“I need it over with now.”

“I understand that. So you’re going to do the passive observer thing – keep two steps back from the action at all times?”

“Yes. That’s the best approach by far. Harrowing as it was to watch the actions that inevitably led to Lily’s death, I can look at it now and see that I was just a stupid…child. A stunted boy with an obsession. It’s odd to see it from this perspective…a grown-up perspective. You know, Jemima, I wonder if I ever really developed emotionally before I…died. So to speak.”

“You’re definitely the poster boy for life after death. And this life will be so much better. I’ll bloody well see to that.”

“I daresay you will.”

Jemima felt the prickle of tears in her eyes as one long pale finger travelled a slow path across her cheekbone. If he’d been a lost boy when the snake attacked, he was a man now, and a man he would remain if she had anything to do with it.

“So then. Green. Green for go.”

Severus looked at her a little oddly.

“You know…like traffic lights.”

“Oh, yes. Traffic lights. That’s right. I associate this colour more with…pensieves.” He peered into the flask’s spectral glow, watching it as if it were alive. Then he braced himself in a kneeling position on the rug and let the ectoplasmic stream invade his consciousness once more.

At first Jemima noticed little more than a great deal of facial mobility – mainly a variety of expressions indicating contemptuous disbelief, including an enormous range of sneers. He must be reliving his teaching experience, Jemima thought with a suppressed chuckle, thinking herself lucky never to have been on the receiving end of such depths of disdain. About a third of the way into the trance, the mood changed and the agitation she had seen last time returned, together with the clutching of the left forearm. A bitter contortion of the mouth and the word ‘Potter!’ hissed with true venom. His head shook violently so that strands of black hair whipped around his face. “You can’t ask me that!” he exclaimed at one point. Then he was lunging with an imaginary wand, agony in his face. Thereafter the full repertoire of violent gestures and pained grimaces flowed continuously, one to another, in a seamless sequence of torment until finally he was plucking at his neck, drained of all colour, nothing readable in those black eyes. Then he crashed down on the rug as if suddenly felled by a poison dart and lay on his side twitching for the full half hour.

This time Jemima was unequal to the task of restraining her own response. As she watched his depleted body flapping like a fish on a slab, the tears coursed down her cheeks. This was it. She had pushed him too far and now he had seen too much. This damage could well be irreparable. She buried her face in a sofa cushion and desperately tried to avoid making a sound that would alert Severus to her grief. He had enough to deal with on his own account without having to worry about her.

It came as a shock to her when she heard him laugh – at least, she thought it must be him but he sounded so unlike himself she was thrown into confusion for a second. An uncontrolled, high-pitched laugh. Hysterical. She looked up to see him sitting with his arms clasped around his knees, which were drawn up to his chest, rocking slightly and laughing with a haunted look on his face.

“Severus. Please…”

He looked at her. At least he seemed to recognise her; that was a good sign, wasn’t it? He mastered his breathing enough to break off from the manic giggling and say, “I’m all right, it’s all right, Jemima. It’ll be all right.” Then he laughed some more, rocked some more. “I bet you didn’t know I could fly, did you?” Fresh peals of crazed mirth assailed the air.

“You can fly?” Jemima blinked. “Please, Severus…breathe. Calm down.”

“I’m sorry…it’s just…” He was gasping, uncomfortable now, his eyes popping with the strain of trying to bring himself back from the brink. “I don’t know how I did it. How did I do it, Jemima? How did I stay sane?”

“It was that bad? Can I touch you? Hold you?”

He nodded, still struggling to find coherent speech. Jemima scrambled down to unlock his clasped hands and press herself inside their compass, holding on to his shaking body as if it were a lifebuoy on a stormy sea. Severus emitted a few more brief barks of laughter then wiped the tears that had leaked from the corner of his eye with the heel of a hand and began to compose himself.

“I should by all rights have gone mad living that life, Jemima. I’m not quite sure why I didn’t. Perhaps I did, a little.”

“You were a spy. You had to hardwire that mentality into your brain, I suppose. Deceit and ambiguity became second nature to you.”

“Yes, they did. I could never allow the guard to drop, even though at times I was enormously tempted. Gods, how tempted I was. How I longed to tell Voldemort what I thought of him…it was almost physically painful, holding it back. And always the pain. Always an atrocious pain, headaches from the Occlumency mainly, though there was also an unpleasant stomach complaint that no Potion seemed able to assuage…”

“Oh! An ulcer, I’ll bet. Stress-related. Don’t you have it now?”

“Oddly, no. Dying seems to have improved my health no end.”

“Good. Because you can hardly go back to the infirmary. Okonedo would be all over you like a hospital superbug.”

“Yes. Well, those children I taught certainly bore the brunt of my aches and pains. I’m a natural disciplinarian, but I seemed to overstep the boundaries rather more often than Dumbledore would have approved of.”

“Dumbledore? The man you…?”

“Yes. Killed. At his own request.”

“Christ, that must have been the hardest thing you ever…”

“Did. Yes, it was.” He sat silently for a while, staring out of the window at the autumnal sunshine. “And then, for a horrible time, I had only his portrait to talk to without having to cloak myself in obfuscatory magic. To all intents and purposes, I was flamboyantly living the Death Eater dream. I had to be crueller than ever to the children…leaving them to the tender mercies of a pair of hired thugs. I had to live and breathe everything I had rejected, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. That kind of lifestyle can take its toll…I must admit, I was at a very low ebb, mentally and physically, when the Final Battle came around. I knew what I had to do; I had my instructions from Dumbledore. And I knew Voldemort would try to kill me. And I didn’t care. I cared that he would be defeated, but when it came to my own part in that defeat, I was almost past caring. A release was my only hope. If that release had to be death, then so be it. But if I could pull off survival AND release, then so much the better. But I no longer wanted to be the man I was. I wanted to be somebody else. I wanted to get rid of the memories before they poisoned my brain into madness – which they were slowly and surely doing.”

“Which you did.” Jemima’s words were barely audible, so compelled was she by Severus’ words.

“Yes, it worked out quite neatly, really. I knew when Voldemort had me killed – which he did far earlier than I was expecting, incidentally; I was rather worried Potter might not turn up. But he did. When Voldemort set that vile reptile on me, I knew I had certain memories Potter had to see. Before I left Hogwarts, I did a little bit of memory charming. I put all of my memories into a pensieve, and I placed a concealment charm of 30 days duration on those that Potter did not need to see. My hope was that, whether I lived or died, I could rid myself of the pernicious toxins in my head, while ostensibly showing Harry Potter what he needed to do to defeat the Dark Lord.”

“So that’s why you gave him the memories. I see.”

“Yes, though I made sure to keep one. The plan I had conceived to cheat the snake. Only that remained.”

“Well, it worked. Are you…glad? Are you glad to be alive still?”

Severus shut his eyes and hugged Jemima in tighter.

“I’ve seen the worst. And yes. I’m glad to be alive.”

*

After a much-needed hot bath and a tot of warm brandy, Severus and Jemima decided to go out for a walk amongst the falling leaves of the Edinburgh autumn.

“This is a beautiful place,” he mused to Jemima, passing underneath a canopy of gold and red branches. “But I don’t think I can stay.”

Jemima felt a sharp pain in her chest. “You want to go back there? To that…place?”

“I think I have to. I think I’m…needed. Now that I can see with more clarity, I have ideas. Lots of ideas. Things that have to change if the same situation is not to repeat itself.”

“A crusader.”

“With my trusty Shield Charm of Righteousness, yes. But Jemima…you look sad.”

“I can’t live there, Sev.”

“You don’t have to. You can continue with your career. I’ll deal with Wizarding business by day…and come back here at evenings and weekends. If you’re amenable to that, that is.”

“Amenable? You’re funny.” Jemima stood back to look at the man who was making the offer of a future. He looked younger than when they had met, and considerably less ferocious. Did she dare conclude she was good for him? And he for her, if the number of remarks about her changed aura at work was anything to go by. “Would you really…want to do that? Wouldn’t you rather have a witch?”

“No I would not! They’re much more trouble than they’re worth. Give me a scientist every time.”

“Do you love me?”

He regarded her for a while, his eyes drifting around her expectant face as if searching for the word or phrase that would express the depth, the magnitude, the enormity of his passion. When he found it, it was simple but devastating. “Yes.”

“You know how I feel, don’t you?”

“I do. So?”

Jemima laughed. Could this be true?

“Yes,” she said.