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‘Promise me,’ whispers a set of empty green eyes. This was the only person he ever trusted, ever, from today all the way back as far as he could go. She’s so pale as to be skeletal, deep and dark bags under her eyes, hair like rust. There’s an accusation in this non-stare. ‘How dare you,’ it murmurs. ‘You’ve come too far to ever go back, Severus. You’ll never claw it all back. Never.’
Her lips didn’t even twitch- the voice was coming from a younger Lily, a softer one, sitting opposite Severus. Her hair was on fire, and it burned him. This was Lily as she was the day that his life settled comfortably into the dark. He could admit, now, that he made bad decisions. After that, there was no way to turn back, at least not for Severus Snape.
Anger stalked these memories, and sadness, and something that would have been self-loathing if he could ever admit it, even to himself. He was loathed as the dungeon bat, he embraced that hatred. He couldn’t admit that he agreed with it. The baby murmurs. There is a clicking on the stairs. Footsteps, perhaps? But, no, no, Severus had been alone that night. The dream faded in a heartbeat, etched into his memory only by how frequently it appeared there. The murmur becomes the distant hum of students, and the infernal clacking!
Severus swept out of his private quarters like a bat out of hell. His lips are pulled back into a characteristic snarl, growling out a line that was becoming all too common. “Poppins!”
The characteristic clicking of knit one, pearl two pauses. The nanny holding the needles looks up from her almost complete green scarf. She’s smiling. How many people can smile, sitting in almost complete dark, in a grimy potions room, with him glaring down at them? “Severus, my dear boy. You missed breakfast.”
The expression on his face has made all of the students on its other end cower in utter terror. It was the combination of narrowed eyes, snarling lips, and the billowing darkness that encroached onto the chilling air. It affected several lesser professors, too. Not Poppins, though. She was serene, sharp angles and sweet smiles. She also had a gilded tea tray sitting on his desk. “That was quite intentional, Mary.”
Mary clicked her tongue. Severus flinched, a tiny bit, before he steeled himself. “You know my name, Severus. I know I taught you manners.”
Severus flounced into the chair opposite her with entirely too much dramatics. She brought out the worst of him, every time, childishness and rage. “Ms Poppins, I have told you every day this month that I don’t need this!”
Mary didn’t speak. She poured a cup of tea, by hand, like she was the muggle she had pretended to be all those years ago. She left it on a doily on the table beside him. Sweet Merlin, she had cleaned the table, and probably by hand, if he had to bet. He begrudgingly began to sip by the time she had finished buttering his scone. Just the way he liked it.
“I will see you tomorrow, Severus.”
~
Tonight, it is James Potter sitting opposite, laughing as cruelly as he did as a teenager. Sirius Black looms outside the shattered windows of the cottage, hissing something that can only be levicorpus, and Severus feels the cold envelope him- “Severus, this sets quite a poor example to the snakes, you know.”
He hisses as he pulls himself out of the bed, throwing himself in the direction of that infernal voice. She dodges. “Do you truly remember nothing of your lessons, Severus? You were quite a good pupil, once.”
“I was never!” He roars, pulling on his over-robes with such force that he hears a telltale tear along the sleeve. He starts a swear, but stops himself mid way though at the click of the nanny’s tongue. He barely even notices. She does.
It’s with approval that she appears by his shoulder, sewing kit in hand, and delicately stitches back up the seam. While he is a truly captive audience, she speaks, in a quieter version of her no-nonsense tone. “Petunia Evans was over-emotional, and Lily Evans was over-enthusiastic. Whenever you heard my lessons, you listened to them too, Severus Prince. There is tea in your antechamber, and my godsons class of third years will be waiting in the corridor in silence until you call them in.”
He gives a startled approximation of a laugh, far from the hanged-mans heaves he can usually produce. “Even you can’t promise that, Ms Poppins.”
She flicks back a lock of hair behind his ear before she makes her leave. “I have never broken a promise I’ve seen fit to make, Severus.”
~
Tonight, Severus Snape knocks on the door of the Potter Cottage, rather than simply appearing in the upstairs bedroom. When the door creaks open, there is no corpse on the stairs, no wand rolled out of reach in the living room. In the landing, not a hair is out of place. The last step to the bedroom takes aeons. Pushing the door open reveals Lily, as usual. At least one thing is the same.
Severus sits down beside her, but he is not weeping. He notices, all of a sudden, that her hair has only one grey. Her skin hasn’t a single wrinkle. She’s perfect, in his dreams, and so painfully young. The baby starts to wail. Severus stares at the crib, really looking for probably the first time in all these centuries worth of dreams. The tiny babe inside has her eyes, James Potters curls, and dark skin that only reminds him of the boy that sits on the third row to the left in his OWL class. This baby is in his OWL class, and the woman on the floor-
She’s gone.
Severus wakes up cold, to the sound of rapping at his door. With such an unusual night, at least this is the same. He opens it to find another painfully young woman he has a painfully complicated past with. Can one call an immortal young? She looks it, at least, but her eyes are a little too weary, most days. Not today.
She holds a box in her hands, wrapped in the ribbon she was enchanting for the last week as he woke up, the box from the month before. “Severus. I know you have nothing for me, or mine, and are unlikely to receive anything more than bribes and generic thanks today. Knowing that, this is still yours.”
Severus’ jaw drops a little, but he quickly fixes it back up. Oh, no, she didn’t. The last time he received a genuine gift at Yule- well, it was probably also by her hand. His hands shake as he unties the ribbon. Inside is a green scarf, with embroidered snakes around the edges, and thick slashes of silver interspersed throughout. He recognises the cheering charms she had been obsessively working through, her second year at Hogwarts, and the warming charm that went through trial and error in her fourth. “This is...”
“I told you, once, that all magic was founded on faith. There’s a layer of charms for every strand on that scarf, Severus, and something even more potent.” When he looks up at her, she seems blurry, but still bears the same stern smile she did when he was a boy with too much bitterness and barely any mistakes. “I can’t take this.”
She raises one eyebrow and sweeps out of the room. “I will see you at breakfast, Severus.”