Snape had the ability to save Bella's life, especially in the moments just after she had died.
Compared with communicating with the dead in the World of the Dead, this method of halting the process of death was far simpler and more direct. It was especially easy for him now.
But he didn't want to do it at all.
It was just as he had coldly watched Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbott, those two children, kill Barty Crouch Jr.
He had watched Barty's soul drift toward the Veil with a distant look in his eyes, without the slightest hesitation.
Unlike Dumbledore and Grindelwald, who had all sorts of schemes and wanted Voldemort alive and active for a while longer, Snape had no political ambitions.
Perhaps he had once had them, back when he followed the Dark Lord in the conquest of the world, but that part of him had died with Lily.
Nor did he have the detached temperament of Anton and Nicolas Flamel, who could watch the conflicts of the world unfold without being moved.
Wizards of this scholarly sort were the most typical kind in thousands of years of magical history. Knowing that their proximity to magic had warped their minds, they chose to distance themselves, little by little, from the world of ordinary people. Unless someone went out of their way to provoke them, they rarely took action.
Wizards like that were everywhere: Herpo the Foul, who had invented Horcruxes and the Basilisk; the wizard who had created Dementors and lived on Azkaban Island; Slytherin, one of the Four Founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; and others.
Wizards who reached this point had always possessed great wisdom, and that often meant they would live long lives.
There was no evidence that Herpo the Foul had