Pairings Snape/Lily, Snape/Bellatrix Rating PG for lots of angst Warnings none Summary Snape is dead and tries to find some meaning for what used to be his life. Disclaimer The world of HP and its characters belongs to Rowling. The author of this fic has borrowed them for the purposes of storytelling. No profit was or will be made. Word count ~5,480 Author Notes It's not so much life after death as regret after life.
Dark Blossoms
Snape's nightmares were always the same. He dreamt of killing Lily Evans--he refused to think of her as Lily Potter--and seeing her come back from the dead to call him a murderer. Her ghost was an avenging fury whose voice chilled him to the marrow. Her voice grew louder and louder until she was screaming as she repeated over and over again that he had murdered her and her husband. The Lily of his dreams was never the lovely and affectionate girl that he had known in life. She was a shrill-voiced virago with distorted features, claw-like hands, and a voice filled with hate. And he knew that he was the one who had made her what she was.
In those nightmares, it was not Voldemort who had killed Lily and James Potter. It was Snape himself who used the unforgivable curse. He knew that he had killed James--in the way that one does know things in dreams--but he actually saw Lily die. He saw her contorted body fall in the blaze of green light that he directed at her and he looked down into her glazed and lifeless eyes.
Torn by guilt, he begged her avenging spirit to forgive him, but forgiveness never came and he awoke drenched with cold sweat and with a sense of desolation that lingered throughout his waking hours.
The nightmares came all too frequently towards the end. Dumbledore had been dead for a year and Snape was forced by Prof. McGonagall to desert Hogwarts and leave the school in the hands of the Carrows. He had promised Dumbledore he would stay on as Headmaster and protect the students from Voldemort and the Death Eaters. When he could no longer do that, his failure added another layer to his burden of guilt, and the nightmares became even worse.
By the time Voldemort sent for him to come to the Shrieking Shack, he had not really slept for days. Yes, my Lord, of course my Lord, let me do it my Lord. He hardly knew what he was doing or saying. Then came the attack by Voldemort's great snake, sicked on him like a savage dog by its master. In his exhaustion and guilt, it all seemed part of the same horrible dream, even as he spewed up his dying memories for Potter to catch in a bottle, butterflies of thought trapped in a collector's glass.
* * *
When awareness came back to Severus Snape, he was huddled alone on the dusty floor of the Shrieking Shack. Everything around him seemed oddly unclear, as if there was a mist in front of his eyes. The sound of torrential rain drummed down onto the roof, and a pool of water, as cold and dark as his thoughts, had formed under one of the boarded-up windows. What little light there was came through the cracks between the boards and it was grey and chilling.
The mist cleared gradually, until his vision was clear and he could see the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and the marks on the floor that his fingers had scraped in the dust and dirt.
Snape rose to his feet and looked around the room, trying to make sense of what had happened. The last thing he remembered was seeing Potter and the Granger girl, who were looking at him with something like horror on their faces. They were gone now. There was no one here at all. And then he realized that the crumpled, black-robed shape huddled at his feet was his own body, sprawled gracelessly in a darkened pool of congealed blood. He reached down to touch his shoulder, and his fingers passed through the flesh of the corpse as if it were mere shadow.
Dead. Dead and alone, and he had failed Dumbledore as he had failed everyone else in his life. The nightmare of his existence continued and it seemed as though his torture was never going to end.
A sibilant whisper floated through the room, "Severus.... " and slowly a figure began to take form. Snape tore his eyes away from the black-robed heap on the floor and watched it coalesce from the mist and become the wizard who had guided him through those long years since Lily's death.
Dumbledore stood in front of him, dressed in one of the elaborate, heavily-embroidered, robes that he liked to wear at school feasts. With his curse-blackened hand returned to normal and his blue eyes watching Snape with kindly interest, the Headmaster might almost be a living man--except for the soft silver nimbus of light that surrounded him
"I am sorry that it came to this, Severus," he said, and there was deep regret in his voice.
"I'm sorry too," Snape murmured, glancing back toward his corpse. "Not because I died, but because I failed. I tried to look after the school, as you asked me to do, but Minerva and the others forced me out. I tried to convince Voldemort that I should be the one to deal with Potter, but I failed at that as well."
"Never mind. It's all over now. You did your best and that is all that anyone can do. Sometimes things are simply beyond our power and events have to take their own course." Dumbledore smoothed down his long white beard with one hand. "I had hoped that you would live, and would go on to have a happier life."
"You did not expect my death?"
"No. I thought it was likely that Riddle would discover that you were spying on him but I thought that you would have enough warning to escape his violence. I expected you to survive the war and to take my place at Hogwarts, but somehow my plans went awry. I did not expect Riddle to murder you for the sake of the Elder Wand."
"So that is what it was," Snape said, without much interest. "I am still dead. The reason why does not really matter any more, does it?"
"In the long run, no," Dumbledore conceded.
"How long has it been since I died?" Snape considered his cold body, crumpled on the filthy floor, and was surprised to find that he had so little feeling about it or about his death.
"This is the third day. After you were killed, Harry reviewed your memories in the Pensieve. That same night he went out into the forest, intending to die at the hands of Riddle, just as I told you he must. He lived, but his self-sacrifice helped to kill the fragment of the Dark Lord that was in his soul. Shortly after dawn, Harry and Riddle duelled and Riddle died. It is over, Severus, ended. Lord Voldemort is dead."
"Dead... " Severus rolled the word over in his mind. "He may be dead, but is he gone?"
Dumbledore hesitated. "I don't know. Some residue of him may remain, but his damaged soul is past the point of no return. He cannot come back in the flesh to trouble the living."
"And the school?"
"Wounded, but it will survive."
"And what of me?"
"You must make your own decision about that," Dumbledore said.
"What do you mean?"
"You can prepare to go on, or you can decide to stay here."
"Not precisely here, I hope," Snape said, looking around at the peeling paint on the walls of the desolate room, where the sound of the rain beating down still drummed loudly through the room.
"Oh no, I trust not," Dumbledore said. "At Hogwarts, I mean."
"And if I prepare to go on, as you put it?"
"You must come to terms with your own life. Don't be like the Bloody Baron and the Grey Lady, forever dwelling on old grudges and unwilling to move beyond them. Or like Nearly Headless Nick, who is still afraid of what abandoning this world might mean to him. Try to understand the meaning of your existence. If you do not, you can never move forward."
Snape laughed, a bitter, humourless sound. "I had hoped for oblivion when I died. Do you mean I have to spend eternity remembering my sins and all of the evil that I did in my life?"
"Remember it, and then reach beyond it. Each of us is his own heaven and hell, Severus. I lived with my demons just as you have lived with yours." Dumbledore smiled softly. "I don't believe I thanked you for killing me. I do so now. Goodbye my friend. We will meet again."
And with that, the wizard's spirit slowly faded away, leaving only the sound of the relentless rain.
There was nothing to keep Snape in the ramshackle old building, certainly not any ties to his earthly remains. He didn't even give the corpse a final look as he went down through the hidden exit and into the tunnel that led toward the Hogwarts grounds. The tunnel seemed much longer than he remembered, leading on and on, but he moved steadily forward, engrossed in his thoughts, and finally he could see a circle of light at the far end.
He emerged from under the roots of the Whomping Willow into an overcast summer day, where heavy black storm clouds moved restlessly overhead. The rain had only recently stopped, because he could see that water drops still hung on the trees and grass, and that the paths were muddy. He passed through the branches of the tree as if they were mere illusion, or as though he had become the illusion. In a world where death and life so nearly touched, it was hard to tell which was the true reality.
He was stunned to see how much damage the great castle had suffered. Even from where he stood, he could see a gaping hole in the side of one tower and the debris that strewn across the grounds. Many windows were broken out and the turf around the building was gouged and torn with the raw earth showing through it like wounded flesh. Turning toward the gates, he saw that the perimeter wall had been breached and that piles of rubble were strewn across the drive.
Snape heard voices, and saw that people were moving about, looking at the damage and discussing repairs. They sounded optimistic and Snape knew that Dumbledore was right; Hogwarts would survive. He walked among the small groups of people. Some of them were students. Others were ex-students, and there were some residents of Hogsmeade there as well. Some of the witches and wizards had come from many miles away, to do what they could for their old school. He recognized many of them and he could see the shock on their faces as he strode past and they realized that he was dead.
They nudged each other and they nodded to him; some murmured deferential greetings. The other spirits that he passed made way for him in silence, nodding respectfully. Even the Bloody Baron inclined his head and moved aside. He had a place in Hogwarts history now. His name had been added to the list of those who had died in defence of the castle, as well as the roster of its Headmasters. He wondered suddenly if his portrait was among those others in the Headmaster's study, and what his portrait might have to say to his ghost.
Snape continued on his way through the grounds, thinking about being dead and trying to come to terms with the fact that everything was now out of his hands. He was dead and there was nothing more he could do to affect the course of life. The only thing that lightened his sense of futility was the knowledge that death had brought him closer to the woman he loved. Somehow, somewhere, he would find her. His Lily...
A short distance away, under the great elm, he saw some silvery figures seated together on the grass and he hastened toward them, hoping... But then he slowed. The sound of their voices floated on the breeze and he knew who they were, who they must be. The Marauders. The group that had made many of his school days so miserable.
Almost against his will, Snape went to talk to them, forcing himself to walk like a man instead of gliding over the ground as a ghost.
"Well, look who's here!" the spectre of Sirius Black said casually as Snape approached them. "Snivilus in person!"
"You certainly have not changed," Snape said coldly, looking Black up and down. "You are still an arrogant, self-obsessed, bastard, except that now I can add dead to the description as well."
"He's got you there!" James Potter said, nodding.
Sirius muttered something and his form flickered into that of a spectral hound and back again.
Remus Lupin, who was leaning back against the tree, holding a book in his lap, glanced at James and then shook his head sadly. "What did it all come to?" he asked. "The way that you and Sirius bullied Severus and the way that I ignored it, all of his dislike for you; none of that matters any more. They've written finished to our stories." He looked up at Snape. "So you died at the end?"
Snape nodded. "From the bite of Voldemort's snake. And you are dead as well, I suppose, or you would not be here."
"I died in battle," Remus said wryly, "as if that matters."
"A perfect little hero," James said, releasing a translucent snitch and catching it again. "As he so cogently points out, it would be the same thing if he'd been run over by a cart horse."
"I was a spy," Snape said. "Dumbledore's spy, for seventeen years."
"And look what it got you," Sirius said with a shrug. "Membership in the dead heroes club. Welcome!"
"What are you and Potter doing here?" Snape asked. "Lupin and I died at Hogwarts, but you died in London, at the Ministry, and Potter died in Godric's Hollow."
"When you're dead, you can be wherever you want to be," Sirius said off-handedly. "So why don't you go and be somewhere else?"
"I think the dead return to the places where they were happy," James said, considering the matter.
"Unless they creep around after someone to haunt him, like Moaning Myrtle did," Sirius said. "Or unless they're tied to the place where they were killed. Just where did you die, Snape? Were you hiding down in the dungeon while the war was going on?"
"I died in the Shrieking Shack."
"You may have a problem there, Snivvy. You'll probably have to spent the rest of eternity staring at battered furniture, peeling wallpaper and claw marks on the woodwork, courtesy of our werewolf chum."
"Remus died, and suddenly we were here all together again," James went on, ignoring his friend's comments. "I think we came back to Hogwarts to join him because our school years were happy ones."
Remus nodded in agreement. "They were happy years for me, in spite of everything."
"Yeah, our school years were probably the best times of our lives, for all three of us," Sirius said lazily. "Well, for all four of us, if you want to be exact, but when Pettigrew turned up here we told him to go work off his guilt somewhere else. Rotten little tosser."
"I cannot recall any time of my life that was the best," Snape said slowly. "In retrospect it seems all uniformly grey and unpleasant, from my childhood to my death."
"A long rainy day of the soul?" Remus said.
"Something like that," Snape said, thinking of the rain beating down on the roof of the Shrieking Shack. "Where is Lily?"
"Not here," James said. "This is our own little bit of give, take, blame, and forgive. She is not part of that, and never was."
"It was my fault that she died," Snape said slowly, admitting something that he had never told anyone but Dumbledore. "I repeated a prophecy that I heard from Trelawny, and Voldemort killed you both because of it."
"If I had known that, I would have killed you myself," Sirius said with a nearly dog-like snarl. "You really are a bastard!"
"I didn't intend for it to happen that way."
"No, perhaps not," James said shrewdly. "I can believe that you were unhappy about Lily being killed, but you didn't shed any tears over my death, did you?"
"No," Snape said, remembering Dumbledore's scathing denunciation on that long-ago night, when he begged for help to save Lily, but admitted that he was willing to let her son and her husband die. "Why should I? You bullied me and humiliated me, and then took away the only person I ever loved."
"That's because you were a creepy kid," James said lightly. "You know, I've been dead now for almost as long as I was alive, and I've thought about the Marauders and about you quite a bit. All right, I admit it; we were at fault. We were wrong to pick on you when we were all here at Hogwarts. Weren't we, Sirius?"
"Yeah," Sirius said grudgingly. "I guess so. We were kids, and you know what kids are like."
"But you've got to face one thing yourself, Snape," James went on. "You were obsessed about Lily and it was all one-sided."
"That's not true!" Snape said. "We were inseparable, Lily and I, until we came here and the Sorting Hat put us in different houses. We grew up together. If it had not been for you, she would have loved me."
James shook his head. "You're deluding yourself, Snape. Did she ever give you any reason to think that she had anything but friendship for you? You may have loved her, but anything else was all in your own imagination. Have you ever thought of that?" He lifted an eyebrow and then went back to playing with his ghostly snitch.
The other two spirits regarded him, Sirius smugly, and Remus with a half troubled, half apologetic look on his face.
Snape didn't answer. He turned away, starting toward the castle and brooding over what James had said. It was easy for Potter to believe that, but he stole Lily's affections after she and Severus had a tiff. If it hadn't been for Potter's presence, she would have forgiven him eventually. They would have been together again, as they had been since childhood.
And then something came rushing down the path toward him like a gust of icy air and it screamed like the horrible figure in his dreams.
"Traitor, murderer! It was all your fault!"
He flinched and put out his hands automatically to fend off the ghostly shape. It was the spirit of a dishevelled woman, and for one moment of horror he thought he had fallen into the old familiar nightmare again. Much to his surprise he could feel her, touch her as if they were both still alive and not mere insubstantial spirits. He held her by her slender silvery wrists and looked down into a twisted, hate-filled face. It was not the face he feared to see.
It had been a beautiful face once, though. He could still call to mind the way she looked at her trial, before she went to Azkaban. She had been imperious and regal then, with her heavy hair and heavy-lidded eyes, proudly declaring her faith in Voldemort and defying the Wizengamot and all that it could do. That was before so many years in that hellish prison turned her into the hollow-eyed half-mad woman that grovelled at Voldemort's feet for crumbs of attention.
"Bellatrix. I did not know that you were dead."
"Yes, I am dead." she said, tossing back a mane of hair that had once been satin-black. "I died fighting the mudblood scum, for the glory of my Lord! And I was right about you all along, Snape," she said, trying to twist free of his hands. "You were a traitor and you lied, and your lies destroyed him."
"Not mine, Bellatrix. Voldemort brought about his own destruction. He was insane from his youth."
"How dare you say that!"
"I say it because it is true."
"No! It's not true! He was the most powerful wizard in the world," she declared fervently. "He was my Lord, the master of my soul. He was all I needed and all I lived for!"
"Bellatrix, he was a madman. He killed me, and he would have killed you, eventually."
"What of it! I would have died for him. I would have accepted any torture if it was for him, if it was at his hands. And now he is dead, and it was your fault." Tears streamed down from her hollow eyes, flowing over her cheeks in streams as silvery-bright as unicorn blood.
Snape was taken aback. He had only known Bellatrix in the flesh as an arrogant, defiant, and untouchable witch. The sight of this iron-willed woman breaking down for love of the madman who called himself Lord Voldemort, and admitting that she welcomed the pain he caused her, was more pitiable than he had ever imagined.
He relaxed his grip slightly, and she tore her wrists away from him. Her eyes blazed and she lunging forward, clawing with her fingers as though to tear his face apart. Automatically, he jerked his head away, caught her by the wrists again, and thrust her away from him. She stumbled and fell to her knees on the muddy path, with her ripped robes crumpled around her. Giving up her assault on Snape, she buried her face in her hands and wept.
Hesitantly, he put out a hand toward her, but then he changed his mind, withdrew it, and passed on by, leaving her alone with her lamentations.
* * *
Snape wandered through the grounds, feeling more alone than he had ever dreamed possible, even for a solitary person like himself. Eventually, his wanderings took him to a particular place in the gardens and he stood there for a long while, looking at the bright blossoms and remembering. He remembered this place very well. Long years ago he walked in this same garden with Lily, at just about this time of year. It was here that she told him she had no use for the Marauders or for James Potter and his tortured soul had soared with hope, for just one glorious moment.
Perhaps his memories invoked her. First there was a shimmering outline, then a figure of wonderful radiance. She appeared, bent over a bed of her namesake flowers, and then straightened up to look at him. She was exactly as he remembered her from so many long years ago, She was as young and beautiful as his memories painted her, but now her dark auburn hair was turned into a sheet of burnished silver.
"Lily... " He breathed her name, if spirits can be said to breathe.
She smiled gently at him and held out her hands. "Hello, Sev."
His own hands trembled as he touched hers, and then he clasped both of her hands tightly, as if to never let her go again.
"It's been so many years," he whispered. "I hardly dared to believe that I would see you again, but I hoped. I lived on hope. It has been all that kept me going through these long lonely years."
"You should have let it all fade away, Sev." She looked up into his eyes and her face was filled with infinite sadness. "Just think of all that you could have done with your life, all that you could have been--and you wasted those living years mourning for me."
"Wasted! No, never. My love for you was what warmed my heart. It was for you, all for you. Everything that I did, everything that I tried to do afterwards... Lily, forgive me. It was my fault that you died." He bowed his head and began to cry, his tears falling on her slender hands.
"Don't cry, Sev. That is all long ago now, and for all we know I might have died some other way, in some accident that didn't involve you at all. I remember that James and I were happy together before we died, and perhaps to die when one is happy is the best death of all." Her voice was pensive, cool and remote with thought.
"Lily, please...," he said, his voice halting. "Forgive me. I did everything that I could to atone for your murder."
"I know you did," she said softly. "But never mind about the past; bury your guilt in my grave. If you want my forgiveness you have it, easily. Nothing that happened in my living days seems to matter much any more. Perhaps I was lucky. After all, I died young and you had to live on, though all those years. You are so much older now than I was, Severus."
He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them over and over again, with all the love that he had never dared to express in life. "You are here now, and we are together again. That is all that matters. My lovely, lovely, Lily," he said reverently.
She shook her head, and gently freed her hands. "No, never yours, Sev. We were best friends for a while, that was all. There was never anything more than that between us."
He stared at her and disbelief welled up through him. "Do not say that. Please do not say that. I loved you! I still love you. My whole life was dedicated to you. I cannot lose you again."
"Severus, you have made an idol out of me, and I was never that. I was only a woman. We were children when we met and you were my best friend. I will always be grateful for the way that you looked after me and taught me about the wizarding world. But you and I went our separate ways, and when I grew to be a woman I fell in love with James Potter. Nothing can change that now."
He suddenly realized, with a pang that was like a knife thrust to his heart, that she spoke the truth. Nothing could change what had happened. She died loving Potter and death had crystallised her. She would always be young and beautiful--and she would always love Potter. Snape could not win her love. Never. The time for that had passed. It was gone, and nothing could ever bring it back.
He swallowed hard and although his lips trembled he managed to smile at her. "It seems that our separate ways have come together again, Lily. I will always love you. I cannot change that, any more than you can change your love for Potter. I hope that you will think of me as your friend, now and always."
"Forever," she said reassuringly.
He knew that he would always treasure the gentle smile that she gave him, and the hardest thing that he had ever done was to walk away and leave her there in the garden, alone with her love for James Potter.
* * *
Not a day had gone by since Lily's death that Snape had not thought of her. He spent his life wrapping himself in guilt for her sake. He had dreamt all of his adult life that he would one day see her again, touch her, tell her he was sorry. That time had finally come... and gone. He had found her again and told her the secrets of his heart; he had begged her for forgiveness.
She had forgiven him, but she had not loved him.
What else was left? It seemed to him that the sole reason for his existence had suddenly vanished and he was left as aimless as a dry leaf swirling in a winter wind.
Snape walked through the grounds and back to the castle, trying to deal with the emptiness in his heart. He went up the broad front steps, hardly noticing the ex-students who paused and greeted him as they were repairing the great oaken doors and manoeuvring them back into place. He had lost his reason for living, and now it seemed that he had lost his reason for dying as well.
He headed for the stairs thinking to go down to the dungeons, where he had spent so many years of his life, but then some whim took him to the Great Hall instead. There was a single figure standing between the house tables and the front dais. It was Bellatrix, her arms stiff at her sides and her hands clenched, staring at something crouched under the edge of the High Table.
Snape came up behind her and looked over her shoulder.
There was a twisted, ugly thing huddled there. It resembled some kind of malformed, aborted, foetus. Silvery, like a ghost, it looked as though it had been flayed, with its veins and muscles showing as clearly as the image on an anatomy chart. Blind and unaware, it whispered to itself in a sibilant voice that Snape knew only too well, but what it said was the mindless murmur of idiocy. He felt a sick revulsion at the sight of that twisted spirit, and he remembered what Dumbledore had said to him about some residue of Voldemort remaining behind.
"Bellatrix," Snape said softly. "Come away from that thing, there is nothing that you can do for it or about it."
"What is it?" Her voice was filled with horror.
"You know what it is," he said
"No. Not this. I will not believe that my Lord has come to this." She shook her head in violent denial.
"It is true, and you know it is true. He is what he made of his life."
She whipped around, looking full into Snape's face, and said, "You brought him to this, you with your traitorous ways. You have destroyed him."
"No, Bellatrix. Voldemort started out on the road to his destruction long before you or I ever knew him."
The tears welled up in her eyes again and, sobbing, she struck out at him. This time Snape did not try to stop her. Her long nails dug at his face and he could almost imagine that he felt his skin ripping and the rivulets of blood running down his face. It did not matter that nothing she did would leave any marks, that she could not actually hurt him in any way. He let her rage wash over him and he let her anger punish him.
In that punishment, in his acceptance of it, he found some bit of expiation for the guilt he had carried since he was a young man, since Lily died.
"You did it, Snape. You were the traitor. You, you!"
Bellatrix pounded on his chest with her fists, crying hysterically in grief and rage until, like a child having a tantrum, she collapsed with exhaustion. When her frantic cries faded into soft convulsive sobs he gathered her into his arms.
"Yes," he said, gently rubbing his cheek against her dishevelled hair. "I did it, and I would do it again. Hush, Bella, hush now," he murmured, bringing back from deep in his memory the soft words his mother once used to sooth his childhood pains.
She gulped and wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. "Will he... can't he ever recover? Is there no hope?" she asked, choking back her tears and sounding like a small child that is looking for reassurance.
"There is no hope for him, but there may yet be some for us," he said, and his voice was soft and kind, as gentle as a lullaby. "Poor Bella, poor little Bella. Forget about him now, and come away with me."
He turned her away from the the crippled thing under the table and guided her back toward the entry hall. "We have an eternity of time before us, and we have many things to talk about. Let me take you down to the lake. We can watch the sun set over the water."
Worn out with her weeping, Bellatrix leaned against him as they walked out of the castle together and across the great lawn, toward the water where the red and orange of the setting sun was reflected and broken into a thousand dancing shards by the breeze-driven ripples.
And Snape, holding her close with a protective arm around her slender shoulders, thought of something that he had once read, that it is not the young and and resilient ones who need help, it is the sick and wounded souls, who have no hope and nowhere else to turn.
Perhaps, with an eternity before them, they could yet find some comfort for their injuries and their pain.