Disclaimer: The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman and Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. (No. You never. I thought Jeremy Paxman and A. A. Gill wrote the lot.)
Author's Notes: They are a lot alike, aren't they? In Harry Potter canon, this is just post-OotP. In Sandman canon, I've only read up to A Game of You. No, I don't care if the timelines don't match. Shutupshutupshutup! La la la, I'm not listening... This has probably been done before and more coherently by better writers than me, but in case it hasn't, here it is.
Visiting
(Potions for dreamless sleep do work on him; they just don't give him dreamless sleep. They're not powerful enough. Nothing is.)
The walls of the tiny, cold stonework chamber ooze with sticky scarlet fluid. He smells wet sandstone and garlic in the foetid air. There's no way out. With a grinding sound the room begins to sink, and he scrabbles desperately at the walls...
It's nail varnish.
And from the stone floor he can see for miles, the sun bright, the air crisp, the clouds a rolling, changing landscape against the azure dawn. Below is a sparkling indigo sea and beyond that, a gloriously green island. There are people sitting on its cliffs, dipping long oars into the sea, straining with effort as they row their country away. He can see other little dots of green on either side of this one. It's a race...
There's a glass suncatcher hanging in the air in front of him. First it's a tall man. Then it's a hunched boy. Then it's a little child. It's getting smaller, and he has to lean forward to see what it's going to change into next.
They're taking the castle down stone by stone, the children floating away on rag rugs (they can't afford proper magic carpets these days, how embarrassing), and he watches with the other teachers, furious but mute. There's nothing any of them could do to stop it. This is prime property, they said. It's all just a matter of money. He has no idea what to do with himself now. Maybe he'll just take a broom, fly across the channel and after that, go... somewhere...
But Voldemort looms up in the sky in front of him, the size of a castle, the size of a county, and swats him out of the air like an inconvenient fly. He's tumbling freely through the sky, hair and cloak whipping around him in a suffocating cocoon, whipping his face, (was that a voice calling him?) and he tries to take a breath but the buffeting, icy slipstream pummels into him like blows and knocks the wind out of his lungs each time, and so blind and breathless (he's certain someone said...) he is about to crash into the sea, and he knows, he's been told, that at this velocity and from this height the water will break every bone in his body, and then he'll sink—
(Severus!)
Strong arms catch him, and he's back in his bed again. He struggles to rearrange the tangled bedclothes, letting his eyes adjust to the faint moonlight.
(That wasn't a bad one.)
The other man is still there. His eyes glitter like stars in the darkness.
"Oh," Snape says. "It's you."
Then he swallows, gathering as much belligerence as he can when it's three in the morning and he's so badly shaken:
"What do you want?"
A pause. Then Morpheus says:
I wish to speak with you.
The voice is more felt than heard, like a noise in the dark that you can't be sure you didn't imagine. The words never reach his ears, but travel in vibrations through his fingertips and up his arms and neck and into his head. They sit in the mind briefly before melting away like sugar in the rain.
"I didn't think you merely dropped in to say hello," Snape says. This time the aggression is not hard to muster.
There is only silence. Snape becomes impatient with the shadow at the foot of his bed, and this is not unusual. He always has been better with potions than with people – at least herbs are never deliberately obtuse. He always gets the feeling that other people are trying their damnedest to tap-dance on his last nerve.
"If you have something to tell me, then do," he hisses. "I never liked small talk. Well? Say your piece. Then go away."
The twin stars flare angrily. You dare tell me where I can and cannot go?
Snape gives him a flat look that clearly says he would dare spit in a horntail's eye, just so there would be one person in the world as generally annoyed as he is.
The flares subside, and a grudging, measured look takes their place. You have a knack for riling well-intentioned people.
Snape gives him a look of utter disgust. "It's an inexpensive pastime."
They glare at each other in the darkness, watching rather than speaking for now.
Dream's hair is black, as elegantly glossy as a young crow's wing. Snape's hair is black, and permanently slick with the unpleasant fumes and vapours of the many potions he brews. Dream's skin is pale, like snow or a well-prepared corpse. Snape's skin is pale, with a sallow, jaundiced tinge, because he lives in Scotland and spends most of his time underground. Dream's eyes are black, from one corner to the other, and in their depths the cosmos whirls and sparkles. Snape's eyes are black, and ordinarily human in construction, but the iris is truly black, not dark brown or grey, but black like boiling pitch, and in the darkest depths of the pupils are inextinguishable flames.
"Why now?"
The dream king blinks.
What?
"Why now?" he repeats, with exaggerated patience. "It's been sixteen years since I last saw you; why are you here now?"
You are in danger now. A war is looming.
"No. Really?"
It's not his best comeback ever, but then, he is very tired.
You will die.
He slumps. "Fine with me," he sighs, and means it.
Dream is suddenly angry. You may wish it, but I do not. Your death is avoidable. I will not see you suffer needlessly, Severus.
"Oh? And how is mother these days?" Snape says nastily.
Rather than provoking rage, this seems to silence him. Snape gets out of bed, stretches uneasily, feeling his vertebrae shift and crackle, looks out the window. The lake shimmers and ripples under the bright black sky; as far as the eye can see, all is silver and shadows. It's a full moon, he notices. He wonders if Lupin has bothered to take his potion, or prefers to wallow in pain and misery like a good little widower. He wonders why the question actually worries him.
He senses a stirring behind him, and a gaze on his back. He turns around, and Dream stares down at the floor. Snape is not kind enough to view it as any sort of humility. Then Dream looks up at him, and in his fathomless eyes there is a form of apology.
Some... events occurred recently which made me... reconsider certain of my actions in the past.
Snape says nothing.
I have been making amends for those I can. I have been correcting the mistakes I made. The pause, the lift of the chin, the defiant stare in the face of abasement. I have learned my lesson.
Snape gives a tiny laugh, alien and quickly stifled; he never laughs if he can help it, but sometimes it catches him by surprise. Dream looks embarrassed and angry. Snape is reckless enough not to care.
"You haven't learned," he spits. "You can't; you can't hold the lesson in your head. You can go anywhere and do anything, from now until the end of time. You'll never die, so you don't have to age; you don't have to age, so you cannot change. All your experience will never teach you anything except that you don't answer to anyone but yourself!" He's shouting now, in the darkness, but he knows no-one will hear him; this is just another kind of dream. "You have no fear of death to drive you – you don't have to worry about spending eternity making up for your sins. You can't learn. You'll never learn."
He bows his head, clutching the back of a chair with chalky fingers. His voice is a hoarse whisper.
"And you can never rectify the things you've done."
There is a tense silence.
Dream bows his head.
I can make things better, he murmurs.
"How?"
I can destroy your enemy.
Snape allows himself to fall into the chair. He has the temerity to let his incredulity show.
"We're like laboratory mice to you," he says suddenly.
Dream looks startled. What?
"We're like laboratory mice," Snape repeats slowly. "You don't understand. You have watched us and manipulated us for so long that you're curious; you want to know how we work, how we think. How far we'll go. You're curious, but you'll never fully understand, however much you want to. And, in the end, we're of as much consequence to you as rats."
Dream has had enough. He stands, haughty and insulted, and says, You do not understand what you're talking about. I do not understand why you reject what I am willing to grant you, but this is the last time I will offer it.
Snape closes his eyes. "I reject your offer because it would be wasted. You have no apprehension of the truth: he is only a manifestation of the problem. Either this war will lead to a greater peace and knowledge, or it will plunge the world into darkness – and even if it does, all darkness fades. Even the most horrific things have good consequences; even he cannot destroy that balance. If I die for the greater peace, then I have served my purpose and have nothing to regret. If I die in vain, so be it. Either way, I will not abandon my duty."
(He has talked too much and too passionately; his hopes are voiced, and he has the absurd superstition that this makes them vulnerable to dashing.)
Dream is staring at him.
Dream's eyes are black, from one corner to the other, and in their depths the cosmos whirls and sparkles. The wisdom of eternity is his, even if he does forget it sometimes in his pride; and some foresight, some anticipation of what is imminent is available to him. He is a proud creature, and not good company – his realm is in the back of the mind, which is a silly, lonely place – but people's dreams shape him as much as he shapes people's dreams, and so, to a degree, he is capable of being human. This is not necessarily a good thing, but neither is it necessarily bad. He does have empathy, and while he is often incapable of admitting his mistakes aloud, he does understand. He does now, anyway.
He is proud. He is proud of Severus Snape.
Snape gets back into bed. His sallow cheeks are tinged an ugly colour, and his movements are stiff from sleep and embarrassment. He lies, staring at the ceiling, waiting for Morpheus to go.
(This was one of the rare times that Snape slept at all; he is stubbornly wary of the realms of night, and very good at sleep-replacement potions.)
Dream smiles, and does what he came here to do; what he should have done long ago, but didn't, out of spite – to punish the foolishness of an angry boy. Snape doesn't feel the sand fall into his eyes, but drifts into a lukewarm oblivion with his own angry hopes still ringing in his ears.
(He dreams of golden feathers; he dreams of heads bent over perfectly steaming cauldrons, of a future with a future. And house-elves darning underpants and singing Celestina Warbeck songs, of course, because even Snape has to have silly dreams sometimes.)
Goodnight, Severus. Sleep well.
END