Fifth step – Bewilder
After the seemingly endless agony came silence and darkness, but no peace. It was mildly unexpected, Severus decided, if only because he had no more energy to spend on questioning why there was no rest to be had even after death.
Eventually, he found himself standing in the white marble departure hall of a specific London train station.
King’s Cross.
Severus hadn’t been there for decades, but he knew the place well enough to recognise it immediately. Once upon a time the young Slytherin student Severus Snape had taken the Hogwarts Express from King’s Cross to Hogsmeade each year, but since graduation there had no longer be a need to return to that place. Even as a teacher there was no necessity to oversee platform 9 ¾ or the train that traditionally brought the students to and from the castle.
So the big question was why the afterlife looked like London’s premier magical station bathed in bright white light.
Also, where were the dead? Severus couldn’t believe that he would be the only one to have died at that precise time in the entire world. At the very least, there should have been others wandering around, even if this place was just one of many gateways.
A lengthy walk around the station revealed no other occupants, or even travellers for that matter. The boundaries seemed to be truly strange, however, because they appeared to at once exist yet not to be there at all. It was more than clear that they were not to be passed, but despite that they managed not to be completely impregnable at the same time.
If one was sufficiently stupid, stubborn or desperate they could make it, Severus decided. He wondered if that was the source of the ghosts found throughout the world, Hogwarts included. Had all of them fought against the inevitable and crossed those unseen-yet-unmistakably-felt lines bending existence itself, then lost parts of themselves in the process to have the shade that was left appear in the living world?
It would seem that way from where he was currently standing on the other side of it.
In the glass windows he passed Severus caught sight of his own appearance; blood-matted hair, dull eyes, still-bleeding throat gruesomely mauled and his bloody teaching robes torn in various places from the struggle with the venomous snake of the Dark Lord. If he’d had any doubt left on whether he’d truly died, then the sight of his lethal wounds alone would have vanquished them.
At the far end of the furthest platform, Severus finally found another person. The dark-haired figure was sitting on one side of a lone bench, watching how the trains arrived and departed in perfect silence. Only when Severus cautiously approached did the other person turn their head to look at the potions master, allowing the professor a good look at the stranger’s face in the process.
Potter junior was waiting for him. Wonderful. Severus should have known that this final indignity would take place no matter his state of life.
“Potter!” he growled automatically, as if they were back at the castle and the master spy had just caught the brat red-handed in the middle of some mischief. The boy said nothing and only watched the adult wizard approach with an eerily calm gaze.
It took Severus precious minutes to realise that the young man in front of him wasn’t Potter, for all that this person resembled the brat like a mirror image reflects its original. The stranger with the familiar face wore a set of wide, sweeping jet-black robes with extremely wide sleeves that reminded the professor of his own teaching robes—in better times, when they weren’t as battered or stained as they were currently—if one were to add two or three more layers of fabric on top of them. They were of such a deep black that the fabric seemed to absorb all the light, even as it also appeared to hold a fragmented sort of luminance. Potter, the younger Potter, had never been as comfortable when it came to wearing wizarding clothes as this person amply displayed with their very posture.
Having decelerated his pace to an alert walk, Severus accelerated again to reach the apparent teenager with a more fitting speed that was neither too fast nor too slow—it wouldn’t do to show any sign of weakness, after all—and took place sideways on the unoccupied part of the bench to face the young stranger.
Years in the service of the Dark Lord had taught Severus patience by necessity, and it was the one skill that had always served him best. He waited in what appeared to be content silence for the other person to speak first. And they did, eventually, though Severus couldn’t tell if it had taken hours, days or mere minutes.
“Hast thou decided?”
The professor clenched his teeth together to stop himself from blurting out an unintelligent response that would give away his confusion. Just as strongly he had to suppress the urge to vent his frustration about the entire sequence of recent events by hurling some insult at the stranger he couldn’t read.
“And, pray tell, how am I supposed to decide when I have yet to be given the question?” Severus returned silkily.
“All who arrive here will at length decide what path to take, if any,” was the even-toned answer.
Severus had been observing the person even since he’d sat down, but the short exchange served to truly highlight all the oddities of this strange, strange individual. Potter’s doppelgänger’s face was blank like a clean slate, like a mirror polished to shine without blemish that reflected all light that fell onto it. The hint of emotion seemed painted like a mask over the features to give it the illusion of life, which made it look superficial to Severus’ expert eye, but the master spy wasn’t sure that he wished to know what lurked beneath.
Just this once, his instincts had deemed it too dangerous to know the secrets that were being kept away, judged that the cost would be far too great if he so much as tried to uncover what was hidden—and the professor was not fool enough to ignore either the warnings or the steadily-rising feelings of panic he was beginning to feel more and more intensely.
Despite vividly experiencing the sensation of a noose closing around his neck, Severus managed to get out his words in the form of a polite question that did not betray any of his inner turmoil.
“If I may, with whom do I have the honour of conversing?”
The doppelgänger’s fake expression changed ever-so-slightly to something that could vaguely be called an indulgent twitch of the lips.
“This one has many names to be known by. One is, among others, The End of All Things.”
A horrifying suspicion immediately bloomed inside the sort-of-former Death Eater’s mind, but he did not speak, not yet, while the Being continued His—Their?—spiel of introduction, apparently assuming that Severus hadn’t managed to gasp at least some part of the underlying meaning.
“In addition, one supposes that thou wouldst know one as being among the Four Heralds from the pages of the revered books thou art most familiar with.”
The bible, Severus’ mind supplied automatically. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
“I see. Which one are you?”
In response to the question that was in tone somewhere between serious and sarcastic with a touch of nervous jest, the false smile became just that little bit wider. The answer was dry and could have been humorous if the Entity wasn’t utterly incapable of speaking with true emotion ringing through Their voice.
“Why, one is the last, naturally.”
“Death,” Severus breathed with terrified awe, barely aware of the name he’d just allowed to escape from his mouth.
“The Destroyer of Worlds,” the God agreed with an odd cheer that fell on Severus’ ears like crunching glass.
All of Severus’ most horrific nightmares couldn’t compare to the dread that filled him at the confirmation, but at the same time the part of him that had always been morbidly fascinated by magic, spells and life—which was somehow still there after everything he’d seen and experienced—couldn’t do anything but feel wonder at meeting something so powerful beyond comprehension.
In a way, he thought ironically—grabbing at the first thread of thought he could in the fog of his blind panic—it was a very odd coincidence that a Death Eater could be found here, sitting next to Death. If anything, was his next rapid-fire thought while he nearly drowned in holding back the hysterical laughter that threatened to come out, I’d sooner expect Death to be the one to eat me than the other way around.
Death just watched Severus with somewhat of an indulgent expression and absolute patience that only a God could have. Their sort weren’t bound to the rules of the Higher Powers like mortals were. Time did not rule Death, Destiny did not control Life and neither did Luck influence War. To them, such concepts had power only if the Entity it belonged to was invoked and had arrived to enforce their rules with Their very presence.
It wasn’t said for no reason that names have power, and this went doubly so for Entities of Power. If a God were to speak someone’s name, they claimed power over that person. And if that someone were another Deity it would invoke Their presence and Their power, at the risk of catastrophic consequences. Severus assumed that was why Death had never spoken Their Own name aloud during the entire conversation and why They only hinted at Their identity but spoke Their Own titles like they were part of Themself.
The master spy had never been as glad to have had a pure-blood witch as his mother as he was right now. Eileen Prince had taught her son about the Powers beyond the mortal plane, in accordance with the traditions of the Prince family—for as much as she could, anyway, considering her violent drunkard of a muggle husband. The poor witch had had to sneak in as much as she could whenever the opportunity arose and this had inevitably led to all the knowledge the pure-blood parent had tried to impart ending up in a very fragmented state.
Severus could vaguely remember being taught that Deities often took on a guise familiar to the mortal that happened to cross paths with Them. It was said that many a mortal creature had been driven insane by exposure to the sight of a careless or cruel Entity in Their true form.
Was this why Death looked like Potter’s unearthly twin? And if it was so, why had the most loathed of humans in Severus’ life been chosen?
Before the potions master lost himself in the theories, he forcefully cut off his current thought in order to focus on the Entity still leisurely sitting in front of him. It would inadvisable to get stuck on the secondary issues while the primary problem was yet to be dealt with.
“What are my options?” Severus ventured to ask at last, while he also hoped not too much time had passed in the meantime.
“Thou canst venture onwards hence, abide within this realm or return whence thou hadst come,” the God explained calmly.
Move on, stay here or go back. Those were the possibilities he had, apparently. Severus didn’t bother to question why returning was one of them—the God of Death Themself said he could and why should he even doubt that?
“Then, how do I choose?”
A slow caricature of a smile appeared on the face of the Deity at the question, as if the Entity had been waiting for it all this while, but there came no verbal answer. Instead, a hand clad in pitch black fabric was momentarily swept sideways in a vaguely dramatic gesture that encompassed the entire train station around them.
This very place exists to visualise the choices that are on offer, Severus realised.
So, if he wanted to stay, he didn’t need to go anywhere.
And if he chose to go, all he had to do was board a train.
But that left returning… What exit would he need to return?
The potions master imagined that going back wasn’t usually on offer and was therefore not as obvious in the design of this place as the other two options. Was this why Death was here? To personally send him back if Severus made it known he wanted to live out his life for as few or many pain-filled days he still had left? Had the God chosen Potter’s appearance to remind Severus of what he would be returning to if he decided to protect that brat one more time? Or was it simply because the boy’s very existence was the last shackle that had bound Severus to life for the last sixteen years?
The more Severus pondered about the three routes and their circumstances, the more he found himself beginning to lean towards living on for however long he could. In this place his near-lifelong depression was unable to linger and that rekindled his hope that he could someday attain a peaceful life. To not die like a mangy dog in a ditch somewhere now seemed like an actual possibility rather than a miraculous deviation from the inevitable outcome at the end of his life.
Although his decision was made, the professor continued the conversation with the aim of gaining just that little bit more information before he made his choice known.
“These are no ordinary circumstances, I presume?” Severus verbalised carefully. “I cannot imagine that the dead are usually allowed to resume their lives without fuss.”
“It dost happen, on occasion,” the God answered with a tinge of indulgence in Their voice. “Thou art an occurrence of rarity, but no more improbable than a shower of rain. Nevertheless,” and here, the God’s gaze became momentary piercing like a sharp needle. “Thine word of preference willst not undo that thine end hadst come.”
Choosing to return to life will not erase the fact that you were dead.
It was due to the solemnity of the words that Severus now became aware of a muted burn on his back that he had been feeling throughout his stay at this illusionary King’s Cross but which he had not consciously paid attention to until now. With a murmured word of polite apology the professor stood up and approached the nearest window he could find to once more study his own reflection.
While at first there appeared to be nothing amiss, aside from the obvious lethal wounds and the other remnants of dying, the potions master eventually spotted the end of what seemed to be a black line on his half-bare shoulder that just barely peaked out from underneath the edge of his clothes. That prompted him to check the state of his own body more closely by uncovering his chest and shoulders from the partially-shredded robes he still wore. As most of the upper buttons on the front were already lost, loose or undone, the professor could quite easily slip both his shoulders up through the now-extra wide collar hole.
A sideways pose in relation to the reflective surface allowed the master spy a better look of part of his back, including the shoulder closest to the window, but it still took a little manoeuvring to allow himself to view the surface somewhat clearly in the misty reflection with its perpetual whitish tinge.
A great area of his skin was marked, he found—not entirely unlike the Dark Mark on his arm that was present even in this in-between realm of the dead. The new all-black symbol was larger than any other the master spy had ever come across, whether it be among the dark wizards he’d mingled with over the years or on the pages of the many tomes he’d read. Its design made him think of thorns of far greater size than the stem they grew from, twisted in sets of orderly formations that fanned outwards, the entirety of the brand’s style combining the swirls reminiscent of moving water with the angular pattern that sharp rocks would have.
Its central part was distinct, yet somehow seamlessly integrated into the whole, almost like someone had drawn that first and then decided to expand it. Even in this odd environment, the lines engraved in his skin radiated magic and power in its purest form and caused that burn soft enough that he hadn’t truly noticed it until mere moments ago.
Overwhelmed by the mark’s presence, Severus needed several minutes to comprehend what it meant and why it would be on him.
Then, the clues fell together to give him a more coherent, if incomplete, whole. The professor whipped back around to look at the personification of Death still sitting on the bench with greater understanding than ever of why They were present.
And he dreaded .
Without much further thought, he forced himself to voice which path he had chosen.
“Eternal One, I wish to return.”
There was no ‘art thee certain?’ or any other comment. Severus, despite his currently muddled thoughts, was aware enough to wonder why he had expected that there would be. The God on the bench gave no indication that the wizard’s request had been heard—there was only a sudden rush of blackness coming up to meet the wizard as the professor’s vision of the fake King’s Cross soundlessly fell away and shattered into nothing.
“Do not forget, lest thou art prepared to add to thine slate.”
The next thing Severus became aware of was himself lying sideways on a creaky wooden floor, trashing, seizing and vomiting up nothing but liquid. He could not find the strength to open his eyes and could do nothing but endure as his body convulsed while he still heaved what felt like not just the contents of his stomach but the organ itself up and out through his mouth.
It was somewhere between two waves of these excruciating fits that he realised that his eyes were actually open and must have been for a while. The problem was simply that the signals apparently weren’t making it to his brain.
“Where—” he managed to get out with much effort when the fits started to subside at last, some dozen or so rounds later. More words were beyond him in his current state, and Severus was already exceptionally proud of that single word he’d vocalised more or less coherently.
It was at that point that his vision started to clear from black nothingness to blotchy spots of colour and then all the way to smudged coloured shapes. In the haze of blurry moving shapes the professor thought that he could discern that there was somebody else present, though he couldn’t yet tell who it was nor why they were there.
Whoever they were, this person didn’t seem hostile, judging by the calmness their magic radiated—although Severus had his suspicions that this day would not be getting any better.
Sure enough, once his sight had recovered to the point that the master spy could reliably tell who was patiently sitting next to the professor’s aching body with a wet cloth ready in one hand his mood was not at all improved.
As if this day hadn’t already made it straight into the top five worst days of Severus Snape’s life.
“Hello professor,” the real Potter near-whispered with a calmness and cheerfulness that did not fit the situation and the presumable confusion Severus’ violently spontaneous resurrection should have created. “Welcome back.”
Coming face-to-face with the real Potter after having dealt with a God that wore the boy’s shape until what felt like only seconds ago was an extremely jarring experience. Severus blamed that for the embarrassingly long time it took him to respond to Potter’s greeting.
“Potter, what are you doing here?”
There was something very odd about the look that the boy gave him, but Severus couldn’t quite tell what part of it was the cause of the disjoined feeling that the potions professor found himself unable to fully shake off.
“I’ve been keeping you alive.”
“Truly? So it is you I have to thank for this… deplorable state I have found myself in?”
“Professor,” the boy cut in before Severus could elaborate at length on exactly how he felt about having had Merlin-knew what sorts of medical treatments attempted on him without permission and how having Potter’s unskilled hands being the ones to have performed it made the whole situation worse still. “If I hadn’t put in the effort, you would’ve come back in a much less pleasant manner.”
And that warning, more than anything, made Severus sit up (metaphorically) and pay attention to what hadn’t been said so far.
“What do you know,” he hissed at the student with narrowed eyes, “about this that I don’t?”
The infuriating boy just raised an eyebrow at him.
“Are you going to listen to what I say, or are you just looking for an excuse to start shouting?”
Severus bit down hard on his own tongue in order not to snap at Potter. There was a sense of disconnect growing in the back of his mind that warned him to tread lightly, before the spy miss-stepped and lost any advantage that could be won with caution.
The younger wizard appeared to take the silence as acquiescence and briefly patted down Severus’ sweaty forehead with the cold cloth before holding it there until Severus himself was able to take over the job to keep the wet fabric in place.
“Sir,” the boy began, Lily’s eyes efficiently sweeping over the professor’s prone state on the floor without ever meeting the man’s eyes. “You died of Nagini’s venom.”
Hearing it said so plainly was somewhat of a shock.
Severus had truly died, which he knew because Death had said so, but the fact hadn’t had time to sink into his mind yet. Now the knowledge bit itself into Severus’ psyche, carving out another scar to join the rest, and the potions master had to fight not to show his inner pain.
The professor almost missed Potter’s next words, but did raise his gaze in time to meet the endless emerald eyes as they came to look straight back at him.
“I brought you back.”
And as the paranoid wizard looked into the deep green eyes the boy had inherited from his mother, he suddenly realised that he could see Death in their depths, just as he had seen a spark of Potter in Death’s eyes, back in that godforsaken train station.
Suddenly, Death’s appearance seemed more deliberate than whim. Was it even a choice, conscious or otherwise, that Death had appeared in the guise of Harry Potter? Or was there a reason that had forced that form onto Death?
In any case, it was clear to Severus that there was a connection between Potter and Death—and the boy had all but admitted it with the way he was behaving and the words he didn’t use.
“Potter.” the dark wizard breathed with a terrible mix of dread and anxiety he had never expected to feel in regards to any Potter. The master spy had looked the Dark Lord in the eye without fear, had seen the most gruesome sights without flinching and survived the lethality of a full-blown war, but he would swear an oath on this being the most terrifying moment of his life.
In the total silence of the Shrieking Shack, where he’d once almost lost his life and had now gone through both death and resurrection in a single day, the words that Severus spoke were barely audible.
“Are you Death?”
The potions professor was overcome with tension, and he actually did not need Potter’s confirmation to know that the answer was some variation of yes—but Severus needed to hear it or he would never find rest.
“For all intents and purposes, I suppose that I am,” the boy answered easily, his head cocked to the side in a surprisingly inquisitive way. The dour wizard was having trouble to hold himself back from reaching out to touch the child’s black hair, to check if he was real and not part of a fevered dream from the brink of death.
“More correct would be to say that a part of me is.”
That addition had Severus’ brows rise involuntarily, then frown in deep thought.
“Am I to believe that you are not alone in your head?”
As much as it came out sounding like a joke, the elder wizard was actually very serious. Divine possession was a very real and very dangerous possibility that they could not afford to overlook.
The spike of fear for the student lasted only a short time, because the boy soon shook his head no.
“It’s nothing like that.”
“Then what is it, Potter? Stop dodging the question. What is your relation to one another?” Severus pressed on.
There was one more moment of silence before Potter finally explained.
“I presume that for the purpose of this discussion the best term is Aspects, as I don’t know what else to use. The Death you saw and the me here—we are Aspects of the same Force, wearing the same face. The Aspects of Death.”
“How—”
…Is that possible, Severus wanted to scream. It was one earth-shattering shock after another when it came to this boy.
The Aspects of a Deity relate to the interpretation of Their Divine Power and what sides there are to the same thing. A God of change could just as easily cause decay as They could growth or progress—and Deities only rarely had just one singular power.
Death was a terribly powerful Force that touched on a great number of other related concepts, and because of that it had many Aspects. It was Renewal, Destruction, End, Decay, Evolution, Reversal, Change, Revolution, War, Illness, Loss, Separation—and many more.
If what Potter said was true, he was the personification of at least one of the Aspects that belonged to Death, making the boy either a God in disguise, a Host or an Avatar, all of which just about came down to the same thing in most regards. Severus thought the latter two were more likely, as those had less of a risk to cause reality to break in the long run and were thus a much safer way for a God to exert influence on the mortal world.
And they also fit in better among the mortals, thought the spy when he noticed that the student had in the meantime begun manually cleaning up the blood, slime and other liquids that were splattered all over the professor. The boy was letting him think in peace and clearly took care not to draw attention to himself with exemplary patience and calm, all in order to give the man the time he needed.
Severus was feeling too worn out to bother with keeping the inner turmoil out of his tone.
“What is your Aspect, Potter?”
Without looking up from his self-imposed work, Potter gave his answer immediately and without putting any sort of weight into his words.
“I am Mortality. I am everything Death both is and isn’t.”
It was a helpful answer but at the same time it wasn’t, if only because it left too many questions open. Severus felt the exhaustion of the day pressing down onto him, which made him decide to leave that avenue of questioning for the moment in favour of something that he needed an answer to more.
“How did you come to be entangled with a God?”
“I was born this way,” Potter told the spy grimly, confirming for Severus that the boy was most probably an Avatar. “That is the simplest, most straightforward explanation I can give you, professor. But hush now, sir. You are exhausted and we are about to have company.”
The noises that became louder with each passing second did indeed prove to be Poppy Pomfrey when she burst into the room with the two other members of the Golden Trio coming in close behind her. Severus knew that they hadn’t directly apparated into the Shack for fear of landing on top of him and making his injuries worse.
He felt strangely glad at the prospect of being taken back to the castle’s infirmary for treatment--he couldn’t even bring himself to care about Poppy’s impending fussing. The events of the day had quite exceeded his tolerance for handling shocks, and the master spy wanted nothing more than to sleep and forget about it all for a few hours.
When he was laid out on a stretcher the potions master reflected on that he would have to talk to Potter again at a later moment. Delving into the reason for Potter’s deeper connection with Death was very interesting and useful to know, but Severus hadn’t even gotten to ask for the information that was the most important of all.
Why had Death—Potter—even given him the option to come back?
What was the point of it?
Severus needed to know the answer to that, if only to protect himself from losing control entirely over his own fate when, inevitably, Death was going to get involved—if They weren’t involved already.
The gentle swaying of the stretcher as it was levitated to float alongside Poppy while she prepared to run back to the infirmary was sure to lull Severus into an exhausted sleep that he was unable to avoid. He was certain that by the time he woke, a considerable amount of time would have passed.
Right now, the prospect of sleeping for a long time sounded very appealing. Severus would just have to blame it on the heavy-duty potions Poppy’d had him drink. The mystery of Potter’s background workings would have to wait until the professor didn’t feel like the world itself had crushed his body.
The last thing the potions master saw before his eyes closed was a glimpse of Potter, stood amidst his Gryffindor friends while they were undoubtedly discussing what had happened to the spy in Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger’s absence. The final fleeting thought that Severus managed to form before his consciousness sank away was on the mysterious meeting that he’d witnessed a year earlier.
Would he eventually find out what had been said or was this knowledge doomed to stay out of his reach forever?
And then he knew nothing more.