Chapter 40

The Hall of Absences

The Great Hall should have been filled with returning students, but the Slytherin table gaped with absences that seemed to stretch impossibly long, the benches extending into shadows that shouldn't exist in the enchanted morning light. Severus sat in his usual place, counting the empty seats with growing horror, though the number kept changing each time he looked, seven, then twelve, then seven again.

Mulciber's chair pushed neatly under the table, waiting for someone who would never return. Avery's spot beside him vacant, no scattered quills or half-finished essays. Montague's boisterous presence missing. The gaps multiplied as his gaze traveled down the table, each absence a wound in the fabric of reality.

His converts. His allies. Gone.

Professor McGonagall's voice echoed strangely across the hall, each word falling like stones into still water, arriving a heartbeat too late, as though traveling through deep water. "Those who have returned to us after recent events will find their schedules adjusted accordingly. The Ministry has advised, " Her voice caught briefly, or perhaps time itself stuttered. "The Ministry has advised certain precautions be taken."

Around him, remaining students sat in stunned silence, faces pale with grief too vast to comprehend. But when Severus tried to focus on any individual face, the features blurred and shifted like reflections in disturbed water. Regulus Black's eyes were hollow, staring at nothing, or were those Sirius's eyes? The faces kept changing.

Even the Gryffindor table seemed subdued, missing faces Severus suddenly couldn't remember ever seeing but knew with dream-certainty should be there.

"What happened to them?" Severus asked, his voice sounding foreign to his own ears, echoing in a way voices shouldn't echo in the Great Hall.

No one answered. A seventh-year girl, her usual perfect composure fractured, merely shook her head. Or was she a third-year? Her age kept shifting when he looked away.

"Tell me!" Severus grabbed the arm of a fourth-year beside him, but the boy's face was a blank oval, features not quite formed.

"You don't remember?" The faceless boy's voice quavered, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "The raid. They took them all, anyone who had been at the meeting. They said, " The voice dropped, became multiple voices speaking in unison. "They said examples needed to be made. Some went to Azkaban. Others just... disappeared."

This is what mercy costs, a voice whispered, his own voice, but older, more broken. This is what happens when you choose safety over action.

The weight of his blood oath at Spinner's End burned through his veins like liquid fire, all that power, that binding magic, and for what? To watch his friends die while he slept peacefully, dreaming of writing letters to Lily.

"Evans is gone too, " the faceless fourth-year added, almost as an afterthought that made the world tilt sideways.

Severus's head snapped up. "What?"

"They took her for questioning. Said she knew things, that she'd been involved somehow." The boy's blank face somehow conveyed pity. "Potter went mental, tried to stop them. They stunned him right in the entrance hall."

The ceiling above reflected a storm-dark sky, but wrong, the clouds moved in reverse, lightning forking upward instead of down. The enchanted ceiling illuminated Dumbledore's grave expression at the head table, except Dumbledore's face kept shifting between young and old, blue eyes and red.

"I tried to warn you, " Regulus whispered, suddenly beside him though Severus hadn't seen him approach. When had he sat down? His eyes were red-rimmed, his Black family arrogance stripped away, leaving something raw and broken underneath. "I told you they were planning something. You said we had time."

Severus rose from the bench, unable to breathe properly, the air thick as water. "I need to find Lily."

"You can't, " Regulus grabbed his wrist, his grip burning cold, then hot, then cold again. "The Ministry has sealed the castle. No one in or out."

"Then I'll find a way." Severus yanked his arm free, but his feet wouldn't move, rooted to stone that had become soft as mud.

"Save who?" Regulus's voice cracked. "They're gone, Severus. Mulciber tried to tell them he'd changed his mind. They laughed. Avery told them you'd shown him another path. They took him first."

The enchanted ceiling darkened further as thunder rumbled overhead. Rain began to fall, somehow passing through the magic to drip onto the tables below, a phenomenon Severus had never witnessed before but couldn't quite remember why that was impossible.

"I know where she is, " whispered a voice.

Peter Pettigrew stood at his elbow, appearing without warning, looking more rat-like than ever. His watery eyes darted around nervously, but his smile was wrong, too wide, stretching beyond where mouths should end.

"Where?" Severus demanded, though speaking required tremendous effort, the word catching in his throat.

"Department of Mysteries. They're questioning her about blood magic. About your... connection." Peter's face flickered, became Dumbledore's, then Voldemort's, then settled back to Peter but slightly wrong, features not quite aligned properly.

Severus felt the blood drain from his face, except he could actually feel it draining, a physical sensation of liquid leaving his body. "How do you know this?"

Peter's expression flickered between fear and something like pride, his face rippling like water. "I listen. People don't notice me. But I'm always there. Always watching. Always have been. Always will be."

Regulus clutched Severus's sleeve, his fingers passing partially through the fabric. "If they know about the blood magic, "

"Then they know everything, " Severus finished, the words arriving in his mouth before he'd thought them. "About the oath, about our plans, "

"About your time travel, " Peter added quietly, and the Great Hall fell silent.

The silence was absolute, unnatural, as if sound itself had been extinguished. Every head turned toward them, except the heads kept turning, rotating impossibly far, some completing full circles.

"Mr. Snape, " Dumbledore's voice carried across the suddenly hushed room, arriving from multiple directions simultaneously. "I believe you and I need to have a long-overdue conversation about the nature of temporal interference."

"There's no time, " Severus argued, though time was clearly broken, seconds stretching like taffy. "Lily, "

"Is beyond your help now, " Dumbledore said with terrible gentleness, his voice layered with multiple versions of itself. "As are Mr. Mulciber and Mr. Avery. The choices we make in moments of peace determine our options in times of crisis."

"I was trying to save them!" Severus's voice rose, cracking with emotion that felt too large for his chest. "All of them! I was changing their minds, showing them another way!"

But Avery's empty seat seemed to mock him, multiplying until there were dozens of empty seats, hundreds, the entire table a wasteland of absence.

"And while you carefully planted seeds, " Dumbledore said, his face now ancient beyond measure, "others harvested lives. Your caution became their opportunity."

"You don't understand, " Severus whispered, though his whisper echoed like a shout. "I had to be careful. I couldn't repeat my mistakes, "

"So you made entirely new ones." McGonagall's voice cut through his defense, except it wasn't just McGonagall but a chorus of professors all speaking in perfect unison. "While you played your subtle games, real people suffered real consequences."

The Great Hall began to dissolve around the edges, reality peeling away like wet parchment, revealing darkness underneath that pulsed with a rhythm like a heartbeat, seven beats, pause, seven beats.

Fragmenting Reality

The screams tore through the night, ripping Severus from whatever fragile sleep he had managed. He sat bolt upright, breath caught in his throat, fingers already wrapped around his wand. His nightshirt clung to him with sweat, his heart pounding as if it might break free of his chest.

The sound still rang in his ears, cries of students, shrieks he couldn't quite remember but felt in his bones, and for a long moment he couldn't tell whether he was in his dormitory or somewhere else entirely. His chest heaved. The sheets clung damp to his skin. With a jerk, he shoved them aside and lurched toward the narrow mirror on the wall.

A boy's face met him there, pale, sharp-boned, eyes too old for sixteen. His breath caught; the reflection felt like a stranger, like some cruel distortion of who he had been, or who he was meant to become.

Behind his own image, he thought he saw shadows, flickers of wands raised in fury, the swirl of green light, a dozen names carved across headlines that had not yet been written but hovered in the air between him and his reflection.

Newspaper headlines drifted through the air around him like autumn leaves, weightless yet sharp as blades: SEVENTEEN FAMILIES MASSACRED. MINISTRY DECLARES EMERGENCY. MASS EXODUS AS TERROR SPREADS. Each one hung before his eyes, glowing faintly with sickly green light, then tearing itself to shreds as though devoured by invisible fire. The fragments settled on his skin, cold as ash, burning like ice.

He reached for one with trembling fingers, but it dissolved before he could touch it, leaving residue that smelled of smoke and blood. Another flared to life, HOGWARTS UNDER SIEGE, and he staggered back, bile rising in his throat. The headlines seemed to know him, to accuse him, as though the ink itself was written in blood he had failed to stop.

Time folded in on itself the way it only does in nightmares, and suddenly it was three days later, or was it three weeks? Three hours? The number kept sliding away like water through fingers. The dormitory was empty, or full, or perhaps he was somewhere else entirely. The walls breathed.

He couldn't shake the vivid details that clung to him like cobwebs, the Ravenclaw table mourning a first-year whose Healer parents had been targeted for treating "unworthy" patients. The Hufflepuff section a monument to absence, families fled to America, Ireland, anywhere beyond Voldemort's immediate reach.

But Slytherin's losses cut deepest. Not just his converts, but anyone who'd associated with them. The Death Eaters had been thorough in their purge, eliminating the "weak" and those who'd influenced them. His pact with Regulus, all their careful planning, reduced to a graveyard of empty chairs that multiplied each time he counted them.

You had weeks to prepare, his own voice echoed mockingly from somewhere inside his skull. Instead, you convinced yourself the storm had passed.

Professor Slughorn's ebullience replaced by hollow exhaustion. McGonagall's mouth set in permanent sorrow. And Dumbledore, Dumbledore wasn't there at all, or was there three times, or was there but his face kept shifting to Grindelwald's, then Voldemort's, then back.

Some losses were too terrible to contemplate, even under his protection.

Voldemort had won. Again. The future Severus had died to prevent was unfolding exactly as before, because he'd been too comfortable, too willing to believe in peace.

"Not this time, " Severus whispered to his reflection, which whispered the words back a fraction of a second too late. "Never again."

Confessions Uncontrolled

The dormitory suddenly felt suffocating, the walls pressing inward with each breath. He dressed quickly in the darkness and slipped out, the stone floor cold beneath his feet, except the cold kept changing to hot, then back to cold in waves.

The Slytherin common room stood empty at this hour, the fire reduced to glowing embers that cast shadows which moved independently of any light source. Severus sank into an armchair, staring into the dying firelight. The images clung to him, sharper than memory, heavier than imagination.

"Couldn't sleep either?"

Severus startled. Regulus Black stood at the entrance to the boys' dormitory, except he hadn't been there a moment ago, and Severus hadn't heard him approach, and the entrance was simultaneously behind him and in front of him.

"Bad thoughts, " Severus said, the words coming out before he'd formed them in his mind, his voice not quite synchronized with his mouth.

Regulus crossed the room and took the chair opposite, except he also remained standing by the entrance, two versions of him occupying different spaces. "About what's coming?"

"About what happens if we fail."

Something in Severus's tone must have conveyed more than he intended, or perhaps he had no control over his tone at all, perhaps the nightmare was speaking through him. Regulus leaned forward, concern etching his aristocratic features, which kept shifting between concern and horror and back.

"I'm beginning to think we might have been overreacting, " Severus heard himself say, though he fought against the words even as they emerged. "Not about everything, of course. But perhaps the immediate threats aren't as severe, "

"You died before." Regulus's voice was flat. Not a question. A statement that arrived before Severus had said anything to prompt it.

Severus tried to deny it, tried to swallow the confession back, but different words poured out of his mouth like blood from a wound: "I lived another life. I got Lily killed. I joined them. I became everything I hate. I spent twenty years serving darkness before I found the courage to, "

"We know."

Regulus's face flickered, became Dumbledore's for a single heartbeat, blue eyes twinkling with terrible knowledge. Then McGonagall's stern features. Then back to Regulus but slightly wrong, eyes the wrong shade of gray.

"We've always known, " Dumbledore's voice said from Regulus's mouth.

The abandoned classroom, when had they moved to a classroom?, filled with people who hadn't been there a moment before. McGonagall materialized to his left, her expression grave and knowing. Lily appeared to his right, tears streaming down her face but her eyes hard as emeralds. James Potter stood behind them, laughing soundlessly. Voldemort himself emerged from the shadows, red eyes gleaming with triumph.

"He thinks he can save us, " Peter Pettigrew's voice came from everywhere and nowhere, from the walls themselves. "Thinks his second chance means anything at all."

Severus tried to run but his feet were rooted to stone that had become soft as clay. Tried to speak but only confessions poured out, every secret he'd ever kept, every truth he'd hidden, flowing out of him like poison from a lanced wound he couldn't stanch.

"Time travel, " Bellatrix cackled from a corner that hadn't existed a moment ago. "Two lifetimes and still a failure. Still too weak, too cautious, too afraid."

The room multiplied, became seven rooms, became one room, became infinite rooms all occupying the same space. Faces pressed in from all sides, everyone he'd ever known, everyone he'd ever failed, all of them knowing his secret, knowing his shame, knowing his desperate attempts to rewrite a future already written in blood.

"Two lives, " they all said in perfect unison, their voices merging into a sound that was somehow both whisper and roar. "And you wasted both."

He tried to scream but the sound caught in his throat, strangled by invisible hands that felt like his own fingers wrapped around his own neck.

The scene shifted, that strange folding of time and space that marked dreams, and Severus found himself somewhere else, though he couldn't remember the transition.

The Marked

Dawn crept reluctantly over Hogwarts, except the sun rose in the wrong direction and cast shadows that pointed the wrong way. Severus stood at the edge of the Forbidden Forest with Lily, though he couldn't remember how they'd gotten there and the forest kept getting closer and farther away without them moving.

"We move tonight, " Severus said, his voice low but firm, though he hadn't decided to speak. "The first meeting will be in the abandoned classroom on the fourth floor. Eight o'clock."

Lily nodded, her green eyes sharp with determination, except her eyes were brown, no, green again, shifting like a cat's. "I'll bring Mary and Marlene. They've been asking questions about the disappearances in Hogsmeade."

Time skipped. They were walking back to the castle, except they'd never left the forest, or had they always been in the Great Hall? Severus's perception couldn't quite catch up to where his body was.

The castle appeared and disappeared, stone walls breathing, windows that watched them pass.

Later, hours or minutes or days, time had lost all meaning, he found Regulus in a corridor that stretched impossibly long in both directions. But something was wrong with Regulus. Very wrong.

His friend slouched against a window in a deserted hallway, staring out at the lake which reflected a sky that was simultaneously day and night. Even from a distance, Severus could see something had changed. The younger boy's usually impeccable posture had collapsed, shoulders hunched as if bearing an invisible burden that grew heavier with each breath.

"Regulus."

The younger boy turned slowly, his face a mask of exhaustion, but when Severus blinked, Regulus had never turned, was still staring out the window, was behind him, was everywhere at once. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his skin had taken on an unhealthy pallor that seemed to pulse with green light.

"Hello, Severus, " Regulus said quietly, his voice carrying unspoken apologies, arriving from the wrong direction. "I tried to warn as many as I could." The Mark pulsed visibly through his sleeve, except he had no sleeve, except his entire arm was the Mark, writhing and spreading. "It hurts. Every day. But the alternative..."

Severus felt the blood drain from his face, and could feel it draining, a physical sensation of emptiness spreading through his veins. "When?"

"Last night. My dear cousin Bellatrix collected me personally." Regulus's laugh held no humor, became multiple laughs overlapping. "Family privilege, she called it. I didn't have a choice."

Severus approached cautiously, each step taking minutes or seconds, his feet moving through space that felt like syrup. "Show me."

With trembling fingers that multiplied and divided, Regulus pulled back his left sleeve. The Dark Mark writhed against his pale skin, black, malevolent, pulsing with unnatural life. But something was wrong with it, it had seven points instead of one, or the skull had his mother's face, or it was eating its way deeper into Regulus's arm with each pulse.

The edges looked raw and inflamed, still fresh, or perhaps ancient, the skin around it cracking like old parchment.

"They raided a Muggle village near Leeds, " Regulus whispered, his voice coming from underwater, distorted and echoing. "They made me watch. Bellatrix said it was educational." His voice cracked, became screaming, became silence, became his voice again. "There was a girl, maybe six years old. She kept asking where her parents were, even after, "

"Stop." Severus couldn't bear to hear more, though the words came anyway, describing horrors in perfect detail that seemed to etch themselves on his brain.

Burning Letters

Time folded again, and it was evening, or morning, or perhaps both simultaneously. The abandoned classroom felt different, too large, then too small, the walls breathing in and out like lungs.

Severus and Lily stood together, except they were sitting, except they'd never arrived, time stuttering and skipping like a broken clock.

"I received several letters today, " Lily said, her voice hollow, arriving before she'd opened her mouth. "Condolences."

"From whom?" Severus asked, though he already knew, had always known, would always know.

"Parents of students who've disappeared. They think because I'm a prefect, I might know something." Her voice caught, or perhaps reality caught, the air itself tearing slightly. "Martha Jenkins's mother sent me her daughter's diary. She thought I might want it as a remembrance."

"Lily, "

"Wait." She reached into her bag and pulled out a bundle of parchment tied with black ribbon, except the ribbon was red, was black, was made of smoke that tried to escape her hands. "These aren't all of them. Just the ones I couldn't bear to read again."

The letters lay between them like an accusation, multiplying and dividing, the pile growing larger and smaller simultaneously.

She took the top letter and held it to a flame that appeared in her hand, though there was no candle, no torch, no source for the fire. The parchment caught instantly, curling and blackening.

"Martha Jenkins. Fourteen years old. Disappeared from Hogsmeade, " Lily said, her voice mechanical, feeding another letter to the flames. But the pile never diminished, new letters kept appearing in her hands, an endless supply of grief that couldn't be consumed. "Thomas Finch. Muggle-born seventh-year. Found in the lake last week."

The flames cast no shadows. The smoke rose perfectly straight despite the still air, defying natural law, forming shapes that looked like faces screaming.

Letter after letter burned, but there were always more, the pile somehow growing as it shrank, existing in multiple states simultaneously.

"My father, " Lily whispered, and the world tilted sideways. "Robert Evans. Who never harmed anyone in his life."

She held the final letter, except it was the first letter, except there were seven final letters, one for each knife, longer than the others, staring at handwriting through tears that fell upward, defying gravity.

"They killed him, " she said, and her voice was every voice Severus had ever heard, overlapping and echoing. "While we were planning, while we were being careful, they killed my father."

The letter burst into flames before she'd brought it to the fire, consuming itself from the inside out, the ashes forming words that spelled out accusations: TOO SLOW TOO CAREFUL TOO LATE.

Spinner's End

The air was thick with damp, the river stinking of rust and weeds and something else, something rotting. Severus tightened his grip on a lantern that cast light in impossible directions as they crept along the alleyway, boots echoing in silence, making no sound, making too much sound. Regulus walked just ahead, or behind, or beside, pale as bone, his hand hidden in his cloak as though concealing a wound that bled darkness.

Lily's face was set, jaw clenched, green eyes burning with fury at shadows that closed around them and opened before them simultaneously.

"We're close, " she whispered, her voice carrying like a blade in the night, cutting through reality itself.

The wards of Spinner's End were visible now, faint lines of shimmering silver, webbing the street in a net that pulsed with his heartbeat. Old blood magic, etched into stone and soil by his mother's hands. Severus felt them respond to his presence, humming in his veins like something alive and hungry.

You will not pass. This house is protected.

The words rose unbidden, as though Eileen Prince herself spoke them into his ear from grave or memory or futures yet to come.

Mulciber and Avery lurked near the back, except Mulciber was dead, had died at breakfast, or had never existed, their forms shifting between solid and transparent. Regulus kept one hand on his wand, restless, his Mark glowing through his sleeve like a green beacon.

"Through here, " Regulus rasped, pointing toward a passage that led seven different directions simultaneously, his voice trembling. His sleeve shifted just enough for Severus to glimpse raw, blackened skin beneath, the Mark seared into him, still burning, always burning, never healing.

Severus's stomach turned. Too late. Already bound. Already lost.

"Don't look at it, " Regulus snapped, his voice coming from behind them though he stood ahead. "Just move."

Lily caught Severus's sleeve, her touch burning hot then freezing cold. "He's not beyond saving. None of them are." Her hand squeezed his wrist, firm, steady, except her hand passed partially through his arm. "We can still break this, Sev."

He wanted to believe her. Her certainty, her fire, it was enough to make him think it was possible. That together, with the wards at their back and her beside him, they could cut through fate itself with the seven knives from the prophecy.

The group pressed on, slipping into a narrow tunnel that led beneath the house, except they were already in the house, had never left the house, would never reach the house. The bricks wept with damp, the air smelled of rust and salt and his mother's perfume and death. Severus felt the wards pulse harder, brighter, almost alive with warning.

"This is madness, " Avery hissed, except Avery was ash, was alive, was seven people wearing Avery's face. "If the Dark Lord finds us, "

"He won't, " Severus cut him off, his voice more confident than he felt, coming from someone else's mouth. "This house rejects him. My mother made sure of it."

He placed his hand against the stone, and for one breathless instant, the walls seemed to tremble in recognition. Warmth spread through his palm, rushing into his blood, except the warmth was freezing, was burning, was his mother's voice saying yes and no and too late all at once.

Yes. This house remembers you. This house knows what you've become. This house sees your failures.

Lily's eyes met his, multiplied into seven pairs of eyes, all believing in him. That was enough. Had to be enough. Would never be enough.

They reached what should have been the final stairwell, except the stairs led up and down simultaneously, to the river door that loomed ahead, behind, everywhere. The door was swollen wood and rusted iron and his mother's bones. Beyond it, freedom or slaughter or both or neither.

Regulus faltered, his hand pressed tight to his arm where the Mark burned through seven layers of skin. "I can't, " His voice cracked into seven voices. "It's burning, "

"Then we burn it back, " Lily said fiercely, becoming his mother, becoming Dumbledore, becoming herself again. She turned to Severus, urgency sparking between them like lightning that froze mid-arc. "Together."

In Severus's mind, an image cut sharper than steel: Eileen, lying lifeless at the doorway of their Spinner's End home, except she was alive, was dying, was seven corpses, was watching him with eyes that held disappointment eternal. His mother's eyes, glassy and still, fixed on nothing, on everything, on him.

She had died believing in him, yet she wasn't dead. Not yet. Already dead. Would die because of him.

The vision gnawed at him, half-memory, half-prophecy, whole truth and complete lie. He couldn't tell where it ended or if it had already begun or if it would ever start.

Severus's jaw tightened. The wards thrummed in his veins, aching to be unleashed, demanding blood price, his blood, their blood, all the blood. He grasped Lily's hand, clinging to the single anchor he had left.

For the first time in weeks, hope sparked within him, dangerous, unsteady, but alive. Or was it despair wearing hope's face?

They would stand. They would fight. They would,

Awakening

Severus's scream shattered the silence of the dormitory.

The other boys jolted awake, fumbling for wands in the darkness that was too dark and not dark enough.

"What the bloody hell, Snape?" Avery demanded, his voice thick with sleep, blessed, ordinary sleep, alive and whole and unmarked.

But Severus barely registered their voices. He flung aside his tangled sheets and stumbled to the window, pressing his forehead against the cold glass as he fought to control his breathing. His heart hammered against his ribs like something trying to escape. The lake shimmered beyond, black and depthless under the moonlight, real and solid and blessedly unchanging.

It was gone. All of it.

No deaths. No Mark on Regulus's arm. No letters burning with endless grief. No Spinner's End rescue. His mother had not spoken through the walls. Lily was safe in Gryffindor Tower. The converts were alive, sleeping in their beds.

Only a dream.

Yet his chest still ached, his hands still trembled. The phantom warmth of the wards lingered in his blood, as if they had been real, as if he had truly touched them. Every detail remained vivid, the empty chairs, the headlines written in accusatory ink, Regulus's raw and burning Mark, Lily's tears falling upward as she burned letters that never diminished.

Severus pressed his face into his palms, trying to steady his breathing, but the images clung to him with hooks that wouldn't release. The warning clung to him, vivid and merciless.

Not gone. Not false.

Too close.

"Snape, you alright?" Mulciber's voice came from across the room, groggy but concerned, beautifully, mundanely concerned about a housemate's nightmare, not dead or arrested or marked.

"Fine, " Severus managed, though his voice cracked on the single word. "Just... a nightmare."

"Must have been a right awful one, " Avery muttered, already settling back into his bed. "Sounded like someone was murdering you."

If only they knew. If only they understood that in seven different futures, in seven different timelines, that nightmare could become their reality. Would become their reality if Severus allowed himself to be lulled by the false calm of the past two weeks.

He stared out at the lake, watching moonlight dance on dark water, and felt the nightmare's warning settle into his bones with the weight of prophecy. The storm wasn't passed. The calm was a lie. And his complacency, his dangerous, comfortable belief that they had time, that the Death Eaters had backed away, that success in the Shrieking Shack meeting meant they were winning, that complacency would cost lives.

This is what happens, the nightmare whispered in his memory. This is the price of believing in peace that doesn't exist.

Severus closed his eyes and pressed his forehead harder against the cold glass until pain brought clarity.

Tomorrow, no, today, now, this moment, everything changed.

No more false calm. No more comfortable assumptions. No more sleeping without protections or walking through hallways without constant vigilance.

The nightmare had shown him the cost of failure with brutal, visceral clarity. Empty chairs. Burning letters. Regulus's Mark. His mother's disappointed corpse-eyes. Lily's grief that couldn't be consumed by any flame.

Seven knives to cut the bonds, he thought, the prophecy returning with new meaning. Seven chances to choose differently.

He'd been wasting time, letting two weeks slip by in peaceful studying and casual confidence. The Death Eaters' civility wasn't retreat, it was sophisticated predation. The six weeks until term's end wasn't abundant time, it was barely enough.

And if he didn't act, if he didn't push harder and faster and with more urgency than felt comfortable, the nightmare would stop being nightmare and become memory.

Severus turned from the window, looking at his sleeping roommates, Mulciber snoring softly, Avery already back to dreams, others undisturbed by his scream. Alive. Unmarked. Still saveable.

Tomorrow he would find Lily. Tell her about the nightmare, not as mere dream but as warning. They would accelerate everything, the resistance network, the student awareness, the preparations for term's end.

Tomorrow he would stop pretending that successful intelligence gathering meant they'd won anything except time they were wasting.

Tomorrow the real work would begin.

But tonight, for the few hours remaining until dawn, Severus sat by the window and watched the dark water, refusing to sleep, refusing to let his guard down ever again.

The nightmare had been a gift, a terrible, necessary gift that showed him the future he was sleepwalking toward.

He wouldn't waste it.