Marquas Wilson had always imagined his death would involve something dignified. Perhaps a heroic sacrifice saving a child from a burning building, or peacefully passing in his sleep at the ripe old age of ninety-two after a life well-lived. At the very least, he'd expected it to involve something cooler than a Prius.
And yet here he was, sprawled across wet asphalt on a rainy Tuesday, his laptop bag flung halfway down the street, watching as the hybrid vehicle that had just introduced itself to his ribcage at forty miles per hour idled innocently nearby. Its driver, a teenager frantically texting into a phone, hadn't even looked up.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Marquas wheezed, though he wasn't sure if any sound actually came out. Blood trickled warmly from the corner of his mouth, which seemed like a bad sign. "A Prius? Not even a Tesla or a Mustang?"
His vision dimmed around the edges. Someone was screaming for an ambulance. Too late, he thought distantly. He could feel himself slipping away, consciousness fading like the battery life on the coding project he'd never finish now.
What a stupid way to die.
His last thought before darkness claimed him was that his code would remain uncommitted on his laptop. His team lead was going to be pissed.
---
Consciousness returned like a slow server response lagging, buffering, and finally loading with a splitting headache. Marquas groaned and rolled over, burying his face into a pillow that smelled faintly of herbs and something less pleasant. Had he survived? This didn't feel like a hospital bed too narrow, too firm.
Wait.
Herbs?
He sat bolt upright, instantly regretting it as his head spun viciously. The room around him was dark, lit only by a single candle flickering on a nearby desk. Stone walls. A small window showing nothing but night sky. Bookshelves crammed with leather-bound tomes and... were those glass jars filled with floating things?
"What the actual hell?" he muttered, his voice coming out deeper and raspier than expected. "Did I get airlifted to some medieval hospital?"
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood unsteadily. The nightshirt he wore was black, flowing to his ankles, and made of some rough-spun material that definitely wasn't hospital issue. Looking down, he noticed his hands pale, long-fingered, with neatly trimmed nails stained slightly yellow.
Those weren't his hands.
His hands were broader, with a writer's callus on the middle finger and a small scar across the left palm from a childhood bike accident. These hands belonged to someone else entirely.
Heart hammering, Marquas stumbled across the room, searching frantically for a mirror. He found one hanging on the far wall small, slightly tarnished around the edges, but functional enough to reflect the face that was definitely not his.
Sallow skin. Hooked nose. Thin lips pressed into a line of shock. And the hair, shoulder-length, black as midnight, and greasy enough to lubricate machinery.
"No," he whispered, watching those unfamiliar lips form the word. "This is impossible."
But the face staring back at him was unmistakable. He'd seen it in eight movies, countless memes, and one very specific series of books that he'd devoured as a teenager.
He was looking at Severus Snape.
"I'm having a coma dream," he declared to the empty room. "Or this is some bizarre purgatory where I'm being punished for pirating Adobe software."
He pinched himself hard. Nothing changed.
Panic rising, Marquas began pacing the small room, bare feet slapping against the cold stone floor. His mind raced with questions, each more impossible than the last. How could he be in the body of a fictional character? Why this character specifically? Was he in the books, the movies, or some alternate universe altogether?
His eyes fell on a calendar pinned beside the door. September 1979.
"Oh shit," he breathed.
If this was real and the throbbing pain in his head suggested it might be, then he wasn't just Severus Snape. He was pre-Harry Potter Severus Snape. Death Eater Severus Snape. The Snape who was probably still obsessing over Lily Evans even as she married James Potter.
The Snape who would eventually die a horrible death by snake venom after a life of misery, manipulation, and unrequited love.
"Nope. No thank you," Marquas said firmly. He began rifling through drawers, finding robes, potion ingredients, and ah, there it was. A wand. Sleek, black, and humming with an energy he could feel even without touching it.
Hesitantly, he picked it up. Warmth spread through his fingers, up his arm, settling in his chest like a second heartbeat.
"Lumos," he whispered, half-expecting nothing to happen.
The tip of the wand burst into bright white light, illuminating the room and nearly blinding him. Marquas yelped and almost dropped it, hastily muttering, "Nox," which thankfully extinguished the glow.
As the light faded, something strange happened. Images flashed behind his eyes, a classroom with bubbling cauldrons, precise wand movements rehearsed until fingers cramped, Latin incantations practiced in the dead of night. Knowledge that wasn't his own flooded his consciousness: potion recipes, spell theories, the exact angle at which to hold a wand for a defensive charm.
Marquas gasped, steadying himself against the desk as Snape's memories washed over him in fragments. Not everything, there were still vast empty spaces but enough that he understood how he'd just performed magic without training. The knowledge was there, stored in this body's muscle memory and neural pathways, waiting to be accessed.
"Interesting," he murmured, flexing his fingers around the wand. "The body remembers even if I don't."
He tried again, focusing harder. "Wingardium Leviosa."
A nearby quill floated effortlessly into the air, and with it came another flash of memory, a younger Snape practicing in a dingy room, determination etched on his adolescent face. The sensation was disorienting, like watching a movie while simultaneously being in it.
"Holy shit," he said, staring at the wand. "I'm actually... I can do..."
He looked back at the mirror, at Snape's face wearing an expression of wonder that probably hadn't graced those features in years, if ever.
"Magic is real. I'm Severus Snape. Which means..." His expression darkened. "Voldemort is real too. And in this timeline, he's very much alive."
Marquas sank back onto the bed, head in his hands. As a software developer, he was accustomed to fixing bugs, not dealing with dark lords. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
His mind flashed to Snape's fate in the books. Decades of pining after a dead woman. Being a double agent. Getting his throat ripped out by a magical snake. Dying alone in a dirty shack.
"Yeah, that's gonna be a hard pass from me," he muttered. "If I'm stuck here, I'm rewriting this damn story."
He stood up again, newfound determination pushing through the panic. First things first, he needed information. Where exactly was he? What day was it? Was he already a Death Eater? Was Lily already dead?
Rifling through papers on the desk, he found his answer, a half-written letter addressed to "My Lord," detailing some potion research. So he was already in Voldemort's service. Great.
But another document, a copy of the Daily Prophet, confirmed that it was indeed September 1979. Which meant Lily and James were alive. Harry wasn't born yet. The prophecy hadn't been made.
The entire tragedy that was Severus Snape's life hadn't fully unfolded.
"I have time," Marquas whispered. "Time to change things."
He moved to the small window, pushing it open to let in the cool night air. Somewhere in the distance, he could see lights of what might be a village. Spinner's End, perhaps?
Marquas took a deep breath, feeling the unfamiliar body respond, lungs expanding, heart rate steadying. He was Severus Snape now, for better or worse. But he didn't have to follow the same path.
"First things first," he said decisively, turning back to the mirror and eyeing the greasy hair with distaste. "This whole aesthetic needs a serious upgrade. If I'm going to navigate magical politics and avoid getting murdered by the most dangerous dark wizard of all time, I refuse to do it looking like I wash my hair in cauldron residue."
He experimentally ran a hand through the lank strands, grimacing as they left an actual slick on his palm. "What the hell, Snape? Did you use motor oil as conditioner?"
Wiping his hand on the nightshirt, Marquas began mentally listing priorities:
1. Figure out how to de-grease this disaster of a hairstyle
2. Determine exact Death Eater status and obligations
3. Establish relationship with Dumbledore (but without the unhealthy codependence)
4. Find a way to navigate the war without dying horribly
5. Maybe save some lives along the way
He paused, adding one more to the list:
6. Resolve the Lily situation once and for all
Because no way in hell was he spending the next decades pining after someone else's wife. That train had sailed. Or ship had left the station. Whatever he was mixing metaphors because he was still processing the fact that he'd died and woken up as Severus freaking Snape.
"No way I'm dying for some kid's plotline," he declared to the empty room, voice firm despite the absurdity of it all. "I'm officially declaring this a Snape redemption arc that doesn't end in tragedy. The greasy bat of the dungeons is getting a makeover, inside and out."
He picked up the wand again, twirling it experimentally between his fingers. It felt right in his hand, like an extension of himself.
"Time to see what this magic thing is all about," he murmured. "And then... operation 'Don't Die Like a Chump' begins."
Marquas now Severus smiled. It felt strange on these unfamiliar features, but not unpleasant.
"Let's rewrite this story, shall we?"