Chapter Text
Lily woke up in King’s Cross train station, on platform 9 and ¾. The station was empty, expect for her, and everything felt weirdly grey and desolate.
She was sitting on bench, hands neatly on her lap and legs tucked together as she woke up to the perfect silence of the platform. She could not tell what had woken her.
I see, she thought. So, this is it then.
It was better than expected. In honesty, when she had been bothered to think about it, she had pictured more brimstone and fires, not this depressing greyness.
She stood up, looking around her, her slight footsteps loud in the otherwise dull silence.
“Hello”, she called into the oppressive emptiness.
“Hey.”
The voice went through her like an electric shock, seizing all her synapses and jerking her dead, unbeating heart into a painful jolt.
She did not dare to turn around, not immediately. She needed the moment to just stand still, to stare at the cracked, filthy and grey walls of the platform, of the faded and chipped letters of 9 and ¾, of the quiet misery of her surroundings, before she could slowly reorient her body.
Severus Snape stood where there second ago had been nothing but empty air, looking exactly as he had been when still alive.
Long, awkward limbs not entirely fitting into his teenager’s body. Strings of greasy hair crawling down to his shoulders, framing a face with unhealthily swallow skin and a huge hooked nose slapped in the middle, much too big for the rest of his face. Eyes black, and teeth flashing behind thin lips, crooked and filthy yellow.
He was beautiful, just like Lily had always remembered him. An angel wrapped in second-hand Hogwarts’ robes. Heavenly benevolence given form.
What else was Lily to do, but to fall to her knees and cry. Cry like for the first time since she had been 15 and spending her first night in the cold cell of Azkaban.
“Sev?”
“Hey Lily.”
“You came for me?”
“You are my best friend.”
There was a weird disconnection when the fifteen years old Severus helped her back to sit on the bench, as he was so much shorter than Lily herself, and that was not how Lily remembered him. God, he had been so young when he died. Her years as a teacher were now protesting that she accept any help from a literal child, urging her to collect herself and control her 37 years old body from showing weakness like this.
But it was Severus. And she was dead. And it was all just too much.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that.” Said Severus, hugging her grown-up, broken and twisted friend, as if they were still children and everything was fine.
Lily returned the hug carefully, inhaling the forgotten scent of potion ingredients and unwashed teenage boy. Oh, how she had missed it.
“I am the one who should apologise. You died because of me.”
“Of course I didn’t, stupid. I made my own choices.”
“I forced you to go.”
“You did no such thing.”
“I did some really awful things after you were gone.”
Severus went still and rigid in her embrace. “I know. I saw.”
“I’m sorry.”
He had nothing to say to that.
Just as carefully as Lily had entered the hug, she now pulled away, keenly aware that she was a mass murderer and that her best friend was a murder victim.
“What happens now?” She asked, looking at the beloved, unscratched face, the rib cage that wasn’t pulled apart, guts that were not hanging out.
“Well-“ Severus’ face got a bit more animated from the tender sadness it had been until now. “This is a bit unorthodox, maybe even a bit against the rules but you see- I just- Well to put it simply you have a choice now.” He fidgeted with his sleeves, as he had always been prone to do when he was having trouble putting thoughts into words. “You can either wait for the train-“
“Where will it take me?”
“Oh you know-“ he made a lazy gesture with his hand, “-away.”
It wasn’t what Lily had been asking, but she didn’t dare to ask what she really had been asking. Besides, she suspected that she knew the answer already.
“Or you could come meet someone in the station proper. We thought that maybe setting up a date for you two would be…good.”
We? Station proper? Date?? Lily shook her head a little in confusion.
“It’s just- You can stay here, but honestly, I don’t think that I’m the one you need.”
You will always be the one I need. Lily thought desperately but did not say out loud. It didn’t seem to matter, as Severus looked at her knowingly anyways. “If it doesn’t work out, you can always come back here and see if a train comes to pick you up, so you can follow me, but I really think that it would be good for you to not stay on this platform.” He peeled a strip of flaking paint from the bench they were sitting on, revealing decaying wood underneath.
“I…Okay. I trust you.” It was now her turn to blindly follow his suggestion and walk into the unknown. Maybe she would find salvation, maybe she would be ripped apart by a werewolf, it wouldn’t matter. It was now her turn.
“Great.” His smile was wide enough to show a flash of yellow teeth.
Severus guided her across the depressing shade of what looked like platform 9 and ¾, until they reached the stone wall that would lead to the muggle side of the station back in the world of the living.
Oh. The station proper.
Through the brick wall, they emerged in what was clearly King’s Cross, but just a little bit to the left.
Unlike the platform, the station was vibrant with colour, shop-window glasses clean and shiny, the noise an endless ebbing and flowing hum, and people surrounded them with the usual dismissive air of London commuters. It could have been King’s Cross as she remembered it, but not quite. She could not recognise the shops, nor the restaurants, their names unfamiliar and strange. (Expect WHS Smith. Apparently, every station always had a WHS Smith, even those in the afterlife). Where she subconsciously expected a column to be, there was nothing, and where she could remember empty space, there were columns. On the whole, there just was so much more space than in the real King’s Cross, and the ceiling was made of glass, with white structure beams making the whole affair look very airy and light.
But it was the people that were the most different. The endless flow of strange people, some dressed in Victorian era dresses, some in modern suits, some in tunics, some in spiked punk rock ensembles, and many more in garments that Lily had no words for. Some walked staring intently at a thin, rectangular thing in their hands, tapping on its surface as they passed, and some carried swords with them. None paid any attention to Lily, nor Severus. All were busy getting to wherever it was that they were going.
Keep your soul and personality with you, at all times. Do not leave your personal sorrows unattended at any times. Said the announcement from the loudspeakers.
She wanted to ask, of course she did, but she also suspected that the answer would be simply “The station”, were she to ask.
Severus steered her through the strange station expertly and waved towards someone standing in front of a coffee shop. That someone turned out to be her.
The Lily Evans that leaned against the wall, was much younger than her, much more gentle-looking, much more groomed, much more everything good and likeable, and Lily hated her immediately and immensely.
The other Lily didn’t look at ease either, studying her counterpart with the terrified revulsion of someone who is forced to face her grotesque double. The you, you didn’t believe yourself capable of being. Lily smiled her sharpest smile, the one that had made her students tremble and whimper in fear. The other Lily was not unaffected either, looking quickly away.
“You made it.” The other Lily aimed her words at Severus, face immediately softening and smile becoming fond.
“Of course. She’s not evil.” Severus answered immediately, rolling his eyes familiarly to the other, better, not broken, not twisted Lily. The Lily, who she could bet anything, had never committed war crimes.
“Sure.” That other Lily said unconvinced. “Well, he’s inside already, so…”
Severus turned again to meet her, a certain old sadness in his eyes that forced her to remember that he wasn’t fifteen. He was not the sullen and occasionally beautifully excited young boy that had quietly stolen her heart when she still had had one. That boy had died decades ago.
“You can never really love me. You twisted that love to something terrible for so long, and I don’t know how to help you. So, I’m letting you go. Do you understand? Probably not yet, but I hope you will.”
Stretching on tip toes, the love of her life, her best friend, her obsession of over twenty years, gave her one final quick hug, before stepping back. “Turn to the right. He’s at the corner table.”
“And don’t you dare hurt him!” The other Lily added with such threatening affect, that Lily could have almost imagined herself using that tone.
Lily stepped inside the coffee shop, half expecting to end up stepping right into hell, but actually ending up just inside a coffee shop. The barista behind the counter smiled a fake smile of customer servicers everywhere. “What can I get you?”
“I don’t have any money.” She blurted out, still out of sorts with the whole situation.
“Any what?”
“Ah… Black tea?”
The barista snatched one underneath the counter, without preparing anything, and handed it to Lily, clearly expecting their interaction to be now over.
Lily stared at the hot cup in her hand, starting to get angry with how she didn’t understand anything.
Corner table at the right, Severus had said, so, there Lily headed.
She dropped the teacup, which shattered against the tiled floor, when she saw who was waiting for her.
“Lily, I told you that I don’t think that-“ The other Severus did not finish, as he came to the realisation that the Lily in front of him was not 21 years old.
“You’re not… You’re not my Lily.”
“And You’re not my Severus.” She said, as there seemed to be nothing else to say, and sat down, before her legs did something stupid.
Severus Snape as an adult was not something she had ever taken time to imagine, aside from the stray I wish he had been able to grow into one thought. It was uncanny, to see the cherished familiar black eyes set in a face that had grown into its full frame, the way his body had evened out.
His eyes roamed the contours and lines of her face as freely as hers did his, something sad and hungry in them both.
The steaming cup of tea had simply appeared back on the table, unbroken, and she wrapped her hands around it just to stop them from shaking. This Severus Snape looked sad and tired and broken in a familiar way that Lily never, ever had even dared to imagine any Severus Snape ever looking like.
His eyes zeroed down to her arm, where her sleeve had ridden up as she had snatched the teacup, revealing curve of black ink branded on it. “How!? Is this some kind of- Some sick joke! No Lily would ever- Not the dark mark!”
“Well what was I supposed to do!” Lily snapped back, now treading very familiar ground. She had spent countless nights imagining Severus looking at her in disgust, asking her: how could you?! Obviously, she never won those arguments inside her head, but she was familiar with the discourse itself. “You were gone! And no one was going to do anything. And he offered me a way out of Azkaban! What else could I have possibly done!”
Severus across the table had gone even paler, clutching his own arm, with again too much familiarity for Lily to pretend that she did not guess what was hidden underneath that black sleeve.
She wanted to cry. Maybe she was in hell and they were tormenting her by pushing her own mistakes onto the person she had most cared about.
“I…would you…” The other Severus clearly struggled with the words, “would you tell me about it.”
She had never done that. She had never told her entire story to anyone. Not Dumbledore, not Voldemort, not even Potter who had been given more intimate picture of her life than most, in the end.
But she wanted to, she now realised.
“It all started with me giving that stupid dare…”
They never ran out of beverages. The barista kept bringing them more as they finished their cups, without ever needing to be flagged. Time around them stretched strangely. Some moments it felt like they had been sitting in their booth for maybe an hour, max two, and then some other moments she was convinced that they had been sitting on this booth with an ever-lasting supply of tea and coffee for days.
“-And the worst part was that when I died, I was convinced that I had failed after all. Potter was going to die, and all I had done was to make sure that he dies during the right moment. Of course Lily- My Lily- Lily from my universe, says that he did survive after all.”
Lily tried not to imagine it. Severus Snape drowning in his own blood on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. Of course she could imagine it, could vividly imagine it.
“I was right. You would have found the path with the least casualties.”
Long slender fingers came to rest over hers, and the simple kind human contact felt so alien that she almost wanted to cry.
“I never cared enough about the world to try and change it.”
“And I cared too much and too bloody.”
“You have always cared about others deeply. I always wished I could have been more like you.”
“And I have apparently also always judged too harshly and been too unforgiving. I always wished I had had your pragmatism. Your capability to adapt and survive without breaking.”
Lily took the leap of faith and linked their fingers over the table. “What do you think is beyond those main doors?”
They both watched through the coffee shop window at the station entrance, the glimpses of city beyond, and the never-ending flow of people walking in and out.
Their barista approached the table again, to clear out the empty mugs, and Severus snapped her arm before she could trot away. “What is there outside?”
“The city.” The barista answered with clearly struggling to not add duh at the end.
“But what does that mean?”
“Dude, I’m just a barista.” The barista angrily snapped and yanked free of Severus’ hold. “Can I bring you anything else?”
“No.” Lily said, suddenly sure of what would happen next. “We’re leaving.”
“Okay. Have a nice day.”
On the other side of the entrance, they could see and hear London during the rush hour, in all its noisy, rushed, packed glory. People annoyedly bumping into each other, cars honking, a flock of pigeons getting underfoot.
“It’s not heaven, of that I am certain.” Said Severus, standing besides her, still holding her hand.
“I know. I wouldn’t dare to try and enter, if it was.”
“Me neither.”
“Then what do you think it is?”
“Honestly, I have no idea.”
She took a deep, unnecessary breath, and gripped the hand holding hers a bit more tightly. “Let’s find out.”
And they stepped into the cloudy, overcast, half-light together.