New Beginning

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."

Helen Keller

*^*^*^*

Her mind is Henry, Henry, Henry, lifeless grey eyes beneath pale lids, her hands, her own hands, too weak to save him. She's screaming, she thinks. She doesn't hear it. "Avada Kedavra!" The flash of the curse is as blinding as Potter's arrogance. This is how she dies. How she expects to die. Except. This. She is crying. A stranger's voice, a woman: "I've got you. There, there." Her mind is Henry, Henry, Henry. She's in a nursery. She's been spared. Punished. Alive.

Her first memory after death is birth. It strikes her with astonishing clarity. The wet squeeze into a new world. Her lungs bellowed as they took air for the first time, each gasp as raw and jagged as a curse. The rough warmth of unfamiliar arms pulling her close. The scents of exhaustion, sweat, and betrayal. Voices ringing above her: a woman, exultant, "They're here! Twins!" A man, resigned, "Just like you said." Her thoughts tangling into an impossible web: She is dead, dying, this is hell, a curse, it cannot be, Henry, Henry, Henry.

Seraphina Eileen Snape. That's what they call her. A name as unrecognizable as the voice who speaks it. But then so is her new reality. Reborn and returned to a time that shouldn't exist. They are just children—Severus, like a fragile shadow of his future self, clutching at her as though she might vanish. Their mother, useless and resigned. Their father, hateful and looming. She spends a year like this, trapped in an unending loop of disbelief, of infantile despair, convinced each day is a further punishment. Is this what it means to lose?

Her past life clings to her, even now. The final stand against the Dark Lord. Potter's glorious, reckless demise. The Order crushed one by one, last and most expendable. Until Henry. Sweet Henry, begging, "Stay with me," in a voice so like the other. Her real failure, the final shame. Perhaps that is why she is here, starting over in a world she has no right to. Reborn without him. Born again to watch her brother die, and die, and die.

Her teacher saves her. Severus Snape saves her. A pathetic truth that makes her hate him for it. Hate herself. The boy who should be nothing but history, a dark, unanswered question. Her... brother. Now the center of this reborn world. It is his fault she's alive. His fault for existing.

Except. He won't let her remain indifferent, not even in their first days. Tiny fingers wrap around hers, fierce and unrelenting. Those black eyes, so solemn and searching, a child-sized echo of Henry's that she cannot ignore. Something pulls in her chest—painful and reluctant. He wins. He always wins.

When she screams in frustration, voicing the unfairness of it all in the only way a child can, Severus responds with piercing wails of his own. They both fall silent in shock. Even she must eventually laugh at the absurdity of their cries harmonizing through the shabby house, relentless and mournful, like wolves. She hates him less, then. Maybe even loves him. Her brother. Her Henry.

So here she is: Seraphina. Pansy. Neither. Both. A girl with a future she has already lived, clutching the past as it crumbles between her hands. Her despair dwindles, replaced by a resolve she hadn't known she possessed. Maybe it is all she has now. Her resolve, and Severus.

By the time he takes his first steps, unsteady but determined across the cold floors of Spinner's End, she is with him. Step for step. Eileen praises them both with tears and tired smiles, stroking Severus's dark hair, Seraphina's fair cheek. "You have each other," she says, almost to herself. Her resigned voice is full of something so close to hope that it hurts.

It hurts, but not like before. She isn't supposed to be here, but she is. Henry is gone, but Severus isn't. And it matters.

*^*^*^*

To her considerable shock, she has grown to love them both. Her new life, and the odd but earnest little boy who helped her remember what it means to live it. Seraphina, they call her. A girl who isn't Pansy. A girl who didn't lose. It's just a name. A name, and then a face. Her face. Cerulean eyes, bold and bright, stood out against her fair skin with an intensity that demanded acknowledgment. They weren't the cool, gray depths she remembered from her past life; they were vibrant, alive, drawing attention like beacons. Her black hair, long and impossibly lustrous, felt like the mantle of a stranger. It flowed around her like liquid silk, refusing to be tamed. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. She barely recognizes herself, and yet.

Is it vanity? To care so much about her appearance when the rest of the world has gone so wrong? Perhaps. But she's learned that survival requires some degree of selfishness, and this time she intends to survive. So she revels, secretly, in her new reflection. At four, at five, each year unravels her image further from Pansy's: that narrow nose, those wide eyes. It's strange and exquisite, knowing she is the only person who looks like her.

Except for Severus.

This is its own shock, finding his angular, intense features endearing. Cute, even. His presence is an unwelcome mirror, reminding her that her once-and-future professor has become such a solid part of her life, a source of grudging joy. Reminding her, also, that she is still Snape, after all.

She tries to recall him as he was in her past life. An intimidating figure behind a dark desk, eyes like endless corridors with doors that lead to questions she never dared to ask. Then: still those eyes, so like her own, but just a different color—now a little boy's, soft and wide.

Her brother, truly. Hers to protect, even from the future horrors of a slightly imperfect nose.

She won't let Tobias do it. Not again.

It's astonishing how much these thoughts shape her. How little she minds. Not so long ago, she felt lost inside a stranger's skin. Her own voice unfamiliar, the cadence of her laughter unsettling in its lack of bitterness. Now she finds she cares. About them. About everything.

Even Henry would be shocked at her newfound sense of... belonging? Surely not. Not yet. But something close.

The longer she is here, the harder it is to claim this as a punishment.

Yes, she is stuck with a new name and half-blood status. A far cry from her pureblood origins, a travesty she initially regarded with horror. But now even that doesn't matter so much. She remembers who she was. What she became. She can see clearly how circumstances shape lives. How choices—not names—define them.

Her choices, this time, will not be the same.

Not for herself, not for Severus, and not for Eileen. She has a family now, and she means to keep it. Even if it's nothing like the family she thought she would have.

For seven years, she has shared her life with them. Seraphina. A sister. A daughter. Pansy. A ghost.

She wonders, for the first time, if she's living for more than just her brother's sake.

*^*^*^*

If this is another punishment, then at least it's an inventive one. For all she lost in her last life, she never imagined herself losing privilege, power, or status. A half-blood is bad enough, but poor? Reborn in a world where even Eileen's worn, threadbare clothes put her own to shame. It stings more than she cares to admit. The indignity of it.

That, she thought, would have been her last indignation. But here she is. Potter is gone, the Order in ruins. The best she could do is die a pureblood. And now. Even that. It's a bitter pill, made worse by her growing understanding of what it truly means to struggle.

The cramped, uneven rooms of Spinner's End are like something out of a nightmare, a grey world in which nothing thrives, where the closeness of objects—and people—strangles. Pansy tells herself that she'll adjust, that it's not as bad as all that. But it is. And she doesn't.

She wonders if the others would have laughed at this, if they could see her now. Pansy Parkinson in second-hand shoes. Pansy Snape, more like.

It doesn't take long for her to resent their father. She blames him for the damp, crumbling house. For Eileen's sunken eyes. For the disgrace of their name, their family, their lives. Most of all, she blames him for herself. Her new self.

Each time his drunken rages echo through the paper-thin walls, a reminder: This is who you are. It is intolerable. But Severus endures. Somehow, even in his silence, he finds ways to remind her that she is not alone.

Her old professor—the distant, accomplished wizard she once aspired to—is now the one looking to her for guidance. A surreal turn of events. But this time she won't fail him. This time, no brother will be lost.

She marvels at how resilient Severus is, despite their circumstances. Despite Tobias. They are not even old enough to know real magic yet, and already he possesses more strength than she ever gave him credit for. More strength than she possesses herself, in this life and the last.

And it's that thought, more than anything, that draws them together. Her surprise at their growing bond gives way to a grudging pride. It seems the two of them are more compatible than she'd imagined. That was true before, but she never dared hope for it to be again.

Their unspoken pact, formed before they could speak: She'll look after him. He'll put up with her.

For all her bitterness at losing what she once took for granted, it seems that Seraphina Snape is more capable of love than Pansy ever was. She finds she likes it, the discovery. Her brother's thoughtfulness in contrast to her expectations.

Her anger grows with her certainty. Her absolute refusal to let them suffer. Tobias is a cruel but fascinating lesson, and she learns it quickly. Some days she hates him. Some days she almost wants to thank him for opening her eyes.

Every day, she resolves to prove him wrong.

*^*^*^*

So much is the same, it's as if she's lived this life already. She has. Just not like this. Both mothers caught in useless despair. The difference is, she senses that Eileen might actually care. Just not enough to act. Not yet.

She watches the woman through disbelieving eyes, comparing her to what she knows, what she's seen. The way Eileen's shoulders hunch with defeat, the tired lines at the corners of her mouth, eyes that never quite meet their father's. Those eyes, though. In them, she sees flashes of something so similar to her own that it hurts.

Unlike her mother before, Eileen has the capacity to love, though she's almost too weary to express it. Her ineffectual moments of warmth are like matches struck in the wind: flaring, then gone. But they are there, and Pansy notices. They're not enough to make a difference, but they're enough to inspire an entirely new sense of frustration.

An entirely new sense of fear.

She refuses to live that life again.

The years may have been reset, but the outcome will not be the same. This time, she won't let Eileen's weakness bring them down. Bring them all down. This time, she'll change it. But first, she must learn to protect herself.

The first time she hears their mother crying, she is four. Tobias's voice a low and menacing growl, as if the house itself is preparing to strike. She hates how small and fragile she feels, how big and angry he sounds.

She remembers the helplessness, the noise, the hate.

"Stay here," Severus warns, as if he has any authority at all. But his small hand on her arm gives her pause. It makes her stop long enough to hear something that sends her running: the sharp crack of their father's palm against skin.

The fear vanishes in a flash of white-hot rage. He has no right to do this. Not in this life, not in any life.

For the first time since her rebirth, she lets the anger and grief take control, boiling to the surface. Eileen doesn't have to be her mother, doesn't have to be anything. She won't let him do it.

She screams with fury, with every frustration and failure that brought her to this miserable place, a cry loud enough to silence them all. Even Severus is startled into a moment of wide-eyed shock before joining in with his own indignant wailing. They won't go unheard. Not this time.

But she is only four, and it shows. Her cries are no more than a child's tantrum. Her efforts no more than an interruption.

They find her on the stairs, small fists clenched, blue eyes ablaze. Tobias's towering shadow darkens the narrow landing, but it is Eileen who reaches her first. Eileen's trembling hands, still red from the blow, that pull her into a tight and wordless embrace.

"You shouldn't have," is all their mother says, rocking her back and forth. "You shouldn't have."

The difference is, Eileen protects her, however poorly.

Her failure haunts her. She tries, desperately, to think of ways to get around it. At the very least, she'll learn patience. She has to.

That night, Seraphina curls into her brother's narrow bed, both of them refusing to sleep. Severus's shoulder juts against her chin, his hand firmly clutching hers. A silent pact.

"It won't always be like this," she tells him. It sounds false even to her own ears.

They are young and powerless, yes. But they have time on their side, and this time she has someone to share it with.

Pansy never expected to be the clever one.

In the years that follow, she uses that cleverness to her advantage. And, she is surprised to learn, to Eileen's. A carefully placed smile, a thoughtfully timed compliment, an expertly feigned sense of daughterly devotion. These are her weapons, for now. The only ones available, but surprisingly effective.

Tobias starts to notice. The girl is peculiar. But he softens, briefly, with pride in the unexpected ways of a firstborn child. The girl is useful. They are at the very least enough to make him second-guess his earlier hatred. Long enough for her to hatch a plan.

If Eileen won't save them, if Tobias won't destroy them, then she'll simply have to take matters into her own hands.

Her pureblood mother must have a pureblood family. Pansy remembers their world. Her world. Someone, somewhere, has the resources to help them, even if it takes her years to find them.

She will find them. She'll find every advantage she needs, no matter what name she has to call herself. Seraphina. Pansy. Failure. Anything but that.

*^*^*^*

Is she ungrateful? Maybe. Maybe it was too much to expect one life free of alcoholic men. Absent fathers. But she hoped. It didn't turn out that way, so here she is again, doing what she can, what she must, to make the best of it. This time she's prepared.

It starts with softening Tobias to the idea of magic. With making sure they survive long enough to make a difference.

Seraphina doesn't delude herself into thinking it will be easy. The first few years are just short of impossible, but she remembers the worst of them and tells herself that a few things, at least, are within her control. She's changed. They're changed. They're more clever, more determined, more equipped to handle the life they've been given.

He won't leave them, the way her first father did, but she might have preferred that to these forced lessons in dependency.

If Eileen has been around this long, surely she can stand it a little longer. Long enough for Pansy to make a plan. Long enough for Tobias to soften under their feigned devotion and growing skill in small, strategic acts of kindness.

Seven is too young to have the kind of contempt she feels. Seven is too young to see a childhood as a battle. But she's not really seven.

And she doesn't play fair.

It works for a while, her subtle, thoughtful tricks. The surreptitious nudges to steer him from drinking himself into oblivion and taking them with him. Just enough to show their ungrateful father what unexpected assets he has, and to inspire in him a thin and threadbare pride.

"The kids aren't normal," she hears him saying more than once, gruff and reluctant. "I knew there was something odd." And then the dangerous one: "They're freaks."

He might even believe it, for a time.

Pansy's fear is that he'll notice their strangeness the way her real father did, with suspicion and a growing resentment. With anger, this time, instead of cowardice. When Tobias discovers the full extent of their unnaturalness, his earlier pride makes the turn all the worse.

That time, she was six. Still too small to defend herself or her brother. And it's Severus, once again, who reminds her not to fall apart. Not to give up.

"Not bad," he remarks, offhand, the first time she uses accidental magic in front of them. Their mother is less impressed.

"Don't let him see," Eileen warns, her voice as small and frightened as Seraphina's own.

But it is too late. Tobias's jaw, already set, hardens even more.

"They're freaks," he decides. "Both of them. Just like their mother."

Seraphina's grip on her emotions is impressive. Her grip on their father is tenuous.

Each week he drinks a little more, hates a little harder, and Pansy pushes back with her only weapons: careful affection and artfully restrained tears. She works on him, dogged and deliberate, a strategy refined by generations of pureblood persuasion. But his temper is sharp and unyielding.

"Why do you even stay?" she asks, finally. The anger that bubbles to the surface in the middle of their shouting matches is real enough to make Tobias think. Real enough to sting.

"If it wasn't for the kids—" He stops himself, hand twitching with the urge to strike. "I don't know why."

He stays because Eileen has loved him too much to let him go. Because she's given up everything to be here, to be miserable. And Pansy despises her for it, almost as much as she loves her for staying.

The threat of leaving makes the situation even worse. Makes it even more necessary for her to find a way out.

And so she keeps trying, all but forcing Eileen to talk about her past. All but demanding to know who her family is, where they live, why they haven't helped. Why Pansy hasn't given up yet.

She watches Severus as she prods their mother for information. Even with his unwavering brilliance, she doubts he could manage the family alone. Not without her. Not with his sister.

But Seraphina will manage. They'll all manage, if she has anything to say about it.

When she finds out about the Prince family, she almost feels relieved. Almost feels guilty for believing she would never have to ask.

But when has she ever hesitated to do what she must?

*^*^*^*

She thought she was learning patience, but really she's learning everything. The way clothes are mended instead of replaced, bread baked instead of bought, love earned instead of expected. Magic has its own lessons, but she's not quite old enough to master them yet. Not long now.

Longer than she'd hoped. Longer than her old self would have allowed. Pansy is learning more than expected about what it means to wait. But it's not so bad, really. Not when the other options are considered.

The scandal of it, back when she was herself.

Somewhere in the past life she only half-remembers, she'd made a vow: never again. Not the war, not the grief, not the love.

Never again.

But her own expectations get the best of her. When she realizes they might not have to. When it seems, just for a moment, like things will be better this time. Like her birthright will spare her from caring, from trying, from Henry, Henry, Henry.

It doesn't.

So here she is, Pansy Parkinson, a Snape who can't quite make herself forget what it's like to have it all. To lose it all. And to wish she hadn't.

Even when things turn grim—especially when things turn grim—she knows they'll turn out different.

Not long now.

But maybe long enough that she'll learn to live this life as well as survive it. She doubts she'd be able to, without her brother to remind her what that means.

Even at eight, Severus's magic is just as powerful as his determination. And Pansy's own talent, it seems, is nothing to sneer at. Her skill is careful, calculated, controlled. At least when she intends it.

They won't have to wait much longer.

Even when they do, Seraphina's patience—and its payoff—is the surprise of two lifetimes.

Who knew she could learn so much from loving people? Not the things they expect, not things they demand. But the people themselves, what it means to want, to need, to have.

All the things Pansy Parkinson avoided.

All the things Seraphina has discovered, living this time instead of just biding her time.

It's a lesson well learned, and she plans to apply it just as soon as her schemes allow. The surprise and fear she's come to expect from Tobias won't be far behind when he finds out she's written to the pureblood family. The exasperation and fondness she's come to expect from Severus won't be far behind when he finds out they might have cousins.

Even if they don't answer. Even if it takes more time than she has left to learn it all, she's resolved to find out how much better things can be.

The Prince family is her best hope, but not her only one. If there's one thing Pansy has come to expect, it's the unexpected.

For the first time in either life, she's decided it's not such a bad thing.

"Do you really think Mother will talk to them?"

"Of course. Don't be such a defeatist."

"And if she doesn't?"

"Then we'll ask again," Seraphina decides, softening, then smirking. "After you've made yourself more presentable."

'We'll have to meet up for lunch,' they'll say.

They'll survive this, no matter who they become.