They're back! This story is neither a sequel and nor is it really an alternate ending to Complicated Shadows. It is somewhere between the two. This story picks up near the end of chapter 35 of Complicated Shadows and gives you all that alternate ending you were so hoping for. Rather than stopping there, however, I am going to continue on into life after the war.

One warning before you begin reading: if you've not yet read Complicated Shadows, you should probably do so or this story will make very little sense. You can read the whole thing or just through chapter 35. (Yes, I hear you, "Just chapter 35, she says.") If you have read it, you may want to re-read that chapter (and maybe a couple before) if it's been a while.

I think that's all that needs to be said at the start. Please read and review!

"Samantha," he choked out. "I came back."

Though his breathing was ragged and his voice harsh and strained from the wound on his neck, which continued to seep blood, Snape's chest likewise continued to rise and fall with encouraging regularity. The blood replenishing potion Samantha had given him appeared to at least stabilize him, but he was far from the road to recovery. Samantha, however, was damned if they were going to get through the battle alive and have Snape die on her.

"We need to get him back to the castle now," Samantha demanded.

Kingsley and Arthur immediately bent to lift Snape's limp body. The group quickly, but carefully, made their way over the lawn strewn with rubble and wounded. Samantha led the way, shoving and shouting as she went.

Word must have made its way to the castle even faster than Samantha, for McGonagall was waiting at the doors to what remained of Hogwarts' once imposing Entrance Hall. Her tartan robes were torn and stained and her usually strictly controlled hair was half falling down her back in gray waves.

"Poppy has already been alerted that you're on your way," she said, in clear need of some way to assuage her guilt. "The hospital wing is all but demolished, so you'll have to make do in the Great Hall."

"It will have to do," Samantha responded tersely as she hurried up the stairs. She was in no mood to help McGonagall make up for how horribly she'd treated Snape – and her, for that matter – over the past year. There would be enough time for that later, there was no room for fresh leaves quite yet.

The students, teachers, and Order members alike parted at Samantha's barked bidding, allowing Kingsley and Arthur, supporting Snape's body, to pass in her wake. Samantha spotted Madam Pomfrey the moment she stepped into the Great Hall. She looked equally as harried as McGonagall, but at least didn't look as though an apology was on the tip of her tongue (though Samantha wasn't so sure that particular feeling wouldn't surface soon). The woman had, thankfully, cleared out an area in which they could work on Snape without an audience breathing down their necks.

"Do you have an antidote for Nagini's venom?" Samantha asked, though she was not at all hopeful at the answer.

"No," she answered. Samantha's face fell. "But," she continued, "Severus has the formulation for one that he brewed for Arthur."

Samantha whipped her head around. How had she never been made aware of this? Stocks of the antidote should have been made in advance.

"It happened the year before you came here," Arthur said, somewhat sheepishly, by way of explanation.

"You work on keeping him stabilized," said Samantha, turning back to face Poppy. "I am going to see what remains of the dungeons."

"I will do everything in my power," Poppy assured her.

Samantha sighed as she turned to leave the hall. And there it was. These women were going to be haranguing Snape for forgiveness the moment he showed any signs of recovery. She already knew exactly what his reaction would be: "There is nothing to forgive." There was, of course, but he would say that he had played his part and that he'd wanted them to treat him as they had. That that's what they were supposed to do. On some level, however much she didn't want to acknowledge it, he was right. If they had questioned his allegiances, his life would have been unquestionably placed in even greater jeopardy than it already was. The problem was that they had all been so ready to doubt his loyalty to Dumbledore and they had easily allowed his history to completely cloud their judgment. Then again, had Samantha not done the same? She had allowed her feelings for him to control how she viewed his actions just as they had done. They were two sides of the same coin, as was so maddeningly often the case in her life.

These thoughts carried Samantha to the badly damaged dungeons. It was fortunate that the door to the lab had been blown clean off, for she had never been given free access to it despite her relationship with Snape. Luck did not even begin to cover how very fortunate it was that the fighting had not really made it down this far and, though there was severe structural damage to the walls, likely from errant spells and the crashing of thunderous giants on the upper levels, the majority of Snape's ingredients and equipment were intact.

"Now, where would you be if you were a research notebook," Samantha said aloud to the room, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She had read somewhere that you were more likely to find something if you actually said the word of the thing you were looking for. Her habit of talking to herself suddenly seemed like a virtue.

It took Samantha only minutes to locate the battered notebook. While he had likely copied out his final findings elsewhere, she didn't have the time to search his entire office. She began to flip through pages, forcing herself to not get sidetracked by what was clearly decades worth of research. She finally came across a potion that had no title, probably on purpose, but clearly had all the elements one could look for in an antivenin.

She was devastated, even if she was not surprised, to find that Nagini's venom was one of those elements. Before allowing herself to lose all hope, she started searching through Snape's fairly priceless ingredients, praying that he'd kept a vial of it on hand. As she carefully sifted through the vials and jars, her confidence that she could save him began to fade as each item proved to be yet another exciting, expensive, and completely useless ingredient. Just as her pool of candidates shrank to only five remaining options, she picked up a small black vial labeled in Snape's unmistakable handwriting. She struggled to make out the small script and nearly dropped it when she realized she was holding a vial of Nagini's venom.

"Thank you," she fervently whispered to whatever deity happened to be listening.

Samantha assembled all of the equipment and ingredients Snape had listed in his notebook to make sure there wasn't anything she was missing. Seeing that all seemed to be in order, she sent her Patronus to the Great Hall to tell Poppy that she was beginning the potion and to keep working on Snape.

As her Patronus, which had from her childhood taken the form of a beloved cat she had owned for most of her young life, took off for the Great Hall, Samantha set to work brewing what would likely be one of the most complicated potions she had ever attempted to create. The intricate brewing process probably matched, if it did not exceed, the time-consuming work that went into Wolfsbane. It cemented once more in her mind Snape's shamefully unrecognized prowess in the discipline. It also drove her to succeed in saving him if only because he would then be free to research and publish to his heart's content.

Both Poppy and McGonagall let out a sigh of relief when Samantha's Patronus delivered its message. It was one of the first times in more years than they cared to think about that either of the witches could remember that a Patronus had been used to announce good news.

Poppy continued to tend to Snape as McGonagall looked on. Bystanders had initially tried to catch a peek of the ailing war hero, but Kingsley had swiftly dissuaded anyone of getting too close to the mediwitch and her patient. Snape still looked awful, but there was the barest hint of color in his cheeks, even if Poppy could still not get the wound to close. She knew it was dark magic preventing it from healing properly, but she hadn't the first idea what to try first. Her best hope was Snape's own potion. It didn't heal the wound on its own, as they'd found with Arthur, but it counteracted the dark magic in the venom, allowing healing spells to work as they should.

"How did he do it?" McGonagall asked everyone and no one for what was probably the hundredth time. "All that time and he had no one who knew the truth."

"Samantha knew the truth," Poppy said, though neither had heard that from Samantha herself.

"I suspect she did," McGonagall agreed with a sigh. She would have plenty of apologizing to do when all this was over.

McGonagall paced furiously while Poppy continued to work on keeping Snape from slipping into a coma. They were bad enough in the Muggle world, but a coma brought on through dark magic actively worked to trap the victim in a comatose state, effectively turning him into a prisoner in his own tormented mind. Witches and wizards who were left in comas for too long had been known to lose their minds when revived. Poppy knew she would have little hope of saving Snape even with the potion should that come to pass.

It was hours before Samantha had a finished batch of the potion. There was only enough of the venom left for one attempt. While the potion appeared to be what Snape had described in his notes, Samantha knew the only sure test was to come. However much confidence she had in her skills, the circumstances in which she'd found herself brewing were not particularly conducive to the kind of exacting concentration she normally devoted to her potions. Samantha fervently prayed as she ascended the stairs from the dungeons that her work would prove successful.

"Poppy, I have it," she said urgently, hurrying to Snape's cot.

Most people were busy tending to others, if they weren't sleeping themselves, so they thankfully had no audience to speak of as Samantha administered the potion. She sat on the edge of Snape's cot and pulled the cork out of the flask. Poppy had shifted Snape's pillows so he was almost in a sitting position. He was completely unconscious. It was the only thing saving him from the pain he would feel given that they couldn't give him any pain relieving potions until after his wound could be closed. Samantha held his head back and tipped the flask into his open mouth. She massaged his throat to help him swallow, careful to avoid aggravating the bite marks.

"How long did this take last time?" Samantha asked Poppy as she gently laid his head back on his pillow, keeping her eyes on his pale face.

"Arthur was conscious within a couple of hours, but he was found almost immediately after he'd been attacked. Given the state of him, Severus had to have been bitten at least three or four hours ago. Maybe more," Poppy said, worry creeping into her voice.

"It was more. I saw him in the forest just as Malfoy told him that the Dark Lord wanted to talk to him. That was not long after the battle began. He must have known something like this could happen," Samantha said angrily, more to herself than to anyone around her. "Why was he not prepared for it?"

As Samantha brooded, Poppy ran diagnostic spells over Snape's prone form. Samantha looked up at her expectantly when she was done. Poppy shook her head.

"It's too soon to tell anything," she said apologetically. "You should get some sleep. I will run these checks again in an hour."

Samantha shook her head. She was not about to take a nap while Snape fought for his life. She sat in the chair next to his bed, his clammy hand clasped firmly in her own.

Throughout the night, Poppy performed hourly diagnostic spells on Snape's condition. Each hour, she could give Samantha no more hope than she had the previous. After this had happened the fourth time, Samantha reached into the pocket of her robes to extract the rosary she had taken to keeping on her person. Most of the time, it served as little more than a security blanket, now she was desperate to have her prayers heard. Keeping Snape's hand in her own, she knelt on the hard, cold stone and wrapped the rosary around both of their hands. She leant her head against their clasped hands and begged for Snape's recovery. Samantha could practically feel her heart break at the very thought that she could lose Snape after they'd gotten through this far.

Poppy continued to tend to Snape around Samantha, who refused to move for the rest of the night and into the morning. The only concession she would allow was a small pillow to pad her aching knees.

It was nearing midday when Snape stirred. The first thing he registered was a searing pain in his neck. The second was that he was no longer in the Shrieking Shack. From there, it all came back; giving his memories to Potter, Kingsley finding him, and Samantha on the battlefield. Had he actually survived? It was then that he realized someone was holding his hand. He cracked his eyes open and squinted against the harsh light coming in from the windows across the hall from where he lay. Turning his head slightly, he saw Samantha, her head against their hands. She wasn't asleep, for her lips were moving and tears were sliding down her cheek. Snape lifted a finger to brush them away. Samantha gasped and looked up at him.

"Severus," she whispered in a broken voice, sounding as if this surely must be a dream.

"Samantha," he croaked. He winced at the pain.

Samantha stood up immediately and called for Poppy, who rushed to his side.

"Oh, Severus, you had us so worried," Poppy exclaimed, clearly relieved. "I am going to try to heal your wound now. The potion should have removed dark magic."

He must have had a quizzical look on his face, for she nodded her head toward Samantha.

"I found your notes for Arthur," Samantha explained, continuing to hold his hand in a vice-like grip. "You do know there are about eight superfluous steps in the potion, right?"

Snape almost laughed at her critique. Only she wouldn't think twice about saying such a thing at a time like this.

Poppy said the spell and sighed in relief when it closed the wound. There would be a nasty scar, but there was no more dark magic preventing at least most of it from healing properly. Samantha immediately grabbed a pain relief potion from the small trolley that had been wheeled to Snape's bedside and moved to bring it to his lips. Snape shook his head and took the bottle from her hands.

"Let me do it myself," he said in a whisper, not wanting to strain his throat. He was thankful that Samantha didn't look put out by his refusal, but rather glad that he was asserting his ability to take care of himself. Snape downed the potion and immediately felt a lessening of the pain in his neck, but there was still a background throbbing. Given that he should have died, he had to be thankful for small mercies.

Samantha took in a great lungful of air and let it out slowly as she smiled at him. She moved her hand to his face to brush the stray hairs out of his eyes.

"We survived," she said simply, knowing the great weight those two words carried for both of them.

Snape never believed he would ever hear those words. He had accepted a long time ago that he would die doing what he did. Spies were not known for their longevity and, frankly, he was surprised that he had lasted as long as he had. Truthfully, he was at a loss as to what came next. This had been his existence for his entire adult life and, if he were honest, had defined much of his adolescence. He wouldn't mind continuing to teach, he knew that much. Excellent as his brewing skills were, Snape had no desire to go into it commercially. Customers had to be treated with kindness and care. Students did not. He suppressed the urge to grin wickedly as he imagined his students finding out that he would not stop being a bastard just because the war was over. And not only that, he could finally rein in his house. He could finally encourage them to develop the skills that had gotten them into Slytherin without the attendant ideology he'd been required to uphold. New beginnings, indeed.

Samantha watched Snape carefully as he stared out of the window opposite his bed. She said nothing, wanting to allow her words to sink in. The glimmer of amusement in his eyes, however, piqued her interest.

"What on earth is going on in that head of yours, Severus Snape?" She asked, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.

Snape raised an eyebrow as he turned to look at her, his lips twitching, plans already forming.

"The House of Slytherin won't know what hit them."