Work Text:
The grass on the side of the river had long since dried in the blazing summer heat. The trees they’d spent their time under as children had been thinned out in the past few years. Only one large one lingered its branches spread widely out over the river; the grass underneath its shade still maintaining a bit of the green expected from earlier summer months.
“It was too itchy yesterday,” Lily said as she opened up her book bag and pulled out a worn quilt which was thrown across the just green grass easily enough. She turned to look at Severus and a smile crossed her face. “I think this should help it though.”
The smile was enough to make the nearly oppressive heat slide away as if a shield were placed between his body and the air around them. He managed a shy grin as he stepped forward and sat down on it, his own books dropping to the space next to him.
They had been studying like this for most of the past month, he and Lily, and Severus was sometimes frightened at just how perfect this made his life feel. Never mind Hogwarts, with Lily’s friends that seemed to loathe him, or his friends that certainly loathed her. Never mind what things might have been like there because here and now Severus could ask for nothing more.
“Move over then,” Lily said with a laugh, and her bare arm pressed against him as she pushed him over on the quilt slightly when she sat down. “Can’t take up the entire blanket or I’ll be itchy again today.”
“Sorry,” Severus muttered with a small smile and heat rising in his cheeks just momentarily. Her skin was so soft, and with its touch came a thousand images and fantasies and longings he couldn’t have imagined a year ago. Whatever his friends might say, she was beautiful, and warm, and very definitely a woman. His eyes dropped down at his book, his head bowed so that he appeared to be studying, although slowly as she reached for her own book, his eyes raised once more, dropping for an instant on the line where the neckline of her shirt met bare skin and he had to pull his eyes back to his own book.
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” he said suddenly, and then felt awkward for the comment had felt so out of place in the near silence of the afternoon.
Lily turned to look at him and for an instant she seemed almost sober and then her green eyes lightened and a smile spread across her lips. “I am too, Sev. I wish we did it more frequently.”
The unspoken wish -- at school -- hung in the air but Severus looked in her eyes and vowed that yes, he wished it too and yes, they were going to do it more frequently -- schoolmates be damned.
“We will,” he said and his thin face broke into a real smile, something most people were likely unaware that Severus Snape could do. That it might not happen when they returned in a few weeks, or that neither one of them might be able to push away the peer pressure from their houses to carry through on that promise was simply not important now.
Lily’s smile mirrored his own, although it was perhaps as much from the fact of Severus’ smile as it was from anything he had said. In a rare moment of physical affection she leaned towards him, her cheek resting on his shoulder.
Their eyes were no longer meeting, but Severus could hardly mind that under the circumstances. Lily’s movement had seemed so natural for her, but Severus hardly knew how to respond. In the end he slid one hand around resting at first awkwardly, but then with increasing confidence on the small of her back.
The potions text laid open on his lap, Lily’s lay discarded nearby, and Severus felt her head shift and could tell her eyes had moved to the book. “You’ve got a lot of notes in there Sev, I didn’t think you’d made these yet.”
Normal conversation seemed miles away and yet somehow Severus pulled back to manage it.
“I haven’t, but you can look at the properties of the ingredients and that’ll tell you a lot there -- see?”
“I’m not certain I do on this one,” she admitted, seeming perplexed that it was passing above her head.
“It’s not difficult though,” Severus encouraged, the idea of being able to once again share something with her pulling out older feelings of pleasure and delight in the friendship. Sharing what he knew with Lily had always made him happy. “See, take a look at the main ingredients here,” the hand not around her back pointed and Severus launched into a discussion of the effects amounts might have on various combinations.
The grass was still dry: The river was still dirty; Severus Snape was still a half-blood Slytherin: Lily Evans was still a Muggle-born Gryffindor, but none of that mattered in this moment. In this moment happiness was not elusive: it was a naturally given right.