Cave of Mind - Full

    It was disconcerting, to say the least, to wake up staring at your own dead body. To watch it lie there, then be picked up and carted off for burial. It was even more disconcerting to realise that you couldn't follow. That, in fact, you couldn't leave the six walls of the room in which you'd died.

    But the worst of it was seeing your murderer lunging at you, feeling all the terror and despair of that moment, the utter hopelessness when you realized you'd never see a world without Voldemort. And then, just before you died, to know that you were a ghost. And that, as soon as you awoke, it would happen all over again.

    But wait. Here was another ghost, one who didn't belong. A wizened scrap of an old woman. "Severus," she said, and he recognized her youthful voice. "It's over. It's time to go home." He took Hermione's hand and they walked together into eternity.

_6/9/08