Work Text:
End of the Line
I pray that God will give me courage
To carry on 'till we meet again
It's hard to know she's gone forever
They're carrying her home on the evening train
The first thing he noticed about the afterlife was that it was blindingly white, a stark contrast to the darkness of the Shrieking Shack. It had been dark and smelled of age and dust motes, must and woodworm. Years and years of neglect and decay. Now the air was clean and bright, like freshly laundered cotton or a gentle spring breeze.
His hands jerked instinctively to his throat, feeling for the deep puncture wounds from Nagini’s fangs—
But the skin was whole and unbitten, as it had been in life. Not that he was alive, though. Looking around, for the first time since he woke in this strange new place, Snape took in his surroundings. He was standing in the centre of what seemed to be an enormous cathedral-like building made entirely of glass and white-painted iron that twisted in delicate arches and swirls, like a crystal palace. There was no sun above the glass, no cloud or sky or anything more than a pearly glare, yet the place was bright and he squinted at first to adjust to the change.
Looking down, he saw he was no longer in the blood-stained robes he had died in. Instead his clothes were clean-pressed black linen that fit him perfectly. Reflexively he reached for his wand, but his fingers closed around nothing.
“Severus,” a voice behind him said. He froze, heart spasming in his chest and for a moment he felt like he was about to die all over again.
Because he knew that voice.
It spoke of summer holidays spent in the forest glade beneath dappled sunlight, of inside jokes and mindless chatter and languorous, happy days long since passed. Memories he had clutched close to his heart all these years flashed through his mind and his knees felt suddenly weak.
“Lily,” he whispered, and turned suddenly around with baited breath.
He had waited over seventeen years to see her and here she was; exactly as he remembered her, not a day over twenty-one. She was all deep red hair, glowing green eyes, soft lips and a kind face that he’d seen in his dreams for almost eighteen years.
Lily, Lily, Lily—
But she was not alone.
Beside her, his hair messy and black as spilt ink, glasses slightly crooked and hazel eyes narrowed, was James Potter. Snape’s gaze dropped between them where their hands were firmly clasped, fingers interlaced so tightly that it was as if they were refusing to ever be separated again. The sight of her pressed to Potter’s side, leaning into him like he was her support made Snape feel like ice had been poured down his spine, the bitterness seeping into his bones.
“You’re dead,” Potter said shortly. Lily pressed her lips together, moving closer to James. Snape wondered if it were possible to die again.
“Yes,” he replied hoarsely, though his eyes were fixed on Lily. For God’s sake, how many times had he hoped for a chance to speak to her one last time? How many times had he imagined what he would say to her if he ever saw her again? And now all he could say was ‘yes’, and not even to her?
Pathetic.
“Who was it?” It was a Potter again. With a jolt, Snape remembered that Lily was a Potter, too. In all his dreams and hidden fantasies she had a very different surname.
“Voldemort; he used the snake,” Snape said. His voice was gritted and aimed at James, but he had eyes only for her. He wanted to push Potter aside and clasp Lily to him, to hold her and to reassure himself that she was really here, that the girl he had loved for nearly all of his life had come back to him.
“Betrayal doesn’t feel good, does it?” asked Lily. Half of him wanted to weep at the sound of her voice again, the other half suppressed a flinch at the bitterness in it.
“I… I’m so sorry.” He cleared his throat, wanting to say more, needing to explain more—
“How can you stand here and say you’re sorry?” demanded James, his voice hot with rage. Lily reached out her free hand, placing a placating hand on his chest but Potter didn’t stop. “How dare you even look at us after what you did? We were murdered because of your loyalties, Lily was murdered because of you! And you’re really going to stand there and say you’re ‘sorry’?”
Each word hit Snape in the chest like a ton of bricks and he staggered back slightly, a burning wave of heat flushing his face. He opened his mouth to respond, but couldn’t find the words.
“And Harry,” Lily said, and though her voice was low, it was as venomously angry as her husband’s. “How could you? He was just a boy; me and James’s son, our child! And you took every opportunity to make him feel like he deserved nothing, that he was stupid and worthless and nothing more than a pathetic excuse of a wizard. Don’t you understand?” She was shouting now, chest rising and falling rapidly as angry tears welled in her eyes. “He had no one, Severus! No one! Harry was alone and he was scared and he needed kindness and all you could do was be a hateful prick who was sour because he was the son of a man you didn’t like in high school!” Tears were now flowing freely down her face, mottling her cheeks and rimming her green eyes red. Her slender shoulders trembled with immense grief; seventeen years worth of pain.
And not just anyone’s agony; this was a mother’s torment.
“Please,” Snape begged, making as if to move towards Lily but James stepped half in front of her, shielding her, and his eyes flashed in warning. His hand that was not holding Lily’s curled into a tight fist, knuckles bleach white. Trying to swallow the hard lump of misery in his throat, Snape moved back and stared imploringly at her. “Perhaps I was too hard on him, but you have no idea what he was like—!”
“And I never got to know him, because of what you did!” she shouted, hurling the words at him like throwing knives. Her face was contorted with rage, like that of a snarling lioness.
“Tell me, Snivellus,” said James, just as incandescent with fury as Lily. “Would you have treated our child differently if we’d had a girl? Would you have relentlessly tormented a kid if they looked like Lily, not me?”
“I— I—” Snape spluttered, completely fazed by the idea. Of course it would have made a difference— not that he was willing to admit to Potter. If Harry hadn’t had his father’s stupid, arrogant face, if he hadn’t had his father’s hair, nose, chin—
“My point exactly, you fucking creep,” James said, his voice positively venomous.
Snape flushed at the implication, his neck mottling an ugly shade of scarlet. “How dare— I would never—”
“No,” James said, drawing himself up to his fullest height, which (even at twenty-one) was still taller than Snape, “you wouldn’t have. Because I would’ve come back from the dead to kill you before you ever had the opportunity.”
“I protected your brat,” retorted Snape. He’d recovered his composure somewhat and the humiliation of what Potter had implied only doubled his hatred for James. He turned to Lily, practically begging her to see sense. “Just come with me now, Lily. You don’t have to stay with him.” He gestured to James.
“Don’t you dare speak about Harry like that!” Lily’s face was white and livid. “And You didn’t protect him from anything except actual death,” she continued furiously. “You were a vile bully! He was eleven years old and you, Severus , were a grown man who couldn’t handle rejection. You’re still the same petty little loser you were in school.” She turned to look at James for a second, her gaze softening slightly as she caught Potter’s eye. That look hardened as she faced Snape again. “And there isn’t a part of me that has ever doubted that I chose the right man. These years spent watching over my son, I saw you as you really are and it sickens me that I ever thought you were a good man.” Her stare was withering. “If you ever think I would leave James for you, you’re deluded.”
“But I protected you! I begged Dumbledore to hide you, I risked my own life for years because I love you!” Snape protested. He was overwhelmed by the injustice of it all; his skin felt too tight, blood too hot in his veins, and despair uncoiled itself in the pit of his stomach like a hungry snake.
“Don’t pretend like you ever loved her,” James said hotly, starting forwards with his jaw set. But Lily clutched his arm and held him back. Undeterred, he went on, “Loving someone means putting their happiness above your own, it means being selfless, it means caring about what they care about, it means putting them before yourself.”
“I did—” Snape protested angrily, thinking of that dark, stormy night he had begged on bended knee for Dumbledore to hide Lily.
“No,” she cut in. “You wanted me alive for you, because it would make you happy. You were willing to let my husband and my son die because you didn’t care about them, even though I loved and needed them more than anything. You didn’t love me. Not truly and not in any of the ways that matter. What you felt for me wasn’t love. It was some corrupted, obsessive variant.”
“You- you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Snape stuttered. He tried to draw himself up to his fullest height, yet he was quelled by the fire that blazed in Lily’s bottle-green eyes, cowing him like he was back to being that slope-shouldered school boy who scared easily. “Potter- Harry… he was so much like- like him ,” he spat, jerking his head twitchily at James. “Rude, lazy, arrogant—”
“Don’t talk about either of them like that!” Lily shouted, eyes flashing. “If Harry were even half like James then I’d already be proud of him. Luckily for me, he is every bit as good and kind and brave and loyal as his father.”
Snape moaned, burying his face in his hands. “This is all wrong,” he mumbled into his hands. “You were supposed to love me , Lily, not him ! I thought… I thought you’d see everything I’d done for you. I kept Harry alive, didn’t I?”
“You want me to applaud you for keeping him alive?” Her jaw seemed slack with disbelief. “Can’t you see the problem with that? Any decent person would have done that! In fact— ” she took a step closer, face hard-set, “—they would have done more than that. A decent person would have shown him comfort, trust, kindness and everything else you denied him for the simple fact that you still aren’t over the fact that I didn’t pick you.” Her eyes burned. “Actually, it was never even a choice.”
She turned to Potter and his arm slipped around her waist, tugging her close. It was a simple, intimate gesture; one that Snape had always fantasised about. The idea of being able to touch Lily without thinking…
Jealousy and hatred flared in his chest as strong as it always was when he thought of James’s hands on her body. He knew that feeling all too well. It had lived in his heart for years. It grew more bitter with each passing day when he would see the two of them holding hands in corridors, kissing down by the Lake, when he had heard she was marrying him… A muscle twitched in his jaw at the memory.
Her voice was quiet as she spoke then. Her words weren’t hard or cutting, just simple truth. “It was always going to be James. Always. And I am sorry that that fact was enough to make you so full of hate. You could have been such a good man, Severus.” She sounded suddenly lost and her voice trembled with hurt. Snape’s heart, if he still had one, crumbled to ash. “But you chose to betray us.”
“I didn’t betray you! Once I knew that the prophecy referred to Harry—”
“You betrayed me,” she interrupted coldly. “You supported the man, if you can even call him that, who wanted people like me and anyone who protected us dead and gone. Would you have turned spy if it wasn’t for me?” she demanded. The resounding silence was proof enough. She loosed a pained breath, like a laugh with no humour. “Of course not. Can’t you see? It shouldn’t have mattered who the damn prophecy was about. A good man, a truly good man, would have helped simply because it was the right thing to do. ”
“I was always used to being an outsider, always used to playing second best to him—” Snape gestured at James— “and the Dark Lord offered me everything… You cannot possibly imagine how that felt!”
“So you think we should forgive you because the biggest bully in the playground offered you some power?” James spat, the disgust unmistakable.
“Shut up, Potter,” snarled Snape, every bit of the hatred he had felt towards James crashing through him with the strength of a rampaging bull. “You never deserved Lily, you— you—!” But Snape couldn’t find the right words.
“That’s enough,” Lily said sharply. There was a deep sadness in those green eyes as she watched him. There had been a part of Snape that had been convinced that if he could see Lily, if he could only explain… She could be his and those seventeen years of misery and grief might have been worth something. Yet the look in her eyes, like he was a she didn’t even know him, made the hope wilt and die in his chest. It fell, severed, like a flower cut from the stalk. A dead lily flower in the cold, dark earth.
“I don’t love you, Sev,” she said quietly. He hadn’t heard that old childhood nickname for over twenty years. He wanted to hold on to it, put it in his pocket and pull it out on a dark day. But she didn’t say it with the affection she had done when they were younger.
She spoke it like goodbye.
“Lily,” he croaked, trying desperately to blink down the tears that burned his eyes and made his throat ache. “Please, I’ve waited so long. I’ve wanted nothing but this for years!” His voice broke.
Lily remained where she was, in James’s arms.
“We don’t ever come back to life,” she said, still in that quiet voice, like she was talking to an animal ensnared in a poacher’s trap. “This is the final frontier. We stay dead, Severus. Forever. It’s a longer time than you could ever imagine. I hope time treats you better than you treated Harry. I hope it is long enough that you can let go of all this hate inside you. It’s time to say goodbye.”
“No!” Snape screamed the word; it tore from his throat, blistering its way from his lips like the shriek of a wounded soldier. He clutched at his hair, heart hammering and vision clouded with tears and pain. “This can’t be the end! We were supposed to have forever—”
“We have forever,” Lily said, turning to James, who dropped his forehead to hers, a soft smile playing across both of their lips. James cupped his wife’s face, his thumb skimming her cheekbone and she pressed into his touch. “We just won’t have it together, Severus.”
He couldn’t take it anymore.
Severus Snape dropped to his knees, shoulders trembling with the weight of a thousand mistakes, a thousand prejudices and cruelties he thought he could outrun.
“I’m sorry,” he said, forehead pressed against the smooth white floor. “I’m so sorry.”
There was a long pause before she said simply, “Thank you.”
He raised his head to watch her kiss James, a short, sweet kiss. It was like they didn’t need to kiss like each one would be their last, because they had had their last kiss almost seventeen years before. They had forever now. An eternity in which to love and be loved.
Snape wished in that moment that he could have had just a day to be loved like that, just an hour, a minute, a breath.
At the end of the glass palace, a light flared suddenly. It was hot on his sallow skin and even more blindingly brilliant than the rest of the hall. Lily and James turned around, their hands still clasped, and walked together towards the light, vanishing in a blaze of heavenly fire.
Then the light disappeared in a blink and he was alone again.
Closing his eyes, he leaned forwards again, palms flat on the floor with his eyes closed.
For the first time in almost eighteen years, Snape allowed himself to cry.
Every pane of glass shattered.