Chapter 600: The Rising Mists
Severus Snape's nightmare ended the moment the Black Cat leaped into the fray.
At first, he thought he was simply exhausted. Why else would he be seeing a
creature that looked exactly like his ward? The statue of that very cat still
stood on the third floor of Hogwarts; every wizard who had walked those halls in
the last three years knew exactly what it represented.
"Master of Dreams and Mists... Bridge between Life and Death... Eternal Symbol
of Luck..."
Snape thought of the ridiculous rumors whispered by the students. He thought of
the dunderheads who spent their nights wandering the corridors in search of
"Luck," providing him with a never-ending workload of detentions. At his peak,
he had once caught a dozen of them in a single night—busting an entire
"Luck-hunting" ring.
The corner of his mouth twitched with a ghost of a sneer.
"Good evening, Professor Snape."
The Black Cat spoke. The voice was youthful and familiar, yet it carried an
otherworldly resonance, as if a hundred different voices were vibrating in
unison, making it impossible to pin down the speaker.
"Sean Green," Snape stated, his voice booming with authority.
The Cat kept its head buried in a bank of mist, pretending not to hear.
Facing the unresponsive animal, Snape didn't push. He began to take in his
surroundings. They were in a world of pure, blinding whiteness. Vapor swirled
around them, but it wasn't normal fog—it was raw, unformed matter.
He thought for a moment, and the realization hit him like a cold draft.
"The legends... they are true..." Snape whispered. He looked at the Cat with a
gaze that shifted through a dozen different emotions. "Good evening... Divine
Sir."
His voice was a raspy, jagged sound. His frame trembled slightly.
"You were having a nightmare?" the Cat asked, its tail remaining perfectly
still.
Snape lowered his head, his sharp eyes clouding over. He had been dreaming of
his past. Usually, such trivialities wouldn't bother him. He had seen enough
disasters to last a lifetime. What were a few more deaths in a war?
But lately, he had changed. He found himself wondering: Whose father was that
man? Whose child was that girl?
He thought of the boy back at Hogwarts. He thought of the orphan he had taken
in.
A concept he had never considered before began to take root in his mind: the
idea of someone waiting for a traveler to return. Snape had spent his life as a
man who had nothing. You cannot force a man who has never seen the sun to miss
the light.
"Does a God..." Snape muttered, "really have this much free time?"
The Cat didn't answer. Orbs of mist drifted around its head, obscuring its
expression—though Snape noted that reading the facial features of a cat was a
fool's errand anyway.
Suddenly, the Cat leaped from its orb. Snape flinched as he watched the creature
trot toward the horizon, its form beginning to merge with the white haze.
Fearing he would be left behind in the void, Snape followed without hesitation.
He scanned the landscape as they walked, unaware that behind a veil of
pearlescent mist, the Cat was watching him.
Longing... cowardice... the hunger to see her fighting against the urge to run
away...
Sean could see the threads of vapor coiling around Snape. He understood their
meaning instinctively. If he looked long enough, he could read the wizard's very
soul.
So this is what Hufflepuff meant, Sean realized. The mists allow me to see the
secret heart.
He felt a surge of excitement. With this power, his long-term plans were already
halfway to completion.
The man and the cat moved through a valley made of shifting vapors. For a long
time, the path was peaceful. Then, the storm broke.
Snape stopped dead. Within the churning grey clouds, he saw a kaleidoscope of
his most shameful moments.
"Start running, Professor," the Cat commanded.
"What?" Snape asked, his mind reeling.
"Run... everyone has something they know is futile, yet they cannot abandon.
Dreams build bridges. The traveler uses them to find the things they could never
let go of in the waking world."
The Cat spoke in riddles, but Snape understood the subtext. He grit his teeth as
a wall of black mist—thick and heavy as a tidal wave—rose to consume him.
"Move toward the voice that calls you, Severus. You will find your direction.
This is the Lands Between; here, the call of the heart is louder than any
thunder."
The Cat gazed into the boiling clouds. He thought of the image he had seen in
Dumbledore's mind.
"Madam Brock said I am the storm."
A jagged bolt of lightning shattered the black mist. Through the chaos, Snape
saw the infinite dark and heard the roar of the heavens. He realized then that
he truly was standing before a deity, and this was the dream he had waited for
all his life.
"And then?" he roared over the thunder. "What do I do then?!"
"Go forward," the Cat's whiskers twitched. "Unless it becomes a matter of life
and death, do not look back."
Time lost its meaning.
When Snape finally reached the far shore of the storm, the world transformed.
The mist was no longer a violent, reddish-brown shroud of anger. It wasn't the
damp, bone-chilling grey of the Highlands.
Here, the vapor was silver. It was light and ethereal, like a veil woven from
moonlight, spreading out beneath his feet in infinite layers. There was no wind,
no heat, no cold. There was no breath of the living here. There was only a vast,
silent vacuum and a distant, sourceless light.
Snape looked down at himself. His black robes were pristine. The wounds he had
received from the encroaching mists during his charge had vanished. His hands
were clean of blood.
Am I dead? he wondered. Is this it?
He felt no fear at the thought. No relief. Only a dry, hollow sense of
unfinished business.
But something was different. A sound echoed from the distance.
He raised his head. The silver mist was receding, parting of its own accord to
grant him passage. A straight, white corridor opened before him. At the end, a
warmth emanated—a gentle, merciful light.
He saw it. At the end of the path, inside a small wooden cottage, sat a figure.
Red.
The color hit him first. A deep, vibrant crimson, like a solidified flame
resting against a shoulder. Then came the silhouette—slender, familiar, traced
by the soft white light of the room.
She was sitting with her back to him, as if she had just heard a sound and was
about to turn, but hadn't quite completed the movement.
Snape's body reacted before his mind could. He stopped mid-stride. It was as if
an invisible rope had snared him, freezing his every muscle.
He was lost.
His brain was suddenly flooded with a century's worth of information, the
thoughts colliding and jamming in his throat. That patch of red hair had flipped
a switch deep within his soul.
Red hair. Green eyes.
It was really her.
His lips moved, but the air in his lungs refused to form a sound. That name—the
name he had whispered ten thousand times in the dark but never dared to speak
aloud while awake—felt like a glowing coal wedged in his windpipe. He couldn't
breathe.
Then, his mind exploded with a violent, agonizing joy.
It was a wildfire, tearing through the ruins of his scorched memories. It was
her. Not a portrait. Not a Pensieve-ghost. Not the cursed green eyes of Harry
Potter that reminded him of his sins every day. It was her.
She stood in the light, a quiet, peaceful presence.
He wanted to charge forward. Every muscle in his body shrieked at him to run to
her. He wanted to throw himself at her feet, to grab her hands, to speak the
words he had spent a lifetime brewing in his cauldrons and washing in his tears.
I'm sorry... Forgive me... I—
He took a step forward. Just one.
Then he saw it. A flash of green.
He saw a green flower on the table. And then he noticed a dark stain on the hem
of her robes.
Was that blood? He wasn't sure.
But in that heartbeat, a cold clarity returned. He wasn't worthy.
She was here, waiting. But for whom? A man who had essentially held the wand
that killed her?
He had delivered the prophecy. His tongue had condemned her to the green light
of the Killing Curse. His hands were clean, but his soul was stained with ink
and blood.
The bitterness rose in his throat, tasting like a bottle of expired Draught of
Living Death. He remembered himself as a young man standing on a hilltop, his
black robes whipping in the wind as he made that pathetic, selfish plea: "Spare
the woman."
He had thought that was love. He had thought he understood the word. But back
then, he had only mistaken jealousy for devotion.
He didn't know how to love. He never had.
Not until he learned to look into the eyes she had left behind. Not until he
realized how much she had wanted to be his ally, and how he had pushed her away.
Their paths had only truly merged after her heart had stopped beating.
Snape took a step back.
Silently, instinctively, he retreated into the shadows. His body knew what his
mind was trying to deny: he did not belong in that light.
He could serve Dumbledore. He could stain his hands with the blood of a spy. He
could spend the second half of his life atoning for the sins of the first. But
some things can never be bought back.
The bitterness didn't last long, for a roar from the horizon signaled that his
time was up. He watched her one last time, memorizing the tilt of her head.
That morning, the mist had thickened as Lily brewed her second pot of tea.
She added a piece of pine to the hearth, the sap spitting and crackling like
tiny voices whispering in the flames. She lifted the copper kettle with a
practiced ease, pouring boiling water over dried rose petals. They swirled and
unfurled, bleeding a soft pink hue into the water—the color of a fading dream.
The cottage was small, yet its boundaries seemed to shift and expand whenever
she wasn't looking. On the wooden table sat an open book, its pages turning
occasionally as if read by an invisible guest. An empty chair stood in the
corner; if one stared at it long enough, they could almost feel the lingering
warmth of a previous occupant.
On the wall hung a circular mirror. It never reflected Lily's face. It only
showed the mist outside—though in the reflection, the fog was a different color,
a window to a different world.
Lily leaned against the windowsill, her chin resting in her palm. The glass was
fogged with moisture. She traced a circle with her finger, and a sliver of the
Highland chill seeped through—smelling of moss and distant, phantom rain.
She pushed the window wider.
The world outside was a study in uncertainty. Trees dissolved into the vapor,
occasionally revealing a branch where an owl—or perhaps just a thicker knot of
mist—perched. A path wound through the grass, vanishing into the white void.
Only the statue of the Black Cat remained solid. Every wizard in the Lands
Between knew the story of the Messenger.
Lily was waiting. Waiting for a cat.
The wind-chime above the door gave a tiny, melodic ring. Lily didn't turn. She
simply poured a second cup of tea and pushed it across to the empty side of the
table.
Time in this place was a soft, malleable thing. It could be stretched like fresh
dough. A century could pass between two sips of tea. A leaf could fall from a
tree and be digested by the earth before the next sentence was spoken.
Lily rested her head on her crossed arms, her eyes half-closed. She looked as
though she were dozing, or perhaps listening to a melody from a very long way
off. Her lips moved silently. If one got very close—close enough to see the
moisture on her lashes—they would hear her humming a song without words. The
tune was like the mist: drifting, formless, and everywhere at once.
Snow began to fall in the Lands Between.
It settled on the roof of the cottage and on the tips of Snape's dark hair. The
memory and the reality began to overlap. A vision of the Hogwarts Express
flashed through his mind.
"You'd better be in Slytherin," his younger self said. He saw the way Lily's
expression brightened, and the young Severus felt a surge of encouragement.
"Slytherin?" a boy in the compartment asked, turning around. "Who wants to be in
Slytherin? I wouldn't stay there, would you?" James Potter asked the boy sitting
opposite him.
Sirius Black didn't smile. "My whole family has been in Slytherin," he said
flatly.
"Blimey," James noted. "And I thought you seemed alright!"
Sirius grinned. "Maybe I'll break the tradition. Where would you go, if you had
the choice?"
James raised an invisible sword. "Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!
Like my dad."
The young Severus let out a derisive snort. James turned on him. "Got a problem,
Snivellus?"
"No," the young wizard sneered. "If you prefer brawn over brains—"
"And where are you hoping to go, seeing as you're lacking in both?" Sirius
interjected.
James roared with laughter. Lily straightened her back, her face flushing with
anger as she looked at James and Sirius with pure loathing. "Come on, Severus,
let's find another compartment."
Snape's vision blurred.
He realized then that they had been on the same side once. Even at the end, he
was the only one who had truly lost his way.
The white mists were surging with a renewed violence. Snape knew it was time to
leave. He gazed at her from the threshold of the shadows.
The snow piled up on his shoulders. As he listened to the flakes hit the ground,
he remembered the moment fate had handed him a rose. He remembered the vibrant
red of its petals. From that day on, a part of him would never truly belong to
the dark again.
"What I do now is a far, far better thing than I have ever done; and the rest I
go to is a far, far better rest than I have ever known."
He turned away. The dream shattered.
Tonight, the mists rose. And in the silence of the world, he loved her from the
shadows.
The Lands Between.
The wind-chime rang once more.
Inside the cottage, the tea was still hot. The chair was empty. The fire was
roaring.
Everything was in its place.
Except for a certain coward who had run away.
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