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Perchance to Dream	By : Ataraxia Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 6300 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Harry Potter franchise and do not profit from this story.

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“Severus...”

The tang of saltwater invaded his nostrils as he once again found himself standing on the pebbled beach, facing the roiling waves. Black eyes searched the beckoning water, desperately seeking his friend.

“Lily? Lily?” he screamed her name into crashing waves but knew that his voice was lost on the wind.   After only a moment’s hesitation, he ran into the surf and allowed the undertow to once again drag him into familiar oblivion.

The crushing pressure of the water was soon replaced with warmth, and Severus found himself standing in the white nothingness with Lily Evans holding him so tightly he thought his ribs might break. He closed his eyes and revelled in the lavender scent of her hair.

“I am so glad I found you again,” she murmured into his chest.

“Mmmm,” he murmured in assent, “Although, the method of transportation here leaves much to be desired.” He smiled weakly as his lifelong friend pulled away to observe his tortured expression.

Lily laughed, her tinkling voice echoing into the eternal nothingness around them, “You never were one for swimming,” she teased, her face breaking into a loving smile. She reached up and curled a finger through his shiny black locks.

Severus resisted the urge to lean into her hand, as if such a thing would be far too intimate. The woman before him had haunted most of his waking moments since their last encounter but, try as he might, he was never able to find her again in his dreams - until now.

“Harry defeated the Dark Lord,” he told her quietly, “Thanks to your warning we were able to organise the troops before the battle. You saved his life.”

Lily shook her head somberly, “No, Sev, you saved his life. And now I need you to save his mind.”

Severus raised an eyebrow in surprise, “You know of his condition then?” His mind filled with images of the empty boy seated in front of the window.

“I know more than I can possibly explain to you, but I’m going to try. Walk with me.” Reaching down, she encircled his elegant hand with her small fingers and together they proceeded into the whiteness, where she began to explain.

“There is more to existence than life and death, Severus. There are places, states, in between the two planes of existence that can hold a person’s soul, or pieces of it.”

“Limbo?” Severus asked, evenly, “Purgatory, perhaps?”

She nodded, slowly. Their soft footsteps reverberated into the void as she continued, “When you die, your spirit as a whole separates from your body and usually passes through the between states, into death. Lost spirits can pass from life into this world, between, and become trapped here.”

A flicker of alarm graced Severus’ typically expressionless face, “Are you saying Harry is dead?”

“ No, no,” Lily shook her head fervently, “If he were dead, his entire spirit would have left his body, which is hasn’t. Severus, Harry’s stuck here. Apparently, killing Voldemort fractured his spirit. Only a small piece of it is left in his body, the rest of it is trapped; some of it here, some of it beyond. I can feel him, I can track down pieces of him but I can’t guide them back to his body. I need you to do it for me.” A pleading expression crossed her lovely, freckled face.

A million questions ran through Severus’ mind, the whole concept was so utterly beyond anything he had ever tried to comprehend. He understood magic, but this, this, was so much more than that.

“Lily, I am unsure as to how any of this relates to dreaming, precisely. How am I seeing you here?”

White teeth appeared as she chewed her bottom lip, searching for the right words to explain the situation. “When people dream, a piece of their spirit leaves their body and wanders between. The piece of spirit that leaves can only survive for so long on its own, so over the course of the night it is drawn back to itself. Every morning when you open your eyes, your soul is once again whole.”

She looked up at Severus calmly, watching his face to make sure he had full comprehension. His brow was furrowed, but he seemed to be understanding as he encouraged her to continue with a slight nod and a squeeze of her hand.

“Harry’s soul can’t find its way back to itself,” her voice barely registered above a whisper, “If the pieces can’t be drawn back into his body, they’ll pass on, leaving him in his current state.”

“And you aren’t able to bring the pieces together.”

“No, only someone from the realm of the living can bring the fragments back. I can’t get any closer to your realm than I am right now.”

The whiteness that surrounded them seemed unending, and Severus had a difficult time picturing anything beyond it. “What’s on the other side?” he asked, quietly.

Even in her darkest of moments, Lily Evans managed a small laugh and her eyes sparkled with mischief, “You’re not allowed to know that yet, Sev. Not for a long time, I hope. I’ll get in trouble for telling you; we dead guard our secrets carefully, you know.” She scrunched her nose at him in a teasing gesture.

Severus inhaled sharply as a biting pain ripped through his chest. In their moments together, he had allowed himself to forget that Lily was, in fact, no longer alive. He cleared his throat and blinked back the pesky tear that threatened to betray his tightly guarded emotions.

“Should you not be there? Have you not passed on?“ he queried.

“I made it through, but I’ve been fighting for years to make it back to this in between place. I knew if I could somehow get here, I could reach people who were still alive. People like you. Or Harry”

“Harry?”

She frowned and shook her head “I could never reach him the way I reached you. He’s my son, but he never knew me. I couldn’t reach him through his dreams the same way, no matter how hard I tried. Believe me. I tried.” Abruptly, she stopped walking and turned away from him to face the whiteness. Her voice took a low timbre, and she spoke barely above a whisper. “Oh, Sev, if you knew how hard I tried...”

Severus stood quietly for a moment as his brain tried desperately to organize his thoughts into a coherent steam. His eyes fluttered shut momentarily and his tongue darted out to moisten his thin lips before he whispered his reply: “Tell me what to do.”

~*~*~

Jagged pain shot down his abused spine as he awoke with a start in the stiff-backed chair that occupied Harry’s room. Groaning, he unfolded himself from the seat, noting with disgust that a thin sheen of his sweat coated the artificial leather upholstery. With a sickening crack, Severus jerked his head left and right, desperate to relieve the crick that had formed there after what he could only assume were many hours of terrible posture.

Casting a glance to the sleeping boy in the bed, Severus gathered himself and disapparated from the room with a loud crack.

In his office, the headmaster regarded Severus calmly as he recounted his tale. The potions professor was keenly aware of how absurd the entire thing sounded, and on more than one occasion he cringed as the words passed his lips.

Dumbledore steepled his fingers on his desk, his eyes alight with wonder, “But, Severus, how do you find the soul fragments?”

Severus shrugged, “The pieces are attached to his memories and dreams, which are trapped somewhere between. According to Lily, if I can find them, I can bring them back with me when I wake.” It was a daunting prospect, to say the least. There was no saying how many pieces the boy’s soul had splintered into, or how long it would take to successfully recover them.

“Follow my voice when you sleep, Sev. I’ll try my best to guide you”.

His heart had sunk when he’d realized that she wouldn’t be accompanying him on his journey to help save her son. The sharp pain of longing for her company had become a faint ache over the past sixteen years, but being in her presence again, however briefly, had brought the pain back to the surface as if time had not dulled it at all.

~***~

Tears streamed down Lily Evans grubby face as she stared at her wounded knee. Blood seeped through her abraded skin and mixed in with the grit that was ground into her tender flesh. Whimpering, she tried to stand up, but her injured knee wouldn’t hold her weight.

“Unnnhhhh” she cried out, as she collapsed onto the sandy surface of the playground once again.

“Lily!” cried a young, dark haired boy as he sprinted across the old playground. “Lily, are you okay?” The dishevelled boy squatted in front of the young girl and stared worriedly at her knee.

The girl smiled in relief at the sight of her friend, “I hurt myself, Sev” she said, pointing a slightly chubby finger at the angry red wound that was revealed by the tear in her favourite yellow overalls.

Severus frowned, his young brow knitting together in concentration as he examined her knee.   Peering up at her from beneath his long, shaggy black hair, he asked “Can you bend it?” He placed one delicate hand on her calf, and one just above her knee, and gently tried to flex the joint.

He smiled reassuringly at Lily as he put her leg back down. “I think its okay, Lil,” he said, nodding to himself, “Come over to the fountain and we’ll wash it off, yeah?”

Reaching down, the boy in faded black clothes carefully helped up his beautiful red-headed friend and helped her hobble to the fountain in the middle of the park, where he gently washed her knee, unaware that anyone was watching.

“You were always so kind to me, Sev.” Lily, the adult (of the ghost thereof) placed a hand on her life-time friend’s shoulder as the two of them watched their childhood selves.

Severus shivered slightly under her touch, his eyes never leaving the two children in front of him, “You loved those overalls,” he mused quietly.

Lily laughed “Remember when you tried to patch them for me?”

Severus winced as an image of the poorly mended pants flashed in his vision, one yellow leg patched horrifically with a handkerchief and clumsy black stitches. “I never have been particularly adept at the domestic arts,” he admitted dourly. His expression softened as Lily dropped a soft kiss on his sunken cheek.

“ ‘A’ for effort, my dear.” She teased, affectionately.

The two of them turned back to the scene in front of them, where young Severus was tenderly patting young Lily’s freshly washed knee with a pocket square. “There,” he pronounced proudly, admiring his handiwork, “All clean now.” Folding the square so that the soiled areas were out of sight, he reached up and wiped the tear-streaked dirt from Lily’s shining face.

The girl beamed at him appreciatively as his cloth gently stroked her cheek. Hesitantly, her small hand reached up to his wrist, stilling his gentle cleansing.   Severus froze momentarily, his dark eyes locked on her green ones.   The little girl leaned forward and planted an awkward, childish kiss on her best friend’s lips, causing their noses to bang together clumsily.

Young Severus looked shocked momentarily, his eyes wide as his lips received their very first kiss. Even from a distance, one would have been able to see the pulse leaping in his throat.

Smiling, young Lily drew away and looked at him, sheepishly, “I love you, Sev,” she told him, smiling, “And some day I’m going to marry you!”

The boy shook his head as if to clear it of a thousand different thoughts. He smiled as a blush rose up his narrow face, “Together forever,” he promised.

“No quite.” The bitter words escaped the grown Severus’ mouth, unbidden. His heart lurched in his chest painfully as the memory before him swirled into a fog and faded into oblivion. Staring at the whiteness before him, he took a deep, shuddering breath. “I thought I was supposed to find young Mr. Potter,” he said, quietly, not daring to look at the woman beside him.

He felt a small, feminine hand grasp his tightly. “You’ll find his dreams and memories, Sev, but you’re also going to end up wading through your own. And mine.” She looked up at him, his face in profile as he faced the nothingness that had, moments before, shown him a glimpse of his childhood.

“I suppose these memories will not be of my choosing?” he asked, closing his eyes slowly.

“No, Sev, they won’t. I’m sorry.” Her fingers tightened around his hand.

He nodded slowly and opened his onyx eyes, turning to look at Lily for the first time in this visit. “Then I pray that this mission is over quickly.”
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Perchance to Dream