Dead or Alive

Today is the end of tomorrow

Nearly a month had passed since the Dark Lord had set Nagini upon Severus, and still the sting of her bite galled him. Yet for all that, there were signs that gave him hope. The first he had noticed shortly after coming to in Spinners End. The Mark upon his arm, so long burning and so long a mark of foolishness, of hate, of blindness, lay still and cold on his arm. Unlike before, there seemed no life to it, no hidden malevolence. Were he any less wise, he could have sworn it to be little more than Muggle ink. Even the edges fell flat against his flesh and, for an inane moment or two, he had felt as though it had ceased to breathe.

It had been sign enough that the child had succeeded. Sign enough that despite every oath he had sworn – one in silence to himself and the soul of a woman departed, and another again to an old man who had deceived him utterly in the end – he had been unable to protect or save Harry Potter. Lily’s child was gone, but the world – the world would live on in his stead. Loathe though he was to admit it, Severus felt the price a burden too high to bear.

He did not know who else had died, nor did he dare to care. Severus kept himself hidden, determining his next move while trying in vain to stop the spread of the venom his late administration of antidote had failed to curb and cure. He had gone out but once, his head bowed and shrouded by a cloak, the awkward shuffle of his step and the limpness in his side keeping anyone from looking too closely, an unexpectedly useful benefit to the paralysis slowly creeping its way toward his heart. Purchasing only food and a few herbs, he had returned without daring to pick up a paper, too afraid of the faces he would surely find in the obituary section.

It had been two and a half weeks since then, and Severus was declining rapidly. He was running out of options and he knew it, but stubbornness had always been one of his more failing traits. St. Mungo’s should have had him the moment the paralysis set in, but the Potions Master was not a fool. He knew if he set foot there he would be arrested, and he dared not face Azkaban. He could not bear that price for his crimes, as deserved though it may be, so he had ignored the facts and continued to push for a cure of his own making.

This morning, he had almost been unable to get out of bed. This afternoon, he had dropped things from his good hand. It had begun to curve into a tight and crippled claw recently, though arthritic balms had been able to ease the ache there until today. It was nearing three when Severus felt his heart stutter and had grasped for his table, only to be unable to hold himself up. Long, agonizing moments passed him by on the hard, cold floor of Spinners End before he found the strength to roll himself to his better side and push, pull and drag himself back to his feet. It was four by the time he made it the short distance from his upstairs workroom to the floo in the parlor. By four fifteen he had stopped fighting with himself and stepped through to St. Mungos. By no less than four thirty seven was he ushered into a room and the door shut firmly, securing his sense of trapped unease. He was to be arrested then, rather than tended to.

Closing his eyes, Severus resigned himself to his fate and succumbed at last to sleep that had threatened the edges of his consciousness since his collapse. Drained and exhausted, the one-time professor at Hogwarts School of Witchraft and Wizardry was blissfully unaware of the hustle and bustle that soon followed the orderlies departure. The Healer-In-Charge took the case, being the only one familiar with the venom coursing slowly through Severus’ system, and the tireless war was waged for his life as one orderly committed an act so far against St. Mungo’s confidentiality clauses that should he or she ever be caught, you can be sure they would lose all licence to practice healing.

For the first time since the Battle of Hogwarts, the evening edition of the Daily Prophet came with a headline bearing debatably good news. While the Healers toiled and Severus’ life hung delicately in the balance, Rita Skeeter got the go ahead for an urgent exclusive.

Long Live the Spy:
Severus Snape Lives!

Perhaps a premature announcement, considering how touch and go things became. In the end, the venom was pushed back and cleared from the central nervous system. They could not save his right hand, nor could they completely relieve the paralysis in his left leg. He would be permanently damaged on his right side, but it was better than before – at least somewhat. The venom cleared, it would not spread again. With a job well done, the healers on St Mungo’s Creatures ward found themselves brutally staving off photographers and reporters, who were never permitted inside the wards in any case, while the Healer-In-Charge attempted to look up any next of kin Severus may have, in the event that the sleep he had fallen to proved more problematic than thus observed.

There had, of course, been no such individuals save for a Vinicus Prince, who had proved unreachable, and the Malfoy family by right of extension. He was listed as the godfather to the Malfoy heir, but something didn’t sit right with the Healer-in-Charge about inviting ex-cons to the ward to visit an invalid spy. It seemed a little too much like inviting trouble, so in the end, he had chosen not to contact anyone.

The Ministry had opted to station a guard at the door, as the resurgence of Severus Snape had the chance of luring out some of the escaped Death Eaters, who may try their hand at revenge. Little more could be spared, as the restoration and the hunts for the Marked was still heavy under way, but Kingsley had been adamant on that much at least for Severus, whom he would likely address in time.

Due to the media attention, the fact Severus did not come to for three entire days caused considerable speculation and rumor. Enough so that when he did come to, the healer present had felt obligated to let someone know. Severus saw his guard briefly as some bustling took place, but he thought little of it beyond the fact it was a little odd he should be stationed outside the room, rather than within it. Before long, he was carefully sat up and brought some food by a nervous mediwitch, whom Severus believed was afraid of him and whose gaze he deliberately avoided as a result. He had just been marvelling at his ability to handle a fork with ease, eying the workmanship on his left hand, when the Healer-in-Charge stepped in to announce that he had a visitor.

Lowering the fork slowly, Severus prepared himself to face an Auror – and if he was cursed enough, a member of the Order to boot, even. As such, when the Healer-in-Charge stated that she would be escorted out if he did not feel up to discussion, he had been considerably confused. When the man stepped aside to usher in a worn and ragged looking Hermione Granger, Severus simply stared. His silence was taken for welcome, and the Healer-in-Charge left them to whatever reunion they may have. Still Severus stared, uncomprehending. Surely the Ministry did not think to punish him by sending in this broken looking child, who had surely seen too much, lost too much? There was nothing Hermione Granger could possibly say to him that he had not already torn himself to pieces over.

Still, he could understand the need for a final word. The need for something to lash out at. Better than most, he dared imagine. Carefully, Severus folded his hands together and waited. When the silence seemed to stretch, he chose to break it himself. His voice, normally so cutting and caustic, held only weariness and defeat. ”And to what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Miss Granger?”

Hermione Granger

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Long Live the Spy: Severus Snape Lives!

Hermione ought to have been alarmed at the lack of emotion she felt upon reading that particular headline in the Prophet and the subsequent article, more than likely a bunch of fictional jargon getting spewed by that horrible witch Rita Skeeter. Why she hadn’t kept that woman in a jar was completely beyond her. Who the author was honestly elicited more of a response out of her than the headline had. It said that he’d been admitted to St. Mungo’s Hospital, which ought to have surprised her. But it seemed that hardly anything did these days. She was tired, worn, and felt emotionally ransacked. The loss of Ron had been hard on her, almost as hard as it had been for Harry.

So the eighteen-year old girl spent the next three days going through a few emotional phases. First was the numb state she’d been in when she first read it. That had actually lasted until she’d gotten some food in her, and had spent a few hours out in the sun on the Hogwarts grounds. Next had come the disbelief. How had he survived? She, Harry, and Ron had seen him attacked, they had seen that horrible snake strike him. Granted, his body had never been recovered, but they had always guessed that somehow it had gotten destroyed in the heat of the battle. How had he survived this long with injuries so severe? Professor Snape had died right in front of them. It was impossible that he’d lived.

But then shortly thereafter that, which had preoccupied her for most of the second day, was the mixture of disbelief and grieving rage. How was it fair? That was the question she demanded of nobody in particular. How was it fair, that he had survived, when Ron lay in a grave? How was it right, in any way, that she’d been forced to lay one of her two best friends, the boy she had finally admitted feelings for, to rest, when someone else had been permitted to survive a dire situation? In what sick and twisted world was that acceptable? After the rage had come the tears. Hermione was slightly disappointed that she still had tears to cry, one would thought her tear ducts had run dry after that first week after the battle. But there were just some wounds, she decided, some wounds that could never heal.

It was in the tears state that she had paid a visit to Harry, who seemed to be the only one who could understand her pain. That had been yet another visit full of tears and embraces, the only comfort available being knowing that they weren’t alone. After that, Hermione had tearfully returned back to Hogwarts to the warm bed that never offered her peace. And another day went by as she settled back to the numbness that had enveloped her on that very first day. It was like a security blanket, a comforting thing that provided her the only sanctuary available.

Yes, Hermione Granger had undergone quite the emotional roller coaster. And now, on the second of June, she had made a decision. It might not have been the wisest, nor was she particularly sure of what she was looking for, but she knew she had to go and see him. Ask him questions… in reality, she didn’t know what she want. The broken young woman just knew what she had to do. What she felt like she had to do. There was no choice, really. She had watched him die – she wanted to know how and why he still lived.

So that morning she had prepared herself. And then she had Apparated to the hospital. Some Healers recognized her from pictures, one or two just knew who she was on principle. But they all recognized her as a veteran of the war, even as one so young, as there was no mistaking that haunted, broken, ghostly look in her brown eyes. When she’d stated who she was here to see, in a voice that was oddly disjointed and hoarse from lack of use, the Healers at reception had looked at one another in surprise and had asked her to wait there. So Hermione had. They asked her to use a private stairwell – the press was absolutely awful, they told her. It was better to remain unseen, lest she be swarmed by reporters. Unwilling to live through that particular hassle alone, Hermione had thanked them for their kindness and went on their way.

And then she’d been let in to see him. At his words, hearing his voice, it really did dawn on her that he truly was alive. Hermione wasn’t sure if she’d actually believed it or not up until right then, after all, what proof had she had other than a trashy article? But it was the defeat in his voice that had caught her attention. They both had lost a great deal in this war, she realized. Unable to think of anything else to say, she just replied, ”I’d heard you’d made it. I wanted to see it for myself.” Her voice too was tired, broken, weary. One survivor to another, nothing more.

But then the question came. Before she could stop herself, she asked, ”How, Professor?” Even if that wasn’t the proper title anymore. ”We… saw. We saw everything.” Her choking on the word ‘we’ was almost audible.

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Severus Snape | 908 | Too many feelses for past midnight.

Loki

Today is the end of tomorrow

Severus wasn’t certain what she would say, though he supposed when she spoke that the ever-present need to understand the world around her would be the most prevalent factor in her decision to visit a man she had every reason to despise. So he merely sat as he was and allowed her to see what she would, expecting she would leave once her curiosity had been assuaged. Of course, Severus should have known that mere confirmation would not be enough to manage that. Not with Hermione Granger.

He did not miss the way her voice faltered on the word we. That alone was enough to make what little color he had regained in his naturally pallid features to drop away rapidly, his lips parting in a slight gasp of remembered agony as his hands curled into fists upon his hospital blanket. Or tried to. The lift curled tight on his lap, while beside it the right shook a bit and arched, claw-like and arthritic, but did little more than this.

Closing his eyes, Severus did not ask. He did not need to. The Mark had faded. Harry Potter – this young witch’s best and dearest friend, next to Ron Weasley – was dead. He had been there to witness what should have been Severus’ end. Despite the fact the boy hated him, despite the fact he had murdered the child’s mentor before his very eyes, Harry Potter had crawled over to take the memories that would damn him. He accepted Severus’ final confessions and in so doing, had sacrificed himself. Severus had lived, and the child he had sworn to protect – sworn to himself, to the spirit of the child’s mother, to Albus Dumbledore – had been destroyed.

Perhaps a good man would have died. Died rather than live with the guilt of that truth. But Severus had never been a good man. He was an obsessive and bitter one, who had spent nearly eighteen years living with guilt and grief in order to atone for a childhood sin. For what he had done to Harry Potter, Severus would be bound to live a very long time indeed. For there was much to be atoned for there, and he was too stubborn not to try. Albus had deceived he and Potter both and in the end, the price to pay had been the life of a child, willingly sacrificed. Severus could no more change that then he could bring back Lily. Nor would he have wanted to do either, now. Lily’s spirit was reunited with her son eternally, and Severus knew it was time to let her go. She would never forgive him and he would never forget his crimes. It was a karmic balance and one he could in time grow used to.

Atonement for those crimes began here, with this child left behind. Licking his now dry lips, Severus found his voice, still a soft shadow of the caustic acidity of his normal tones. There was no professor here, lecturing or scolding. No tyrant, belittling. Merely a man, drifted away from the present and displaced in the world around him in the wake of fallen empires. ”I kept an antidote upon me at all times, for Nagini’s venom. I needed to….ensure that…” Severus closed his eyes, the confession falling hoarsely from his lips, ”Your friend received the message. The memories, rather.” He could not speak the boy’s name just yet. Did not dare to do so, for he did not have the strength to face grieving rage for the loss he had directed her to facing, by showing Harry Potter what he needed to do.

He fell quiet then, shifting uncomfortably in order to draw himself up. To show some semblance of strength in all of this, to give her vindication in the realization that he was not about to use what had befallen him to seek mercy from her. ”After you left, I took it and pulled myself over the edge, to make it appear as though my body had gone, and used a portkey to return home. I have, since, been working to stop the spread of the venom and the paralysis, as the antidote was administered too late.” Severus lifted his chin a bit, suffusing as much dignity into his expression as he could, stating flatly, ”I failed and had no choice but to come here. I should imagine I shall be facing trial and Azkaban soon enough,” He willed himself to sound as indifferent as he could, for he did not seek her sympathy nor did he want it, but he was too weak to keep the tremor of fear from his tone, still so unaware of matters to not know his own absolution by a boy he didn’t even know was in fact, still alive. Nostrils flaring angrily at the display of weakness that revealed, Severus looked away from her, suddenly fascinated by his hospital blanket as he plucked at it with his good hand.

Hermione Granger

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As Hermione stood there in that hospital room, a chilling realization overcame her, one that didn’t come to her very often… though it seemed that she was having it more and more. Hermione Granger didn’t know what to do.

It was possible that she could have sat. There were chairs in the room, but she didn’t want to appear too comfortable, because in reality she wasn’t. In fact it was possible that this was one of the most uncomfortable and odd situations she had ever been in. Not because of the hospital – no, Hermione had far too many experiences of being at someone’s bedside in the hospital (one of the many side effects of being Harry Potter’s best friend). It was simply the fact of whose bedside she would be at, sitting there, when a part of her still protested that Severus Snape should be the one to live when Ronald Weasley had to have been put to rest. It made no sense to her. And it hurt. And she wasn’t sure what she wanted.

But she listened, because that was one thing that Hermione had vowed she would do. Listen to his explanation, find out the truth. She, Harry, and Ron had seen him die, seen him pass before their eyes, and yet he was here. And Ron was gone. That balance, perhaps, was one that would haunt her every time she saw her former professor, but in the back of her mind, she doubted that she would ever truly recover from the loss of her friend.

However, there were still some things that would never change. Seeing him try to sit up, to try and move when it was clear he was in pain, Hermione moved forward, concern flashing in her wide brown eyes. ”You oughtn’t overstress yourself,” she protested quietly. ”You’ve been through a great deal already. There’s no need to injure yourself more, Professor.” But she made no move to touch him, or otherwise move closer than she already had. Hermione continued to stand there, looking like someone who’d gotten lost on their way to class.

At his final comment, however, there was no stopping the furrowing of her eyebrows in confusion. ”You haven’t heard? Nobody’s told you?” Goodness, how long had he been laying here with the expectation that he would soon get carted off to prison? To have that hanging over one’s head was a wait that Hermione didn’t particularly wish on anybody. What was more, she couldn’t believe that nobody had informed him of what had become of his name at the Ministry. Hermione felt the need to fix this oversight at once. ”You won’t be facing trial. Or Azkaban, for that matter. Harry had everything worked out with Kingsley after the fighting, he made sure people understood. Your name was cleared weeks ago.” She sounded more like she was reciting an answer from a textbook rather than delivering what might be received as joyous news.

Hermione had absolutely no inkling that Snape suspected Harry’s absence from the world. After all, it wasn’t Harry she had lost, and she had figured that everyone knew of Ron Weasley’s fall in the Battle of Hogwarts. She could still remember the gruesome long list of those who had deceased in the Prophet – Ron’s among them. And next to the list had been a short article, with the horrendous title: ‘The Golden Trio – Not Golden Nor a Trio Any Longer?’ The reason it had been so short was simply because, as many might have expected, neither Harry nor Hermione wanted anything to do with the article, and had neglected to comment.

Remembering it made her lips tighten, as she continued to watch Snape anxiously. ”Do you really… have you honestly heard nothing, about all that’s happened?” Hermione questioned him, her tone marked more by disbelief and curiosity than anger or irritation that this might actually be true.

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Severus Snape | Sorry   about   the   relatively   short   length.   xP

Loki

Today is the end of tomorrow

If Miss Granger did not know what to do with herself, it was nothing in comparison to how baffled Severus himself was by her apparent concern for him as he adjusted himself. For a long moment afterward, he sat still mainly because he didn’t know how to respond to any further indications of kindness, though he took comfort in the fact she didn’t seem inclined to act on her words in any way, unlike some nurses.

Stiffening somewhat when she frowned and asked two rather ominous questions. Were the Aurors waiting just outside the door for her to finish up, then? Before he had gathered the strength to ask, she plowed on, her words taking a moment to register. He wasn’t going to trial, or to Azkaban. Kingsley and people understood. His name was cleared. Harry had made sure of it.

Harry had everything worked out.

“What?!” The word burst forth past his lips before he could stop it, a mixture of emotions raging through it – horror, shock, confusion, fear. ”But the Mark,” He hissed, staring at her with a very swiftly paling face that had already looked unhealthy to begin with. ”The mark is dead – it faded – how – “ How could the Mark be gone if Voldemort was not?

How could Harry be alive if Voldemort was dead?

Nostrils flaring, eyes wide and a touch wild, Severus looked almost deranged as what little he understood of this new reality seemed to unravel and come undone before him. He knew nothing – absolutely nothing – beyond the fact that hi Mark had ceased to ache and nobody had come searching for him since his apparent death, beyond a ransack of his house in search of other fugitives. He had not allowed himself to know more. Having failed to save Harry from the fate set out for him despite his oaths, Severus had seen no point in knowing who all had lived and who all had died. To him, the one whom he owed the most was gone and there was nothing left to fight for.

”He had to die,” Severus breathed, the words wretched with a pain that ran far deeper than the loss of a child, beyond even the loss of the mother, fading as far back as Severus’ words with his own mother as a child on the nature of promises and what they meant to a soul when they were broken. He had been ruined by breaking his promise to Lily, devastated by the oath he had then had to swear to the corpse of her.

Realizing in Albus Dumbledore’s study that he would be forced to let the child die, that there would be no choice but to forsake his oaths in order to preserve the world itself, had destroyed something within him. Something that, in the wake of its reality, had left Severus devoid of many things, but perhaps most prominently, his ability to be bitter. Bitterness required the ability to remain resentful. Resent required the heat and passion of someone who sought justice or vengeance for wrongs done; Severus had channelled his resentment for years to make himself the masks he needed to acquire his vengeances over the years. With the death of Voldemort and the loss of the one he had sworn to protect, Severus had lost the ability to be resentful. The fight in him was stripped away, replaced with emptiness and apathy. Beneath that, there was a sense, an almost desire, for amends. Ultimately, however, the most that Severus had now was an unruffled sense of quiet that now seemed thrown to turmoil.

”Please,” One word, torn with emotion, was all Severus could manage at first, before he motioned as best he could, a bit abrupt and certainly a touch desperate, toward the chair in the room, indicating she could sit if she needed. ”Please tell me what happened.” The end of his bitterness, the wake of his paralysis, and the state of need he was currently in made Severus painfully humble in the asking, because he understood all too well how little he was owed from her. He was no fool to what cruelties a bitterness could bring to bear, and she had plenty of cause to be bitter with him. Granger had him at his most vulnerable, and could very easily leave him now, left to unknowing and a plethora of fears, if her bitterness was high enough.

Hermione Granger

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