Let it fall
“Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous and it pricks like thorn”
Romeo, Romeo and Juliet
Severus Snape's heart stops and starts again on December 20th, 1977.
In from the wind, in the depths of winter, Lily Evans washes upon his shore.
She stands at his front door, falling off its fickle hinges. Lily is dressed in a black peacoat, with maroon gloves covering her shaking hands. A tin of apple pie burns the pads of her fingers through the fabric.
“I’m sorry I missed the funeral,” She says aflush with humility.
Severus can’t breathe.
He steps to the side, and lets her in.
Severus watches as she moves about his kitchen. He hasn’t seen somebody cook the muggle way in a long, long time. Not since–
He looks away.
There’s something awfully embarrassing about it. He’s still in his funeral clothes, an entirely black ensemble that belonged to his mothers father. His mothers father that decided not to show up to the funeral. Most people didn’t show.
She doesn’t speak for a long time, only hums a melody under her breath that he’s never heard before. He wonders if it’s muggle, or something she made up with her friends. Severus wonders how much of her world he doesn’t know.
The oven creaks and groans when Lily opens it to put the tin in. She keeps humming.
Lily takes off her coat. She’s avoiding his gaze, though he can’t bring himself to look away. It’s as if she’s a beacon of light and he is but a moth. She looks nervous, but determined in that way she always was. Turning around, she claps her hands together, green long sleeves extending to her knuckles.
“Christ, Severus, your house is freezing.” She fusses, clearly cold in her black skirt and tights. “You’re a wizard, you know. Surely you know about warming charms?” Lily crosses her arms.
“I’ve heard whisperings of the sort.” He quips, waving his hand with a flourish, feeling the warmth spread throughout the kitchen.
She leans against the wall and studies him.
“Why are you here, Lily?” He asks.
Because she shouldn’t be here. She hates him for what he did– for what he— Everything that happened that day, and before.
They ruined one another.
She’s quiet for a moment. And then: “Your mum died.”
Lily has no idea what the fuck she’s doing.
When she imagined coming, she brushed it aside and chalked it up as being a good Samaritan. But– she’s still here. She keeps finding herself coming back, over, and over and over.
She didn’t tell anybody. She knew her friends would talk her out of it. And part of her wanted it to be a secret. Everything with Severus felt hushed, and horribly dire. Lily never planned on speaking to him again. The words– his words– rang in her head impossibly loud.
But she always comes back.
She comes back the next day, this time with only ingredients for chocolate chip cookies.
And she reminds herself, as she knocks on the door, that she still hates him.
He lets her in without a word.
Severus’s kitchen is a mess, really. In the dead of night, everything is dark and strewn about. She stomps over to the lamp in the corner and turns it on. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the tiniest bit of an eye roll.
Her stomach flips and fills with moths.
She makes a point to do everything the muggle way, just to spite him. It’s not like she thinks it’ll do anything— but—-
His kitchen is filled with potion making supplies, cauldrons on top of the stove, potion books lined up on the cookbook shelves. Bundles of rosemary hang from the window
She supposes it makes sense, but she worries that he doesn’t eat enough.
They don’t speak much. But it’s familiar, in a twisted way.
“Is your mum going to come looking for you?” He asks. Lily’s mum never liked Severus all too much, she was similar to Petunia in that way.
Her hand stills around a tiny ball of dough. “She doesn’t get out of bed much these days.” Lily replies, uncharacteristically quiet. Mum never got over Lily’s dad’s death. She’s seen first-hand how grief can kill people. She’s felt it herself, even.
Perhaps that's why she’s here. Despite everything, she doesn’t want to see him that way.
And of course, Severus reads her mind. “Is that why you’re here?” He asks bitterly. She knows he loathes pity.
Lily takes another scoop of dough and molds it in her hands, watching the snow fall outside the window. She can feel his gaze on her back, intense. Somehow part of her thinks that arguing with him would be better than this, that something, anything would be better than silence and sad confessions. They used to fight so much, God, it was awful in school. They were so angry, so sure of their point of view. But even that requires a level of intimacy that they simply don’t share anymore.
She left him, they tore it all up, and now they’re paying the price.
“I didn’t want you to be alone.”
And what she doesn’t say is, of course,
I didn’t want to be alone either.
Lily sits down next to him, wrapping her arms around herself. Wind whips her hair around her face with a vengeance. “You’re going to catch your death out here.”
Maybe that’s what he’s trying to do.
“How did you find me?” He asks, his voice bitter. Severus holds a half-burnt cigarette in his bare hands, wearing only a long sleeved shirt and trousers.
She holds her hand out and without even looking he hands her the cigarette. It makes her smile a bit, despite herself.
The clearing is beautiful. Elieen Prince was a quiet, but beautiful woman. She’d been an ever-present figure in her childhood. Never saying much, but when she was around you knew it. Elieen had a way of spreading beauty to her surroundings, filling them with life. Lily thinks that in another life she would’ve been born a forest nymph, or a tree. Something beautiful and natural.
Even in death, buried under a willow tree behind Severus’s house, far from her husband's grave Lily can feel her presence all around them. She wonders if Severus can feel it too.
“You weren’t at home. I figured you were here.”
“I don’t want you here.” He quips. Lily hands him back the cigarette.
“Tough. You were there when my dad died. I’m repaying you.”
It’s not the whole truth, obviously. Her dad died in second year, in a car crash. Back then they were still desperately trying to stay friends, holding onto every semblance of childhood they had left. But Severus was there. She couldn’t leave him alone when he didn’t.
Severus vanishes the cigarette with a wave of his hand, he scoffs. “I don’t need you to repay me. Like I’m some chari-”
A feverish, insane part of her quirks up. A part that needs them to argue, if only so that things can feel like they used to.
“Don’t you dare insinuate I’ve treated you like a charity case. Wasn’t it you that said you wanted to be friends again?” She takes the cigarette box from next to him and lights one. “Act like it.”
“You’re upset.”
“Astute observation.” She pauses, blowing out smoke. “I won’t keep having the same conversation, Severus. I’m here because I want to be.”
He sighs heavily. “...Thank you.”
She nods and they both fall silent.
Despite all the anger, and all the hurt, it feels like a truce.
Lily comes over the next day, and the next, and the next.
He lets her in.
The next time Lily comes over is Christmas day. The entire day Severus wandered around his house, feverish, trying and failing to fall back asleep. He unwrapped and rewrapped his gift 12 times over and convinced himself that she wasn’t coming at all. Of course she wouldn’t. They weren’t children anymore, they didn't have to spend Christmas together.
She hates him.
But here he is, at the door stepping aside while she brings in flecks of snow with her.
She’s stunning.
Lily has on a red dress that falls at her knees, with a matching maroon corset and a white shawl.
“Sorry,” She steps in, too distracted to notice his staring (fortunately) “Tun— Petunia’s Christmas party dragged on forever. She had seven courses and made everybody give her a ‘ complimentary host gift’ as well. Who does that?”
“Your sister, supposedly.”
Lily snorts. “It’s so like her, you know? I just wish— I don’t know.”
“You wish things were different.” He says, without thinking.
She looks at him as she takes off her shawl, throwing it on the coat rack and turning on a lamp. This time without the pointed look. And she smiles. “Yeah.”
The spell is broken after a moment and Lily takes the basket she brought. “I’m putting you to work this time,” She points at him. “You’re helping me.”
He opts for no words, knowing that when Lily Evans has her mind on something, it will be done. They used to bake and cook together when they were younger, the two of them both having relatively absent parents they had to learn to do things themselves. Severus introduced magical elements into their cooking from a young age, much to Lily’s excitement at the time.
He knows better now.
She hums like she did before, it’s something he knows this time. A Christmas song they used to hear in town, when they snuck out to see the Christmas lights. He feels his lips twitch up as he rolls his sleeves up. It’s horribly domestic in a way that causes his stomach to turn anxiously.
They work around the kitchen for a long time, talking idly as they do. Their conversations used to be of great meaning, or at least that's how it feels when you’re young. But he finds himself desperately grateful for Lily’s soft-smiled tales of the Christmas Dinner From Hell, as she calls it. It’s not how it used to be. Nothing is. But, he dares to think for just a moment, that things are better.
Everything's better with Lily Evans.
They finish nearly exactly as the tiny electric stove clock hits midnight.
Lily laughs. “It’s fate!” She says as she works on plating their ridiculously large meal.
It alludes him how someone like Lily Evans wouldn’t know how captivating she is. It’s hard to wrap his head around how she could look in the mirror and not see a complete vision, full of more life and love than a amortentia itself, or even a resurrection stone. Even Potter, someone cruel and blind as a child, fancies her. It causes him to feel a petulant sort of arrogance, that she’s here with him and not Potter. Regardless of everything else, he has that.
They don’t talk much as they eat. They don’t bring up the dark lord or the recent muggle attacks. Everything feels like it has a sense of detachment. Nothing is wrong in the world except that his mum is dead and things aren’t right between them. For a moment, he can almost pretend that day didn’t happen.
For only a moment, of course.
“Oh!” She exclaimed hurriedly as she finishes up the dishes. “Before I go, I got you something.”
Lily walks over to the coat rack and picks up a rectangular box wrapped in impeccable green paper tied with a red ribbon. He swears she didn’t come in with it, though he’d hardly paid any attention to his surroundings.
She watches him wearily as he tears the wrapping off, gently so as to not ruin anything. Inside the box is a neatly folded black coat, it looks like something she couldn’t have bought anywhere– somehow both wizard and muggle material.
“It’s uhm–” She stutters a bit, pointing to the box in a way that’s uncharacteristically nervous. “I transfigured it from some fabric I found. The process was shit, it dragged and– anyways. The sleeve has a vanishing charm so you can hide your wand beneath it.” The meaning of it isn’t lost on him. He never really considered her guilt for what happened. “And, the entire thing has a warming charm on it. Since you’re so bloody cold all the time. I made the spell myself, so it finds the best temperature in relativity to the outdoors. So you can wear it in the summer if you please.”
He thinks back to what she said. I didn’t want you to be alone.
Seveurs has always felt alone. His entire life. With the rare exception of Lily, he’s been by himself. And it’s cold. Sitting down, staring at the wall or combing through ancient potions textbooks, no matter what he does his spine feels cracked down the middle. She was the only warm thing in his life, someone he always associated with summers in London.
In the depths of winter, she gave him warmth.
He just stares for a long time, down at the fabric in his hands. And suddenly, he knows that he can’t give her his gift. It’s not nearly as– and the effort– He feels horribly embarrassed and grateful and sick with love like he’s choking on it.
Lily seems to sense something, because instead of demanding that she get a gift back, she kisses him on the cheek, a chaste gesture that warms his entire face. “It’s okay. I have to go, if mum won’t come looking for me, Petunia might. I’ll be back tomorrow, yeah?”
“Okay.” He kicks himself for not saying more as she leaves, but he was never good with words.
Back at school, he never even tried to convince himself that he was over Lily. Because he could feel it, in his bones, in every breath he took he felt longing that couldn’t have been healthy. Every time she walked into a room, head held high, his heart skipped a beat. He knew more than anything that if he got another chance, if she ever showed up at his door, he’d let her in.
Charity asked him once if he could forgive her for walking away that day. He said he didn’t know.
He did. Of course he knew.
Lily could kill him herself and he’d forgive her with a kiss on the cheek.
Lily finds him two days later in front of one of the few windows in his house, typing on an old typewriter. It feels wrong to intrude, like she’s walked in on something extremely personal.
Art was always something that was important to the two of them. Severus would sit in the grass, notebook in his hand with a large feather quill while she painted him with her little watercolor paint set and a broken easel. It was private, but something they shared with one another in their own way.
Outside rain pounds on the window in large droplets, causing the sound of the typewriter to muffle. Even still, he feels her presence and turns around.
“Lily.”
“Severus.” She walks over and plops down on the chair next to him. It’s her favorite in his house, one she claimed as a kid as hers. He’s written a fair bit, she can tell. It’s in poetry formatting, with spaced out lines and nothing in between.
Lily pulls a book out from her tote bag and flips to her bookmarked page. Silently, he levitates a mug of coffee over to her. Two sugars, how she likes it. Her cheeks warm. She throws a blanket on her lap and takes a second one from the floor. Lily throws it at him.
“S’ like you enjoy being cold.”
Severus rolls his eyes but unravels it and puts it around himself anyways.
She never found out what he was writing.
They stay there for a long time. Lily finishes her book and dozes off to the click of his words and the splatter of rain behind her. She wakes up at one point and makes the two of them more coffee in a french press. When she brings it to him she feels a wave of domesticity. It’s strange, and all at once she feels like they aren’t seventeen. That they’re much older, and wiser.
The two of them make dinner together and Lily tells him about her book. It springs on a long tangent where Severus correlates it to a book he read. She decides that she needs to read it, so he leads her to his room and plucks it off the shelf.
Lily walks backwards and falls onto his bed. It’s wobbly and made out of cheap metal, but it’s the warmest she’s ever known. “Read me a chapter.”
“You’re going to fall asleep.” He says, because he knows her. Regardless, he sits down next to her, giving her space.
If she didn’t know better, she’d swear his lips were upturned into a smile. Which was a trick of the light, obviously. He begins to read.
Lily doesn’t pay attention to any of it.
Instead, she falls asleep on her chair and pretends it’s a mistake.
Lily wakes up to a feeling of extreme calmness, despite not knowing where she was at first. She’s still in her clothes from yesterday, and her hair is a wreck, but somehow it doesn’t feel like it matters at all. Slowly, she sits up, her limbs protesting.
In the back of her mind, hatred fizzles up in tiny little bubbles. But it’s not something she feels, just something she notices. In a very analytical, accepting way. I hate myself for this.
I hate myself for coming back, for staying.
She accepts. The feeling will come later.
For now, she looks over. Severus is asleep, still, sat up on the headboard with his neck craned sideways from where it rested atop Lily’s head. Somehow, even with her up, he still hasn’t moved. He was never a heavy sleeper before.
His freckles are almost completely gone, but she observes two small specks of gold near one of his crinkled eyes. He looks so peaceful when he’s sleeping. Very pretty actually.
Lily shakes her head and pushes herself off the bed. The bathroom is lit from the tiny window above the bath. She looks at herself in the mirror. Objectively, she looks a wreak. However the bags under her eyes have faded. She must’ve slept well, she doesn’t remember dreaming at all.
She begins to apply her glamor charms when she hears a crash from the other room.
“Severus?” She yells, a note of concern in her voice.
Footsteps. His head appears behind her in the mirror. “I thought you left.”
Lily rolls her eyes. “I would have woken you. Grab me my bag will you?”
He disappears and then comes back after a moment. Lily shuffles around in it for a moment before pulling out her makeup bag and pulling herself up onto the counter. “I thought we could go grab breakfast.”
“You’re not going home?”
She freezes. “Do you want me to?”
Lily looks over at him fully for the first time. Now awake, his hair is curled at the tips from sleep, and his eyes are wide like a deer in headlights. “No.”
She finds herself smiling. “Well go on then. Get ready. We don’t even have to fight over who pays, we can just walk out like we used to.”
Severus’s lips upturn fully, like he’s hiding a smile. She grins at him and fishes out her muggle makeup.
The walk there isn’t very long. The field surrounding Severus’s house splits off into a winding path, surrounded by trees and covered in fog when it’s autumn. Lily jumps into a puddle and then threatens physical violence if Severus doesn’t jump into one with her.
He does it, of course.
And all of the sudden, it’s the first time she’s seen him laugh since that day. Not a sneer or something small and fake. It’s a sound she hasn’t heard since they were just kids.
Lily smiles the whole way to the diner.
“They don’t serve the milkshake for breakfast, they won’t let you get it.” He says sensibly.
Lily shakes her head. “No, they do, it’s just not on the menu.”
Severus looks up at head and deadpans, “I’m going to laugh at you when they tell you it’s not on the menu.”
Taking that as a challenge, Lily asks the waitress if she can have a strawberry milkshake with her pancakes. The waitress writes it down with her order on her notepad and looks back up at them.
Severus sighs heavily. “I’ll have the chocolate milkshake with mine.”
She sticks out her tongue and Severus rolls his eyes.
But she saw him smile.
They walk out without paying, like they’re just kids.
They walk around till nightfall, talking and looking at the lights one more time before they’re all torn down for the new year.
Lily stops when she sees a phone booth and fumbles for a coin. “I’m going to call home, wait here.”
She dialed her home phone number. On the other line, she hears Petunia's voice. Lily rolls her eyes. Her breath fogs up the glass. Her voice is muffled.
“Petunia?”
“Lily, where are you?” Her sister's voice is curt, annoyed but more angry than anything.
She looks at Severus, who’s smoking down to the filter and glaring at passersby’s. “Just a friend.” And then: “You don’t know her.”
Lily can practically feel the dramatic eye roll on the other line. Petunia sighs dramatically. “Well you need to come home, mum is- Wait-“ She pauses for a long bit. “It’s Snape, isn’t it? Severus Snape!”
“No! It-“ She looks at him and then up at the tin roof, hoping that whatever God is above strikes her with a bolt of lightning. Quick. “Please don’t tell mum.”
Her mum has been absent recently, barely getting out of bed, but she’s also been irritable. Prone to long lasting mood swings, swaying from catastrophic blues to anger with the click of a hairpin trigger.
“I’ll see you at home.” Petunia muses. The evil bitch hangs up on her.
“Shit!” Lily slams the phone back into the receiver. She quickly gathers her bag and opens the door. “I have to run, Sev,” She doesn’t even notice the nickname slip. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re leaving?” He deadpans, his face falling.
She stares at him for a long moment, unable to look away. “I’ll be back, okay?” A moment. And then more forcefully: “Okay?”
Severus nods slowly and rubs the tip of his nose. “Okay.”
He opens his mouth to say something but then closes it. Lily shakes her head and gives him a toothless smile before running past him on the path home.
She wonders what he would’ve said had she stayed longer.
Lily’s family home is a small one story with two bedrooms and torn, yellowing floral wallpaper. She used to imagine that it was a church before, because all the windows are made of simple stained glass. It’s a little funny how everything seems to be floral.
Her dad used to call Petunia and Lily his little flower girls.
It’s hard to believe, as she stares at her house, windows illuminated, that he’s never going to call them that again. She’ll never be able to dance on the tips of his toes, crushing him in the process, she’ll never be able to get into silly arguments with him.
He won’t teach her to drive like he promised.
Lily takes a deep breath and continues down the hill, hopping onto the concrete plane and opening the door.
Her mother is in the kitchen with Petunia, hands on the counter, head down.
Jacqueline Evans used to be a different person. It’s strange seeing her now. Because it’s as if it’s not even her mother, it’s just a woman who knows all her secrets. Her mother used to be one of her best friends.
The only time she saw the mum she used to know was after that day with Severus. It was only a week before summer break, and she spent every day down at the phone booth in the local muggle town phoning mum. She was so kind about it, because she could tell that for once, her daughter really, genuinely needed her.
The first week Lily was home she didn’t sleep unless it was in her bed. She spent most of her time there, napping, reading. Curled up like a baby bird in her mothers nest.
Nobody else understood. It was the first time that she was on the same wavelength as her mother, where Petunia wasn’t. All her sister did was tell her to get out of bed, to forget him. That she was being awfully sensitive for someone of her age.
Jacqueline knew different.
She knew what grief felt like.
So for that first month, she bought Lily all the kids cereal she wanted and watched cartoons with her on that bed.
Now she’s staring at Lily, not like she betrayed her, but like she betrayed herself.
“Petunia, leave the room please.”
“What!?” Petunia shrieks, ever present with the older-sister third parent syndrome.
“Now Petunia.”
Her sister scoffs and tugs on her jacket, whooshing past Lily and leaving the house with a slam on the door.
“You don’t understand mum…” Lily starts. And she knows. She knows how she sounds. Petulant teenager, ‘you don’t understand me’
But really, she feels like nobody knows what it’s like with Severus for her. Who will tell her the truth, when they don’t know? They weren’t there. Her mother understands loss, but she doesn’t understand the intricate knot of feelings she can’t untangle.
She wasn’t there when they danced in the rain at twelve years old. She wasn’t there when Severus told her that she was the love of his life. Fourteen. She hasn’t been through all they went through together, everything all of it, all at once. How it all felt like the pull of fate and a strike of chance.
But Lily was. Lily was there. And as hard as she tries not to, she still feels it. All of the time.
“No, I don't understand.”
“I…” She trails off, throwing her arms up weakly. Lily is never at a loss for words.
Her mum turns around and takes a dish in her hand, scrubbing it with a sponge. The first few drops of rain hit the glass.
“I told you I don’t want you running off with that boy anymore. Especially not after what he did. I read those wizard newspapers that come to the house Lily. Do you even know what’s happening while your over there?”
“Of course I do!” Lily pipes up, infuriated. It’s in the back of her mind all the time, the attacks, the murders. That stupid fucking mark in the sky.
“Do you?” Jacqueline spins around, throwing the dish in the sink so suddenly she’s surprised it didn’t break. “Because as far as I’m concerned that boy—“
“He’s not!” She feels herself say, immediately.
The need to defend Severus is something ingrained in her. They went through so much, so many awful people, it’s just second nature.
But she realizes, perhaps for the first time since she showed up at his door, that she doesn’t know. She knows he’s not one of them , sure, she’s seen him with his sleeves rolled up. But that doesn’t mean—
She’d never thought of it before. She tried her hardest not to think about him in general. But with who his friends are—
“Isn’t he?”
Lily feels herself snap, like a string pulled too hard. “I need him! You don’t—“
“You think I don’t understand how that feels? Lily I was you! But you don’t need him, you don’t need anybody— You need your family—“
She shouts this time, over her mothers last breath. “You weren’t here! Petunia isn’t here! Dad isn’t here! None of you are here! This whole fucking house is empty—“ She breaths heavily. “It’s a shell.”
Her mother looks at her for a long time, disheveled, throat raw. And she thinks that her mum sees her for the first time, really, truly.
“Leave then. Learn the hard way.”
Wordless, with fruitless tears in her eyes, Lily turns on her heel and runs out the door.
Lily shows up at his door with tears in her eyes.
He lets her in.
“Was the fight about me?”
Lily snorts around her cigarette and blows out smoke. They’re sitting on a creaky swing set at a nearby park. Some wine moms tried to get it removed a while ago. Apparently it’s a hazard. He heart feels heavy, her lungs like they're flooded with water.
“Who said I got into a fight?”
“Lily.”
She sighs and stares down at the rocks beneath her feet. There was a time they didn’t even touch the ground.
“Yeah. I’d rather not talk about that, though.”
“Okay.” He says simply. She looks over to see him looking directly up at the sky. “The moon looks beautiful, doesn’t it?”
Lily looks up, it’s fogged over a bit by big, lumpy black storm clouds. But it shines bright, even still. She laughs, though, because it’s so unlike him now to talk about how beautiful the moon is.
Severus laughs. “What?” He swings sideways and bumps her. “I’m distracting you.”
She takes a drag and shakes her head, laughing. It feels so different when she’s actually with him. When she’s away she can hate him, but when she’s with him– she’s only pretending. That’s the dangerous part. She’s getting worse at pretending.
“You’re in a good mood.” She points out, she hasn’t seen him like this in a while.
He looks really good. Severus always looked good at night, and for a second she thinks it’s just that, but he tips his head back, his bitten red from the cold. Her heart skips a beat, and she finds herself smiling at him.
“Lily, I…” He looks over at her and trails off. “What?”
“Nothing! I just, I don’t know.” She feels sick to her stomach, her mum's words ring in her mind. Learn the hard way. But then Severus’s eyes flicker down to her lips and,
She doesn’t even know who leaned in first.
But here she is, snogging Severus Snape on a swing set in the middle of the night.
For a moment the only shock is that it took them so long.
Everything else disappears. Her heart beats again.
“I want to go to the beach.” Lily says.
It’s New Year's Day, Cokework is covered in snow, and Lily Evans is lying with her head in his lap, her hands playing with his.
Severus feels– dare he say– happy.
“During summer?”
Lily sits up and he briefly mourns the loss. “No, like, now. It’s snowing– have you ever seen snow on a beach? We could see the fireworks over the water.”
So they go to the beach.
Lilys the only one of them who knows how to drive, of course. She stole her mum’ s car, actually. Not that it matters. For some reason, Lily’s assured him that she won’t be missed.
Severus sits in the passenger seat, a book propped up on his leg that he’s not actually reading. Instead he sits and watches her. She’s illuminated by all kinds of light, making her hair glow. Her eye makeup is smudged, and there’s lipstick around the corners of her lips, but she looks stunning. Singing along to some awful muggle Christmas song, dancing in her seat, she looks stunning.
She always looks stunning.
It takes them about an hour to make it to the beach, with the added time of Lily packing them snacks in a little basket she placed in the trunk. He waits for her outside the passenger seat as she retrieves it, and when she comes back she slows to a walk and takes his hand.
Lily and him walk together hand in hand, and he does something utterly insane.
He prays to God that she won’t let go.
Lily was right: snow on the beach is surreal. The feeling reminds him of the first time they walked into the doors at Hogwarts. Starry eyed kids who’ve never seen real magic.
She releases his hand and runs forward, stumbling over the snow and the grooves in the sand. Lilys laughing, for some inconceivable reason. He tries to keep up but he doesn’t reach her until they’re both right near the shore.
Lily sets the basket down, and picks up a chunk of snow and sand, grinning at him. It takes him half a second to realize what she’s doing and another second to run for the hills.
He feels it hit his back. Lily Evans has surprisingly good aim. Severus shakes his head and crouches down, grabbing his own bundle of snow and throwing it as he turns around, hitting her while she least expects it.
After a very intense snowball fight where Lily literally built a little snow wall to protect her stash, she flops down onto the snow in front of the water, flakes of snow falling onto her cheeks. Severus lays down next to her, and nudges her pinky with his. Lily takes his hand full on.
She was always the brave one.
He stares breathlessly at the snow falling down above, his entire body feeling like it’s on fire.
Lily looks melancholic and wistful at the same time,
“What are you thinking about?” She asks, her head rolling over to look at him.
“You.” He answers truthfully, squeezing her hand three times like they used to.
Severus has been in love with Lily his entire life. He will live and he will die loving her, there’s nobody else for him. He feels like he’s been given a gift from a higher power, he feels like he’s in a dream or running on air. Even if it doesn’t last, he doesn’t think anything will feel quite like it.
Lily's eyes crinkle with her smile, and she looks up again. A snowflake falls and melts on her cheek. “It took us so many years to get here.”
“We were just kids.”
Youth is a strange thing. Part of him feels like Lily and him were never kids, they were always so much older and so much more mature than the other rouges at the playground. And they’re both right in a way. They’re kids now, even. But they could’ve gotten here years ago.
He knows that now, and it kills him.
“I know. It takes time.”
Lily looks pensive, smiling at him in that sad way she always does.
Severus frowns. “Is something-“
She shakes her head quickly. “No. I’m just happy to be here now.”
Lily rolls over and kisses him, and everything else disappears.
The first red firework shoots over the water, and she’s pulled away again, as if washed in a tide.
The final morning of winter break brings along a new wave of melodrama. She feels incredibly heavy, and featherlight at the same time. She hasn’t seen her mother in days.
Lily’s heart beats, then skips one, then beats again.
They’re in Severus’s bed, in the crook of his neck while he reads aloud, tracing circles on the back of her neck idly.
Severus hooks his finger around the gold chain on her neck and her heart stops entirely. Slowly, he pulls out the ruby amulet from under her shirt. His fingers still.
“Is this…”
Lily sits up slowly, looking down at him. “Sev…”
His eyes harden and completely shut down, like a lake frosting over. Her heart beats sickeningly in her chest, so visceral she can feel it in her entire body. “Potter’s gift.”
“It’s not—“ Her fingers instinctively fall to the amulet. “It was from Remus too—“ She pauses and takes a deep breath as she runs a hand through her hair. “The whole lot pitched in after dad died. It was before that happened, I swear.”
“But you’re still friends with him. Lupin.”
“He’s-“
“—I told you Lily—“
“—Just listen to me!”
Severus falls silent and she stands up on shaky legs. She wants to throw up. She knew this would come. She knew it—- she knew it— she knew—
The last day of winter break.
He quickly stands up after her and crosses his arms.
“I know they’re all arrogant and stupid I know that. We can’t keep having this conversation.”
“They’re not just—“ He pauses, he sniffles and it breaks her a little bit. “You saw what they did.”
“Remus didn’t— he didn’t agree with that.”
She can feel him slipping through the cracks. The entire house feels like it’s caving in on them, the walls, the look in his eye. Mudblood, Mudblood, Mudblood.
“I’ve already told you about Lupin! He’s not— He’s a monster!”
Lily scoffs painfully as she feels hot tears prickle in her eyes. She turns on her heel and leaves the room, ignoring the sounds of his footsteps following her.
“Lily!”
She spins around sharply. “A monster? Yeah? He’s— what? Subhuman? Like a mudblood?”
“You know I didn’t—“
“I don’t care!” She shouts, throwing her hands up. The tears are coming hot and fast now. “I don’t care. I thought I could get over it, I really tried. But I can’t.”
The truth of it all is that she will never unabsorb what he said.
In retrospect, if she were a different person with a different life it might have been something she could brush under the rug.
But he knew what it was like for her.
He knew about it every time she was cornered in a hallway by boys who wanted her dead, he was the one who held her as she described the fear she felt. The sickening feeling that she just wasn’t good enough. That she was subhuman.
That she was a monster. That being a mudblood was all she was.
He was the one person she’d never expected to see her that way, the one person she swore saw her for who she was, wholly and truly.
He was the one person who made her feel human.
When she thinks about what happened that day it makes her want to throw up, it has, in the past. All of it— it’s hard to think straight.
The realization she had when she argued with her mum washes over her in one fell swoop. “You were thinking about joining them, weren’t you?”
His silence is enough.
She feels his hand on her wrist.
“Please,” She hears him say. For the first time, Severus Snape is begging. “Please don’t leave me here alone.”
It’s in that moment that she knows that she loves him. Wholeheartedly, truly, and torturously. She never really doubted it. It’s been in the back of her mind since she was nine years old. She loved him when she met him, down to the very first glimpse. She loved him in Hogwarts, and she loves him now. Every poem, every painting, he’s been the sole catalyst and her muse.
And it’s in that moment that she knows she will love him forever.
It’s a cold wash of acceptance that overcomes her entire body.
She knows that there will never be a moment in time where she won’t wonder what would’ve happened if she didn’t walk out that day. But in the same, slow, dying breath, she knows that she has to. Nobody should love another person like she loves him. Love, true, raw love is a calamitous thing. She loves him so much she hates him, so much that she hates herself when she’s not with him.
She’s sure that she will love other people, but she hopes with all her heart that she never loves somebody else the way she loves Severus. That is their burden to carry. Always.
Lily conjures up her Gryffindor courage and looks him in the eyes. “We can’t keep doing this, Severus.”
She walks out, and lets everything they had fall behind her.
That was the last thing Lily Evans ever said to him.