Return To Me

A/N: Sorry for the terribly long wait between updates!


Her sleep was restless. She tossed and turned and found herself wide awake at some ungodly hour of the night. The hospital wing was quiet, all the other patients sound asleep. Even the light that led to the Mediwitch’s chambers was dark. It would do no good to stay there. She needed to grieve.

Cold stone scraped her feet as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. With her robes drawn tightly around her, Aurora slipped silently out of the hospital wing. His chambers were her first destination, but as she crossed through the great hall she paused to weep. The bodies were laid out in caskets, each baring flowers and roses on them.

His was black, silver handles and a single white lily was placed over the lid. She choked back a sob, and closed her eyes. He had returned to her just not as she’d intended. The last night she’d seen him; the night he’d held her until sunrise; the night she had been raped; he had promised he would return. Between his promise and his apologies she wasn’t sure he had spoken anything else.

Her fingers gripped the handle, but the tears shook her body and she was too grief stricken to life the lid and gaze upon his lifeless face. Aurora leaned her lips to the lily flower and muttered a soft, “Goodbye, love.” Before she turned and ran from the great hall. It did not take her bare feet long to find the entrance doors and then she was racing across the lawns.

The Whomping Willow hardly took notice as she approached. It too was in a state of mourning, perhaps for a few lost limbs in the battle or perhaps as an enchanted tree it truly understood the great loss that the side of good had suffered in triumph. Either way it was that much easier for her to slip into the secret passage that led to the shrieking shack. When she’d been tossing and turning, flitting in and out of consciousness she had overheard bits of the conversation; how he had been attacked in the shack as a final stand, how the body had appeared in a strange place on the grounds thereafter.

Crawling through the dirt tunnel on her hands and knees she hardly felt the rough tree roots scraping the flesh of her palms. It didn’t take her long to emerge into the shack, but when she did she nearly collapsed. Blood; his blood; was pooled thick in the center of the floor and she sobbed. It was here he had met his end, with no kind eyes to look upon and no tender person to hold his hand as he faded away. She hadn’t meant to love him; she hadn’t meant to care so deeply for a man so dark. He’d warned her; warned her not to become involved but she’d been stubborn to a point.

It would never be the same. There would be no more late night star gazing up in the astronomy tower while he held her close. No more watching the sunrise as they’d stayed up making love until dawn. She would not find him waiting outside her classroom door for a quick word that would lead to a hot but silent office fuck. Severus Snape was gone. She had lost the man she loved and no one seemed to notice or care.

Aurora placed her palm against the stain of his blood; it was slowly drying into the cracks of the wood, but still sticky enough to coat her hands. Tears fell freely down from her eyes and she cried so hard she could hardly see. Words she had spoken haunted her and she wanted nothing more than to lay down in the blood and die.

“For the greater good…” she whimpered as she closed her eyes. Trembling fingers reached into her pocket and withdrew a vial. The liquid inside shimmered an unnatural shade of green. She’d stolen it from his personal supply cabinet the night he’d fled the school. It had been a long time coming, but she didn’t think she’d ever need it. It was his own special modified potion; he’d explained it once to her. A modification on the draught of the living dead, one could sleep forever and feel no pain, the mind and body at peace forever.

Stenciled on the floor she’d written letters with his blood. “We will be together.” It was simple. Aurora twisted the cap of the vial and slowly sat back against the wall. The potion smelled sickly sweet and a vapor the shape of a skull escaped the narrow opening in the tube. Living without him was hardly living. And there was no way of knowing for sure if she’d find him in the beyond. He could have unfinished business and be trapped as a specter and she not, or vice versa. She did not want to risk the chance.

But in eternal sleep she could dream, and in her dreams she would find him. They would be together forever in her dreams. She would just have to sleep forever to keep him. The glass rim touched her lips and the liquid sloshed in the vial. She closed her eyes. “I’ll find you soon, Severus,” she whispered. Green potion flowed into her mouth and down her throat until the vial slipped from her fingers, shattering against the floor.

Her head swam with fog and the lights grew dark. Just before her eyes, there he was, gripping her hand, speaking her name. And as she drifted into an eternal slumber, she gave her best smile. She had found him.

He had been too late. Detained for hiding in the headmaster’s office until the ministry pardon had come through. The polyjuice ploy had worked its wonders. He’d have to remember to thank the Granger girl for her suggestion later. It had spared him his life. But he needed to find Aurora, the woman he’d sworn he wouldn’t love, but then did.

His chambers had been the first place he’d checked, thinking perhaps she was mourning there. He counted on harsh words and perhaps a few violent swings but once she accepted that he was in fact alive, she’d be over it and they would embrace. But when he found his rooms empty the slightest hint of concern crossed his mind. It wasn’t until he was leaving that he noticed his office door to be ajar. Severus Snape was a man of meticulous detail and he did not leave doors ajar.

“Aurora?” he called out as he entered his office. The room was empty but his eyes found their focus immediately. The store cabinet was open. His heart dropped as he strode forward and started searching through it. The little green vial was gone. His feet couldn’t carry him fast enough as he tore through the dungeons and out onto the grounds, racing toward the Whomping Willow. Again it took no notice as the person approaching, though Severus would have hexed the thing from its roots had it tried.

The tunnel was a lot smaller than he remembered and in his haste he cut his hands. But there was no time to worry about his bleeding flesh. He burst into the room and fell to his knees before her. Her head was lulling against her shoulders, the vial shattered on the floor.

Severus squeezed her hands, trying to shake her from the haze. “Aurora,” he muttered. “Aurora!” but it was no use. He watched helplessly as she slipped into eternal sleep, a faded smile on her lips as her head slumped forward, her body pitching into his arms.

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