Life was leaving him as quickly as the blood flowing from his neck. The wound throbbed with piercing pain and he struggled to find breath as blood filtered into his airways. His body grew cold, and fear restricted his lungs more than the blood flow. So he reached out, pulling the boy toward him to look into those eyes that just might have the power to save him or at least offer some comfort.

"Look… at… me."

And the boy did look, straight at him. And for a moment he was with Lily and the pain and struggle he was under died away. He gripped the soft cotton of the boy's robes more tightly as he gazed into those emerald green eyes, waiting for death to take him.

"You can let go now, Severus."

The shock of the voice made him gasp, and he relinquished his hold instantly. He knew that voice and was certain of its owner, despite the fact he hadn't heard it in nearly three decades. Once he let go, the owner of the voice drew back far enough that Severus could see her face. Lily Evans was looking down at him.

He gave a cry and scuttled backwards from her out of surprise. Lily was dead. So how was she kneeling before him in the exact position Harry Potter had been in moments before?

She raised her hand in a gesture of calm. "It's alright, Sev. Take a breath."

The use of the nickname, which he hadn't heard since they'd parted ways, calmed him. And he took a breath, a deep and long one.

"You're dead," he said, finally.

"And so are you."

His hand shot to his neck in an effort to prove her wrong, feeling for the wound there. But it was gone. He gabbed at the other side of his neck, thinking he must have been mistaken. But there was nothing there either.

He looked down at his hands, expecting blood, but there was none. His hands had betrayed him. There was surely a wound on his neck, they just couldn't find it. And then he saw the cracks - lines running along his hands, up his arms, through his stomach and his legs. He could see right through the lines in some places to the floor of light below him. For that matter, it wasn't much of a floor, just light that was somehow solid or at least able to hold up his weight. "I'm…"

"Fractured." Lily finished for him. "Most souls have scars, some souls have deeper scars than others. And then some souls, injured from committing murder…" She paused here, staring at him, not with hatred or disgust, but with compassion. "Are fractured."

He looked her over, and could see no scars. She appeared solid but she had a glow, as though she was somehow made of the same light he was sitting on. He looked around. Above, below, and around them was nothing but light - an endless hall of light, stretching farther than he could see. And here and there, dotted among the light were a countless number of doors.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"This is in between." He stared at her and she tried to clarify. "After death but before the afterlife."

"I'm dead?" he said it more as a confirmation to himself than as a question.

"Yes."

"And this place…?"

"Is a kind of testing ground. Everyone is brought here after death to determine the condition of their soul."

He looked down at his hands again. "This isn't my physical body?" It looked to him like he was in pieces, but those pieces stubbornly refused to fall away from one other another. Somehow, his soul was holding itself together.

"You left your physical body behind when you died. It's just your soul now."

"And it's fractured?" Compared to how Lily's soul looked, it seemed clear his soul wasn't in any good condition.

"You can be healed," at this point, she stood up and walked over to him. She took his hands and helped him to his feet, "but it will take some effort. There are tests you have to face."

"… Okay." He wasn't sure he understood exactly what was going on. But he was distracted by how real her hands felt on his own, as though they weren't two souls but two bodies touching, skin on skin. "Lily, I…" He found it difficult to sum up all he wanted to say to her. He wanted to tell her he was sorry for the role he'd played in her death, wanted to tell her how much he'd missed her friendship, wanted to tell her…

"We'll have time to talk later," she said. "Right now, there are more important things."

"Like what?"

"Saving your soul." She released his hands (he wished she hadn't). She gestured at the many doors around them. "Here your soul is tested, and if you're deemed pure, then you are granted eternal life."

He seriously doubted the chances of his soul being deemed pure. "And if not?"

"Then… you're granted eternal death."

"Which is… what?"

She furrowed her brow. "I don't honestly know… and I don't want to know." She shook her head. "It's not something you should have to worry about."

"I don't think that I-"

Her hands came back to his and squeezed. "You'll do fine. Trust me."

He did trust her, much more than he had ever trusted anyone in his life. But still, he didn't see how this could turn out well.

"I will be here every step of the way," she said. "I was appointed your guardian, which means I'm here to help you."

"Okay…" He supposed with Lily on his side, things couldn't turn out too badly. He looked down at his fractured soul to remind himself he was indeed dead. "What do I have to do?"

She released his hands again and started leading him down the hall of light. "You'll go through a series of doors. I won't actually be able to come in with you, but I will there when you enter and once you exit. I can't interfere once you're inside. What happens in there will be up to you."

"What am I going to find in there?" He was starting to like this idea less, especially now he realized Lily wasn't going to be with him the entire time.

She stopped walking and turned to face him. "It's going to be trials from your life, things that left you scarred and fractured." She gestured to the lines covering his soul. "You're going to have to face them. And if you can overcome them, you'll be healed. And if you can't…"

"I won't be," he finished for her.

"Right."

"And if I'm not healed," he said, speaking the words she seemed to have trouble saying. "Then I'm… impure?"

She hesitated, as though she would rather not think about it. "Yes."

"What if I don't want to take the test?" he asked, thinking it might be the easier route.

She let out a long breath as she spoke, "Then you are stuck here, in limbo, until you do."

Lost forever in a beautiful hall of light with Lily didn't seem like a bad idea at all.

"And I go away," she continued, as though she had read his thoughts, "until you change your mind."

Well, scratch that idea. "I don't have a choice, then."

"No, you don't."

He was silent for a moment. He studied her, staring at her eyes, intense and waiting. She wanted him to go through with this.

"… All right. Show me the first door."

He was young, much too young to understand what was happening. But his parents' voices were loud and he didn't like it. He stood in the corner, adding his own cries to theirs.

He grew older. Their arguments became worse and he cried less, but the corner never changed. He always stood in the same one. Sometimes he'd sink to the floor and hug his knees and wait for it all to end. Sometimes he'd stand and watch with silent tears running down his face. But he'd always go to the corner behind the sofa. The corner meant safety even though it never meant an end to the scenes that played out before his eyes.

His parents' arguments consisted only of raised voices at first. But over the years, the two of them started banging on tables or walls to make their point. Then his mom started breaking things. Then his dad started throwing things - first breakables, then fists.

One time, Severus got up the nerve to leave the corner and run from the house. He ran up the hill to the playground, and it was there he first met Lily. She was playing by herself, and it had seemed to him that she was an angel sent to save him, at least temporarily, from the horrors of his house.

As time went on, he would often run up that hill to escape his parents' fighting. Sometimes Lily wouldn't be there, but most of the time she was. Those days, running from his parents to Lily, were both the worst and happiest times of his life.

Every single argument his parents ever had played before Severus' eyes as he stepped through the door Lily opened for him. But he wasn't just viewing them, he was reliving them. He was standing in that corner watching them fight. He felt himself at three years old, powerless to understand, let alone do anything but bawl. He felt himself at five years old, sobbing and begging his parents to stop. Then he was eight, tucked away in the corner and in tears but silent.

And then he wasn't sure what age he was, but he knew exactly which fight was playing out before him. This was the fight that changed his parents' arguments forever. He remembered running from the house up the hill to Lily and coming home to find his mother with bruises and the house quieter than it had ever been. It was a quiet that marked his father's realization that he could win any fight.

Severus never actually saw his father hit his mother. But he did see the bruises and when he didn't see the bruises, he noticed the quiet. Lily would ask him how bad things were at home, and he would shrug. She would assume he didn't want to talk about it. And that much was true, but mostly he couldn't tell her how bad things were because he didn't exactly know… But he could put two and two together.

As the fight played out, Severus felt his legs moving him toward the door. He would run, run to Lily, and she would save him. But as he pulled on the doorknob, the door wouldn't open. He pulled again, nothing. A third time he tried, but the door was stuck. That hadn't happened in real life.

He turned slowly from the door to face his parents. And he realized he wasn't a kid any longer. No, he was himself, an adult, with all his years of serving Voldemort and Dumbledore behind him. So, what has he supposed to do? Running away wasn't an option this time. And if his parents' fights had wounded him spiritually… was he supposed to try to put an end to it?

"Stop!" he yelled at his parents, but it was as though they couldn't hear him.

His father picked up a book from one of the shelves and threw it. Then he grabbed a glass from the table. His mother dodged and the yelling continued.

"Stop!" he tried again, taking a step forward this time.

His mother picked up her wand - never to use, but only to threaten - his father threw a fist. And it connected.

There was silence as all three people in the room stood in shock. The sound his father's hand had made against his mother's cheek seemed to reverberated throughout the small sitting room. No one moved. Then his mother raised her wand again, maybe to defend herself this time, but his father hit her again, realizing he had power now. As his mother backed away, his father advanced on her, yelling.

Severus felt himself moving forward. He grabbed the back of his father's shirt and threw him across the room, away from his mother. He stood between the two of them as his father regained his balance.

"Leave her alone," he said to his father.

His father looked right at him. It was a power hungry look. Severus had seen that look many times while working for Voldemort, and he'd seen it on his own face more than a few times. The look took him aback.

His father came at him. Realizing he had no wand, Severus raised his hands and hit his father with a punch that sent him stumbling backward. "I said, leave her alone!"

His father steadied himself against the armchair and wiped a drop of blood from his lip.

"You will not touch her!" At first, Severus thought his father might lunge at him again. But his father's body began to dissolve until there was nothing but air and the sitting room began to reshape itself.

Whether because of his unhappy home life or because of the leather bound books blanketing the walls, the sitting room had always felt like a padded cell. But the candle-lit lamp hanging from the ceiling burst with a brilliant warm light that it had never possessed during his lifetime. As the light fell upon the room, things changed as if by magic.

The threadbare sofa and armchair looked comfortable and overstuffed. The rickety table he'd remembered appeared sturdy. The books lining the walls were now new and somehow added color to the room instead of taking it away. It was as though a professional decorator had came in and redone the place. Severus hardly recognized his family's home. Everything was just as it had been, yet the room felt open, charming, and inviting as it never had before.

He turned, and there behind him stood his mother. "Severus," she smiled. "Why don't you have a seat?"

"M-mother?" If it hadn't been that she had his nose, he wouldn't have believed it. She looked full and fit and happy. He had never seen her like that before.

He sat in the armchair, whether out of obedience or shock he wasn't sure. His mother sat down across from him on the sofa. He was struck by how beautiful she looked. It was a word he never would have used to describe her before. Not that she had been ugly, but he hadn't considered her anymore of a charmer than he had considered himself.

But she was beautiful now. Though all her physical features appeared unchanged, she had the same glow about her as Lily and she seemed to radiate warmth. She grasped his hand, and he could feel that warmth.

"It's so good to see you," she said. "I wish we could have more time together, but I can't hold you up. Lily did tell you about the tests?"

"Lily?" He stared at his mother who had only ever referred to Lily as "that girl."

"Yes, Lily," his mother continued, apparently unaware of how out of character she was being. "Look around you, Severus. What is missing from this house?"

He looked beside the chair where he'd seen the body dissolve. "My father."

"That's right. You're father isn't here. He went on the same journey you are on, and he didn't make it." She looked down at the table, took a shaky breath, and looked back up at him. She gave his hand a squeeze. "His soul was sent somewhere else, somewhere you don't want to go."

"I don't-"

"Listen to me, Severus," she leaned in toward him, her eyes shining. "I wasn't able to give you the kind of life at home that you deserved. Your father and I should have been better parents, but we weren't. I should have been a better mother, but I wasn't it. And I want the opportunity to make that up to you. I want to see you back here again. So you listen to everything Lily tells you, and you find your way back here because I don't want hear you went the same way as your father."

She was in tears now, large drops of tears that rolled down her face. And she raised her hands to cover her eyes. Severus pulled his own hand away in surprise. He had often seen her in tears as a child, but always in tears of frustration or anger or pain, never in compassion.

"I love you, Severus," she said. "I never told you enough while you were living under my roof, if I told you at all. And I'm so sorry. I should have told you every day."

He sat dumbfounded in his chair. Again, he was compelled to believe that this was not his mother. The woman before him could not be the one he remembered always screaming and fighting with his father, always bemoaning how unhappy she was, and never having time for her son.

But she lowered her hands to look at him, tears staining her face, and he saw that prominent nose, that nose that he'd inherited. And there could be no doubt that he was her son. She wasn't the mother he remembered, but she was definitely his mother. She'd been transformed somehow into the mother he'd always wanted.

She laid her tear soaked hand on his own, and again he felt that warmth that seemed to radiate from her.

"I love you, too, mum." It can out as barely a whisper, as though he was afraid to speak the words. And for a moment he thought he'd only said them in his head instead of out loud. They felt foreign on his tongue from lack of use.

But that didn't make the statement less true. He'd always loved both of his parents, throughout his entire childhood, despite their fighting and despite how he'd thought they felt about him. It was a feeling he'd always thought was naturally hard-wired into a child's mind, something he had no control over. But for the first time in the existence of his soul, he was glad to have that emotion because it was finally being returned.

As he was sitting in that chair, smiling faintly at his mother, he heard a click behind him. He turned, and light shone on his face, so bright he had to shield his eyes. A door of light had opened up out of thin air.

"You go on," his mother told him. "Lily's waiting for you."