Prologue

Prologue: D'abord le doux sommeil, puis réveil acerbe.

Transmigration of the soul; passage of the soul from one body to another; chiefly, the transmigration of the soul of a human being or animal at or after death into a new body (whether of the same or a different species), a tenet of the Pythagoreans and certain Eastern religions, esp. Buddhism. – "Metempsychosis." The Oxford English Dictionary. Second ed. Vol. IX, p. 684. 1884-1991.

The endless cycle of death and rebirth to which life in the material world is bound. – "Samsara." The Oxford English Dictionary. Second ed. Vol. XIV, p.435. 1884-1991.

The constraints of the dead are different to the ties which bind the living.

While each state had its benefits, without a doubt, finding two beings who agreed on what the advantages of both or either might be was surprisingly difficult, considering the sheer number of souls who were cognizant of the distinction. Still, that there were assets and detriments inherent to each was universally accepted.

But for those fortunate – or unfortunate – enough to exist between life and death, the argument was by and large moot, as they usually lacked the knowledge to weigh the two.

Severus Snape was mostly dead, and although he was as yet unaware of this fact, he was aware of the faint sound of raised voices. The muted Babel did nothing to ease the excruciating pulsation that seemed to emanate from his neck before working its way to his head.

~RP~

"Keep it down!" It was possibly the twentieth time she'd issued the order, and what Lily Potter's voice lacked in volume was more than made up for in vehemence. Her glare met each of the shabbily Spartan room's other occupants in turn. She offered an extra fierce glower to one of the two white-haired men and placed her hands on her hips. "Well, Albus?"

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian of the madly twinkling eyes twinkled them for all their worth (not that he was fooling anyone with the display) and asked mildly, "Yes, Lily?"

"This is your mess," she told him. Shrugging her husband's would-be calming hand from her shoulder, she gave the old man an especially potent glare. "What do you intend to do about it?"

"My mess?" Albus persisted, even though it was clear none of his companions were buying the innocent act.

~SS~

A long while passed (in which the commotion going on just within his hearing didn't abate in the least) before his dulled wits were able to apprehend a correlation between the throbbing pain and his heartbeat. No sooner than he'd made the connection did the pain dissipate.

But then he remembered the snake.

~RP~

"You'll wake him if you lot keep shouting like that," Lily reminded them. "I'm sure none of you wants to be the one to explain. And we all know he won't like any of you to be the first thing he sees!"

"No need to worry about that," came a voice from the doorway. Grinning with a noticeable lack of mirth, Fred Weasley ambled into the room before continuing. "The shouting did wake him, but then his eyes sort of bulged, and he made a kind of strangled noise, and then he fainted. He'll be out for a while yet, I think."

"Well, thank Merlin for that!" Nymphadora Tonks managed to trip over nothing at all on her way to flopping onto the room's sole sofa.

"Don't bring my name into it!" an ancient-looking man with a long silvery beard – the one who'd remained silent since Lily had admonished them all again for their noisy disagreement – ordered firmly. "I've nothing to do with this mess."

Ignoring the old man and grimacing ruefully, she said, "Still got Tonks feet, yeah? Hope it doesn't last too long this time."

Her husband, traversing the short stretch of worn floorboards much more smoothly than she had done, took a seat beside her. Covering her hand with his, he said, "You always pick such clumsy bodies, darling." He smiled at her as if that were something to be proud of.

Lily wasn't the only one to eye the two with something approaching disdain.

"I was not the one who was supposed to mind him." Dumbledore had adopted his kindly-but-firm teacher's voice, and even Tobias and Merlin recognised it. Everyone else had at least once or twice been shamed into altering their behaviour after hearing that voice. "I made do with what I got after you lot failed to do your duty and keep an eye on him. By the time he was in my hands, the damage had already been done!"

"Bollocks!" The force behind the exclamation belied the fragile appearance of the rail-thin woman who made it. Her voice got louder and louder as she went on. "He was only a little boy, not yet past saving! If you'd spared a moment to see exactly what your handsome little Gryffindo..."

Seeing the Potter lad take a step forward, Tobias Snape placed a hand on his wife's shoulder, a silent reminder that their son was sleeping. If either of the two of their boy's nemeses currently present spoke, he doubted she'd be able to rein in her temper.

Dumbledore took advantage of her sudden silence. "I never looked at student..."

"Too right, you didn't," Eileen whispered murderously. "So long as they weren't one of yours, they mightn't even have existed!"

"I admit I might have favoured my lions; it's only natural to..." His eyes twinkled again as he trailed off, smiling abashedly. But even Dumbledore didn't appear to believe the excuse.

Aware another noisy argument might awake his son – faint or no faint – Tobias cut in before the women could get started again. For all her directives for quiet, Lily Potter's temper was something to be reckoned with, and when it got control of her, she tended to forget her own rules.

"Honestly, Albus, you could have done better, and you know it!" Tobias pitched his voice to match Lily's prior tones of hushed intensity. "None of us were at our best when we were wearing flesh, but you had the most experience and the most memories of being Real, and still you managed let him down."

He half-turned and indicated the others in the room with a sweeping gesture.

"Don't go blaming these children" – both Lily and James Potter bristled at the word, not caring that he was speaking in their defence – "for not being able to manage him whilst they were still here! Even as an infant he was a precocious handful; with Eileen and me gone, they did the best they could. Once he was in the Inner and at that school of yours, it was down to you to continue his education."

The change in the wizard's demeanour would have been startling if Tobias hadn't been expecting it. All signs of twinkle gone, Dumbledore stormed over until his nose was inches from the younger soul's. "I refuse to shoulder all the blame for this! You were terrible – both of you – as Inner parents. If you'd never bred, he wouldn't have been able to follow you! If you'd never gone, he wouldn't have had anyone to follow."

He flung up a hand when Eileen started to protest.

"Be quiet! I'll have my say," he said, his voice now as dangerously low as Tobias's had been. "You could have refused the placement! You could have ensured your son was raised properly. You and your wife could have said 'no', and much of this mightn't have happened!"

Tobias shook with barely controlled rage. It had been long enough since he'd returned to the Outer World that – just as Eileen had shed her timidity – much of the temper he'd developed during his most recent stint in a flesh suit had already sloughed off. But Albus had been a thorn in his side for nearly a year at this point, all the while needling him about his failure as father – in this world as well as the one Inside.

"Enough," Merlin broke in from a darkened corner of the room. "They could not have." His subdued authority impelled everyone to turn to him. "You know that, Albus. Even if you weren't a Real Person when they got their orders, you've learned enough – and recalled enough – since your return to realise they couldn't have declined orders."

He stepped out of the shadows, his gaze seeking out first Albus, then Tobias, Eileen and each of the Potters in turn.

Without seeming to consult or even look at the other, Lily and James moved closer to the Snapes.

"I have endured your ridiculous squabbling almost since the day Albus returned to us," Merlin told them. "Before that, even, since you four have been grumbling ever since Black came back to us. I have had enough! What we do about the boy now is the only thing that matters."

~HG~

There was little time for grief, but it wasn't truly possible to join in the celebrating.

Hermione leaned into Ron, somehow aware letting him hold her – allowing him to stroke her hair – as they sat in silence brought him more comfort than any words of condolence could. Her hand shook as she slid it up his chest to his shoulder; her trembling lips fought to hold in a sob.

Fred lay with Tonks and Remus and Colin and... so many others. Just over fifty of their number lost. Not so many as she had first feared.

There was no consolation in that. Only Ron's body, warm and solid and pressed against hers, made much sense at all.

She spied Harry through the crowd. He slumped, exhausted but not diminished, on a bench. Ron continued his gentle stroking.

She watched Luna Lovegood, of all people, join Harry. The two spoke briefly, then Luna was shouting something loon...

No, whatever Luna was shouting wasn't so loony, after all, Hermione realised as Harry disappeared into the folds of his Invisibility Cloak. And on a day where very little had made sense, it was only fitting that Luna should come to their saviour's rescue.

~RP~

If he were still wearing flesh, their bickering would have seemed petty and useless, but amusing all the same. Now it was just irritating.

If they were going to send the kid back to try again, someone was going to have to keep an eye on him. Lily was right out – that would be a disaster. And his parents would just confuse him more.

Knowing there really wasn't any other alternative, Fred sighed and slowly got to his feet. "I suppose I'll have to be to the one," he said.

He didn't miss the glimmer of satisfaction in Merlin's dark eyes.

~SS~

"I don't care what Merlin or any of them says: he's our boy, and we're telling him!"

Tobias Snape would have responded to his wife's edict if his son hadn't beat him to it.

"But I'm not a boy!" Severus didn't let the pre-adolescent squeak that passed for his voice discourage him. Magic had power over many things, after all. He glared at the couple occupying the sofa opposite his. Why did dead people need furniture? "This is ridiculous. I was thirty-eight when I 'died'. Why should that change now I'm dead?"

He sneered when Tobias and Eileen only exchanged a lingering glance, hands drifting together, before turning to him with fond smiles. Irritatingly identical fond smiles. His parents didn't smile. Fondly or otherwise.

"Oh, Rus,' murmured his father. "You missed so much, running off after us before you were ready." Tobias chuckled, a sound Severus was sure he'd never heard before – a sound he was equally certain he recognised as if he'd been hearing it his whole life.

"They say it's young Fred's job to enlighten you," Eileen began whilst her husband's shoulders continued to shake (fondly, Severus didn't doubt), "but they also say you wouldn't have left before you were ready if we'd been here." She glanced away at that.

Severus waited for her to say more, but even his father stopped laughing and stopped looking so damned pleased with life. Death. Whatever. The silence wore on until Severus felt an unaccountable desire to go to the man and woman (spirits?) sitting across from him. He wanted to squeeze between them, bury himself in their warmth, let their soothing hands ease the aching confusion from his brow.

He shook his head. It should be easy to say these two... whatever they were... weren't the man and woman who had given him life. That they were too kind, too patient, too oozing with... love... to be Tobias Snape and Eileen Prince. Only he knew – on a level so deeply embedded in his core, it was nearly impossible to even consider an alternative – they were his. Worse, he recognised their connection ran even deeper than that of the fleshly parents they'd been to him once.

"It's supposed to be like school," Eileen said, startling Severus from his reverie. "Fred explained about Real People, I think?" Severus nodded, and she continued. "Well, he mustn't have got to the part about being human. What he calls 'putting on flesh suits' is more regularly called being born. And it's supposed to be like going away for school.

"Everybody does it eventually, darling boy. Only you went too early. Imagine a seven-year-old wizard starting Hogwarts. That's pretty much what you did when you decided to follow your dad and me."

~FW~

In the tales of great battles, where both those the victors call heroes and those they call villains fall, often little effort is put forth to show how survivors on either side mourn. Yes, tearful or spirited (or sometimes, both) funerals and memorials are described, but how many historians have catalogued the difficulties of planning a proper leave-taking for the lost when nearly everyone they loved or who loved them is needed to finish the war? How many books captured the inner turmoil of individuals living through a war's ugly aftermath?

Fred grimaced at the very idea. He'd lived through many wars over the courses of his many lives. Some things never got any better. Some things always remained beyond the reach of others.

He remained out of sight and just out of reach while watching his family huddle together over an open grave that cradled the shell he'd so recently worn. Their sorrow was a palpable thing to one such as he was now. The weight of it would have been crushing to a newer person.

Perhaps this wasn't, he reflected, the best time to do what needed to be done. But the better moment had already passed, and delaying much longer wasn't likely to make his task easier.

Still, he waited until only a lone man knelt at the edge of the place where his body would decay and disintegrate. Fred knew he was luckier than most people: not everyone had a true twin.

Manifesting so a person dressed in flesh could see him, he knelt beside the man.

"George," he said, ignoring the look of mingled wonder, fear and joy on his twin's face. But he soaked in the shift in his brother's emotions and revelled in the lessened strain it brought. "There's something you need to know. And I'll need your help to make sure it goes right."

~HG~

"I think you should do, love." Ron was stroking her hair again, holding her close just as he had done so many times over the past few weeks. He leaned against an ancient towering oak in his parents' back garden, and she rested her head on his broad shoulder. "It's perfect for you. You'll be able to do so much... good, I guess. And maybe it'll stop anything like... like what happened happening again."

Hermione's first instinct had been to decline Kingsley's offer. As May had stretched towards June, the atmosphere at the Burrow started to become less heavy with sorrow. Arthur had returned to work almost immediately; in spite of the lingering grief which touched every part of her life, it hadn't taken much longer than that for Molly to refocus on taking care of her family. It was as if she could bear to carry on, but only if she knew she was keeping what remained of the people she loved in her sight and safe from harm.

And now, in everything but name, Harry and Hermione were Weasleys. The younger witch felt nothing short of retrieving her old family could be worth leaving her new family just now.

"You're partly right," she began, choosing her next words with infinite care. "Only, I don't think it has to be now. You know what Kingsley said, once I start, I won't be able to change my mind for ages. And we won't be able to talk about it! I'm not even sure how much you'll be able to remember! Before I can even think about choosing that life, there's my parents and your mum and..."

"Don't worry about all that," Ron said, and he pressed a kiss into the hair he was still stroking. "Kingsley said we wouldn't forget. We just won't be able to talk about it with anyone but you. You'll still have me and Harry and Mum and Dad to moan to, and you won't have to worry that any of us will be off telling your secret soon as your back is turned!"

She knew he was grinning, could hear it in his voice. But she also knew he was trying to make the best of things.

"But Molly..."

Ron interrupted her again. "Look, you'll need to go fetch your parents anyway, right? That shouldn't take long, and I'll go with you so Mum won't worry about you doing it alone. And Kingsley will send someone along to help if she doesn't think that's good enough." He squeezed her once, then gripped her shoulders and pushed her back so that he could meet her eyes. "You have to do this, Hermione. And you want to do it. Most of you does, at least. Even if it's hard for us as a family, it's the right thing to do. You know that."

One problem with existing in an isolated society and fighting a largely hidden war is that the horror of what has happened could quickly fade from the memory of anyone not directly touched by the fighting. With the physical damage mainly centred at Hogwarts, and the worst of the emotional damage confined to those who'd lost loved ones, Wizarding Britain had become many islands of pain – instead of a world where friends and strangers came together in a crisis – in the weeks since Tom Riddle's defeat and demise.

Being at once one of the bereaved and one of the champions made the dichotomy between duty and love all the more difficult to balance, Hermione mused. It was a feeling every Weasley – true or honorary – understood.

But a miracle – of sorts, anyway; surely she couldn't call it anything less? – made that concern redundant for her.

"Is that ickle Ronniekins, all growed up?"

Ron spun quickly, snarling, "Shut up, Fred! I'm... "

Then what he'd said – and to whom he'd said it – seemed to register, and the blood drained from his face.

But Fred was looking at Hermione. "Ron's right, you know," he told her. "Mum and Dad – especially Dad – agree. S.A.M.E. needs you. And I expect I won't be going anywhere for a while. My project looks to be a long one. That'll give Mum a chance to... say good-bye properly."

Hermione's gaze shifted rapidly from one brother to the other, living man to dead. As Ron's face gained back some of its healthy colour, she opened her mouth to ask how a ghost could bring anyone comfort, let alone Molly Weasley.

Almost as if he were reading her thoughts, Fred rushed on, neatly cutting off her attempted protest. "I'm not a ghost, by the way. Not the sort you lot remember from Hogwarts. I didn't choose not to move on. Mum knows that, too."

Ron and Hermione exchanged equally bemused glances as Fred started floating back towards the house. After a moment, the spirit who wasn't a ghost looked back and rolled his ghostly eyes.

"Well, come on, slowpokes!" he bellowed. "We've a family meeting, or did I forget to say?"

~SS~

"Are you sure this is going to work?" His high-pitched voice annoyed him in a way that hadn't bothered him in weeks. He went on, in spite of his irritation. "Because it doesn't exactly make sense. If you're taking me there just for me to end up coming right back..."

Severus was confused, but reluctant to admit it. In the months (at least, it had felt like months!) he'd spent in what these Real People (as if living people weren't real!) insisted on calling the Outer World (why couldn't they just call it Heaven?), he felt increasingly like the child they told him he was. At first, it had rankled to realise he had to look up to see almost everyone he met – even Nymphadora Tonks, or whatever was her "True Name", was supposedly centuries older than him. He hadn't accepted his mother's word that he had gone to the Inner World when he was far too young, or that the more than thirty-eight years he'd spent there had equalled only about three years of equivalent human development. But he hadn't been able to disbelieve her, either.

Then he'd started acting like a ten-year-old boy, and it hadn't seemed to matter as much.

Now, though... Now that Weasley was escorting him back to whatever was left of his "flesh suit", his pride came rushing back.

"Time here and time there doesn't exactly match, Sevvie." As he explained again, using the same words he'd already used a dozen times, Weasley's smile was both smug and patronising. Snape wanted to tear it from his freckled face. "Every moment here consists of several moments there. Of course it's limited, but we have some choice of when we arrive in the Inner world."

"No, I mean, if time is counted so differently, how do you know I'm supposedly still a kid when you're all grown up? Mam said..."

"You ask too many questions," said Weasley.

Severus was about to ask another question, but just then they materialised outside a tiny cottage in a pretty little clearing surrounded by an unfamiliar wood.

"We're here," Weasley told him unnecessarily.

A shiver ran down Severus's spine. "Is he... Am I... Where is 'here', exactly?" He wished, not for the first time, that it was his parents, rather than Fred Weasley, who were with him.

Weasley grinned wickedly. "Here," he said, "is where your body has been lying in a coma for the past three months. In you go!"

Next thing Severus remembered, he opened his eyes to find a woman who was very like an emaciated vulture staring down at him. Her sunken cheeks and ugly hooked nose were regrettably familiar.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he croaked and was happy to hear that, although it was hoarse from disuse, his voice had regained its adult baritone.

She gave a short, sharp series of wand movements, and her features seemed to melt, rearranging themselves in a manner which left her looking both familiar and not.

"Not all Princes shrink from taking care of their own," she said once it was done.

Severus stared, not believing what he was seeing.

"Mother?" It couldn't be. Eileen Prince had been in... wherever he'd just left, alongside Tobias Snape. He felt another rush of longing for them.

"Hardly." A second flick of her wand restored her usual appearance. "I could do nothing for my sister," she began by way of explanation. "A librarian's salary is a pittance; a school librarian's is less than a pittance. But I hoped being here, at least I might be able to save Eileen's son. Until moments ago, when the Headmaster's phoenix and that nasty Weasley boy's spirit fetched me to your room, I believed I had failed you as I failed her."