lilt
Severus took another slow drag, the glow of the cigarette illuminating his face for a second before fading back into the dark. Smoke curled lazily from his thin lips, disappearing into the damp night air. Lily stood a few feet away, arms crossed, shifting her weight like she was bored already. But she wasn’t.
He looked on the ground, not making eye contact with her, as if his mind was elsewhere, not with her. It was a very foreign sight to her, to see Severus so … away yet near.
“Well?”
His gaze shifted to her, face expression not so empty anymore.
“Wha’?"
Lily exhaled softly, her voice quiet but sincere. "Thank you."
He didn’t say anything. He just stared at her with confusion. He wasn’t even sure what he was so confused about. She stood there. There, in front of him, alive and well, was no other Lily Evans.
She furrowed her brows and studied his face. “Are you planning on just standing with a drink and a smoke outside, all broody and tragic, or speak sum’thing”
Severus exhaled, a slow curl of smoke unfurling from his lips. “Thought you’d want me to fuck off like a normal person.”
“Normal people don’t set other people on fire,” she looked at the cigarette he smoked, cravingly. “Especially for fun.”
“It wasn’t for fun,” he corrected her plainly, flicking ash from his cigarette. “Pricks deserved it.”
She didn’t say anything. And he didn’t add anything. They both knew they deserved it. Of course, they did. They were called ‘pricks’ for a reason.
Lily looked around to see that the street was relatively empty now. There were less people in the pub, nearly none, and the earlier noises of people in the background had faded away, leaving only two of them the only ones making any sound around.
It was just the two of them, standing there like a scene from a film neither of them had planned on acting in.
“And what have you lost here? In a pub? In this damned street?”
Severus let out a snicker that was meant to be a chuckle. Merlin, he still couldn’t properly laugh.
“Nothing.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “Yeah? Just decided to haunt the pavement outside for no reason?”
He tilted his head slightly, studying her through the haze of smoke between them. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing.” It came too quick. Too sharp. She felt it in her teeth.
She hated how natural this all felt, how familiar. The sharp edges, the bite of his voice against hers. How they could go months, years even, without speaking, yet still fall back into the same pattern. Like they were fifteen again, sneaking cigarettes behind the ol mills, picking apart everything wrong with the world because it had never made space for them anyway.
And maybe that’s what bothered her.
Maybe she did want something from him.
Maybe she wanted him to act like the past wasn’t itching under her skin, burning at the edges of her thoughts. Maybe she wanted him to bring it up first, so she wouldn’t have to.
But Severus just stood there, leaning against the brick wall, unbothered. Detached.
Lily sighed, rubbing a hand over her face. “Give me a fag.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Thought you’d quit.”
She scoffed, holding out a hand. “Since when did you believe in things like quitting?”
For a second, she thought he might refuse. That he might taunt her, say something about how she’d left everything else behind, why not this too? But instead, he fished the pack from his coat pocket, pulled one out, and placed it between her fingers without a word.
“Let me walk you home,” he said, killing the momentary silence, as she lit her cigarette with her fingers as if she wasn’t trying to get at him by mimicking what he just did to the man earlier.
“Why the fuck would I go home, if I came here in the first place to escape from there?”
“What are you now? A rebel?”
“If wanting to just get away from an annoying sister and constant praise regarding the ‘boarding school’ I graduated makes me a rebel, then sure.”
There was no hesitation in her honesty. She didn’t bother telling him the truth, like she knew he’d keep it to himself. Why would he even tell anyone anything about her? If he was a bitter bitch, he could have told anything about her a long time ago, back in Hogwarts, but he chose not to. And so did Lily.
The thing they knew about one another never needed any kind of explanation, a remembrance; it was a filling within a void that they witnessed one another build. And maybe that void was the same reason why they fell out in the first place.
“Okay, where are you heading then?”
“Ehh, dunno. You can tag along,” she said then looked at the bottle of beer in his hand. “Unless you got other plans, of course.”
Severus didn’t respond or comment on anything, and the two just started going somewhere.
The night had settled into a quiet hum, the kind that made the air feel heavier, like it carried the weight of unsaid things. The street stretched before them, dimly lit by flickering lamps that buzzed like dying insects. The pavement was uneven, cracks running through it like veins, damp from the earlier drizzle. It smelled of wet stone, cigarette smoke, and the stale remnants of spilled beer.
Lily walked with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her coat, shoulders slightly hunched, cigarette burning between her fingers. She walked like she had nowhere to be, like she was in no rush to leave or stay, like it didn’t matter either way. But she matched his pace.
Severus kept his gaze forward, the bottle swinging loosely from his hand, cigarette still burning between his lips. The silence between them wasn’t heavy. It just was.
The idea of her walking beside him, real and breathing, was something he hadn’t quite come to terms with yet. It wasn’t a nightmare. He knew that. But it didn’t feel like a dream either, because he didn’t have those—not the good ones, at least. He didn’t get dreams where she turned up in the middle of the night, mocking him in that familiar, almost affectionate way. He didn’t get dreams where she took a cigarette from his pack like it was nothing, like they hadn’t spent years apart.
But she was here.
And he didn’t know if it meant anything.
Lily exhaled, watching the smoke swirl up toward the streetlights. “I always forget how dead this place is at night.”
Severus let out a short, dry breath—maybe a laugh, maybe not. “That’s the best part.”
She tilted her head toward him, glancing at his face. The glow of his cigarette caught the sharp angles of his jaw, and the dark hollows under his eyes. He always looked like he hadn’t slept in years. Maybe he hadn’t.
“Didn’t take you for a pub regular,” she muttered.
He shrugged. “I’m not.”
“Then what, just felt like brooding in public tonight?”
He flicked his cigarette, watching the ash scatter before looking at her. “Like you said, just trying to get away.”
She nodded, like she understood, like she wasn’t going to push. The streets stretched before them, empty and waiting, and neither of them had any real direction. But for some reason, neither of them turned away.
They didn’t talk for a while, just walked. Not in sync, not apart—just two people moving through the same night, bound by something neither of them had the guts to name.
Severus was to grab his next cigarette. His fourth cigarette, as Lily recalled.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, can you stop,” she randomly snapped at him.
Severus paused mid-motion, fingers curled around the cigarette pack, before slipping it back into his coat pocket instead. He exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing just slightly as he studied her.
Yeah, definitely not a dream.
His dreams never felt this sharp, this biting. They never had Lily snapping at him like she actually gave a damn. They never had the way her voice curled around curses or the way her nose scrunched when she got irritated. No, his dreams—if they ever bothered to include her—were much kinder. Or crueler, depending on how one looked at it.
Lily smoked herself. Occasionally. It never bothered her. Sure, she didn’t smoke for a while when she was with James, but it didn’t matter anymore. The scent of cigarettes was somewhat nostalgic for her, especially with him. But now—now, for some reason, it was getting to her. The fourth cigarette was too much. It wasn’t the smell or the smoke curling between them; it was something else, something she couldn’t put her finger on.
Maybe it was the way he did it, so methodically, like he was inhaling something other than nicotine. Like he was inhaling silence. Like every exhale was keeping something locked in.
She crossed her arms, shifting her weight, eyes flicking from his face to the pack he had tucked away. “Good. At this rate, you’re gonna hack up a lung before we even get anywhere.”
Then she looked at him with a sheepish smile as in ‘thank you for not continuing on this awful habit we both have right now’, which made him chuckle.
Lily hadn’t expected that.
The sound was quiet, barely there, but unmistakable—a chuckle. A real one. Not the dry, humourless scoffs she was used to, not the bitter sneers he threw out like knives. An actual chuckle slipped through his lips like it had been waiting there all along.
Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second before she caught herself. It was ridiculous, really, how something so simple could shock her. She had known him when he used to laugh freely—before life had squeezed it out of him.
Still, seeing it now, hearing it, was different.
And because she had never been good at keeping things to herself, a chuckle of her own bubbled up in response. It was soft, almost hesitant, but it was there.
“What?” Severus asked, raising an eyebrow, but there was no real irritation in his voice.
“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Just—didn’t know you still had that in you.”
He rolled his eyes, but his lips twitched like he was fighting another smirk.
She took a stone from the ground, for no goddamn reason and asked him, “So, what are you gonna do in September?”
“Are you gonna hit me in the head with that?” His eyes focused on that little rock in her hands.
Lily snorted, turning the stone over in her palm. “Tempting,” she mused. “But no. Not yet, at least.”
Severus gave her a dry look, but there was still a trace of amusement lurking at the corners of his mouth. His gaze flicked from the stone back to her face, sharp and assessing, as if he were trying to decipher why she had picked it up in the first place.
She didn’t know either. It was just there, something to hold, something to fiddle with while she waited for him to answer.
He exhaled slowly, shoulders shifting like he was rolling off the weight of the question. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
Lily tilted her head, studying him. “You? Not having some grand plan?”
His expression darkened just slightly, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Right.”
He looked at her, “you?”
Severus watched as Lily lifted her hand, forming a mock gun with her fingers and pressing it to her temple. She rolled her eyes, exhaling dramatically.
“Dunno. Kill me?” she deadpanned, then let her hand drop. “I wanna move to another city.”
He raised an eyebrow, ignoring the way his stomach twisted at the words. “Where?”
She shrugged, kicking at a loose pebble on the ground. “Somewhere that isn’t here.”
Severus studied her, the way her face tilted toward the open sky like she was already looking past this place, like she had already left. He had always known she wanted more, but hearing it out loud was something else entirely.
None of them had ever wanted to stay in this town. But as kids, and maybe even now, Severus never understood why Lily had wanted to leave it. She lived in a quite normal neighbourhood with employed parents, who loved her.
Maybe her longing wasn’t so different from his own.
Severus didn’t want to move to another town or chase some distant dream. He didn’t even crave adventure or a new place to discover. What he wanted was simpler, yet harder to grasp. He wanted a life where his parents weren’t there. A life where there was nobody he loathed, nor loathed him. He didn’t want to leave the town, not really. He just wanted to be free of the people in the house. To be alone. To be somewhere that wasn’t home—a place that always felt like a cage.
“So.”
He shot a look at her, which said ‘what again?’
Lily exhaled, watching the smoke swirl up toward the streetlights. “NEWTs will be out soon,” she said with a hint of dead enthusiasm.
Severus made a noise in the back of his throat. A noncommittal sound, neither interested nor entirely dismissive.
Lily scoffed. “What? Don’t tell me you don’t care.”
“I don’t care,” he said flatly.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, Severus Snape, the only person who ever actually enjoyed Potions, doesn’t care about the results of the most important exams we ever took. You can lie better than that.”
A ghost of a smirk played on his lips. “I already know I passed.”
“Arrogant prick,” she muttered, but there was no bite to it.
Severus took another slow drag from his cigarette before speaking. “Grades don’t mean anything. Not really.”
Lily raised an eyebrow, side-eyeing him. “Says the bloke who used to correct Slughorn mid-lecture in his first year.”
He exhaled, tilting his head slightly as he looked at her. “Talent isn’t measured in numbers. A mark on a piece of parchment doesn’t mean you know what the hell you’re doing. It just means you know how to do what they want.”
Lily hummed, considering that. “And what, you think you’re above it?”
“No,” Severus said simply, flicking ash to the side. “But I know better than to pretend it matters.”
She stared at him for a moment, then snorted softly. “Yeah, well. Try telling that to everyone else. Especially the employers.”
Severus wanted to tell her how sure he was of getting a job, how Malfoy promised him a job. But he didn’t. He knew that whatever they had now was too fragile to break with such information.
Severus glanced at her again, and this time, Lily met his gaze fully. There was something unreadable in her expression—thoughtful, maybe, or just amused. Then, to his surprise, she smiled.
And before he even thought about it, before he could stop himself, he did too.
It was small, barely there, but real. A flicker of something unguarded, something that almost felt natural.
Lily’s stomach twisted in a way she didn’t expect. She wasn’t just impressed—she was shocked. She had seen him smirk, sneer, scowl more times than she could count. But this? A real, genuine smile? It was rare. Maybe even new.
Not that she’d let it show.
She cleared her throat, shifting her weight slightly. “Er–do you know the time?”
Severus blinked as if shaking off whatever moment had just passed. He pulled his sleeve back to check his watch, the smile already slipping away.
“Quarter to eleven.”
“Right,” she said, embracing herself with her jacket. It wasn’t that she cared for getting home late anyway. She knew that she was still living with her parents, so she had to care, but adult life, she had to start allowing it to sink in.
Seeing Severus right now made her realize how soon she has to act to be able to find a place to rent by September and hopefully also a job, an internship or anything by that time to be able to function and live.
Without a word, they fell into step, their strides naturally syncing as they started walking toward her house. There had been no agreement, no question of are you coming with me?—just the quiet understanding that they would move together.
Lily didn’t think too hard about it. Didn’t question why Severus had started walking in the same direction, why she hadn’t even considered saying goodbye yet. It was just how it was—how it had always been.
She had so much to tell him, so much to ask him, but again, she didn’t even understand how. How did they manage to find one another after years of not talking? Lily didn’t even say that she forgave him. He didn’t apologise to her again after two years. For some reason, she didn’t bother to say, but it still lingered in the back of her mind.
It was strange, this quiet space they had found themselves in. No resentment, no apologies, no grand reconciliation—just this, walking side by side as if nothing had ever gone wrong. As if they hadn’t spent years on opposite sides of something vast and unspeakable. As if the doom of their friendship never was to happen and that day was never to come.
But it did, Lily thought. It happened, and maybe it was to happen because of the way they were already drifting apart. Everything had gone wrong. And it had been vast. And yet… here they were.
Fate.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Not unhappy, exactly. But not at peace, either. It unsettled her, how easily they had fallen back into step, how natural it felt to match her stride to his. There was something disorienting about it, like stepping into a memory that had never truly ended.
Lily wasn’t naïve enough to pretend everything had healed. She wasn’t even sure she wanted it to. Some wounds needed to scar over, needed to be seen, to be acknowledged. And yet, for all her lingering questions, for all the things unsaid, she didn’t stop walking.
Neither did he.
Severus kept his gaze fixed ahead, his hands buried deep in his coat pockets, fingers curling unconsciously around nothing. He didn’t understand how this had happened. How she had gone from a ghost—something distant, untouchable—to walking beside him again, like all those years hadn’t unravelled into something unfixable.
She hadn’t forgiven him. He knew that.
But she hadn’t left, either.
That should have reassured him, but instead, it twisted inside him, a slow, sick kind of confusion. He didn’t know what she wanted. Didn’t know if she wanted anything at all. Maybe she was just here because it was her way of thanking him. After all, it was easier than just ignoring him after an incident as such.
He missed her. Of course, he did. He bloody missed having her around, seeing her, talking to her, being near her and completely careless and unaware of the world surrounding them. And that certainly wasn’t what their friendship was like for its last years. A place where the fundamental differentiation, bias, stigmas and whatnot were embedded into children’s minds at the mere age of eleven would never be a perfect place for him and her. Especially when the world had already decided they were meant to stand on opposite sides, no matter how desperately he wished otherwise.
They both changed and there was no denying there, but something clicked in both of them once they saw each other after all these years again. Something that made them to be them – Lily and Sev, just the way they always were when it was the two of them. They were just Lily and Severus, two kids that had once known each other so unspeakably well, before all the noise of the world made them forget what it was like to simply be.
“Will you keep on stayin’ in Spinner’s End?” She asked, not really caring whether he did or not.
“Dunno, depends.” Then he, with a tint of curiosity, asked, “you?”
“Dunno either. I wanna move out though. Somewhere.”
Somewhere. That could mean anywhere, or it could mean nowhere at all.
Lily had always been like that—talking about the future as though it were something she could reach out and touch, like it was hers for the taking. And maybe it was. She was bright, ambitious. The kind of person people naturally gravitated toward. She’d find her way. She always did.
Severus, though? He wasn’t so sure.
“London?” he asked, tapping on the top of the pack in his pocket with a practiced motion.
She shrugged. “Maybe. I just know I can’t stay in Cokeworth forever.”
He hummed, and they walked a few more paces in silence. He could picture Lily in some small flat with a terrible view, books stacked on every available surface, the kettle always on. She’d make a home anywhere, he thought.
But what he couldn’t picture—what he actively tried not to picture—was himself in that version of her life.
He had no illusions about the path he was on. No matter how much he had tried to convince himself that knowledge was power, that his talents would take him further than some Ministry job, he knew the truth: his future was already written in ink.
A future Malfoy had helped arrange for him. A future that meant standing on the side of the war that Lily would never—could never—be part of.
And yet, for all the certainty in that, for all the ways he had steeled himself to accept it, he still felt that pull toward her, that old, familiar thread that had never quite snapped.
“I think you’d like London,” he said at last.
She smiled, though it was small. “Yeah?”
He nodded, shoving his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “Yeah. Too many people, too loud, too much happening at once. You’d fit right in.”
Lily laughed, and for a moment, just a moment, it was like nothing had ever changed.
“What does that mean?!” She asked while laughing heartily.
“Well, don’t get me wrong but you were sorted in Gryffindor for a reason,” he said as his mouth twitched—something almost like a smile, but not quite.
Lily raised an eyebrow, still grinning. “Oh, come on, just say it.”
He tilted his head slightly. “It means you’ve always had a way of making yourself heard. Centre of attention, always loud, very… present.”
Lily scoffed. “Present?”
Severus glanced at her, and there was something unreadable in his expression. “You fill up a space, Lily. Always have. People look at you, listen to you. You make them care.”
She blinked at that, her smile faltering just a little. Because she could tell—she knew him well enough to tell—that he hadn’t meant it as an insult. Not really. There was something almost… admiring in the way he said it, like he was speaking a fact he had long since accepted.
But it wasn’t just that, was it? It wasn’t just admiration. It was something else, something quieter, something sad.
She tilted her head, bumping her shoulder lightly against his as they walked. “And what about you, then?”
“What about me?”
Lily smirked. “You say all that as if you’re not impossible to ignore yourself.”
He let out a short, dry snicker, but there was no real humour in it. “People notice me for different reasons, Lily.”
She frowned at that. “That’s not true.”
“It is.”
She didn’t argue, didn’t press, but something about the way she fell silent told him she didn’t believe him. That she never had.
“I noticed you down there.” She pointed at the playground that stood where it has always been as the two were already in her neighbourhood.
“Yeah, because I wore a black jacket and trousers that were tight on me at the age of, what, nine? And I also called you a witch, and you took it as an insult,” he looked at her. “It’s quite difficult to ignore someone like that–”
Lily snorted. “Oh, shut up. That’s not why.”
Severus raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue.
She sighed, rolling her eyes as if she were reluctant to say it. “You were different. Not just because of the magic. There was something about you—I don’t know. You were… sharp.”
“Sharp?” He echoed, as if testing the word on his tongue.
She nodded. “Like—you saw things other people didn’t. You understood things they didn’t. Even back then.”
Severus didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t used to hearing himself described that way, especially not by her.
Lily tilted her head. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
He exhaled, looking away. “I believe you saw what you wanted to see.”
She rolled her eyes again. “Oh, for Merlin’s sake. You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Diminish yourself. Act like you’re nothing special when you know damn well you are.”
His mouth twitched again, that almost-smile returning, though this time it was more self-deprecating than anything else. “I don’t think anyone’s ever accused me of that before.”
“Well, someone should,” she muttered. “You’d deserve it.”
They walked a few more paces in silence, the playground now behind them, the familiar houses of her street looming ahead. The air was still, thick with the kind of quiet that only ever existed in the late hours of the night.
It felt weird for Severus to hear her say that. It felt as though she was admitting it to him, admitting that he was special. Not just talented, not just clever, but special. And not in the way others saw him—not in the way Slughorn had, or his housemates did. Not as a means to an end. Not as a resource.
But as a person.
It unsettled him. Made something shift uneasily in his chest. Because it was Lily, and because it was her saying it, and because it felt dangerous to let himself believe her.
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She was staring ahead, her expression unreadable, but there was something about the way she held herself that told him she meant every word.
He wanted to scoff, to make some dry remarks, to brush it off like he always did. But for once, he couldn’t. He just let it be; he hasn’t done anything to be her way for too long now, and it would be a lie to say that he hasn’t missed it.
She was his best friend for far more for him to be able to hate her.
He had no right to hate her anyway, he thought. He was an ugly fuck who hurt her with his foul vile mouth, and she was … her. She was all the seasons at its peak, every sunset and sunrise in summer, every autumn wind that carried the scent of rain, every quiet snowfall that made the world softer. She was the warmth and light and every goodness within him that he managed to lose, and yet she was still there, still talking to him, still looking at him like he was worth knowing.
It made him feel weird in the head.
It made him want to grab his hair and pull his head down to the ground And scream until the feeling left him, until he wasn’t drowning in it nor choking on the weight of what he’d lost and never could have.
But instead, he just walked with her, hands curled into fists, head down and staring on the ground like if his eyes met hers, he’d fall apart completely and painfully.
In the last two years, he had gotten used to his existence without her around. He didn’t quite know how to exist around her anymore. He had lost too much of himself to be able to do so, at least, he thought so right now.
“You shouldn’t say things like that.”
Lily turned her head slightly, looking at him. “Why not?”
“Because”, he hesitated, searching for the words, “you need to mean it. Not pity me.”
She frowned. “But I wouldn’t say anything if they all meant shite and bonkers.”
Merlin, hand him a gun please, he thought. He let out a breath through his nose, sharp and unsteady.
“That’s the problem,” he muttered.
Lily slowed her steps, her eyes still on him, searching. “What is?”
He shook his head, biting down on the inside of his cheek. It was too much—this, her, the way she was looking at him. He wasn’t built for it. He didn’t know how to stand there and be seen by her, not when he had spent so long convincing himself that he had disappeared from her world entirely.
“You mean it,” he finally said, voice low, almost bitter. “You always do.”
She exhaled, crossing her arms. “And that bothers you?”
He clenched his jaw. Yes. It did. Because if she meant it, then it was real. And if it was real, then he had to accept that she still saw something in him. And he didn’t know if he could live with that.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he muttered instead. “You should hate me.”
“I did,” she admitted, and his stomach twisted. “For some time, I did. And maybe a part of me still does.”
He flinched, but she wasn’t finished.
“But hating you never stopped me from—” She hesitated, but let her words continue. “It never stopped me from remembering who you were before all of this. Before we ruined everything.”
We. Not you.
It should have been a comfort, but it only made his throat feel tighter.
“Lily,” he said, quiet, confused, unsure what he was even asking for.
She gave him a small, sad smile. “You shouldn’t say things like that either.”
But he did, among the many things he had told her before. Among the many other things that hurt her.
She knew from the way he looked at her, only one question ran through his head. Why? Why was she here next to him after all this time?
Lily smiled weakly yet sincerely, shaking her head. “I’m here because you helped me out, or—whatever you want to call that.”
He frowned, shifting on his feet. “Helped you out?”
“Yes, Severus. Helped. You know, when you threw those guys around in the middle of the street like nobody had asked you to.”
His jaw tightened. “I didn’t throw them.”
Lily raised an eyebrow. “No? Then what would you call it?”
“I handled it.”
She gave a dry laugh. “Oh, you handled it, did you?”
He crossed his arms. “I didn’t overreact.”
“You absolutely did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
She huffed, rubbing her temples. “Severus, they were already pissed enough, they would’ve left anyway.”
He let out a sharp breath, shaking his head. “You don’t know that.”
She threw her hands up. “And you don’t know that they wouldn’t! But you went ahead and lost it anyway, like you always do.”
He narrowed his eyes. “So I should’ve just let them—”
“I could’ve handled it,” she snapped, using his own words against him.
He let out a frustrated sound, dragging a hand through his hair. “Right, because you just love handling things on your own.”
“Merlin, you’re impossible.”
Severus scoffed, turning his head to her direction. “And you’re—” He stopped himself, biting his tongue.
She just stared at him for a moment, lips pressing together like she was trying to hold back a smirk. Then, out of nowhere, she tilted her head slightly and said, “You grew out of those jeans.”
Severus blinked.
“What?”
Lily shrugged. “Your jeans. They used to fit you properly. Now they don’t.”
He looked down at himself, utterly thrown off. “What the hell are you on about?”
Her smirk grew. “I’m just saying. You used to drown in them. And now, well…” She gestured vaguely at his legs.
He scowled, utterly bewildered. “Are we seriously talking about my jeans right now?”
She hummed, as if considering it. “Maybe.”
Severus stared at her, utterly at a loss. “You’re mad.”
Lily just grinned. “And you’re still impossible.” Then, before he could argue, she turned on her heel and kept walking, leaving him standing there, frowning down at his damn jeans like they had personally offended him.
He looked at her once again; he wasn’t mad at her, just wanted to laugh at the height of the situation. Hell, he didn’t even understand what the fuck is going on right now.
“What do you want?” He sneered through his teeth, even though he didn’t mean it to. “Lily?”
Her name slipped out softer, almost like an afterthought, as if whatever he’d said before had been too sharp, too rude to be meant for her.
Lily just shrugged. “Dunno. Just here.”
He raised his gaze from the ground, their eyes meeting one another. They stopped for a minute just to be. Just to be. The night stretched between them, quiet and thick, wrapping around their stillness like a held breath. The air smelled like damp earth and distant smoke, like something lingering just beyond reach. Severus didn’t know what to do with this moment, with her standing there, looking at him like he was someone she still knew. Like he hadn’t become some stranger she barely recognized.
She shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here. And yet, neither of them moved.
Lily tilted her head, expression unreadable. “You always did that.”
He blinked. “Did what?”
She smiled, small and knowing. “Look at me like that. Like you’re trying to figure out if I’m real.”
He forced a scoff. “You say the weirdest things.”
She hummed, rocking back on her heels. “Maybe.”
He exhaled, glancing away. “I still don’t know what you want.”
She shook her head in a silly manner with a smile. “You don’t have to have a reason to do anything” said Lily smilingly.
But you have to, Severus thought. One has to have a reason to do anything, he believed. An ambition, a will, a drive to wake up every and each morning. His jaw tightened, something prickling uncomfortably in his chest. “That’s ridiculous,” he muttered. “People don’t just—” He gestured vaguely, frustration creeping into his voice. “They don’t just do things for no reason.”
Lily’s smile didn’t falter. “Sure they do.”
He stared at her, disbelieving. “Like what?”
“Like this.” She lifted her arms slightly, palms up, as if to gesture at the whole scene—the two of them standing here, together, after everything. “I’m here. You’re here. No grand reason. No secret motive. Just… because.”
Severus clenched his fists, nails pressing into his palms. It was such a Lily thing to say, to believe. But it made no sense. It wasn’t how the world worked.
“You always needed things to mean something,” she continued, softer now. “I liked that about you, you know.”
He swallowed. His voice, when it came, was low. “And what do I mean now?”
Lily didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze flickered over his face, searching. Whatever she was looking for, he didn’t know if she found it.
“Dunno,” she finally admitted. “But does it matter?”
Of course it mattered. It was the only thing that ever did. But the way she was looking at him, calm and steady, made him feel like maybe, just for tonight, it didn’t have to.
The silence stretched between them again, softer this time. Less like a held breath, more like an exhale.
They started to walk again, until Lily shortly after stopped him again to say, “like when you called me Mudblood, do you think it was because you meant the word?”
Oh, she brought this up, he thought, wishing he could bury himself alive at the moment. Disappear into the ground, into the cracks of the pavement beneath them. Anything to avoid standing here, caught beneath her gaze, caught between the truth and whatever answer wouldn’t make this worse.
He didn’t even know how to respond, what to say, how to say. For a passing minute, Severus didn’t even know if what she said was a rhetorical question after all. If she wanted an answer, or if she just wanted to see if he would try to give one. He wet his lips, searching for words that wouldn’t come. His mind felt blank, yet unbearably loud at the same time, filled with echoes of the past, with the weight of that moment, with the sharp, ugly words that had ripped them apart. If she wanted an answer, or if she just wanted to see if he would try to give one.
But she was looking at him now, waiting.
His throat felt tight. “What do you want me to say?”
Lily tilted her head slightly, unreadable. “I just want to know.”
“I said it–” He looked at her once again to make sure he could continue. “Just– Just to make you go away.”
The words felt strange as they left his mouth, like he wasn’t sure they belonged to him. But they were true. Or at least, the closest thing to it that he could manage.
Lily’s expression didn’t change. She just watched him, waiting, giving him space to go on.
Severus exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “I was angry. And I knew it would hurt you.” His jaw clenched. “That’s all I wanted in that moment.”
He hated saying it. Hated the way it sounded aloud, the way the words sat between them, heavy and awful and true.
Lily nodded slowly, like she was taking in every syllable. “And did it?”
His stomach twisted. “Did it what?”
“Hurt me.” Her voice was quiet, but not weak. Not accusing. Just… there.
Severus shut his eyes for a second, willing himself not to fall apart. “I know it did.”
Lily exhaled through her nose, something almost like a laugh, but it held no amusement. “You don’t know, Sev.”
He blinked at her, but she didn’t explain.
“I was just–” She ran a hand through her hair, sighing. “I was just wondering if you ever thought about why it was so easy to say. That word, out of everything else.”
Severus stiffened.
His voice grew quieter, like the weight of it all was settling onto his shoulders again. “Because it worked, didn’t it? That word worked the most because it was the last thing you’d expect me to use against you.” He wanted to continue saying how he hadn’t even thought about it—not really—not in the way she meant. How it had been sitting there, buried somewhere in the back of his mind, waiting for the worst possible moment to claw its way out. How it hadn’t felt like a choice at all, but something ugly and instinctive, something meant to wound in the most precise way.
Something flickered in her eyes, like she scanned his thoughts, yet pretended to not see them. “Yeah,” she admitted with a small chuckle. “It did.”
Severus clenched his jaw, forcing himself not to look away. He didn’t know if that was what she wanted to hear, or if it even made a difference now. But it was all he had to give.
Lily sighed through her nose, glancing up at the dark sky. “You ever think about how things could’ve gone differently?”
“Every fucking day.” He admitted painfully, feeling his throat strangely tighten.
She nodded, like she expected that answer. Like she’d thought about it too.
“You see, Severus, I have played that day too many times, and–”, she started playing with her hair to stop the tightness in her throat, “and all I came to realize is that sometimes you don’t have to have a reason to say or do anything. You just do things. Sometimes things happen, but it’s the things before that happened; things that led you to do or say those things.”
She still kept playing with her hair as she continued. “For instance, that incident is what made us be here at this time in such a way. Not directly made it happen, but it happened regardless. But what really, but really, worried me was even if the word you said was unexpected, blah blah, allat, it was the things before that led for it to happen. I felt like that was the final note to our friendship because we were fading away. Involuntarily or not, it happened too, but this time with a reason.”
Severus felt like a child being scolded, like she was peeling him apart layer by layer, exposing something raw and aching beneath. His stomach churned, and for the first time in years, he felt something dangerously close to tears pressing at the back of his throat. It was a strange, unwelcome feeling—one he didn’t know what to do with.
He didn’t speak for a minute. Didn’t even know what to say.
Lily’s words hung in the air, heavier than he could hold. It was the things before. Not just the moment, not just the word, but the slow unraveling of everything they were.
And she was right.
That was the worst part.
He exhaled sharply, looking down at his hands like they would somehow offer him the right words. But they were empty. He was empty.
“I don’t know how to—” He stopped, shaking his head. His voice felt foreign in his own mouth. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Lily gave him a small, sad smile. “I don’t think I want you to say anything, Sev. I just wanted to see if you ever thought about it the same way I did.”
He swallowed hard. He wished he could say no. Wished he could say she was wrong. That it had been a single moment, a single mistake, a single word. But deep down, he knew better.
“You know it hurt a lot, and maybe still does.” She said with a small nostalgic smile at those days. “It hurt even more because even after that I had the urge to defend you against everyone. Against all my friends, because you were my best friend. My only friend who wasn’t friends with any of mine, and that never bothered.” Her voice also started to crack piece by piece, but she gathered herself by exhaling slowly, pressing her lips together as if she could hold back the cracks before they splintered into something irreparable. She tucked her hair behind her ear, a habit she never really outgrew, and blinked up at the sky like it could take away the weight of what she was saying.
Severus watched her, his stomach twisting. He hated this—hated that she still had the instinct to protect him, even in memory. Hated that he had taken something so pure, so unwavering, and crushed it in his own hands.
Lily let out a breathy chuckle, one that held no real amusement. “I remember Marlene saying I was an idiot for still caring. That you wouldn’t have done the same for me.”
His mouth went dry. He wanted to argue—to tell her she was wrong, that of course he would have, that of course he did. But the words stuck to his ribs like tar. Because she wasn’t wrong, not completely. He hadn’t been there in the way she needed. He had chosen the wrong people, made the wrong decisions, let his bitterness build walls where bridges should have been.
Lily shook her head, as if shaking off the thought entirely. “I don’t know why I’m saying this. It doesn’t matter now, does it?”
But it did. It mattered more than anything.
Severus clenched his fists at his sides, staring at the cracks in the pavement beneath them. “I would have.” His voice was rough, barely above a whisper. “I would have defended you.”
Hell, I would have killed for you, he wanted to say, but he knew it would scare her off. Or maybe wouldn’t. But she didn’t have to know that. He hoped she never had to know that.
Lily turned her head slightly, studying him with those eyes that had always seen through him too easily. “Yeah?”
“Always.”
Severus felt the ghost of a smile tug at the corner of his lips after saying it.
Lily caught it, and for some reason, she smiled too—small, fleeting, but real. Like something unspoken had settled between them, something fragile yet understood.
They walked in silence after that, side by side, the night cool against their skin. The streets were quiet, the world around them dimly lit by streetlamps that flickered every now and then. Neither of them spoke, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was just them, just like it used to be, but with years of distance resting between them like a shadow that neither of them acknowledged.
By the time they reached her home, the clock above the doorway read 00:42. Lily exhaled softly, rocking on her heels for a second before turning to him.
“Well,” she said, voice lighter than before, though her eyes still held remnants of everything unsaid. “This is me.”
Severus nodded.
She hesitated for half a second, then held out her hand. “Truce?”
He blinked at her. For a moment, all he could see was her as a child, grinning wildly, mischief dancing in her green eyes as she spat into her palm and then shoved it toward him. Pirate’s promise, Sev, you have to do it too. Merlin, how he hated it.
His lips twitched, just slightly. But before he could decide whether to take it, Lily made the choice for him.
She grasped his hand firmly, then without thinking, without really knowing why, she tugged him forward and hugged him.
It was a quick embrace, barely a few seconds, but it sent a shock through him.
She smelled the same, but now also with a tint of nicotine in her hair.
“For old times’ sake,” she mumbled against his shoulder.
Severus barely had time to react before she was pulling away, clearing her throat like she hadn’t just done that. Like she didn’t just rewrite the entire night with one simple, impulsive gesture.
“Goodnight, Sev.”
And then she was gone, slipping inside and leaving him standing there, staring at the door like he wasn’t quite sure if any of it had actually happened.
“What the fuck.” He mumbled to himself as he started to head back home.