Chapter One - Going Under

Screaming, deceiving, and bleeding for you . . .

Everything he had worked for had come to this: dying on a dusty floor with no one to care, no one to be comforted—none of the usual weepy business that followed a person's death. Severus Snape would never have a funeral; not that he'd ever wanted one. They were far too insincere and sentimental for his taste, and he didn't suspect anyone would be sniveling over him. But still, as he lay dying, one thought that crossed his mind—other than thoughts of her, of course—was that a tiny piece of him wished that there was just one person who would have cared that he died. The fact that there was no one, no one at all, who would care in the slightest, was frankly, quite depressing. Not that he wanted to admit it. He welcomed death, however. Death meant that the years of silent torture were over, and he could rest. Or so he hoped.

Suddenly, he heard a noise. What had seemed like hours had really only been moments, and as the Dark Lord slunk out of the room, another figure entered, covered from head to toe in a long cloak. He saw the figure for only a moment before it disappeared, and he began to wonder if he'd been imagining things in his dying state.

Then Potter was there, along with Granger and Weasley, and Snape knew what he had to do. From deep within himself, he reached for the memories he had kept secret for so very long, and willed them outward. He had no time and no way to pull them out with a wand. In his desperation, they began to escape from his body like a shimmery steam.

He grabbed the front of the boy's robes. "Take . . . it . . . Take . . . it . . ." he said gruffly, not letting go.

He watched the Granger girl hand a flask to Potter, then stand staring at him as the boy lifted his memories into it with his wand. She had a strange look upon her face, almost like pity. He wished she'd turn away. He didn't like the idea of a public death, and more than that, he hated pity. A subtle anger bubbled inside him—much as it could in his present state—but he used it as a force to get the next few words out of his mouth. Foolish as it was, he had to look into his—no, her— eyes one more time.

"Look . . . at . . . me . . ." he whispered.

He found the green eyes of his youth, of summers spent together, of laughter and acceptance—of the one person he'd ever really opened up to. He was ready to let go, ready to go to her. He loosened his grip from Potter's robes, preparing for death by releasing everything around him.

The world then slipped away into memory, and he no longer felt the dirty floor beneath him, but the soft grass by the Black Lake where he and Lily used to meet. Potter's green eyes were now a bright blue cloudless sky, and he gazed up at it as he waited for Lily to arrive.