Deep Love
“I love you, it’s ruining my life.”
The door swings open with a soft ring of the little brass bell. He looks up, startled with every time it sounds. It isn’t her. Not yet.
It’s simply a man, about twenty, in a pretentious trench coat and ankle boots.
Feverishly, Severus convinces himself she is not coming at all. That she’s gotten lost, or apparated to another country on accident, or perhaps Potter convinced her not to go. Or, the worst of them all, she just didn’t want to. He can imagine her now, at her house. An easel is in front of her, and in his mind, she’s painting a photo from their past. And she's doing it in black paint.
It’s like she heard him, she must’ve. Because on the next ring, there she is. Lily Evans– Potter , in a crowded coffee shop, dressed in a long-sleeved black dress.
Like she’s gone to a funeral.
Her eyes are lined with dark charcoal, a muggle thing recently popularized. Lily’s red hair– once so bright has faded to a dull maroon, similar to the tip of an autumn leaf. His nostrils flare at the glimpse of a ring around her finger, golden– authentic, no doubt– with a ruby in the middle. It’s something he could’ve never given her.
The worst part, the part that sends shockwaves of hurt down his spine, is that she’s stunning. Somehow more grown than she’d been in school, only a mere year ago. There’s something leagues more fierce about her, guarded as he watches her order at the front desk. She looks over her shoulder at the door every time the bell rings, her eyes observe the room whenever someone moves. He can see her wand tucked underneath her sleeve, in a hollister.
Her eyes meet his without warning, and for a moment she seems stunned, even though she knew he’d be there. Lily misses her name being called for the order entirely and she has to apologize to the barista.
The closer she gets the harder he finds it to look in her eyes, green as a tree in the summer, bright as the sun. For the past year he could almost convince himself that she was some kind of figment of his imagination, he was almost too bright in his head, a snapshot turned up in its vibrancy. But she looks strikingly real, in muggle clothes in a muggle coffee shop.
And he’s struck with it, all at once.
It’s her, she’s here. Lily’s here.
“Severus,” She greets as she sits down on the mahogany stool.
Severus arches an eyebrow, “We’re on a first name basis now?” He recalls her calling him ‘Snape’ after sixth year, much to his dismay.
Lily studies him for a moment, she has a way of making people feel seen. For better or for worse, there’s no hiding with Lily. She tilts her mug back and takes a sip. He wonders what she ordered, but he’s too embarrassed to ask.
“There’s power in a first name. Maybe I just wanted to catch you off guard.”
“How very Slytherin of you.” He remarks, mostly out of habit. Severus doesn’t mean it, of course. Not really. Lily was more Gryffindor than any of them. He takes a sip of his drink and lets it burn his throat. “How’s Potter?”
She sighs heavily and rolls her eyes, looking at him like he’s just asked her to perform a very precarious task. “Don’t do that– can we not do that?”
And it hurts, of course it does. It all hurts. He thought he had been through it all in the past year– with the upcoming war on the horizon he’s been stretched thin. But Lily Potter rips you open, really, in another life she could’ve been a counselor. Under her gaze, all his scars–new and old, feel torn open. And he wants. There's so much he wants. He wants to tell her everything, he wants to cry and say “I love you” and then take it all back.
Lily gets under people's skin, but Severus has no ability to spill his guts.
Until it’s much too late– of course.
As he sits there, a silence falls between them. He thinks that he hates her, for a fleeting moment. Though he knows that if he were under veritaserum he would be made a liar.
“I wrote you,” He begins, taking a breath. “To apologize. Formally. Enough time has passed.”
Lily deflates a bit, some of the tension leaving her body. “I should apologize as well, I suppose.”
“I should’ve never–”
“-And of course it was rude of me–”
They both stop. It’s eerily similar to some of their old quarrels, sure of themselves and constantly cutting each other off. But– he reminds himself– they aren’t arguing this time. Even though, somehow, it still feels like it.
He knows, truly, that while the love he has for Lily flows through his veins as easily as blood, they will never forgive one another. They’ll never forgive themselves either. The hurt will never be less fresh, and It’ll never be how it was.
And the truth, the full truth, is that he didn’t ask her there to apologize.
He just wanted to see her.
Instead of saying that, he reaches into his weightless leather bag and pulls out a preserved flower. A red carnation.
Back before Hogwarts, they used to exchange flowers they found as a method of communication. It was a secret little thing– they’d search libraries for the meaning the other one left. They carried it into school as well, leaving them on desks as they exited rooms. Getting more creative and leaving them wedged between the branches of trees they both liked.
This one is simple. She knows what it means, he can see it in her eyes.
She says nothing for a moment, her arm outstretched toying with the stem. “I always think–” She starts, “It’s funny, how we pick flowers. Just because they’re beautiful. They’re living things, and we just… kill them.”
Lily continues. “We do it because they’re lesser than us, because they’re inhuman. It’s not as if they have feelings, they can’t drink coffee or sit down in front of a window or pick a flower just because it’s beautiful. And then, when they’re not beautiful anymore,
“We throw them away.” She concludes. Her eyes are searching his, frantic what she’s saying is the most important thing he’ll ever hear in his life.
“Nothing can be beautiful eternally.” Severus replies quietly.
He looks down. Severus thinks of the war, of how much they changed. His eyes trace the black sleeves falling off her shoulder, up to the depth in her eyes, with dark circles painted below them. But mostly, he observes the way her shoulders tense, how her knuckles are white with how hard she’s gripping her chair.
They were once a beautiful thing.
Lily stands up. “I have to go.” She says it feverishly, like she hadn’t planned on it at all.
But she pauses, staring at the carnation on the table. The tips of its petals are withered. She doesn’t touch it, but she looks up at him one final time.
“I did love you, Severus.” She pauses for a long time. “And it killed us both.”
Lily leaves the cafe, and the flower with it.
Red carnations; Deep love.