Work Text:
"Look at me …"
There was never any contest about his death. It was a planned affair he dived head first into when he vowed to protect Lily's son, casting it as such that he would die only moments after the boy does. Atleast, that would have been what happened if the Dark Lord hadn't sicced his blasted snake after him, tearing his throat out and leaving him to bleed to death on the account of the Elder Wand's ownership.
'I should've set that senile old coot's portrait on fire before I went out' Severus thought, watching as the Potter boy ran with his memories in a pensieve. Albus Dumbledore died as a beloved headmaster of Hogwarts, though Severus knows how cruel the old bastard can be. With his plans for "The Greater Good", Dumbledore had seated himself as the paragon of light.
Spots of dark soon filled his eyes, darkening his view even more. Severus Snape knows he is dying, and with his last breath, he hoped he had done enough to atone for all his sins.
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Thump Thump Thump
A loud slamming noise slowly filled his ears after a long silence. Following shortly were undecipherable yells, and the sounds of someone getting repeatedly punched. Severus would know, he had been there when he was young. But it was somehow wetter, like the thing being punched was semiliquid, bringing to mind the warm, wet stickiness still present under him.
Confusion settled in the depths of Severus' mind. He had grown numb to sensations several minutes before darkness overtook his sight, so feeling the agonizing pain on his neck from Nagini's bite, along with other stinging wounds he was sure he didn't have before, was enough to fill his head with irritation.
'I can't even die in peace? Hadn't I suffered enough?' Severus thought as he slowly opened his eyes again. He'll make the ones making all the racket pay for being so irritating, he may be half dead, but there are still a plethora of curses that he can cast wandlessly. His eyes were heavy, only managing to open a sliver, but it was enough to see what little he could in front of him.
It was not the dreary interiors of the Shrieking Shack. Instead, what greeted him was a small rundown apartment. The wet stickiness under him was in fact, his pool of blood gushing out from the hole in his neck. The loud thumping noise was a tall man, towering over another, who was more bloodied and limp. The person on the floor was almost unrecognizable, their guts and blood covering most of their features. The man, though, was wearing a bloody brown leather jacket with his arms covered in that warm red.
As if to take a breath, the man stopped and raised his head. He was wearing a helmet in Gryffindor-red, covering most of his features except for a tuft of white and black hair on the side away from what Severus can see. Slowly, panic began to quicken Severus' breath.
He had not seen the man before, or does he have any idea as to why he ended up here. Severus tried to speak, but only a gurgling sound came out of him. Turning his attention to his throat, Severus kept half an eye on the man. He clutched his throat, it was already half healed but still dripping blood. Any more and he'll die of blood loss. Clutching it tighter, he mouthed the words of his strongest healing spell.
Vulnera……sanentur…..vulnera….sanentur…
The blood slowly seeped back towards him, lessening the blood soaking his side. As the wound sluggishly closed, Severus turned his whole attention to the man a few meters in front of him. The man had turned his head towards him, the cracked side of his helmet giving ways to the person underneath. Severus saw the man's single most defining feature. A bright, glowing green, the shade of the Killing Curse.
Lily's eyes.
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The man slowly stood up over the other man's corpse. His hands were still dripping blood, and his lone green eye trained right at him. Severus cursed in his mind, panic still at the front of his thoughts. He was too weak to even run, at most he could crawl a few paces away. The man was walking right towards him, and he was quickly losing ground.
Look at me!
His magic sparks underneath his skin. His breath quickens and he cannot calm himself down, but the man was already upon him. Pure, unbridled magic shot out of him, uncontrolled and wild. The man was sent back to the wall far away, sparks sizzling in the air. The man groans, his wide green eye- Lily's eyes- unfocused, he must have a concussion. Severus pushed himself up on his arms, trembling with exhaustion and anxiety. He noticed that his wrists were thinner, his hands small, still soaked with his blood. More confusion had clouded his mind, but his head snapped to the sound of the man standing up again. Severus readied himself, head perusing the list of wandless spells he could fling out at the man. The burst of magic earlier was powerful, so he reckons that he was at the same level of power as before, and so he can afford doing strong, offensive spells.
The man once again advances towards him, his body tense and no doubt wary of the mysterious force that pushed him back. Severus watched him, with Sectumsempra at the very tip of his tongue. It'll cut the body in half, and kill the man before him. The man stared at him as he slowly walked, forcefully loosening his shoulders and keeping his body language open. Severus glared at him, feeling his magic hiss at the perceived danger. The man raised his hands– and Severus jerked back at it in reflex,– Sectu!--- the man's eye widened and—!
LOOK AT ME!!
"Expecto Patronum!"
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A silver doe bursts from mist, and the ghostly visage charges and phases through the man. He tried to block it with his arms in front of his body, but the doe went right through him, barreling the man and making him collapse to his knees. The patronus trots beside the fallen form of the man, lowering its head as if to scent him. A burning smell like rotten sewage emanates from the man as glowing green flecks of liquid mix with the blood on his hands.
"What..?" Severus rasps, the word straining his throat. That was not the spell he meant to use at all. He should've used the Cutting Curse that he was so infamous for. The man was unmoving on the ground, his eyes closed, like he was sleeping. The silver doe shine gently upon him, emitting soft pulses of light with a calming atmosphere.
'The patronus charm should not have that kind of effect at all,' Severus thought ' it was simply not designed that way, incapable of harming other than to drive away dementors'.
Severus looked at the man again, it was unlikely that the man was anything more than a muggle. Certainly not something as dark of a creature as a dementor. While the man's actions are of dubious morality, it is definitely not related to magic of any kind.
'So why..?' Severus willed his legs to move under him, shuffling to a nearby wall to support himself. He looked around the room, spotting another door. It's better that he doesn't stay at the same room as the man, or that corpse behind him. Leaning at the wall, he slowly stepped towards the door and weakly grabbed its handle.
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It was a bathroom. A dilapidated and dirty bathroom. Severus had expected the door to lead to a hallway outside but considering the state he was in right now, he can't afford wandering out while looking like a particularly bloody ghost. Glancing back at the room behind him, he saw that the silver doe had settled right next to the man.
'Another weird thing to think about, patronuses usually disperse after its job was done' keeping the door open, Severus stepped inside the bathroom. It has a toilet to the side, a bathtub on the opposite, and a sink with a mirror beside it. He walked towards the mirror, gripping the sink after pushing himself off the wall. He had left little bloody handprints on it.
'I noticed this before but, aren't I too small?' Severus stared at the mirror. It was way above his head, and he is eye level with the sink. Looking around the bathroom once again, he spotted a small plastic stool, and dragged it in front of the sink. He stepped on it, and leaned in the sink, 'Merlin's pants, I look like shit'.
He looked more shitty that usual, and that's saying something. In front of him, a child peeks out from the mirror. He had a gaunt face and heavy eyebags, his head was bleeding as well as his nose, and a bloody bruise was forming under his right eye. It was not something a child of this age should look like, but Severus has seen this sight for more than a hundred times as a child.
Surprisingly, he does look like how he did when he was a child. But the most eye-catching part of him is the big wound taking up a huge part of his neck. It was scarred, reaching almost half towards his shoulders, and dyeing the collar of his loose gray shirt red with fresh and dried blood.
Severus frowns, the expression twisting his face to that of something that is unsuitable in the soft features of a child. He estimates his age, around 9 or 10, and not the almost 40 years that he miserably lived. "What kind of sick joke is this?"
He was not a child, and he had never been one. But someone, or something had thrown him back to his body as a child, sent a man to kill the person that's most probably Tobias, and threw so many strange things at him all at once. This was not his bathroom at Cokesworth, this was not his house nor his life or his body.
Severus glares back at himself in the mirror. He will get to the bottom of this, whoever denied him that peaceful death he had yearned for, he will search and he will find them, and curse them so hard they will regret ever facing him.
'I should try to find mum first, if she's still alive' Severus stepped down the stool, and slowly walked out the bathroom door.