Harry Potter & The Hand God

Lily Evans was named after the plain, white, normal peace lily. 

Petunia Evans was named after the extravagant, blue, wave petunia.

Severus Snape would like to say that they were named incorrectly. Petunia Evans is a normal woman -- normal, hateful, and… sad. Terribly sad and terribly unremarkable. 

Lily Evans is special. She belongs to the world of magic, but there is no wizardry in her charm. The first friend Severus ever makes… and the only, and the last.

Lily is friends with him despite his clothing that stinks of poverty. Despite his family. Despite his lack of experience in these types of situations -- despite, despite, despite. 

Lily loves him despite.

Petunia Evans takes an immediate dislike to him. “He’s magic, Lils. You can’t hang around people like him,” she’d hiss, holding Lily’s arm, trying to hold her back.

Severus sneered, a retort on the tip of his tongue, but Lily says, calmly, “I’m magic, Tunia.”

Her face -- a pale thing; an ugly thing -- flushes. “That’s different.”

“I’ll still love you, Tunia. I’ll never abandon you.”

“That’s -- I’m not--”

Lily squeezed her hand, smiling sweetly. “So there’s no need to worry. Alright?”

And Petunia had relented then and watched Lily go. There is finality in the gesture. She thinks she is losing Lily. And she thinks she will keep losing her, until she is gone and gone and gone and dead. 

She will blame Severus. She will blame magic. She is a normal, a woman, a soon to be wife. And the womanly thing to do, she decides, is nothing. 

She will blame everyone else as she watches Lily go, be dragged off by the boy who smells of death because he smells of freakishness, and she will blame herself too because she only watches. 

Severus does not get why Lily puts up with her. “Her people will never understand us,” Severus tries.

Lily had smiled, shrugged, putting a flower in her hair. “I love who I love, I suppose.”

“She does not love you.” It might be a lie at the time, a baseless assumption. 

Lily does not know nor care. “She’s my sister, Sev.”

Severus thinks her one flaw is her loyalty.

“Don’t you dare marry him, Lils,” said Petunia one evening, when she still picked up her little sister from the park. “Snape is a terrible last name.”

“And Evans is better?” Lily asked, grinning, taking her hand. She waves to Severus with her free hand.

There is a faint blush on her cheek.

“Of course it is!” Petunia exclaims, sounding affronted at even the idea it couldn’t be. 

Petunia and her bicker on the way home and Petunia will stick up her nose at the mention of magic -- shame her for any indulgence in the world both her and Severus’ have a right to… but there is love there. 

Severus wonders when it ever goes away. If it does at all.

But there is one thing for sure. Severus recalls her flushed face, the lily tucked behind her ear, and thinks she is decidedly remarkable and Severus is endlessly in love.

“I hate you,” Petunia will tell her one day. “I love you,” will come the next.

And maybe both are true. Severus Snape is not sure he knows how to love and it is possible Petunia doesn’t, too. 

Severus will tetter on the edge of confessing, of BEHAVING like someone who has the want to confess, for years. Lily is patient with him. When he hands her flowers at the front of her Muggle school and Muggle friends, she both takes the flowers and threatens to punch everyone who laughs at him.

(Severus will blame Harry Potter’s behavior on James because he will think he is James -- the hair, the height, the magic; a true reincarnation; the one prophecy that turned out true. But… Lily was almost Sorted into Hufflepuff and Harry actually was. There are more similarities than Severus likes to see.)

“He’s a good boy! Don’t you dare demean him!” Lily had snarled.

“But,” says one girl, giggling, “he’s smells, Lils--”

“And you don’t, Sara?”

The girl gasped, offended. Lily will later apologize for their behavior and thank him for the flowers. “I always did love lilies,” she said, smiling.

“Me, too,” he’d said, and he was not referring to the flower. He did not gain the heart to say it aloud and he never would.

Would things be different, if he did?

Severus doesn’t know.

Severus doesn’t suppose it would matter.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

Severus tells her about Hogwarts. “It’s amazing,” he’d say, excitedly. “There’s potion making -- and, and a greenhouse full of plants you’ve never even seen--” And it is Severus’ chance of escape. He will flee from his home to Hogwarts and, better than any childhood dream he had conjured, he will not leave alone.

Lily is excited. “Do you think they’ll like me? Do you think I’ll make friends?”

“Of course you’ll make friends,” he’s said. “They’re our people. They’re just like us.”

(He had been wrong. They opened the door to magic together and were violently rejected. It is just like Petunia all over again.)

“What House do you think you’ll get?” she’d ask him on the train.

“Hufflepuff,” he’d said, thinking of her.

“Mhm,” she said. “I don’t think you’re a Puff.”

“No?”

She’d grinned. “You’re a Gryffindor, for sure.” Severus thinks he is a coward. He feels more hate than love and is only strong enough to voice the one that doesn’t matter.

But there is bravery in love, even if he is strong enough only to feel it.

Severus is Sorted into Slytherin. “Guess we were both wrong,” she’d joked.

Lily is Sorted into Gryffindor. Petunia had told her she’d be a Gryffindor -- “too brave for your own good, Lils; I don’t know why you’re even going to this school” -- and when the Hatt suggested Hufflepuff, she’d snapped, “Don’t you dare slight Tunia like that!”

And, apparently, there is bravery in telling the Hat what to do.

Severus is glad for her -- not surprised with her Sorting in the least -- but he’s also worried. They are in different Houses now. Rival Houses.

What if she leaves him?

But Lily laughs when she voices his doubt and tells him that if any Housemate of theirs tries to tear them apart, they’ll have to answer to her.

And she’s a Gryffindor. And she will never back down from a fight.

They are friends. He is bullied and she fights for him and they fight, together, to make themselves known and respected in a world that does not see past their blood. Petunia is still mean and Severus still hates her -- he will come to do that more often; resent. Resent Petunia and his summers and his bullies and his abusive father and his neglectful mother and resentresentresent.

Lily tells him that there is so much good in the world. He must work to see it, too.

“Of course I see it,” he says, confused. “I have you, don’t I?”

She shook her head, like he would not understand and Severus thought resolutely that he didn’t. Lily is a creature of love. She loves her sister and this world even though they hate her.

Still. They are friends and all is well.

That is… before James Potter.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

Severus has never been religious. His father had not been the type to answer to a God of any type -- refused to bow down to anything… even empathy. His mother had talked, during those few times she’d dragged him to the table for a poorly made supper, determined to have a “real family meal,” about Merlin.

The man, the myth, the legend. He was the greatest wizard to ever exist, is a remarkable Seer -- rumoured, by extremists, to be the first -- and is a God. His word is creed.  

But Severus had taken to that ideology like that the same way he takes to her. Which is to say he doesn’t.

He is not religious. Has never have been.

James Potter arrives and attempts (and that is a key word, attempts… though there might be some success) to topple everything Severus holds dear -- and that includes his atheism. 

James Potter is a Gryffindor in their year. James hates him. 

The reason for this is up in the air. Severus is a wizard, but his skill is more in potions than anything practical. He is called Squib more times than he can count and while James is a lot of things… he is distinctly not that. 

Severus is not strong. James is a Quidditch player -- an impressive one! -- and has no problem using his strength to his advantage. 

James is a pureblood heir. He has money to his name -- money that Snape cannot relate to, money that he knows Severus cannot relate to. 

It is up in the air, the reason James hates Severus… But Severus thinks he has a good idea of it. 

Because James loves Lily, too. He looks at her -- imagines flushed cheeks -- and tries to give her flowers too. He looks at her and sees everything Severus does. He sees a kind woman, a loyal woman, a Gryffindor who was nearly a Hufflepuff… and he sees all this past her blood.

James hates Severus because Lily does not. 

Lily is charmed. By his magic, by his strength, by his money, by his blood -- or, god forbid, by his personality, his merry band of friends. She is charmed. So she is friends with them.

“But they harass me,” Severus had said. “They harass me -- and you want to be friends with them?”

“I love who I love, I suppose.”

“Don’t say that, Lils.”

Lily had sighed, grabbing his hands. “I’ve been talking to him about you. He’ll come around eventually. I’m sure of it.”

James does not. 

Severus resents him and tries desperately not to resent her. If she is aware of his constant turmoil (and she might as well be), then she does nothing to relieve it.

So Severus spends a lot of time around James and Co. Partly because they harass him and partly because Lily has integrated herself into the group, against all of Severus’ sound advice. He spends more time than he’d like looking at him, studying his behaviors, his mannerisms. During classes together, he’d stare a hole into the back of his head.

So Severus knows him well, by fifth year. And what he knows is that James Potter is a devout Merliner (successfully converted Lily, too)... and maybe, just maybe, he’s more.

His mother had told him that Merlin’s main claim to fame was not just his prophecies, his great magic, his ability to get someone to believe his ideals in a single moment -- though all those things, she’d say, are certainly impressive -- but the mere fact that when you look at him, you want to worship him. There is something godly about his mere presence. Holy.

James is a strong boy. An athletic one. Though he is not the most impressive flyer, he’s accepted onto the team without a second thought.

Severus wonders how that happened.

James is a charming boy. A popular one. When he arrives late to class, he’s given leeway that even Prefects aren’t allowed.

Severus wonders how that happened.

James is a stupid boy. A lazy one. He tries in a grand total of none of his class, but maintains grades on the same level of Lily.

Severus wonders how that happened.

Severus wonders, wonders, wonders -- and then he figures it out.

He sees James gather books from the library about the religion -- his own religion -- and Severus thinks, yes. He’s realized it, too.

James Potter is Merlin.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

James Potter is Merlin… and Merlin, thinks Severus, is not a Seer. His reincarnation is not and, in all likelihood, he himself never was, either. 

Merlin was a smooth talker. He was able to make someone believe something just by telling them it and so Severus thinks that all those great prophecies that are attributed to him… are not so much real magic as they are Merlin telling someone to do something and them -- willingly or not -- doing it. 

Severus thinks this because he watches James join Divination -- a class Lily is taking, just for fun, she’d said -- and watches him fail, spectacularly. 

Lily and James are not on the same page with everything. She’s of the belief that there will be a New God one day; a follower of the New Age. James… is more old fashioned.

“Merlin, once reincarnated, won’t die. Because he won’t let himself be killed! And so there’s no way to signal the arrival of any New God.” (Denial. Denial and arrogance and a desperate bid to live that will some dya kill him.)

Severus wonders if James has told her. About him being Merlin. 

Seeing the way she hovers around him, bee to a flower, (a girl in love)... Severus thinks he has. 

And, suddenly, Severus is outraged. If anyone finds out what James is, he’s in danger. Sure, the people of the Old Age want him alive -- will protect him, harbor him and anyone he desires and he won’t even have to force them for them to do it -- but people do want him dead. Lily, just by hanging around him, is in danger.

Doesn’t James realize that?

Doesn’t Lily?

But James is a God and Lily is a girl in love -- and… it is love, the way she’s acting. Severus missed his chance with her by never shooting it. Severus will never forgive himself and he will never forget. -- so both of them know this and do not care.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

Everything is fine until their seventh year.

Well. Not fine. But normal. Severus and Lily and friends and James and Lily are in love and James hates Severus -- it is not fine… but it is normal. Severus will never forgive James for tearing Lily away like this. He is grateful, even so, to still have her. 

So everything is normal until their seventh year.

Lily is talking to him. James is there, too. 

Severus does not remember the context exactly.

Severus supposes it doesn’t matter.

Severus insults James. And… when he does so, he insults Lily, too. (These people will never be their own people to him. Not Lily or James or Harry.)

James rises from his seat, a man of indignant rage. He puts his hands together and squeezes.

Magic bleeds from Severus’ chest. 

Squib, thinks Severus.

Squibs Squib Squib Squib Squib.

James lets him go and magic pools back into him. He walks away and it is just him and Lily.

And Lily looks like she wants to say something. Like she wants to apologize, like she wants to talk about it.  

But then she turns around and follows James out.

Severus stays heaving on the floor for a moment.

He thinks she will come back. She will choose him. Because…

Because is she not loyal? She almost got Sorted into Hufflepuff and her only -- only -- flaw is loyalty to the ones she loves. She will stay with James even though anyone who is friends with James will get hurt, will die. She writes to Petuna weekly even though Petunia hates her for her blood the same way Purebloods do; unfairly. 

And…

And Severus realizes that, because she is leaving him, she does not love him. 

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

Severus lives in the past. He does not know how to feel, exactly, about Lily. But, then again…he never had. He forgives her for leaving him, he hates her for leaving him, he loves her, he loves her, he loves her. Hatred and love; he sits squarely in both corners. There is no such dilemma about James.

He thinks about the both of them (because he cannot forget) a lot. 

And then they die. He gets no closure, gets no opportunity for it…

On the first anniversary of his death, he’s passing through a Muggle town, on his way to pick up supplies for Dumbledore. He is trapped in the past, trapped in his head, and when he steps onto a bridge, he is forcibly thrust out of it.

Because the past is no longer in his head.

The past is standing right there.

He hears children splashing around in the creek below them, but he pays them no mind. Watching these children, looking over the edge of the bridge, and now looking with wide, dead eyes at Severus is Petunia Evans.

Unremarkable, plain, simple Petunia. 

Thin, sad, boring Petunia. 

Wifely, womanly, and, now, motherly Petunia.

“Severus,” she says, voice light. A sundress billows around boney ankles. 

Severus stares at her. He clears his throat. “Petunia,” he says. 

“It’s -- …been a while… hasn't it, Severus?”

“...So you could say.”

“How’s… Lily?” 

Severus blinks at her.

“I mean… she used to send me letters,” Petunia says, shrugging a little. “I stopped reading them, after a while, and she stopped sending them. I think… I think she got tired of it. Of me--”

“You don’t know?” he asks abruptly. 

She stares at him. “Don’t know what?”

“She… and her husband,” the word is bitter in his throat, “had a child and then -- then they died.”

“She had a chi… she what?”

“She died,” Severus. He is surprised by his own rage. He approaches her. “She died and you didn’t even know.”

“I’m -- I didn’t--” she splutters, backing up from him.

“She died. She was remarkable and kind -- and loyal -- and you lived. You lived and you are nothing and you didn’t even know she died.” He’s towering over her now. “How dare you?”

“When?” she asks.

“What?”

“When did she die? And… her kid. When did she have a kid?”

Severus stares at her. And then he turns on his heel, leaving her to her bridge, to her children, to her hungry nights of guilt. 

He did not reach out to Lily in the over five years they were separated. He is just like Petunia. He leaves that thought on the bridge, too.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

And then time passes, and we are back to the beginning. Snape has become acquainted, like most other professors, with the little boy with green eyes and a red, bound notebook. 

Snape hates him. Maybe because Lily betrayed him -- lied to him; left him -- and he will never forget and never forgive. Maybe because James did not get the opportunity to. (The reason betrayal hurts most is because it comes from your friends and not your enemies.) 

And maybe because he is just as unremarkable as Petunia Evans is. A stupid boy, bad at magic (a Squib), who prances around this castle like it is his home. Like he does not have to return each summer to a mother that does not love him and a father who hates him.

Harry Potter is an arrogant, isolate, boy. He is a plain and normal peace lily. There is not a special bone in his body.

In Harry Potter’s third year, Severus assigns him a detention. This is not an abnormal occurrence. This has happened before. This is what happens when you have a man made of hate and a boy (just like his mother) who’s love drives him to meet Severus halfway. 

He decides, just this once, to serve him the detention. Normally, he would be handed off to Hagrid or McGonagall or his Head of House -- but this time, Snape isn’t having it. He’s spent nearly eight years suffering through Harry Potter’s egotism, and if no one else is able to discipline it out of him, Severus is going to have to do it himself.

“Even your father would be done with the cauldron by now,” Severus drawled, sitting at his desk. Harry grits his teeth. “Then again… he was about, what? Twice your height and size?”

Harry says nothing, scrubbing the cauldron harder.

“He’d been good at things, too, now that I think about it. He was a prat, but a remarkable one. Couldn’t even manage that, could you?”

Harry breathes deeply. Not quite a sigh.

“You and your father. Good for nothing, defenseless, Squibs.”

And his mouth opens up, like he’s going to say something to defend himself, but then thinks better of it.

Because Harry Potter is not one to defend himself with only words.

He throws the sponge to the ground and practically snarls, “I am not defenseless!” 

And then he puts his hands together and squeezed and Severus is seventeen years old again, bleeding magic. 

James… and Merlin -- were never Seers. It is a lie based on another lie; the fame of Godhood getting to his head.

But. 

But there is at least one prophecy that Severus does not think is fake. 

I will be back. And then Merlin reincarnated as James and then James died -- and isn’t there a heavily implied I will be back, and I will stay back?

“Do not fight me without expecting a fight back,” Harry is saying, but Severus is only half paying attention. Can he be blamed, when his presumed dead childhood rival and not well known God is holding his magic in his hands?

“I challenge you to a wizard’s duel,” Harry declares.

And Severus gets it.

He’s lying.

He’s playing pretend because Petunia was not the only one who peaked in high school. He’s playing pretend because that is what James does; become whatever is convenient for him at that moment. 

Or -- and this is a hard thing to consider -- maybe he’s lying and he doesn’t know he’s lying. James had figured out he was Merlin when he was what, fifteen? Reincarnation is not the best tool for transferring memories. 

Maybe… Harry does not know he’s James.

(But Severus is petty. He will treat him like he does regardless.)

Severus chokes out, “I would never duel a child,” before kicking him out of the classroom.

Severus thinks, back against the door, how could he have ever thought Harry Potter was unremarkable?