She stroked his grey hair, allowing her fingers to gently play with the strands. When had it gone this steely shade? For so long it had kept its fierce, implacable blackness, until one day she had noticed the first grey wisp. Of course her own hair had lost much of its redness, the natural colour draining away over several years. The inevitability of growing old involved acquiring a faded look that only hinted at past glory. Their faces had grown pale and wrinkled together, matching each other’s experiences line for line. And they had had some intense experiences together. The sights and shadows of death had often been in their lives, but they had always managed to survive. Until now.
When had she truly accepted that Severus was dying? The Healers had been telling them for months that nothing could be done. Old age had finally slipped its rope around her husband’s neck and was rapidly tightening the noose in an attempt to get him to leave her. She had watched his usual brisk gait slow over the past few weeks, making him irritable, ready to snap at anything that got in his path. In a strange way it reminded her of the first few months of their marriage as they had struggled to come to terms with each other’s constant company. How many people had predicted it wouldn’t last? How many had openly scoffed at the idea of Severus Snape finally finding a woman?
“Well, we proved them wrong, didn’t we,” she whispered to his diminishing form. “There was no witch and wizard stronger than us in the end. We outlasted them all.”
His breathing was shallower than it had been yesterday and she wondered how soon the end would come. Her heart died a thousand deaths inside her chest at the thought that there would be an end. How could she live on without him? For a hundred and thirty-six years they had shared everything, every waking moment and soundless dream. It had all been theirs. Now there would be no theirs, only hers. She wasn’t ready for it, couldn’t accept her fate. They should have died together in some way. It would have felt far more fitting an end than the hollow nothingness that was about to take place.
The healers said it was a matter of days, not weeks. His body was slowly shutting down so that only his vital organs were still functioning. She cried inside for her husband and for what had been. Their lives had been wonderful after the defeat of Voldemort. They had shared a passion that had drenched them in joy for all of their years together and she was slow to relinquish it. Two children had arrived and continued to make both of them proud, providing grandchildren, great-grandchildren and hours of endless pleasure. Their cottage in Ireland was still standing, the gorse burning at the door in spring and the trees ripe with fruit come autumn. But their autumn was long gone and winter now inhabited their souls. The quiet time, when all is dying or dead, resting before that glorious burst of new life come spring. But they would have no spring, not in this world anyway. Her ravens had never left her land. Their own broods had continued to stand guard over her true home in a loyalty that went beyond any creatures she had ever known. Would they too face an endless winter when she was gone, or would they move to sunnier pastures. But she was not going, he was going, and she gasped anew at the freshness of the pain that thought brought with it.
When had he last opened his eyes? She ran her finger round the contours of his paper-thin lids, feeling them flicker at her touch. She wished he would open his eyes; they were the only part of him, apart from his ever-bright mind, that remained untroubled by the length of their contented life. And what a mind it had proved to be. So many new potions that had helped so many people, so many that she had lost count. He had been published many times and had even had two of his books become set texts at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There was something undeniably fitting about that.
Her wedding ring was still tight on her finger, although all the other rings he had bought her had become loose over time. There was still magic in the swirling gold but she feared for it when the bond between her and her husband was broken. Despite her firm belief that they would be together again, even beyond death, she still feared the interminable time between his going and her following. How long could she live alone? Her family would try and comfort her but they couldn’t understand the soul-searing emptiness that would threaten to eclipse her when he was no longer by her side. Would the purity of their love become diluted in what came after? Would they be remembered down the years with accuracy, or would their lives twist and turn through nostalgia and the re-telling of their tale.
She wished she could gather every memory she had and hold them close to her. How she longed to be allowed the time to take them all out and examine them with Severus just once more. Their honeymoon, the defeat of Voldemort, Harry’s wedding, Remus’ wedding, the birth of their children, Severus’ ‘Order of Merlin, First Class’ ceremony. And there were bad ones to be wept over too: the death of Albus, the losses in the war with Voldemort, the loss of their first child. But they would have cried together, always together. Maeve felt the urge to open all the windows in the house and give in to an orgy of screaming that would tell the world how she felt about losing this man. She wanted to let slip the rope that tied her to her sanity and give in to the endless field of grief that awaited her on the other side of this final, shared experience. But it wasn’t shared, was it? He would go alone, unaccompanied by her, into the night beyond their day. How could he think about leaving her? How could he allow his body to fail him when hers had not?
Her eyes fell to the useless potions that had been lined up by his bed; potions that cared little for his health but stood there as a false panacea for ills they could not cure. Tincture of Sylphre, a vial of Chelfoil oil, tiny tablets that contained bindweed and asphodel which were supposed to relieve any pain he might be feeling. All useless. Neville Longbottom had called in yesterday, himself a bent and aged figure, walking with the aid of a stick. He had given her a small jar that contained a concoction of his own and told her that this was the last gift she could give to her husband, but only if she took it herself.
Her fingers automatically moved to this silver-hued potion as she contemplated the option Neville had given her. How well he knew the machinery of her mind. Their long years working together in their herbology business had given Neville an insight into her that could only be bettered by Severus’. But what would the children think? What would those that were left behind think of such a course of action? Would it be an admission of failure to give up on life at the point when it became unbearable?
Severus opened weary eyes in recognition of her torment.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice the softest she had ever heard it. “I didn’t mean to leave you. You know I would do anything not to go.”
“I know,” she replied, taking his hand and closing her fingers over it tightly. Perhaps if she held on hard enough he would not go.
“Don’t have any regrets, Maeve,” he insisted. “We have been the best we could have been.”
“I don’t want you to go alone,” she whispered, her voice yoked by her sorrow.
“And I don’t want to leave you to what is left. But you know we will find ourselves again.”
“But I don’t want to have to look. I don’t want to take the chance that we may pass each other by and not recognize what we were. I want to go with you… I want us to be together in everything we do. I want to take my final breath with you. I want us to have the same air in our lungs as we pass beyond into the next adventure that the universe has in store for us.” Her pleas were that of a child who knows what she wants but is being denied it by an older, wiser parent.
“I know. But that is not what has been decided for us.”
She managed a smile at the irony of him believing in a higher destiny than that of their own making. It had never been like that. He had often scorned such notions as being implausible and the workings of feeble minds. Ironic really, she thought, given her own destiny. Perhaps her father would come at the last moment and free her from the suffering that lay in store, an extra little bit of destiny that had never been explained to her. But she new he would not. He would never interfere in their lives again, could not interfere in their lives again. Not after the last time. Their deaths were to be their own concern, and death was coming ever nearer. She could feel him walking the corridors of their home, his ear at the door waiting for the right moment to effect an entrance. What would prompt death to make his final decision? Would it be the point at which she could no longer bear to see the suffering on Severus’ face or would it be when Severus himself asked to be released from the prison of his own body?
Her eyes moved to Neville’s potion once again and she knew what she would do. Death would win the wizarding lottery that night, if she had her way. It would be the ultimate two for the price of one offer and all she had to do was make it happen.
“I’m coming with you,” she breathed. Severus looked at her with a mixture of anguish and joy. He had once offered up his life for hers and had been repaid with the seemingly endless years of her love but he could scarcely believe she was about to offer up her own in order to accompany him down the long road of death.
“You can’t,” he said sharply. “You still have years to live, things to do. It is not your time.”
“What things?” she asked. “I have done everything, I have been everything I could ever be and all I have left is you. What am I without you?”
“You are you. You were always you. You didn’t need me to keep breathing, to keep living.”
“You are so very wrong. You were everything to me. You have always been the air that my lungs needed to survive and the ground that my feet needed beneath them to tread a steady path. Without you my life is a ship lost at sea with no safe harbour or lighthouse to bring her home. What am I but you?”
“I have spent all my life protecting yours. Do you think I will allow you to give it up so easily?”
“I am not giving it up. I am exchanging it for something better. I suppose you could say I am trading up.” Her eyes had taken on a glow that meant she would not be shaken from her course of action. “We have always done everything together. Do you really think I am about to let you go on this adventure without me? I’m not missing out on any of the fun.”
“You always were a remarkable woman, Maeve Snape, always.”
“I was always your remarkable woman, Severus. You helped make me who I am.”
She took her wand from her robes and pointed it at the coffee cup that sat on the table. Her final spell of a life that had been full of spells flew from her wand and turned the cup into the key that would open the door of their final journey. Taking his hand she had no need to ask if he was ready, he had always been ready. With Neville’s potion firmly grasped in her other hand she touched the back of her palm to the cup and they both felt the pull that would deliver them to the place they had both come to love.
The cottage in the cool Antrim mountains was waiting for them with a welcoming air drifting through its echoing rooms. The Portkey delivered them straight to the bedroom where their children had been conceived. As they dropped down onto the bed they felt relief that their journey through one life was ending like this. Without giving the matter any more thought, Maeve unstoppered the bottle and gently touched its neck to her lips, the liquid cooling her mouth as it began to filter through her body. This was it, then, she thought, as the ecstasy of a decision well-took began to grip her. All she need do now was sink into Severus’ arms and wait for death to catch up with them after their rapid journey across the sea. The potion would pass from her skin to his, moulding their future into a single entity. As life left Severus, so it would leave her. They would be free to make that final step together.
They had no use for words as the night began to fall around them. Sunlight burned the top of the mountain as the old couple hovered between one place and the next. Magic enfolded them in its cautious arms; taking care to do what it had been instructed to do. As Severus last breath slipped from his mouth so too did Maeve’s and both were caught up in the complexity of the spell that clutched them in its purposeful enchantment.
And Maeve was right. This was not a journey that either of them wanted to make alone as world after world circled their souls. They arched away from the earth, leaving the surly weight of gravity behind them. Atoms of energy teased and beckoned them away from their mortal bodies and into a far, far freer existence. And finally, after so long spent acting as one, they truly became one. As their souls bent beneath the agony of such unsought pleasure, each unexplainable piece of their new existence began and ended in the same place. At last there was peace and no possibility of ever being severed from each other’s side again.