The scent of departure always carries the metallic tang of rust from blood and the bitter brine of belated regrets.

The agony from Nagini’s fangs at his throat was no longer a searing fire; it had begun to turn numb, dragging a deep chill into the very marrow of his bones. He lay there, amidst the rotting floorboards of the Shrieking Shack, his clouded black eyes fixed upon the final emerald green of his life. His breath hitched, his mind beginning to dissolve into the void, carrying with it the secret of a cruel, unrequited love and a loyalty that had never been acknowledged. He was ready to vanish.

Leaving, perhaps, was the only mercy fate had ever granted a spy as weary as he.

But the darkness did not last forever as he had imagined.

A sudden, sharp pang tore through the stillness not in his neck, but in his chest and limbs. He inhaled sharply, his lungs expanding with a pain so acute it felt as though he had just been dragged from the depths of water. Instead of the rot and dust of the Shrieking Shack, his senses were assaulted by the pungent sting of antiseptic and the familiar herbal scent of the Hogwarts Hospital Wing.

His eyes snapped open.

The high ceiling with its grey stone arches appeared before him, the evening sun filtering through stained-glass windows, shining directly onto his thin, small hands resting atop a crisp white blanket. These were not the hands of a thirty-eight-year-old man, calloused from years of stirring cauldrons; these were the hands of a teenager, bony, pale, and covered in fresh scrapes from a disastrous encounter.

Beside the bed, the rustle of a newspaper accompanied Madam Pomfrey’s grumbling voice. "In the infirmary again, Snape. I’ve told you countless times, Mr. Potter and his friends truly crossed the line this time..."

He lay motionless, the heart in his chest thumping so violently it felt ready to burst. The humiliation of being tormented by the Marauders at fourteen surged through his veins, but it was instantly crushed by a realization far more terrifying and cold.

He had not died. He had been regression.

The Potions Master, the man who had deceived the Dark Lord himself, was now trapped in the body of a bullied child in the fateful year of 1974. A new opportunity? Or a new punishment from destiny? He stared up at the ceiling, his obsidian eyes devoid of even a single flicker of youth.