the flower disappearing, and looks up to him. Her small hands reach up to touch his face.
“Do you see, Sev?” she asks him softly. “You did it. You did enough.”
He feels a warmness inside of him, and the grey sky around them starts to flood with light.
He did it? He did enough?
The yellow door creaks, and both him and Lily turn their heads to look at it.
Blonde wavy hair peaks out of it, and the dimply smile of Charity Burbage appears from behind the door.
“Is he coming?” she seems to ask Lily, but smiles at him.
She looks so young, so happy. Just like he always wanted to remember her, but could never see past the visions of the light leaving her eyes above that table.
But she’s not there anymore. She’s right here, in front of him, motioning him with her hand.
Lily looks at him, a questioning glance.
He doesn’t know what to feel, what to think, but the two girls before him are growing rather impatient.
He smiles very softly, the smile of a young boy who would follow Lily Evans anywhere.
He nods, and they both sigh in relief like they have been waiting for him for decades.
Severus didn’t realize anyone was waiting for him at all.
Lily takes his hand, and they start to walk in the direction of the yellow door as Charity holds it open for the both of them like joyful innkeeper.
“Come on, Char,” Lily says with a smile as they approach. “Sev is going to show us magic.”
And for the first time in his life, all he feels is light.