That Awful Boy

That awful boy 

'I don't know who to go to, to cry about you."

It's a strange thing, how even after everything, Lily still knows all of his hiding spots. 

Severus sits in front of her, perched on a low hanging branch of a tree, far away from everybody else. 

He was writing in a small, leather-bound notebook before she approached, a tattered feather quill between his fingertips. He noticed her the second she was close, like some kind of sixth sense. Severus stares down at her with those wide, dark doe eyes. Even elevated, he somehow appears small under her gaze. 

Lily fucking hopes that he’s scared. 

It’s surreal seeing him here after it’s been so long. She saw him after it happened, obviously, but it was only in passing. In fact she did almost everything she could to avoid him. She didn’t want to see his face, or hear his voice, or look into his eyes that begged for forgiveness. And now he’s here, right in front of her. 

She has the urge to take it from his hands and break it in half. Instead, she balls her fists and holds her head high. She’d forgotten the anger he puts in her, for so long she tried her hardest to forget about him. In that, the fury lessened a bit, sitting in the back of her mind. 

It’s here now, though, like fire all over her body. 

Lily breaks the silence quickly, seeing no point in wasting time. “I need to speak with you. Now.” 

She doesn’t wait for his reply, because quite frankly she doesn’t care if he doesn’t want to speak. “I need a favor, and you’re not going to like it.” 

He’s looking at her like she’s just come back to life after being dead for years, like he’s seen a ghost. At the mention of a favor, he shuts down. Severus’s voice is stiff when he speaks. “What is it?” He thumbs through his book, feigning indifference. But she knows. She knows him. 

“I trust you saw that I broke up with James.” 

“Potter made quite the scene.” 

Lily can’t tell whether she wants to smile or roll her eyes at the obvious jab at James. Part of her is slightly grateful that Severus didn’t mention her making a scene as well. Because, well, she did. 

“Right, yes.” She rips the band aid off. “I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend.” 

His reaction is immediate, yet with most emotional things with Severus it’s relatively subtle. Severus’s fingers still on the pages he was flipping through, he swallows air. Blinks. Once, then twice. For the first time, he really looks at her. It catches her off guard a bit, the same way the intensity of his stare always did. She keeps her arms crossed and refuses to give anything away.

She hates how similar they are. 

“What.” He says it like a statement, glaring at her.  

Lily rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t aware you’ve lost your hearin-” 

“I can’t do that.” Severus’s voice is quiet, subdued. If she didn’t know better she’d say he sounded hurt. 

“James won’t leave me alone, it’s really quite annoying actually.”

They broke up a month ago and James still can’t let it go, showing up at her dorm with roses (which she hates, by the way ) among other things. Lily needs him off her back, and quick, or she might as well avada herself now. 

“Have Black do it.” 

It’s almost a test, are you still friends with him?  She is, despite her better judgment as of late. Lily loves Sirius, like a brother, she really does. But he has a nasty habit of taking James’s side every time they argue, he’s hardly spoken to her after the break up. She knows it’s not his fault, and that he feels indebted to James because of everything he’s done for him, but she just wishes things were different. 

“Sirius can’t do it, Sirius is..” She stops for only a second. Sirius is gay, Lily thinks to herself. But of course she can’t tell Severus that. “He fancies someone else, he’s fancied them forever, really James would never believe it.” 

Severus closes his book on his lap, laying one twitching hand on the cover. He stares at it. “Why should I?” 

You’ll do it because I asked you to, she thinks. 

“Fine. I’ll find someone else.” Lily spins on her heel, taking small steps as she walks away. 

She knows she’s won, however, when she hears a voice behind her: 

“Wait.” 

It’s a strange thing, being around him for so long. Because in a way it feels exactly how it used to. She’s propped higher up on the tree, facing him with one leg dangling down. He’s faced her too, turning at some point during their conversation. 

“Well, no. We can’t just be in a relationship. Everybody saw what happened. ” 

“I don’t need a reminder that everybody saw that.” He says with a bite. 

Lily knows, of course she does. There’s a part of her who needs him to remember what happened, the look in her eyes when he called her that. 

But there’s also a part of her, a part that comes in waves, who wants him to forget that day entirely. 

Severus sighs. “What do you suggest we do then?” He speaks with a drawl, feigning indifference. 

She thinks for a moment. Her fall out with James was dramatic, not particularly heartbreaking, but they fought a lot during their short-lived relationship. But her fall out with Severus? That was different. It was dead for the both of them, really. 

What’s worse is that everybody saw it. 

Before then, she could sort of pretend. She had this want, this need to keep Severus close to her. Like a secret, or an oath. In her mind, he was hers. And she could keep him that way. When someone asked about him she’d brush them off, ‘Severus? He’s a friend I suppose.’ 

If she let anybody else in, if she let them know how intricate their relationship had become, it would all be over. Other people would ruin things. 

And they did, in a way. Because nobody saw Lily Evans break down before that day, over anybody. 

She didn’t know what to say when people asked, there was no real way to explain it. ‘ He’s half my soul,’ She could say, but even that felt entirely too small. She could say the truth: ‘I don’t know who he was to me, I don’t know why I’m like this. I thought I’d never leave him until I had to, and somehow it feels like I’m the one who died.’ 

But then, of course, she’d run the risk of sounding crazy. 

The point is, however, everybody knows that there was something between them. Something beyond friendship, beyond whatever they originally thought. 

“We let them figure out the truth.”

“Them?” 

“Everybody, the school, James.” He doesn’t respond, so she continues in a rush to get her thoughts in order. “They know something happened between us,” She ignores the way he stills. “If we really play it up, the story will fall into place: I broke up with James, and went back to you. ” 

Isn’t that what you’re doing? The voice in her head says. 

She shoves the voice down. 

“It’s…” Severus trails off. 

Lilt cuts him off.

“It’s perfect.”