Harry Potter stood in a transitional room, a long span of white nothingness. Tentatively, he reached to touch his forehead: the scar was still there. Then Voldemort must have finished him off.

A noise startled him and he spun around. A man huddled in the middle of the floor, gasping. His shoulders shook. Harry had just seen the man's dead body, had heard his words, "Look at me...." Yet the Severus Snape hunkered before him was different. His shoulders had lost their swagger, the sneer had disappeared from his face. He looked lost and out of control.

"Are we dead?" Harry asked him then remembered to add, "Sir?"

Snape lifted his gaze and the wet black eyes were full of rage and shame. "What are you doing here?"

For being dead, Harry felt a strong sense of injustice. "You should know, you're the one who plotted my death with Professor Dumbledore."

But Snape didn't take the bait. "I died in vain," he said, gulping for air, clearly on a different topic than Harry. His pleading tone made Harry flush and stare at the floor. "He promised I could do something to help. He made me spy, he even made me kill him. And for what? I couldn't even die a hero. I died a--"

"Don't say it!" Harry said forcefully. He was shaking now, afraid that if Snape had died for nothing than maybe he had as well. "I looked at your memories. And you were a hero."

Snape snorted. "Because I loved your mother? Any sentimental fool could do that."

"No," Harry said. He wasn't sure why but it seemed important to explain this to Snape. "You were a hero because everything you did mattered. Even if Dumbledore never thanked you for it. And you're even more a hero because you didn't have to fall off an Astronomy Tower and glow white to be worth something."

Snape smirked even as a tear dripped off his nose. "I sent you the Patronus, Potter."

"I know." Harry shuffled his feet. "Thanks."

Then Snape was sobbing, in a way only a boy locked in a cupboard and mistreated by a sardonic teacher could understand. "I'm sorry," he kept saying.

Harry wasn't sure about what exactly but he thought he could guess. Snape was sorry he had embarrassed a student with baggy clothes and a bad haircut and called him names and made him sort through flobberworms on a sunny Saturday.

"I'm sorry, too," Harry said, and he knew what for this time. For believing Snape had let a troll loose when he had instead risked his life to stop it, for putting him in danger so many times, and being cheeky toward him each time he did it, for calling him Voldemort's man when he had always belonged to Dumbledore.

If he had seen it coming, Harry would have squirmed away-it was still greasy Snape, after all-but suddenly Snape was holding him tight and begging him to return, to kill Voldemort so his death wouldn't be in vain.

"It wasn't in vain," Harry promised even though he couldn't meet Snape's eyes when he thought of how pointless it was to bleed to death.

"Please..."

Harry let go of Snape. He knew now he had to return to Hogwarts. He wasn't allowed to die yet. It was a small favor to Snape for a lifetime of sacrifice.

When he turned to go, he saw Snape's eyes twinkle and he could have been Sirius or even Dumbledore. "I'll see you much later, Potter."

Blackness descended over Harry. His head was throbbing. Why couldn't he open his eyes? Then a thin, cold voice echoed above him, "Is he dead?"