Lily's Charm- Severitus fanfiction

Echoes

Somewhere in time and space…

Harry stepped forward as the mist began to move aside for him, but a hand on his arm stopped his momentum. He turned slightly. Severus was hanging back, as though he was afraid to step too close to the parting mist. He shook his head, his features pinched.

“But, mum’s in there…” Harry tried to explain as he took another step toward the peace, but his father’s fingers tightened around his arm. Severus tugged him gently back, bringing Harry around to face him.

“We are going home,” he said, his voice firm and quiet. Harry stared at his father in bewilderment. He almost felt betrayed. They were all waiting for them; surely his father understood that?

“But Sirius and Remus will be there…and James,” Harry insisted, the prospect filling him with excitement, but Severus shook his head lightly.

“Your friends are waiting for you,” he reminded him and then he glanced once over Harry’ shoulder, his eyes taking on a sorrowful hue. He turned back to Harry; the sorrow was gone, replaced with a renewed fire. “And I promised Ginny I would bring you home.”

Ginny…

A different sort of peace began to fill him. Harry nodded, ignoring the desire that had not quite receded, to see his godfather and Remus again. To see his mum and James outside of the dream world, but his dad held him fast even as Harry looked once more over his shoulder. He wanted to go to them. Perhaps just for a moment… But before he could move toward them again, the mist became a silvered curtain, solidifying into two solid forms in front of them.

Harry and Severus stared. A doe stood before them, blinking placidly, her eyes calm and expectant. A fearsome stag flanked her side, gazing out at them as he snorted softly, denying them entry. Something wasn’t right…

Harry’s hand, as though of its own accord, reached out, and again the gentle tug on his arm. “It is time to go, Harry,” his father told him, his voice breaking the slightest bit as he turned away and Harry had no choice but to follow.

The mist was fading, the two forms dissipating into vapor again as Harry and Severus glided out into the suffocating darkness once more.

He was storm again. The flames were bringing him toward a different kind of light as they passed through the shadows of where they’d been. There were shapes—faces there as well, lingering in the inky shadows. Reminding him too much of Voldemort; Harry shivered and he imagined he could see a familiar face in the murk...the memory of Sirius, falling whole through the veil assaulted him. He didn’t want to see that face; it was no longer laughing. No longer funny…

The light was looming closer now—the images were fast forgotten. Quickly now, storm and flame were carried on alternating eddies of darkness and light. Harry was tumbling over himself, searching for himself as he was yanked forward by his father.

--

1996

Severus felt the world closing in on him once more, trapping him in substance. And there he stood, with Voldemort’s glazed eyes staring at him, while he clutched Harry to his side as though they had never left. There was a shrill cry of fury and Severus immediately pushed Harry’s limp form to the ground, using his body as a shield; Voldemort came with them.

There was a pressure of a shield, already surrounding them, but Severus wove another shield around them quickly as Bellatrix flung herself in wild desperation at them, presumably trying to get to her Master. Before she even reached the boundaries of the shield, Bellatrix stiffened and her arms and legs snapped forcefully together as though she’d been bound in invisible ropes and then she slumped in slow motion to the ground, rolling slightly on the hard ground; her eyes were closed.