Severus barely notices it at first—the voice. It's soft and delicate, ambient, like a breeze whispering over leaves. Words are lost in the echo, but its tone is tender enough. Sweet, but sad too. So sad.

It encompasses him, swallows him whole in a mighty embrace, and soon, the air begins to stir. Though his eyes are squeezed shut, he gets the sense that things around him are rearranging, disassembling and reforming into something entirely new.

The voice urges him to open his eyes, but there is a feeling in his chest like cold dread that pleads with him not to. In the end, he does, finding that the scenery has indeed changed, morphed into the nightmarish sight of a nursery in ruin. His heart drops with the temperature, and it is the voice alone that keeps him standing, keeps him breathing.

Severus watches in horror as a younger, dreamlike version of himself collapses next to Lily's body...

No! Whatever this is—a memory, a dream, a hallucination—he refuses to subject himself to it! He remembers that night all too well, the pain that sliced through him, bled him of his soul. That curse might as well have struck him, too, but he remains here without her, perhaps as punishment for his part in her death, an Inferius with two masters.

His other self shudders in a silent agony that he, too, feels freshly. The hairs on back of his neck stand in alarm, send jolts of adrenaline rushing through his body, urging him to escape this place before he loses his sanity, but the voice insistently roots him  to the spot.

He becomes aware, then, of another presence: Potter—not the delinquent that roams the halls of Hogwarts but the round-faced, pudgy infant in the broken crib behind his other self, and the grief he recognizes in the boy’s watery green eyes is so profound that it might even be equal to Severus’ own.

The child hiccoughs wetly, and Severus wonders if this disturbing addition had just appeared out of thin air, or if it had been there in the shadows, unnoticed, all along. In memory, Severus had been alone in this room, but then again...this was the night his world had ended, and he hadn’t spared very much of himself for his surroundings. The voice gently chides him for that, but encourages him to search deeper.

Had there been another that night? Hadn’t Potter already been whisked away to safety?

The baby Potter captures his attention again, and Severus watches spellbound as his small hand reaches through the crib and comes to rest on the shaking back of Severus’ other self.

Something seismic shifts inside him at the tiny action, and for the first time, Severus truly comprehends all of what was lost when Lily died. Emotions he thought long gone, are suddenly within his grasp, and he is gripped with the overwhelming desire to return Potter's gesture, to acknowledge their tragedy, just as the boy had all those years ago. With surprising ease, he makes up his mind to do just that, to find a time and a place to make things right, and the voice that surrounds him, Lily's voice, is not quite so sorrowful anymore.