Summary: Lily chose her path, and Severus chose his. However, sometimes paths run together.
Categories: Severus/Lily Characters: None
Warnings: Character Death, Sexual Situations
Challenges: Series: None
Chapters: 1
Completed: Yes
Word count: 3314
Read: 4786
Published: 03/20/08
Updated: 03/20/08
1. -- - -- by Vindictus Viridian
-- - -- by Vindictus Viridian
Jan. 9, 1976.
“I’m sorry.”
Lily ducked at the last instant and felt Sev’s nose bump against her hair. She was fond of him, and had been for years, but this felt like a huge mistake. At the same time, it seemed completely logical. After being friends this long, he a boy and she a girl, why shouldn’t he kiss her?
Because she couldn’t make herself kiss him. It wasn’t because of anything her friends said; she didn’t even want to think about what her friends said. This just wasn’t the time.
“That’s all right.” He had hugged her as though he didn’t quite know how to go about it. Now he let go of her and stepped back, making a vague shape on the edge of her vision.
“Maybe I’m still too young,” she offered. “Only fifteen.”
That was worth the snort he gave her, since he was older by so little. On the other hand, he’d lorded those days over her for years, proud to be the elder. He couldn’t take back the significance of three weeks now. “That must be it.”
She knew she was disappointing him, and she hated it. The muddled up feelings in her middle wouldn’t go away. She ought to want to kiss him, she was sure of that, but nothing changed the fact that she didn’t want to. There was no good reason for it. It just wasn’t what she wanted to be doing.
Maybe it was his friends. He could change those more easily than she could change her parents, but not a lot more. “At Hogwarts, your House will be your family,” McGonagall had said, and it was. Lily’s Hogwarts family and Sev’s just didn’t get along, no more than their parents had.
“Maybe…” She knew she wasn’t going to feel different by her own birthday, but things did change sometimes. “Maybe next year. We’ll try it again, right here, right after dinner.”
At last she dared to look at him. By now, she’d expected his blush to have faded, but his cheeks were still pinkish. She wondered the thing a thousand fairy tales had trained her to wonder: would her kiss, if truly loving, transform him from his skinny, sallow, neglected form to his true one? She knew better, and felt bad for wondering, but couldn’t help the thought. Even at Hogwarts, some magic would never happen, but that didn’t stop her wishing for it.
“All right, then. Next year.” He smiled just a little. “Don’t think I’ll forget.”
Jan. 9, 1977.
“I’m sorry.”
She’d known he would say that first, before she’d even adjusted to the dim light of the otherwise-empty room. Lily wasn’t sure why she’d come. She supposed it was because she kept her promises even if they were made foolishly. “We’ve been over that.”
“We have. I still am.”
“I didn’t come here to make you repeat yourself.”
Her eyes picked out more detail in time to see his frown. “Why did you, then?”
“Why did you?” She stayed by the door, ready to bolt if need be. She wasn’t sure how much his friends had influenced him in six months.
“Because…” He shrugged. “Hoping, I guess. Hoping you would be here.”
“Hoping for your kiss?” It came out bitterly, surprising her. Saint Lily of Gryffindor wasn’t supposed to own that tone of voice.
He shook his head just a little. “Hoping to see you without an army of girls, or some boy you’re dating for no good reason at all, or a professor or seven. Hoping to talk to you the way we used to talk.”
She waited for what came next. She knew him so well that she didn’t jump.
“Damn it, Lily, I’ve missed you!” His anger flared enough to make him half-rise from the desk, then faded. With no more support from his temper, he flopped back. “You don’t know what it’s like.”
“You think I don’t miss you?” Still, she couldn’t make herself sound sympathetic.
“You don’t. I can tell you don’t.” He stared down at the desktop. “You lost the worst of yourself, after all. I lost the best.”
Flattery would get him nowhere. She missed him, or she thought she must have. She missed the friendly competitions with him in Potions, now turned bitter and silent. She missed knowing he was keeping her safe, though she suspected he still did. Being told her feelings as though he knew, because he always knew best, annoyed her all over again. If his friendship was the worst part of herself, she didn’t have to feel bad about anything she did now, because here he was to provoke her into it.
She’d had more practice now. She marched up to him, tipped his chin up, bent to him, and kissed him thoroughly. She wanted to hurt him. This seemed the best way. Then she stepped back, flinching a little somewhere deep inside as she glared at his pale face. “You didn’t deserve that,” she said, not sure how she meant it.
He stared up at her for another moment, then flinched out of the seat and away. “I probably did,” he said, and started for the door.
Lily felt horrid. “Maybe… Maybe in a year it’ll all be different.”
He hesitated, or stumbled, but didn’t look back to say, “Maybe.”
Jan. 9, 1978.
“I’m sorry.”
Lily said it the moment she walked in the door, hoping the shadow in the corner was Severus, and Severus alone. It wasn’t a big enough shadow to be any of his more awful friends, at least. She scanned the room quickly, just in case.
The shadow didn’t say anything, drawing in on itself in the desk.
“Sev?” She hadn’t meant to call him that, not ever again, but the resolving shape in the corner looked so unhappy, so small, that the old impulses took over. Somewhere in her heart, he still was the person who’d introduced her to everything important and made her who she was. Sometimes she couldn’t help loving him for it.
“I’m sorry.” If she hadn’t come close, she wouldn’t have heard it. It might have been the first time he’d said it, or the tenth. “I’m sorry.”
Now she was frightened. What new thing could he have done that deserved such a flood of repentance? She touched his shoulder, her vision adapted to see that he was shaking, his head tucked into his arms. “Sev, what’s wrong?”
Somehow, whatever it was, she’d just made it worse. She squeezed his shoulder and waited. Eventually he’d give her a hint, even if he never told her exactly what had happened. His hand, cold and a little damp, crept out to cover hers. Two years ago, she would have put her arms around him and held him. She would have begged to know what was wrong and how she could help. Now, she left her hand where it was and stood patiently.
“I thought… you weren’t coming. You had Potter. That was… had to be… the end. And I did… I wouldn’t have done it if… if I’d known you’d be here…” He stopped again as if unwilling to imply any blame of her. Lily said nothing, waiting for the rest of the story. “Over the holidays, I missed you most. You were right there, right down the road, and you might as well have been on the moon for all the good of it. So when Lucius suggested… Oh, bloody hell. I don’t mean it’s your fault.”
Whatever it was, she was pretty sure it couldn’t be. He’d been the one to push her away, and couldn’t hold her responsible for going. “Sev, what wasn’t my fault?”
He pulled away roughly and pushed back his sleeve. At first she could only think it was a tattoo, and then the shape became clear even in the dark. “Oh, Sev. No.”
He nodded. “It didn’t seem like it would matter,” he told the floor.
Of course it mattered. That mark could only mean he had accepted his role as her enemy “ and yet he was here. He hadn’t thought she would be. He’d almost been right. She was dating James, and she was happy enough doing it. He would never accept such a mark for himself. In spite of all of this, though, there was still only one thing to say. “How am I supposed to do anything with you all folded up in that chair?”
He looked up then, and ducked his head once more almost immediately, but she’d still spotted his reddened eyes. A little rummaging in her pockets yielded a tissue that wasn’t too disreputable. She gave it to him. His chin still tucked down for something a little like privacy, he used it as discreetly as someone with a nose that size could. After a long careful breath, he met her eyes.
There was no hope there, and no expectation. He simply waited for whatever she meant to do to him. Joint by joint, plainly nervous, he stood to face her.
She put her arms out and embraced him, leaving his response entirely to his own choices. If she had done this more “ if anyone had “ maybe he would not have that black-looking blotch on his arm. Maybe everything could have been different. With a shiver, he folded his arms around her also. “Sev? As long as…” She broke off, then tried again. “You can trust me. When I say you’ll see me again, you will.”
“Right,” he whispered. “When you’re married and have seventeen little Potters running around, you’ll still think of me once a year.”
“Of course “ as long as you still remember me from amidst your eighteen little whoevers.” She wasn’t sure which seemed more unlikely.
He snorted, sounding a good deal more like himself at last, then sniffed. “If it isn’t a bouquet of lilies, neither grouping sounds desirable in the slightest.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Who knows? Next year may be utterly different.”
Jan. 9, 1979.
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t altogether unexpected.”
“As of when? He has changed, for what that’s worth.”
“Very little.”
Severus had made himself easy to find; she’d received an owl saying only “Leaky Cauldron.” Finding an excuse to leave the house after dinner had been the hard part. At the pub, Tom the bartender had eyed her for a moment, then jerked his chin toward the stairs with a grunt of “Eleven.” It had turned out to be a room number.
“Now what?”
Sev shrugged. “I don’t know. What do two blood enemies alone in a bedroom talk about when they’re ordinary people?”
“Ordinary people don’t get into these ridiculous situations.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Ridiculous?”
She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings, though that was as far as her intentions had gone. Now she’d violated even that small sketch of a plan. “Sorry.”
“You’ve made something of a name for yourself.”
She’d meant to do it through research. She’d meant to invent some grand potion that would put her in the history books, though wizarding history rewarded all sorts of eccentric notions. She hadn’t meant to become notorious for being hard to kill. Did anyone? “Thanks, I think. And thanks for not making me fight you.”
“I have managed to convince my master I am more useful elsewhere.”
If he meant to sound as though he’d made a sacrifice for her, it had to be the strangest compliment she’d had in a long time. On the other hand, she doubted it was easy to debate staffing choices with Voldemort. She hadn’t tried such a conversation with Dumbledore. “Good.”
Sev had left her standing by the door, studying her from the little table in the corner. There was a second chair if she felt like taking it. She wasn’t sure she did. A memory of their one kiss, the first whole one, made her blush, partly for the shame of having done it and partly because now she was wiser in the ways of men. Now, she was tempted to do something far worse.
“Happy birthday,” she said, for the sake of breaking the silence.
“And to you “ early.” For just a moment, the old Sev showed through this dark figure. For just a moment, she could remember her childhood friend and miss the talks they’d had beside the river.
“Have you been home lately?”
The small line formed between his eyebrows to let her know that, for once, she’d puzzled him. She’d never been able to do it often. “Of course not.”
She nodded once. “Our river’s gone brown.”
To her surprise, that did bother him. “Damn. It was rather the best part.”
“Yes.” She waited. “I wanted to fix it.”
“That was what this is all about!” he exploded, as though she were being impossibly thick. “Not having to worry about some damned fool Muggles noticing if we did what we could do! There are so many things we aren’t allowed to even dream. I don’t understand how you can fight that.”
She stepped back a pace, her back bumping against the frame of the door. “Because…” She hadn’t thought of that aspect of Voldemort’s agenda, though it made sense and appealed in a way nothing else had. “Because I’m rather fond of a few of those damned fool Muggles, is why. There has to be another way.”
The explosion, as always, lasted only as long as it needed to. “If there is, send me an owl when you find it. For now, I’ll continue to avoid the punishment of staring down at our river through some no-doubt dirty window.”
He was a killer now. His friends had actually tried to kill her, and James, and everyone else she knew “ and sometimes they had succeeded. She took a step toward him, watching to see what he did about it.
“When did you go back?”
“Today, actually. I was thinking of you.”
He stared through her as though trying to decide if she was telling the truth. “Thank you.”
“I was wondering what on earth we would say to each other after all that’s happened.”
“How about, ‘Some things don’t change’?”
“Don’t they?”
He rose from his chair, and somewhere he had lost all the adolescent awkwardness that had marked him for so long. He uncoiled like a snake. “They do not.”
He approached her staring into her eyes, steady. No thread of carpet or squeaking board marred his advance with a stumble or squeal. She felt a moment’s fear, a certainty she should bolt, before it was too late for anything of the sort.
He placed his hand along the curve of her cheek, tilted her head up, and kissed her.
Jan. 9, 1980.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
He seemed to know what she meant. She was certain he didn’t. “It’s all right.”
Room eleven was exactly the same. Sev was in the same corner, expecting nothing. Lily was in the doorway assuring herself that he should expect nothing and neither should she. One hand wanted to drift to her middle, to the secret she’d only just learned herself. “The problem is, we keep changing so much.”
“No. The problem is, we don’t. Everything else does.”
“Trust me, you’ve changed.” Had he? Once he’d been a scared, sad little boy proud to know more than she did, proud to be important to her. Now, he was a grown man, and she didn’t know anything about him. “I’ve changed.”
“You haven’t. Not in any way that matters. You’re still Lily Evans under the name change. And I…” He broke off and shook his head. “Maybe one or two things are different.”
“Well, then.” She tried to think of something they might talk about, but it had all been said a year ago, before and after. “Happy birthday.”
He stopped her before she put her hand on the doorknob. “Wait. Just…”
She left her hand suspended and lifted her eyebrows at him.
“There is this Potions thing I was working on. You might find it interesting.”
In other words, he was stuck and didn’t trust anyone else’s brains. If his brew was something for Voldemort, she might learn something for the Order “ though what remained of their friendship flinched from the thought “ and if not, she would have a nice puzzle to play with for a few minutes. She shook her head and took up an old argument where they had left it years earlier. “If you’d just learn to cook, you wouldn’t have to ask me these things.”
He lifted one shoulder a fingerwidth. “All right. Some things do change.”
“Well, if you’ve learned to cook, I’m useless. But if you want me to tinker with a problem with you, shoot.”
Jan. 9, 1981.
“I’m sorry.”
This time was different. This time, whatever had happened, he’d had plenty of time to get used to the idea of his mistake and it was still worth the apology. Lily had the sudden fear that their tryst, such as it was, might be known to other Death Eaters “ or to James. She’d been far too regular in this one habit. She’d broken several promises and ignored a few good warnings to be here tonight. “Why?”
He wasn’t lurking in his corner this time. Repentance gave him too much energy to burn. “Because now you’re in hiding, and living the sort of cooped up life that doesn’t suit you at all, to hide from the Dark Lord, and it’s all because of something I passed along. I didn’t know it then. And I’m sorry. If you’d told me… If I’d had the slightest hint it might be to do with you, I’d have kept it to myself forever, believe me.”
“Of course you would have. But what in blazes are you talking about?”
“Dumbledore made you hide. What did he tell you about it?”
“He told me that one of his spies said we, particularly, were in danger. That was all.”
Sev paused long enough to stare at her, then gave a quick nod and returned to his pacing. “That was enough. That was safest.”
Lily worked that over. “You?”
He gave her a tight impatient look and nodded once more. “I had to fix it somehow. It wasn’t supposed to be you. There wasn’t any reason to think it would be you.”
“Well.” Sooner or later, much as he’d wanted to deny it, they were going to have come into conflict. She was only glad it was so indirect. If she’d had to fight him, if he’d had to fight her, she couldn’t imagine how that would have gone. Simply learning something would lead to her, he’d been able to change sides.
He’d changed sides. For her.
“Well,” she said again. She started to smile, realized she couldn’t, and caught herself on the edge of tears instead. “It bloody well took you long enough.”
Jan. 9, 1982.
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