Going

Death had a wife, one that he hoped to keep for quite some time longer, although at this point that may have been the dream of a crazed sleep deprived lesser god.
Mrs Death, a romantic, was on day four of a tirade that was looking to beat the last great tirade, a hundred and ninety seven days of her bemoaning his harsh actions of robbing the world of Anthony and Cleopatra.
She gazed into the basin filled with the frayed ends where The Fates had chopped, running her fingers along bits of life unlived, gathering emotions, dreams, and aspirations.
And he? He stood in the middle of the room scythe in hand, while a not quite dead wizard lounged silent on his chesterfield.

"Herbert Grim Thanatus, I'm telling you he has great potential."
"My love he is unattractive, irascible, uncaring, and quite possibly the most ill-mannered human I have ever met."
Hence he thought the reason the wizard was now silenced.
The wizard in question flashed his not quite smile, barring yellowed, uneven teeth.
"Yes my love I know, but come here!" She demanded.
Death came close, not too near, she was known to slap him around the head at times, "Here! You nupty! You can't touch them from there."
She rolled her eyes, glaring at him.
"I won't hurt you, promise."
She shoved her hands in-front of her, showing her fingers were not crossed. From the corner of his eye, Death could see the wizard laughing silently, cackling really, opening mouthed with his head thrown back.
Bastard.

Death strode forward, and allowed his wife to take his hand, "See feel here."
She ran his skeletal finger along a thread, adoration, the deeply abiding and total adoration of a woman, a living woman, who adored, and returned the love the wizard would give.
He made a small sound, knowing his wife liked when he made sounds, it proved in her mind he was paying attention.
"Now here."
Ahh children, such powerful little beast they would have been too. He felt then what his wife had left unsaid, this bastard of a man, could, if he was allowed to live, fathered children that like their mother would better the world.
With all of their mother's dreams of improving the world, and their father's surreptitious nature, they would for a time, end the senseless wars their kind loved to partake in.
While Death did not mind war, he viewed it as premature harvesting; for even the longest lived would wait for him for the voyage to Charon.
Death looked at the wizard again, such an unfortunate looking man he was, that nose.
He sighed.
"Give me the bits then, I'll go talk to them. You know they'll want another eye for this. Atropos is loathe to re-weave anything, bitter as she is over defibrillators."
He looked at the wizard now sitting straight up, his lips a tight line.
Bastard! Thought Death, an utter bastard, he'd be bitter until the woman pulled his head out of his arse.
Death smiled then, and watched the wizard recoil.
Yes a good woman was what he needed, the one caught in the pieces of fate seemed sensible, Hermione.
Death watched his wife carefully gather the pieces of life, pulling loose pieces tight, smoothing frayed threads. She did have a weak spot for Shakespeare, and he? He had time, fast reflexes, and no need for an eye.

Going

"No."
The door almost slammed in his face, stopped only by him sacrificing his scythe. He apologized to it silently.

"The fate of the world.."
"We don't care.
Lachesis held the eye, wrinkled face cross, well crosser than usual. Today they seemed to have set their wrinkles deeper; and been more inclined to snap, and slam heavy doors that could do awful damage to soft and hard parts.
He stepped into the room, giving a respectful nod towards the eye.
"Look the misses sent me, and I'll be not sent back with a no in the first thirty seconds. Thank you very much."
Clotho reached her hand for the eye, Lachesis moved out of her reach bumping Atropos, that began a scuffle with each screeching complaints of her lack time with the eye; he went to the kitchen.

The first cupboard held eye of newt, Buddha's tears, and three phoenix eggs ashed over.
They really did take this witches bullshit too far.
He looked back at the room, they were still arguing among themselves, the eye trained on him, he turned back and continued his search for tea.
After long minutes he gave up. Not a decent tea to be found in their cupboards, and more body parts than he thought strictly necessary, unless one was of the mind to raise a dark army made up of fingers, toes, ears, and bits they did not teach in death school.
He choose instead of sit on a cupboard and wait.
"Oi get down from there, get your boney arse off! That's not sanitary!"
The look he gave, sanitary he thought?
He was Death, he left wastelands of great swaths, stripping earth, sky, and soul plains of humanity, gods (usually lesser ones) flora, and fauna. Nothing could live when he deemed their time had come, not even bacteria.
He hit the stone top with his scythe, "It's good."
Clotho now the wielder of the eye glared.
"Get down."
"No."
He cocked his head to the side, and bounced his scythe on his knee.
Clotho whispered in her sister's ear, who in-turn spoke.
"Grim, this is no time for games."
"I should think not, I have a wizard in my house, a wife who demands he be sent back, and the matter of the fact that his life was not to end at that time."
He snarled then, and the three scrambled back as one, insulting him with one voice.
"Don't lie to me!" He slid off the counter, his scythe hitting the stone floor with a decisive boom, sending a small thrill through him.
Oh he had forgotten what this felt like.
"Charon hasn't sent for him, neither has his spirit pulled away searching for the next coil." He narrow his slits and let his fire burn blue.
"His soul I found is quite at peace, on my settee."
His voice echoed through the house.
"It's not like that!" Atropos finally said.
"It's just, it was war, and there were all them dying, and then he seemed dead, he wanted to die, he did!" Her voiced squeaked , "So I snipped maybe a bit prematurely."
She shrugged and gave a loopsided half smile.
"If Gloria's taken a shine to him, you can keep him."

Death took a deep breath, it didn't matter that he didn't need to breath, he needed to feel that space in his chest fill with flames, feel them roil in the void, feel his power.
"I DON'T WANT TO KEEP HIM."
He spoke he thought softly, but anger reverberated making his words thunder.
"SEND HIM BACK."
"No." Atropos folded her arms and turned back to the loom. Snipping a life, trying to send him away. Nice try.
"I've already given one of his kind back for that night. I'll not be giving back another."
"He was never yours to take."
"He wanted to die. I'll give him back and in eight weeks he'll poison himself, and where will we be? He'll be dead anyway."
"Be that as it may, that will be his appointed time. But he can't stay here, and sooner or later Gloria will wonder why he's not moving on, then she'll complain that Charon isn't doing his job, because you know how she gets."
The two still facing him nodded.
"She'll be off to Chronos in no time, then he'll want to know how much snipping you've been doing, and Eros will complain of broken hear..."
"Shite."
Atropos turned sticking out her hand
"Just give the bloody threads here!"
She snatched them from his hand; he growled.
She smoothed the threads down, hunting for the loose bits, before handing it to Clotho, Lachesis turned the fabric back, slowly smoothing a space open for the wizard, Death watched carefully as Clotho weaved once cut bits back into the fabric of life; when she was done it was nearly impossible to tell where he was taken from and replaced.
"There it's done, be gone."

Gone

Death took his time wandering back home, it may have been three hours, might be three days, it didn't really matter; time was a bit wobbly on this side; and the dead wizard wasn't really dead until he went to Charon anyway.
Truthfully Death was thinking, it used to be hard to get the Moirai to do anything, he'd start with bribes, then he'd have to take their eye, threaten to feed it to Cerberus, it would take months, sometimes years, and a special few, decades.
Now they were reasonable, he blamed industrialization. The mechanical loom, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR as the humans liked to call it, really did rattle them, by the time humans started running electrical current to restart hearts, and stopping hearts, freezing bodies, trading the hearts out and restarting them, the old girls really couldn't keep up.
The dead were supposed to stay dead. Was it too much to ask?

Outside his house he could hear his wife's voice, she was in her off handed way explaining something, the wizard was silent. Death remembered he'd never un-silenced him. Oops.
No matter Gloria could talk for two, or four.
She laughed, a sweet sound that made his void warm, he opened the door.

The wizard was still on the chesterfield, Gloria was beside him, a scrabble game between them.
She raised her eyes, smiling brightly as he entered.
"All sorted then love?"
"Yes, tell your little friend goodbye, and I'll return him safely."
She rolled her eyes, but her smile widen, then she looked to the man next to her who was pulling himself to his feet.
"Now remember Severus, you'll have to heal first, it'll take some time. Just don't be unkind, you have to be friends first."
He nodded, she straightened his frock coat and robes as if he was a child, as if he wasn't going back to a body mangled by a giant snake, as if whatever they saw wasn't bits of soul formed into a shape.
"Be kind to yourself."
The wizard nodded again.
She pulled him down and pressed a kiss to his temple.

Death laughed, that was his wife, kind even to the most unloveable, hence how she'd managed to love him.
The wizard came towards him, and Death just had to find out what he would say if given the freedom to speak.
Death gave two sharp taps with the shaft of the scythe and the wizard was able to speak again.
He must have felt his tongue loosen, he shifted his jaw side to side, before turning, and taking Mrs Death's hand
"Madam Death,"
She tittered, she did like a nice voice
"It was an honor to meet you, you have my greatest thanks for your interjection on my behalf, you have lifted a considerable weight from my heart. Thank you, truly."

He stood to his full height, and turned towards Death with a small sneer.
"Well come on your ruddy bastard, I've a life to live I'm told."

Death laughed, letting his power rise, feeling it fill him, his scythe glowed, and intoned in his serious voice.
"Severus Snape, you have been given a gift most precious, time. Come."
The wizard stepped directly infront of him.
Death clasped a hand on the wizard's shoulder, and slammed the scythe down; the world fell in.

It reopened in a hospital, or whatever the wizards called it. They were in a private room, the wizard's body was bandaged, and clean, there was an older witch sitting at his side.
"It is a lucky man who has someone to wait at his side."
The wizard sniffed, "She hated me the last time she saw me, she's hated me for a while now."
Death shrugged, "I am a phenomenal method of making things clear in minds, and hearts.
The wizard looked from himself on the bed to Death.
"That you are. I ... should thank you for..."
"Don't. Live that life my wife saw. That's the thanks I'd like."The wizard nodded.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes."

Death looked at the wizard for a long moment, this was his favorite part yet he rarely got to do it. What would it be this time?
In one fluid movement Death snapped his scythe high, before bringing just the tip of the blade down to catch the soul stuff that was Severus Snape, the man shape condensed into hoarfrost on the edge of his blade, gleaming as light touched it.
Death ran his power up the scythe as he swung, the hoarfrost balanced on nothing, the the incorporeal blade swept through the body on the bed leaving the hoarfrost of soul to redistribute into the body.
Death gave a pleased chuckle, that may be the most interesting way he'd found thus far, superior to just chucking the soul back into the body with a shove, the look of shock on the wizard's face. Priceless.

The bed moved with the momentum of the soul returning to the body.
The body, now the wizard in his entirety immediately started to cough, and twitch; the witch sitting screamed for a doctor, nurse, whatever they called physicians here.
The wizard blinked his eyes open, searching, only stopping as they lit on Death.
Death smiled, the wizard shivered, ignoring the witch who had run to his side.
Death gave a quick dip of the head, the wizard returned the dip gingerly.
Death brought the scythe down once more, thinking of home.