It took Severus a long time to understand the significance of that day's events and their implications.
At first, he barely noticed that the war was over and that a massive celebration had been going on for days above his head, in the castle and throughout the rest of the Wizarding World. He didn't realise because he didn't leave the dungeons for the first few days. Once Omegas learned that rumours had spread throughout the castle of her plan to reunite the Deathly Hallows, culminating in Voldemort's defeat by a single Expelliarmus, she once again refused to leave his quarters, and this time Severus didn't feel like complaining.
After the initial euphoria, things began to return to normal. One afternoon, Professor McGonagall knocked on his office door and was lucky enough to find him inside. She informed him that most of the people who had been staying at the castle in recent months had now gone home, and that if he wished, he could do the same. But Severus had no intention of going home. He was already home. He didn't tell her as much, but from that day on, he convinced himself that he could no longer pretend that nothing existed outside that dungeon.
He finally decided to walk up the stairs to the ground floor, where he found an entrance, as well as a Great Hall, a park, and every room in complete disarray. He had never seen Hogwarts in such a state before, not even after the first battle.
It was only then, standing in front of the large, shattered door, that Severus realised the war was truly and undeniably over, and things would inevitably return to normal bit by bit. He also realised that, partly because of the battle and partly because of the wild rejoicing that had followed, it would be a long time before the school was up and running again, even if all the staff put their minds to it.
Shortly afterwards, when he returned to his quarters and shared his thoughts with Omegas, she let out a loud huff.
"There you go," she muttered, throwing herself into an armchair with a drink in her hand. "This is exactly why I leave when a war ends. First they make a mess, then they expect us to help clean up."
Those were the first words to break the spell. He looked into her eyes for a while—the eyes of a nomad. The eyes of a soldier. She didn't even have a home to return to. That realisation threatened to ruin the wonderful sense of escapism he had been enjoying since the war ended. The tacit agreement that had led them to behave as if there was no After—never mentioning it, never thinking about it.
"By the way," she said after a few sips. "Is the party over?"
"Yes," he replied, sitting in the armchair opposite hers, also with a glass in his hand.
"Finally," she sighed.
"The students have gone home," he added. "The castle is practically empty."
Omegas gave him a half-smile and raised the glass to her lips again. "I might even venture out of these quarters."
Severus let out a wry laugh. "Are you planning to make yourself useful?" he asked sarcastically.
She smirked. "I said out of these quarters, Severus. Not out of this dungeon. Don't push it."
He concealed a smile with a scowl, knowing full well that she wouldn't be fooled.
"Well, the injured have been transferred to St Mungo's by now," he remarked. "But the supply cupboard is at least half empty again."
That was a lie. The cupboard was almost full, but Severus knew that she would be too elated at the prospect of returning to work to check.
Her eyes darted to him, the glass suspended in mid-air, and her lips parted.
"Is it?" she breathed.
"It is," he replied.
Omegas stared at him and blinked quietly.
He finished his drink, put the empty glass down on the table, and looked into her eyes again.
"Do you want to—"
"Yes," she cut him off.
She stood up, put her glass down as well, grabbed his arm and dragged him to his office.
That ploy allowed Severus to postpone the After for weeks. Omegas went back and forth from his office to his quarters at six-hour intervals, and except for when he helped with the reconstruction—which he tried to do as little as possible—he was always with her. They prepared potions just as they had done at the start: locked in the office, bent over the table in absolute silence. It was beautiful.
That peace, however, was brutally interrupted a few days later when they were disturbed from their usual tranquillity by a knock at the door.
"Come in," Severus said.
Professor McGonagall began to speak before she had even entered the room, as busy and brisk as ever.
"Severus, Kingsley told me to ask you—" she stopped abruptly.
She looked from Severus to the woman beside him, who hadn't even bothered to raise her head.
"Miss Sylith?" she asked, her brow furrowed.
"Grindelwald," she replied. She looked up at the Headmistress and gave her a cheeky grin. "Hello, Professor."
McGonagall looked back and forth between the two of them for a while.
"Are you still here?" she asked.
"Apparently," she replied.
McGonagall stood in front of her, her nostrils flaring slightly. "And why aren't you upstairs helping with the reconstruction like everyone else?"
"I'm filling the supply cupboard," Omegas said cheerfully.
The Headmistress narrowed her eyes. "The supply cupboard is already full," she retorted.
Omegas paused for a moment. She glanced up at Severus, her brow furrowed, but he continued working impassively.
"Is it?" she asked.
"It is, Miss Sylith," McGonagall insisted.
They looked into each other's eyes for a while, then Omegas went back to work as if nothing had happened.
"Don't you like my first name, Professor?" she murmured.
When McGonagall's hands suddenly came to rest on her hips, Severus judged that it would be an excellent moment to intervene.
"Were you looking for me, Headmistress?"
She turned to him. "Yes," she confirmed, regaining her brisk tone. "Kingsley has been appointed Interim Minister for Magic. He has asked me to return the Death Chamber Arch to the Department of Mysteries."
He looked at her, eyes narrowed and head tilted slightly to one side. "I don't have the Arch," he replied.
The Headmistress gave him a probing look. "You don't have it?"
He shook his head. "I haven't seen it since the day we retrieved Nagini."
McGonagall continued to scrutinise him for a moment, looking for any sign that might cause her to doubt him, but she found none.
"Very well," she said, clearly meaning the opposite. She turned on her heel and quickly reached the office door. "I fully expect you to make yourself useful like everyone else, Omegas."
Without waiting for a reply, she opened the door, stepped through, and slammed it shut behind her.
Severus turned to look at Omegas and found her rolling her eyes. When their gazes met a few seconds later, he quickly looked away and leaned back over his side of the desk. She turned and reached for a glass jar, adding some Lionfish Spines to her Wiggenweld Potion. She waited for the mixture to turn yellow, then spoke quietly.
"Why does McGonagall say the supply cupboard is full?"
He bent over his Anaesthetic Potion far more than necessary.
"I don't know," he replied vaguely.
She smirked. "Did you lie to me, Severus?"
Unable to lower himself any further into the cauldron without risking his nose, he raised his head and adopted an air of confident arrogance. He raised an eyebrow and eyed her up and down.
"Yes."
Omegas studied him in turn. "Just so I had a good reason to brew potions?"
"Yes," he repeated. He decided not to mention the other reason: to keep her busy enough to dissuade her from leaving the castle.
She kept looking at him, her smirk gradually melting into a soft smile. Glancing away, she picked up the Lionfish Spines again and added five more to her cauldron.
"Sweet Salazar, I actually do love you," she said, as if talking about the weather.
"I know," he deadpanned.
She chuckled. "Good."
From that moment on, Omegas was forced to leave the dungeons and take part in the reconstruction work. She did so with such reluctance that Severus feared she would leave just to be rid of the burden. Thankfully, she didn't, and continued to shuttle between his quarters, sporadic reconstruction work, and the preparation of utterly unnecessary potions.
Her newfound occupation gave Omegas a good reason to stay on for a while, and Severus, who had been hoping that it would all be over as soon as possible, suddenly found himself wishing that the reconstruction would never be completed. Each time a collapsed ceiling was repaired, a door was refitted or a hole in a wall was filled, Severus sensed the After approaching.
His anxiety reached the point where, on one of the first cold evenings of the year, as he sat in front of Omegas with a glass in his hand and a fire burning behind him, listening to her recount a journey she had taken to Lithuania and pretending that he had never heard the story before, he considered following her.
He considered the possibility of living a day-to-day life as a vagabond, not knowing if he would survive to see the next day. He remembered every moment of tense suffering he had endured in his office while wondering if he would survive the Second Wizarding War. He hated every one of those dark moments. He watched her speak, not bothering to register the words, and wondered which would be worse: living with that tension for the rest of his life with her, or never experiencing it again without her.
"You're picking up my bad habits," she whispered suddenly, snapping him out of his thoughts.
Severus looked at her in confusion.
"You pretend to listen to me when you're lost in your own thoughts," she explained.
He leaned back in the chair, declaring a calm he did not feel at all. "You've told me that story before," he said.
She smiled. "I know. I thought it was one of those times where we both pretend I didn't, just so we have something to talk about."
Severus lowered his head, shook it and let out a hint of a laugh. "Indeed."
They looked at each other, both acutely aware of the elephant in the room that had been lurking in his quarters ever since the war ended. It had arrived, settled in, and then started to grow. Now, with reconstruction almost complete and the prospect of having to leave the school looming, it was beginning to squeeze in.
Omegas cleared her throat, bowed her head and seemed to shrink in her armchair. Severus had been observing her very closely and had learned to read every movement of her body in relation to how she was feeling. It hadn't been easy; her body language was one of the most bizarre he had ever come across. That particular movement meant that she was preparing for either an intimate or potentially painful conversation, or perhaps both.
He wasn't wrong and he didn't like it.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked softly.
"About what?" he said, giving her an opportunity to change the subject.
She decided not to take it.
"The After."
For the first time since her lips had touched his, he looked at her with genuine irritation.
"No," he grumbled.
Omegas returned his gaze with one of her calm smiles and nodded slowly. "All right."
She propped herself up on the backrest of the chair and swirled the dark red liquid in her glass with her right hand. That was a sign that something interesting—and probably unethical or illegal—was about to happen.
"Would you like to see how I made the antidote that saved your life?"
Severus' eyes snapped to hers. He caught an eerie glint in her gaze that he knew he was returning with an identical one. He glanced up at the clock and read half past three in the morning.
"Now?" he asked.
She shrugged and gave him a grin that said, 'Why not?'
He sat still for a few seconds, then nodded enthusiastically. They left his quarters, reached his office, and managed to ignore the elephant for a little while longer.
But the elephant kept growing, and the effort required to pretend it didn't exist was becoming exhausting. Omegas began to share everything she had kept private with him. She told him stories about periods of her life that she had never mentioned before, including her time with Jay. He didn't particularly enjoy it, but tried not to let her know. She showed him every spell she had invented and wrote down recipes for all the potions she had modified to improve them. She even brewed a few of them, but she didn't start anything that would take more than a week to prepare—that was the sign that the elephant had inevitably reached the office.
Severus had the distinct, disturbing feeling that she was trying to reveal as much about herself as possible, in the hope that he wouldn't forget her once she was gone. He was tempted to call her an idiot for even thinking that there was the slightest chance he might forget her. But he didn't; a far more intrusive thought took over his mind. The idea that, sooner or later, she would forget him.
Thus, Severus imitated her and, over the next few days, shared with her every piece of information he had acquired, every idea he had had and every spell or potion he had invented or modified over time. Those days were so intense, and their sharing so intimate—even more so than the days they had spent locked in his quarters—that he found himself thinking that, yes, he could live without the certainty of seeing the next dawn, if it meant that would never end.
As the last brick of the last tower was put back in place, Severus could no longer deny that the After was drawing ever closer. The elephant in his office was looming so large that he felt suffocated. Bent over the desk together, he searched for the right words to express his thoughts and finally have the conversation that would banish that elephant once and for all.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she was quicker.
"The answer is no," she declared.
Puzzled, he turned and watched her as she floated gracefully behind the table.
"I haven't asked the question yet," he objected.
"I know," she replied. "But you seemed rather uncomfortable with the idea, so I thought I'd pretend you did."
She turned around, smiled at him, and returned to her work as if nothing had happened. Impressed and vaguely annoyed by her nonchalance, he watched her silently for a while. Then he realised the inevitable implications of that 'no', and grew even more irritated.
"Why not?" he snarled.
Omegas turned again and looked him in the eye. She spoke the next sentence in the most inappropriately calm tone he had ever heard her use.
"Because if you died, I wouldn't survive it."
She smiled at him again and returned to her work, rendering Severus utterly powerless to articulate a response.
Omegas shook the Bicorn Horn Dust from her hands and put aside the preparation. She turned to him, gave him a faint smile, clasped her hands behind her back, and took a few tentative steps towards him. That was her way of showing that she felt guilty and was about to do or say something dramatic enough to distract him.
Severus didn't believe anything in the world could distract him from what had just been said.
He was wrong.
Omegas held out a hand, her smile turning cunning. "May I borrow your wand?"
He looked up at her. "Why?"
"I left the one Professor McGonagall gave me in your quarters. And I don't like it anyway—too short."
"What do you need it for?" he asked again.
Omegas didn't answer, but the look on her face was intriguing enough to pique his curiosity. Severus pulled the wand out from under his cloak and placed it in her hand. She examined it for a while, a faint look of bewilderment on her face.
"How on earth do you manage to use it? It's the most rigid wand I've ever held!"
Severus gave her one of his glares, which by now had completely lost their effect. He watched as she moved her bag from the desk to the floor and waved the wand.
A moment later, the large stone Arch that had once belonged to the Department of Mysteries appeared in exactly the same spot it had been a few months before.
Severus stared at it, eyes wide.
"Did you… steal the Arch?" he asked, sounding a little less accusatory and a little more impressed than he would have liked.
"Yes," she confirmed.
"Why?"
She stared at it intently. "You can't expect me to find out that there's an afterlife and not want to investigate it properly."
He unconsciously mirrored her smirk as he turned back to look at the Arch.
After a moment of silent contemplation of the artefact, Severus was interrupted by something that disturbed him enough to distract him. He turned back to her, stood up straight and spoke in the sternest tone he could muster.
"You're not planning on going back in there, are you?"
Omegas smiled and shook her head. "No."
She reached for her bag on the floor, waved the wand again and caught the object that emerged, which he recognised as a pair of lenses invented by the Weasley twins a few months earlier.
"Technically…" she began, in the tone she only used when she had an idea and was about to propose it. "If I could find a way to enchant them the way Flitwick enchanted the vial, then all I would have to do is bribe a ghost, get it to wear them and have it enter the Arch, and I could explore it without killing myself."
That was a brilliant idea, thought Severus. He had no intention whatsoever of letting her know. He casually returned to studying the Arch.
"I'm afraid you'd need a wand first," he said pointed out.
Omegas responded to his remark with a grin that was no longer merely sly—it was utterly mischievous. Pointing her wand at the bag again, she retrieved the long branch she had taken from the tree that had been reborn thanks to the Resurrection Stone.
"How unwise do you think it would be to ask Ollivander for help, hoping he won't ask too many questions?"
Severus eyed the branch greedily and with a slightly disturbing intensity.
"Extremely," he murured.
"Hmm…" she said. "Then I think it's time we do some research on wand making."
During the days they spent in the library, immersed in reading volumes such as History of Wand Making: From 1300 to the Present Day or Recent Discoveries and Developments in Wand Production Methods, Severus and Omegas were both aware that they would not be able to learn how to turn that branch into a usable wand even if they spent the next two years among those shelves. However, the elephant that had occupied his quarters and later his office stayed away for a while, and they could continue to pretend that the After would never come.
It peeked in one night as the two of them sat on the floor of the Restricted Section, lanterns in hand. Omegas emerged from a large hardback book she had been buried in for at least a couple of hours and spoke to Severus for the first time since they had woken up.
"You know, it seems there's a guy in Vietnam who's dedicated his life to making unusual wands. Most of them have been deemed illegal by the Vietnamese Ministry of Magic."
He looked up at her. He could clearly see her slinging her bag over her shoulder and disappearing into a fireplace that would take her directly to the Vietnamese workshop of a shady wand maker.
She met his eyes, waiting for an answer that never came. She closed the book she was holding and brought her knees to her chest—with that, Severus knew she knew. She remained silent for a few more moments as he tried to disappear behind his own book.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.
"No," he replied.
"All right," she said. She went back to her reading and did not speak for several hours.
But the elephant's heavy footsteps had now reached the library walls, and each step it took in their direction threatened to topple the books arranged on the shelves.
They continued reading precariously beneath those shelves for a few days, until the elephant took on a real form and came to disturb them. The form it chose was that of Filch, the caretaker. For the first time in his life, Severus hated him.
He had never disliked that man's presence in the castle. He was so taciturn, so invisible—so alone. He was like a ghost, lurking gloomily through the corridors of Hogwarts, only taking on a physical form when he found someone to punish. He had never found himself being that someone before.
Filch approached, limping slightly and with his grey hair dishevelled, his cat following behind him. He stopped in front of their table and addressed them with his usual gruffness.
"The Headmistress has sent for you, Miss Sylith. She wants to speak to you in private," he said. He gave a grin tinged with a hint of cruelty.
Omegas looked at him, her eyes slightly narrowed and her head tilted to one side. Her lips curled into a cheeky smile.
"Just like old times, Flich," she whispered.
She gave him a nod that showed nothing but quiet respect, stood up and gave Severus an eloquent look.
"Professor Snape," Filch greeted him.
He could only give a small nod and an irritated grimace.
Filch and Omegas disappeared behind the door, leaving him alone with the consequences of the elephant's arrival. He stood there pondering for a while, the book in his hands open and hanging in the air.
The Headmistress would ask her what she intended to do, he knew that much. The castle was now completely empty, except for her, Professor McGonagall, the caretaker and the gamekeeper. It would not reopen until the start of the next school year. Months would have to pass, months during which Omegas could not expect to remain within those walls without anyone asking questions. She didn't belong there, after all.
The After had never felt so close. Severus, who had been staring at the large clock in the library for at least half an hour, found that he was experiencing the opposite of the annoying impatience he had known before. He hoped the clock would stop and she would never return from the meeting. Of course, the clock did nothing but speed up.
Now too restless to sit still at the table, he got up, reached his office and began pacing the room with the same insistence as when he had been waiting for Omegas to emerge from the Arch.
He soon found himself holding a glass in one hand and clenching his wand tightly in the other. Without bothering to give his actions any logical explanation, he waved his wand and a silvery snake appeared, twirling in the air and stopping in front of his face. He stared at its vertical pupils for a long time, wondering how many more times he would be forced to look at them while feeling so afraid, and how long it would be before that fear turned to anger, then pain, then true despair. Things would really get back to normal after all.
"Did I ever tell you what the natural form of my Patronus is?"
Severus turned to find Omegas in the doorway, one of her unreadable smiles painted on her face. The silvery snake vanished, and he forced himself to appear as unperturbed as she was.
"No," he replied.
She approached him slowly and stopped in front of him. He watched her intently. Her body was moving in a way he had never seen before and could not make sense of. She shifted her weight from the tips of her feet to her heels, swaying gently as she traced circles on the table with one finger.
"I thought I couldn't produce one for years," she explained. "In my last year I still couldn't. I tried and tried, but nothing happened. You can imagine how frustrating that was."
"Really?" he said, genuinely surprised.
"Yes," she confirmed. "Then, just as I was about to finish my studies, our Survivance teacher died during a class. Ironic, don't you think?"
Severus chuckled, and she responded—as she always did when he showed that he was capable of laughter—with a genuine smile.
"Anyway, the next time I tried, I finally managed."
He frowned. "Because you saw the teacher die?"
Omegas laughed. "That's exactly what my classmates thought," she said amusedly. "No one spoke to me for the rest of the year. Some thought I had rigged the trap that killed him…" She shook her head.
Severus continued to study her curiously.
She stepped closer and met his gaze stubbornly. "Think."
He let his gaze slide over her face, his eyes narrowed to slits. "Was it a Thestral?"
Her smile widened. She nodded in approval and a hint of admiration. She walked around the table and stood beside him as she had done countless times before. But this time, she didn't get to work. She continued to caress the desk as if it were the hand of a lover.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.
Severus could not have postponed the conversation any longer, even if he had wanted to. Moreover, he was so fascinated by the bizarre movement of her body that he almost forgot all the anguish that had tormented him until that moment.
"Yes," he replied.
"All right," she said.
There was a long pause, during which the smile that formed on Omegas' face, and the obstinacy with which she touched every object on the table as if it belonged to her, became so eloquent that Severus' anticipation once again felt like his usual, old impatience.
"What did McGonagall tell you?" he asked.
She looked around vaguely. "She talked about logistics, mostly."
"Logistics?"
"Logistics, yes," she confirmed. She turned her back to him and started to stroke the other side of the table. "It was rather boring. Apparently, some members of the teaching staff decided to retire after the war, and now she's got empty chairs that she doesn't know how to fill. She did nothing but complain."
She took a few steps away from him and began to study the shelves behind the desk as if she had never seen them before.
"One of those teachers, and I don't feel like blaming him, happens to be Professor Slughorn," she murmured.
Severus' eyes snapped to hers. "Really?" he breathed. His voice trembled against his better judgement.
"Really," she said. "So, unless you're planning on leaving the Defence Against the Dark Arts post—"
"I'm not," he cut her off.
Omegas turned, her violet eyes fixed on his. She took a step towards him; at that point, the grin on her face was too eloquent for him to pretend he didn't understand.
"Did she offer you the Potions post?"
"Yes."
"What did you tell her?" he asked, making no effort to hide his anticipation.
Omegas did not answer—not with words. She continued to stare into his eyes and gave him a single, slow, cunning smile.
Severus watched as she looked away, floated along the table for a few moments more, circled the room, and reached the door. His heart was beating so loudly in his chest that he was sure every remaining resident of the castle could hear it.
"Our Headmistress has informed me that this is supposed to be my office, but you refuse to leave it," she said softly. "We will have to find a solution in the future, you know? I have no intention of leaving the dungeons."
He returned her look with an equally suggestive one. "We will see."
Omegas gave him one last impertinent grimace and a fake snort of annoyance before disappearing behind the door.
Severus waited for it to close. He looked around for a while, utterly unable to form any coherent thoughts. In the blissful silence that enveloped him, a feeling he had rarely experienced invaded every part of his mind and body—and he embraced it as he would a long-lost friend.
Severus Snape, always a practical man, but one who had never allowed himself to be anything else, sat in the chair behind his long wooden table and felt happy.