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The boy who died twice awoke in darkness, memories like shattered glass in his mind.
Severus Snape bolted upright in his narrow bed, a scream caught in his throat. Sweat plastered his lank hair to his forehead as images flickered through his consciousness—a corridor of stone, a great serpent, searing pain at his neck, and a pair of green eyes watching him die. But layered beneath those fragments were other memories: brewing potions in the dungeons, black robes billowing as he stalked down hallways, and decades of bitterness like poison in his veins.
He pressed his palms against his temples. Eleven years old. He was eleven years old. Yet he remembered being nearly forty.
Moonlight spilled through the cracked window of his bedroom at Spinner's End, illuminating peeling wallpaper and the water stain that resembled a skull in the corner. From downstairs came the sound of breaking glass followed by his father's slurred curses. Tobias was drinking again. Nothing new there.
Yet everything else felt new. Or rather, old and new simultaneously—as though two sets of memories were competing for dominance in his mind.
"I'm losing my mind," Severus whispered, his voice cracking. He slipped from bed, bare feet silent on the worn floorboards. "It was just a dream."
But even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true. The memories carried weight, texture, emotion. He remembered casting spells he'd never learned, brewing potions whose ingredients he'd never touched. He remembered loving and hating and dying.
A rustling sound drew his attention to the corner where his second-hand trunk sat packed for Hogwarts. Tomorrow—no, today, he realized, noticing the clock read 3:17 AM—he would board the train and begin his magical education. Only it felt like he'd already lived that life.
Severus crept to the small bookshelf where his mother kept her magical texts hidden behind Muggle titles. His fingers found a slender volume on Occlumency that he'd never opened before, yet he knew exactly what page contained information on memory compartmentalization.
As he reached for it, the air around him shimmered.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZING]
Severus froze as glowing blue text appeared suspended in the air before him. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, but the ethereal lettering remained.
[CALIBRATING TO HOST]
"What magic is this?" he whispered, instinctively reaching for a wand he didn't yet possess. His heart hammered against his ribs.
[SYNCHRONIZATION AT 37%]
[MEMORY INTEGRATION INCOMPLETE]
[TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT DETECTED]
The text hovered at eye level, casting his gaunt face in spectral blue. Severus reached out a trembling hand, but his fingers passed through the words as though they were smoke.
[SYSTEM REQUIRES INITIALIZATION TASK]
[ACCEPT?]
"What are you?" Severus demanded, voice stronger now. Fear had given way to curiosity—a sentiment he recognized from his other set of memories. How many forbidden spells and dark potions had that curiosity led him to explore in that other life?
[I AM THE SYSTEM]
[I EXIST TO CORRECT THE PARADOX]
[ACCEPT INITIALIZATION TASK?]
Severus narrowed his eyes. "What task?"
The blue text rippled like water disturbed by a stone.
[ELIMINATE THE SOURCE OF HOST DEGRADATION]
[TARGET: TOBIAS SNAPE]
[REWARD: FULL MEMORY ACCESS]
[ACCEPT?]
The sound of something heavy hitting the wall downstairs followed by his mother's muffled cry punctuated the System's request. Severus felt a cold clarity settle over him—a familiar sensation from that other life, when difficult decisions were made with calculated precision.
"You want me to kill my father," he said flatly, not a question but an acknowledgment.
[CORRECT]
Severus should have been horrified. Some part of him—the true eleven-year-old part—was. But the other part, the shadow-self with decades of memories, simply assessed the situation with clinical detachment.
"And if I refuse?"
[MEMORY DEGRADATION WILL CONTINUE]
[TEMPORAL PARADOX WILL DESTABILIZE]
[HOST FUNCTIONALITY WILL TERMINATE]
"I'll die," Severus translated.
[CORRECT]
Another crash from downstairs, followed by his mother's pleading voice. "Please, Tobias, you've had enough—"
The sound of flesh striking flesh reached Severus's ears. A familiar sound. Too familiar.
"Show me what I'm fighting for," Severus commanded the System. "If my memories are real, show me something only I would know."
The blue text disappeared, replaced by a swirling mist that coalesced into an image: a young woman with fiery red hair and brilliant green eyes, laughing as she twirled an origami lily between her fingers. Something twisted painfully in Severus's chest.
"Lily," he whispered.
The image shifted: the same woman grown, standing between Severus and a crib where a child with her eyes cried. A flash of green light, her body falling. Then Severus himself, older, broken, cradling her lifeless form.
"Enough!" he gasped, and the vision dissipated, leaving only the glowing text.
[MEMORY AUTHENTICATION COMPLETE]
[ACCEPT INITIALIZATION TASK?]
Downstairs, glass shattered again. His mother sobbed.
"Yes," Severus whispered, the word like ash on his tongue. "I accept."
[TASK ACCEPTED]
[SYSTEM CALIBRATION COMMENCING]
[ACCESSING HOST SKILLS...]
A buzzing sensation filled Severus's skull, and knowledge bloomed behind his eyes—potion recipes, wand movements, spell incantations. Not all his memories, but enough. Enough to do what needed to be done.
He moved to his trunk and opened it, retrieving his mother's silver potions knife from where he'd hidden it among his school supplies. The blade caught the moonlight, flashing like a promise.
Severus descended the stairs silently, each step bringing new fragments of memory: standing before the Dark Lord, pledging loyalty; standing before Dumbledore, pledging redemption; standing before the Great Hall, presiding over terrified students.
He paused at the kitchen door. Inside, his father had his mother pinned against the wall, one hand wrapped around her throat. Eileen's eyes found Severus in the doorway, widening with fear—not for herself, but for what her son might do.
"Go back to bed, boy," Tobias slurred without turning. "This doesn't concern you."
But it did. It always had.
Severus stepped into the kitchen, knife concealed behind his back. "Let her go."
Tobias released Eileen, who slid down the wall gasping for breath, and turned to face his son. His face was flushed with drink, eyes bloodshot. "What did you say to me?"
"I said," Severus repeated, voice steadier than it had any right to be, "let her go."
Tobias laughed, an ugly sound. "Look at you, thinking you're a man." He took a menacing step forward. "I'll teach you your place, boy."
[ACCESSING COMBAT PROTOCOLS]
[RECOMMEND NONLETHAL APPROACH FIRST]
[EVIDENCE ELIMINATION REQUIRED]
The text flashed in Severus's peripheral vision as Tobias lunged for him. With reflexes that belonged to a much older self, Severus sidestepped, allowing his father's momentum to carry him into the doorframe. Tobias grunted in pain and surprise.
"How did you—" he began, but Severus cut him off.
"You've hurt her for the last time."
"Severus, no," Eileen whispered, struggling to her feet. "Please, just go upstairs."
But Severus couldn't. Not with the weight of two lives pressing on him. Not with the System's demands. Not with the knowledge of what would happen if Tobias Snape continued to live: his mother's slow deterioration, his own festering hatred, the cascade of choices that would lead him to kneel before a Dark Lord.
[WARNING: MATERNAL INTERFERENCE DETECTED]
[RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE ACTION]
Tobias recovered his balance and charged again, fist raised. This time, Severus did not simply evade. His hand shot out, catching his father's wrist with surprising strength. For a moment, the two looked at each other in shock—the drunk man and the boy who wasn't really a boy.
"What the—" Tobias began.
Severus twisted, using his father's drunken imbalance against him. Tobias stumbled, crashing into the kitchen table. A bottle of cheap whiskey toppled and shattered on the linoleum.
"You little bastard," Tobias snarled, reaching for a jagged bottleneck. "I'll carve that look right off your face."
"Tobias, don't!" Eileen cried, pulling herself up using the counter.
Severus simply waited, knife still hidden, as his father charged a third time.
When Tobias was almost upon him, Severus sidestepped again, but this time he extended his foot. His father tripped, pitching forward with drunken momentum. Unable to catch himself, Tobias crashed headlong into the corner of the counter.
The sound his skull made against the edge was like an overripe melon splitting. He crumpled to the floor, blood pooling rapidly beneath his head.
Eileen screamed, a sound that would have pierced Severus to his core if not for the strange detachment he felt. He looked down at the knife in his hand—still clean, still unused. He hadn't needed it after all.
[TARGET ELIMINATED]
[CLASSIFY: ACCIDENTAL DEATH]
[RECOMMENDATION: STAGE SCENE]
"Severus, what have you done?" Eileen whispered, staring at her husband's still form.
"What needed to be done," he answered, his voice sounding distant to his own ears. "He fell, Mother. That's all anyone needs to know."
He moved methodically, placing the knife back in his pocket and kneeling beside his father's body. No pulse. The fall had killed him instantly—a drunken accident, just as the System suggested.
Eileen watched him with growing horror and comprehension. "Severus," she said carefully, "how do you know to check for a pulse?"
He looked up at her, suddenly aware of how strange his behavior must seem. No ordinary eleven-year-old would be this calm, this calculated in the face of death.
"I..." he began, but the words died on his lips as the System's text flashed again.
[INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
[MEMORY ACCESS GRANTED: LEVEL 1]
[NEW TASK AVAILABLE]
Fresh memories cascaded through his mind—potions class, detentions, staffroom conversations. Still fragmented, still incomplete, but more than before. The System was keeping its promise.
"I don't know," he lied to his mother. "Instinct."
Eileen's dark eyes, so much like his own, searched his face. She saw more than he wanted her to—she always had.
"Something's different about you," she whispered. "Since this morning, you've been... changed."
Severus stood, wiping his hands on his nightshirt. "We need to make this look like an accident, Mother. He was drunk. He fell. That's our story."
Eileen stared at him for a long moment before nodding once, resignation and something like fear in her expression. "Yes," she said quietly. "An accident."
Together, they arranged the scene: the whiskey bottle shattered just so, Tobias positioned as though he'd stumbled in his drunkenness. When they were finished, Eileen went to the neighbor's house to raise the alarm while Severus washed his hands methodically in the upstairs bathroom.
He caught his reflection in the cracked mirror and paused. For a moment, he thought he saw another face superimposed over his own—older, haggard, lined with decades of bitterness and regret. His shadow-self.
[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: PREVENT THE RISE OF LORD VOLDEMORT]
[SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: ENSURE HOST SURVIVAL]
[TERTIARY OBJECTIVE: PROTECT CREATOR]
The text glowed blue in the darkness of the bathroom.
"Creator?" Severus asked. "Who is the Creator?"
But the System gave no answer, the text fading slowly until only two words remained:
[TASK COMPLETE]
Severus turned away from the mirror as the wail of sirens approached Spinner's End. Tomorrow he would board the Hogwarts Express. Tomorrow he would see Lily again—not as a memory, but as a living, breathing girl who didn't yet hate him.
Tomorrow, he would begin to change the future.
As he looked out the bathroom window at the flashing lights of police cars, Severus felt his shadow-self smile—a cold, determined expression that had no place on a child's face.
"I accept the task," he said to the empty air. "All of them."