Shadows of time
“I’ll still see it, until I die. You’re the loss of my life.”
Lily’s entire body ignites with the feeling of him before she even sees him at all. She knows, on instinct, that he’s there. Like a wild animal feels the scrape of a bullet before it leaves the gun.
Her shirt is untucked, her legs tired and criss-crossed as she wanders the halls, her patrol having gone on longer than usual. She’d volunteered to do the double shift, mostly so she didn’t have to lay in bed, alone with her thoughts.
Sleep is a rare gift these days, given to her only on the brink of exhaustion.
The large door handle is cold under her unsteady hands. Labored breaths escape her, shadows dancing in her peripherals. The door creaks as she pushes it open. Immediately, the cool air washes over her. She can feel it on her knees, just above where her socks sit. Her hands shake with it.
He must’ve felt her coming.
Severus stands at the other side of the Astronomy tower, his wand drawn and pointed at her. His eyes are open to a wild stare, deep purple painted underneath. She notices how precariously close he is to the railing and crosses her arms.
“Are you jumping or trying to kill me?”
His brain seems to catch up with him a moment too late, as if starstruck. Severus looks as if he’s just witnessed the second coming of God, only he’s not sure if he’s good enough for the rapture. The wand in his hand is drawn back into his sleeve before she can blink, like the very presence of it pointed at her burns him.
“I’m sorry– I–” The apology slips from his lips so quickly, but not without effort. She wonders, idly, how much he feels he needs to apologize for.
Lily waves her hand in dismissal, not really caring what he has to say. She takes out a pack of cigarettes from the waistband of her skirt, walking over to the other side of the railing.
The world seems so big on the tower, blending into the stars, all of it so grand like the entire universe at her fingertips. She remembers being a first year, giggling with Severus as they snuck out of their dorms, hand in hand at that same tower. Whispering as if people cared what they had to say enough to listen.
Unfortunately, she remembers everything. All of it.
Severus stares at her like he’s waiting for her to push him down. The intensity of his gaze on her causes her mind to go fuzzy, thoughts escaping her almost entirely.
She really needs sleep.
“You’re not leaving.” It’s not a request, it’s a statement, his voice laced with weariness.
Lily laughs, short and cruel as she sits dangerously on the railing, her back on the side wall. One of her legs dangles down below. “I’m not leaving just because you’re here. I wanted a smoke.”
Hating Severus is easy. As easy as loving him was. It’s love on the inhale and loathing on the exhale. It’s like breathing, the kind of intensity that comes naturally to her. Lily doesn’t do anything halfway, Severus knew that. She’s gone through phases with it. Wishing they’d never met, wishing they’d meet again. Lily spent the entire summer after Fifth year fighting with him in her sleep, cursing his name.
When she came back she became someone else.
That was the hard part. But she couldn’t stay the same, she couldn’t be the person she was. So she bit her tongue, she stopped looking his way entirely. She threw herself into her work, became the best prefect Hogwarts has ever seen. When she cried, she cried in the shower.
Lily made a promise to herself. She’d never trust someone like she trusted him again. She’d live a safe life, a happy one.
And she hoped, she prayed with everything she had in her that she would never love anybody like she loved Severus Snape. It almost killed her the first time.
She’d never tell him all of this, but part of her understands that he already knows. For every time she avoided his gaze, he was waiting for her in every room. He knows her better than anybody, parts of her beating heart still stuck between his teeth.
Lily lights her cigarette, shielding it from the wind with the palm of her hand. Severus’s eyes follow the movement, down to the moment she presses it between her teeth and inhales. She finds that she can’t look away from him, her tired eyes more transfixed with his than the world of stars beside her. It’s like a drug, something she’s gone all year without.
They’ll go home for the winter holidays soon. She doesn’t know who she’ll be then.
She doesn’t know where home is without him.
She shakes her head, hoping to clear it with sheer willpower. Exhaustion makes her pensive, she doesn’t remember the last time she’s slept.
“Lily, I–” He seems to have worked up the courage to speak to her, his mouth opening and closing without another word. She wonders if he meant to say something else and thought better of it. “I’m sorry.”
Lily looks down. “I know you are.”
Because she does, she knows him. As well as he knows her, she understands him. It’s not black and white to her– it’s not an easy thing. She knows that being in Slytherin only strengthened his warped view of the world, and that the things he endured from Potter and his friends changed him. Lily knows all of this, as easily as she knows that his eyes are black and his favorite flowers are Lily of the Valley’s.
She watches the embers fall from the fire at her fingertips, watches them fall all the way down and drift off in the wind. And she knows that it makes no difference.
His eyes are pleading, his entire body angled towards her. It’s like she’s fifteen again, that glow she felt. It used to scare her, it still does, as she sits there. The sheer intensity of it. She ran from it once, tail between her legs, three words on the tip of her tongue. Lily figured she was better safe than starry eyed.
She wonders if she was right.
Severus exhales shakily, like it physically hurts him to breathe. His entire body twitches.
“Please.” Is all he says. And she knows, she knows. He wouldn’t beg like this with anybody else. For anybody else. He’d do anything she asked him to.
The thing is, though, she’s not sure there’s anything he can do to fix it.
The notion that he broke her heart feels too light, too simple of a phrase. Heartbreaks are for angsty teenagers who spend their mourning periods watching romance films and crying on the couch.
Lily’s heart didn’t break. It was never hers in the first place.
Severus Snape took her heart from her chest the moment they met.
The worst thing he did was make her want it back.
“What’ll happen, Severus? I go back to you, and what? You’ll quit the dark arts? You’ll drop your precious Death Eaters? This is bigger than us, Sev–” She pauses, and then corrects herself. “ Severus. ”
“If you wanted me to–”
Lily sighs, “That’s just it.” She gives him a very long look. Carefully, she stands up, stubbing out the cigarette before throwing it down below.
She stops in front of him, tilts her head. Her eyes are saddened, his somber. He’s crestfallen as she drags her fingertips along his eyebrow, as she tucks his hair behind his ear. Severus’s eyes fall closed, his face leaning into her grasp.
It’s cruel, what she does, but their love was never quite gentle. She almost kisses him, almost.
“I don’t believe you.” She says, an inch from his face.
And then she pulls away entirely.
There was a time where she would’ve believed everything he said, where she held onto all his words and stared at him like he hung the moon in the sky. She misses that girl, sometimes. The one who trusted so easily.
She always goes back to this moment, like a bad dream, back in Cokeworth. Lily had gotten her driver’s permit, though she wasn’t old enough for her license. She shouldn’t have done it, but she did.
The two of them sat in her dads car, three towns over, giggling like children.
Lily’s never been sure if they were actually going to run away or not, before the cops found them. All she knows is that she would’ve, if she was sure he wanted her to. And the worst part is that he would’ve done the same if she’d asked.
It’s that kind of devotion, that mentality that broke them both.
Lily walks away from the tower– and him– for the last time. Because she can’t keep driving down that road forever. She’ll never quite trust him, and he’ll never stop running away. They’ve learned the right steps to different dances, the right melodies to different songs.
She sees it in her mind, at Sixteen years old, and she’s wise enough to know that she’ll see it forever. The what ifs, the loss of it all. They’ll be getting over each other for as long as they live. She loved him, and she hopes she never has to love like that again.
The love Severus had for her never made sense to her. It was strong like a current, or wind during a blizzard. And she felt it like she felt the air in her lungs, but they could never work it out. Sometimes, she thinks it was so strong that it eclipsed them both. The fighting, the crying, the screaming. Love isn’t supposed to be that strong, that intense. Love isn’t supposed to drive you crazy, and it isn’t supposed to ruin you when it falls apart.
They were doomed from the start by the love that built them.
She didn’t lie when she said she didn’t believe him, she’s much too guarded now to let him in again. But it was an omission of the truth.
The truth is, of course, that she loves him still.
And sometimes that's not enough.