First Sight
February 21st, 2003
Severus Snape met Lily Evans for the first time at a train station.
He saw her across the way, dressed in a flowy green dress with long sleeves over patterned tights. And this headband— such a strange thing, with buttons all over it.
She walked over, her boots clicking on the platform.
“So,” Lily had said, grabbing the nearest pole and spinning herself around it. “I’m trying a thing. You remember being a kid, right?”
Severus stared at her, but it was clear she was waiting for an answer. “Vaguely.”
“Yes. Well, everybody tells you not to talk to strangers. But I don’t think they’re so bad. Do you? I mean— you don’t seem so bad—“ She went on, and it was like he lost all concept of time. Lily had a way of talking, where it made everything else disappear.
Normally he hated strangers. He hated most things. The sound of wind, the scratch ink makes on parchment, pop music. But he didn’t hate her, for whatever reason he let her patter on.
She looked at him very seriously. “I’m George.”
“And I’m Charity.” He replied the first name that came to his mind.
“I wish I’d met you earlier, Charity. You should’ve seen how the last guy responded.” Lily laughed harder than he’d ever seen anybody laugh, with such unbridled joy that it caught him entirely off guard.
He hadn’t even realized he was leaning until he fell, his stomach dropping as the tracks moved closer. The sound of the train was distant, but ever present.
“Christ!” She yelled, reaching forward and pulling him by the back of his overcoat. Small strands of his hair stuck between her fingers. And then she looked at him, her eyes a bright wide green. “I just saved your life!”
Technically she didn’t, he could’ve gotten off the tracks before the train came, but as it pulled up he couldn’t bring himself to tell her otherwise. Instead he said nothing.
“I think you owe me a meal.”
“I have somewhere to be.” He had work that day, in the office.
Lily laughed at him, like full on laughed like a little kid. “You wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t caught you, silly! Come on, it can’t be that important.”
She grabbed his hand and hauled him on the train.
So, Severus skipped work.
“He asked for no pickles.” She said, hand raised to the waiter passing by. They spoke for a moment, the waiter apologetic. Lily didn’t give her a hard time– the waiter, instead she just smiled reassuringly and got his order changed.
Lily looked over once they were alone. “I have to tell you a secret Charity. I’m Lily. Not George. Devastating, I know.” She held out her hand, and he shook it, feeling unsure of himself. “Lilliana Jade Evans.”
“Severus Snape.” He responded, looking down at the sandwich she ordered for him. It’s something he wouldn’t have usually ordered, but something he would’ve wanted.
He’d find, with time, that Lily happened to know those things. She had a way of knowing everything about him.
She looked pensive before answering. “I think we’re much too close for you to call me Lilliana. Or Lily— for that matter. You should call me Lils.”
Lily— or— Lils threw her head back and laughed again, at something she must’ve thought. “Oh! And I can call you Sev! It’s perfect!” She looked very serious all the sudden. “We’re meant to be.”
He learned a lot about her that first day. She was studying psychology, so she could read peoples minds— obviously. Lily already had a degree in art, which didn’t surprise him, as he could see paint under her fingernails. Severus observed her carefully, the dragonfly tattoo peaking out on her wrist, another one behind her ear. She spoke like she was marketing herself, giving the illusion of a deeper meaning behind her words, but never actually giving away a lot.
And he just– knew. There was something about her, a freeness, and wistful sort of longing that made him think This is it. What it actually was, he didn’t know. All he knew is that it was what people search their entire lives for. It’s what he’d been searching for, without even realizing it. It’s so cliche, and he hates it, but he really did just know.
She had him from the first moment.
“So, Sev,” She started, poking at her salad (which had an absurd amount of dressing on it) “What about you? Tell me something interesting.”
Severus froze for a moment. What could he say? He worked a dead-end job that nearly killed him, he barely wrote even though he longed for it. “There’s not much to say.” He found he never had much to say. Mornings were his favorite time of the day. If it was cold. He took his coffee black, he enjoyed reading and chemistry, but could he say that? Not exactly. Not if she wanted something interesting.
So, he supposed, he did have things he could say. Just nothing he wanted too.
“Well, I for one, think you're plenty interesting. I just don’t think you know it yet.”
For the rest of the conversation Severus pitched in more, despite his melancholy he felt the need to impress her– to make her like him. She spoke to him like they were old friends. It felt like coming home in a way, like he’d known her all his life.
Lily was interesting, fantastical. He’s sure he fell in love with her on that first day– right in the diner she took him to.
On the way out she looked at him, her breath visible in the cold.
“I’m going to marry you one day.” She squinted with one eye at the winter sun behind him, her lips quirking up like she’d just told an inside joke between the two of them. “Okay?”
“That’s a lot of paperwork.” Severus attempted to joke, though he knew his face was beat red. He probably would’ve married her, in front of a priest and everything, if she asked him to.
She laughed that Lily Evans laugh, linking her arm in his, leaning her head on his shoulder as she forced him into a walk. “You’re right. We can just say we’re married. Who’s going to tell us we're not? Deal?”
It was like she knew that he wouldn’t say no to her. He admired that in a painful way, being so sure of herself. Severus nodded, feeling his lips turn up into a grin. “Okay.”
So, in all the ways that mattered, Severus married Lily Evans the day he met her.