Chapter One: It's All in the Hips

Disclaimer: I got bored with my dollies and decided to play with J.K.'s. I promise to put them back... eventually.

Many thanks to my fantastic beta for helping me forge across those giant, annoying plot holes, and without whom, my grammatical errors would cause much squick!

Chapter One– It's All in the Hips

Eyes that refused to open. Lips that refused to part. Hands that refused to reach out and touch anyone, anything. He almost wished he could move, if only so he could confirm that this was just an eternal hellish nightmare and not a prolonged hellish existence. If only he could eradicate this ridiculous, bothersome notion that he was still alive, lying somewhere unbeknownst to him, sedated in a mental confine of his own making...

Preposterous. This just had to be hell. Or Hades. Or Voldemort's idea of a bloody cocktail party. He had to be dead, and this had to be demonic torture. Whatever it was and wherever he was, he was certain it was meant to be torture, this endless descent into madness. Yes, hell would be just like this, just like the only thing that he secretly had feared for years and years; his true self was being compromised very slowly, but very surely.

The walls he had built round his mind over the span of his life were very solid, very strong, and very heavily warded against intrusion. Having been a double agent against the most terrible wizard of all time, and just being an extremely secretive person in general, this particular mental attribute always had been and still was crucial to his survival.

He thought he could hear voices in the distance, far from the inner-sanctum-turned-prison that was his mind. Why couldn't he move? Why wouldn't his captor in death just show himself and be done with this imprudent game of mental hide-and-seek? Even in death, he was glad that his mind was still his own and his soul seemed to be in his body, but that didn't make much sense, really...

This was just torture, plain and simple, and Severus Snape knew how to deal with torture. But this maddening arrangement confused him, for he felt alive in what he thought must be death.

He could smell something faint and familiar very distinctly...was he actually breathing?... but his olfactory senses were just as weak as he was. The intake of air in and out of his nose seemed to be the only thing he still had control over in this eternal blackness, though it was quite exhausting. It did not make sense, of course, but then this could be because he was simply dead, and all of this was all cruel punishment for his past misdeeds. He forced himself to take a lengthier, more painful and controlled draw of air through his nose and immediately pinpointed that familiar scent...vanilla.

Vanilla.

Lily.

His heart began to race; he could feel his breath quickening as she flashed in brilliant, intense moving pictures inside of his mind:

Bright auburn locks of hair flailing in the wind as she soared off of the swing-set that summer day, deliciously green eyes smiling at him from over a textbook in the Great Hall, her fingertips brushing his as she passed him a hurried note in a crowded corridor, her perfectly fair skin glistening in the moonlight as she stroked his hair softly in comfort, and him nuzzling his nose into her soft, sweet locks, trying to find that elusive field of vanilla that had to have been hiding somewhere beneath Lily's soft, sweet hair...

Vanilla...

Lily...

A sudden crashing, booming noise tore him away from the precious memories he thought he would never relive again...

His inner walls were most definitely being breached.

Severus began to panic. He had let those memories go! He had released them into the musty air of the dark, dirty shack after Nagini had gone in for the kill, after Voldemort had left him for dead. He had grabbed that snooping brat Potter, the bane of his existence and the reminder of his failures. Severus had forced a confused Harry to look directly into him. As he had immersed himself in those glorious green eyes, he was blanketed by the memories he fought his whole life to suppress and remember at the same time. He had been momentarily lost, even in what he knew must be death, in the eyes of brilliant green, exactly like Lily's. He had known it was time then, and had let all of those beautiful, haunting treasures of her seep from his mind. He had allowed them to leave his walls as he had slipped into darkness, into the unknown...

So how the bloody hell did they all get bloody back in?

Thunder and lightening boomed and thrashed around his mental walls. What was this magic? He could feel it pulsating all around him, hear it push and thrash against his mind. Was he truly dead? Was this strange, turbulent recovery of his most sacred memories what it meant to be crossing over? Had he been too scared to fall behind the veil until now, too weak to join the other side? Was this Lily, calling to him to join her? Was this how it would truly end, could it be he for whom the bell was solemnly tolling?

Or perhaps... perhaps this was Voldemort toying with his mind. Perhaps Potter had failed, perhaps the Dark Lord reigned victorious over all and was playing with his food before he ate it. It was Voldemort. He was tormenting him. Somehow, he had recovered the abandoned memories and now reveled in his own fallen servant's emotional weakness.

Fear gripped him; he knew his hold on his central self was weakening now and despised himself for it. Cracks began to run up his inner walls at a slow, impetuous pace.

Falsified memories played over and over in his mind, silent and fake as an old Muggle movie. Memories he created, memories he hated. Cracks everywhere, like snakes slithering up dark, ancient walls. His walls. The barriers he had spent his whole life perfecting... were obviously somehow imperfect. He could feel them, see them, and yet they were slowly deteriorating. He did not have control. Severus Snape was, for maybe the third time in his life, absolutely terrified.

He knew this was real, though the thoughts swirling within his mind refused to seep out. His body was in utter refusal of life, but his mind ticked like a freshly wound clock. Unfortunately, it clicked and ticked with lies and memories that he longed to Obliviate from his mind.

Tick, tick, tick... his Master's eyes, red and despicable. The terrible creature he thought once to be great, brilliant. The mad entity that killed his beloved Lily. He saw himself taking the Mark, kissing his robe, creating his dark potions. Voldemort.

He could hear incoherent chanting from far away; someone was calling to him. His mind clicked even more rapidly than before.

Tick, tick, tick... his merciful captors eyes, twinkling and watery, eternally the brightest blue. He had twisted him, manipulated him, and saved him. They both had seen an opportunity and a friendship within each other. He saw himself sitting in the Headmaster's office, complaining about the stupid Boy Who Lived for the hundredth time, while the worn looking man had smiled at him and threatened him in one single look. He saw the dead, cursed hand, and the sad, lost look in his employer's eyes. He saw himself, calmly pointing his wand at the old wizard and hating him with every fiber of his being for using him, for leading him so blindly for so long. Albus.

A beat of a drum, a shake of a rattle, and a low, primal moan. He could feel the hands of his mental clock spinning out of control.

Tick, tick, tick... his love's eyes. Her eyes, and that sweet, fresh vanilla, surrounding him once more. He saw them sitting together on her roof the summer after second year. He was crying. His terrible father had once again beaten his mother into unconsciousness and chased him out of the house. He had run, straight to her. She had listened closely and she had soothed him, comforted him and caressed him. He had kissed her then, slowly and sweetly, and nuzzled his face into her hair, calmed by the scent of fresh vanilla. She had never spoken of that kiss again, but he never had expected her to, anyway.

Suddenly, the spinning stopped, his mind emptied, and something incredible happened. He could see a strange woman in his mind, one he could not recall from any memory he had ever had. It was like he was seeing someone else's thoughts, as if someone was projecting them into his mind.

He saw she was in a room, and she seemed to be dancing around a bed. A man was moving slowly alongside the walls of this strange room, beating a drum and shaking a rattle. They were dressed in an extremely strange manner, and they both seemed to be focusing all of their magical energy on a pale figure lying in the bed. It was then that he realized the angle from which he was seeing this scene...he was the figure in the bed! His blood began to pound in his veins as he realized that this was really happening. He wasn't dead. He was lying in a ruddy hospital somewhere, being subjected to the ridiculous sounding and strangely sensual magical practices of this strange culture of wizard.

Now that he had a grip on his surroundings, somewhat, he tried to survey the scene with a careful eye. The man against the wall was moving very awkwardly, and his shaggy, black hair was covering his face. The man had an exotic looking wreath atop the crown of his head. And if Severus wasn't imagining things, he was... naked?

Death suddenly seemed like a fantastic option. What in Merlin's name was going on here?

Severus shifted his focus to the strange woman and was both shocked and pleased to find her in a seemingly equal nude state. Her breasts seemed to be covered only by hanging garlands made of some sort of vine. Vanilla?

In his mind, he could see her move towards him slowly, as if she were trekking trough molasses. A young, tan woman with wild hair, eyes closed as she twisted her body in intricate patterns all around his bed. She smelled like Lily. She was beautiful, familiar, intriguing. She was... No. Impossible.

This gorgeous goddess was that ridiculous embodiment of word vomit, that infuriating babble mouth Granger?

There was a sudden burst of hot, indescribable pain. Severus was affronted by an abrupt surge of sound, but could not believe what he was hearing.

"HARRY, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! WE ALMOST HAD IT! HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I BLOODY TOLD YOU? IT'S ALL IN THE HIPS!"

31. Snape is alive – only he doesn't believe it. He lays in a deep coma at St. Mungo's, his mind locked in an afterlife of his own making. Occlumency shields prevented the best mind healers from intervening. He's considered a hopeless case – but there's this irritating know-it-all with a crazy shaman trance plan and a boy-who-just-won't-bugger-off.