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31 October 1975
The hospital wing—quiet, sterile—stood in stark contrast to where Lily had been just moments before. The Great Hall had been loud and bright, splashed with the colors of autumn and lit up with the glow of what must have been hundreds of jack-o’-lanterns. The cheer had been palpable as all of Hogwarts gathered for the Halloween feast.
But something had been off. There had been a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach throughout the entire feast after she looked across the room at the Slytherin table, and, after scanning it for Severus, found him absent.
Severus had always loved the Halloween feast since their first year at Hogwarts. Maybe it was because of the macabre elements of the holiday, but even after he had seemed to lose joy in almost everything else over the years, it was one of the few times a year that she could reliably see him smile. Even if they had to sit at different tables and even if Lily certainly didn’t like the people he was sitting with, she always liked looking across the room for that crooked smile and the feeling of unbridled glee that welled up inside her as she found it. Maybe part of the reason she had felt so empty upon seeing him gone was because she hadn’t been able to see that smile this year. Lately it felt like everything she knew was slipping through her fingers like sand, and no matter how hard she tried to catch it, it would fall into the sea, lost to the depths of the past.
At least it was a small comfort, amidst the feeling that she was losing Severus more and more these days, that she still seemed to know him well enough to be able to find him on her first try.
Sitting cross-legged on one of the beds farthest away from the door, almost as if he didn’t want to be found, was Severus. The hospital wing was empty otherwise; Lily could see Madam Pomfrey working quietly in her office offset from the main room, but the other beds were all unoccupied. Of course, no one wanted to be in the hospital wing on the night of the Halloween feast if they could help it, but it was especially heartbreaking to see Severus hunched over a basin with the usual empty, defeated look in his eyes on a night when Lily normally would have gotten to see the deep warmth that radiated from them when he was happy. As she approached, she saw that his eyes just looked even more hollow than usual. Cold, like fragments of coal left behind once a fire stops burning.
The sound of her footsteps seemed to pull him out of the melancholic fog he had evidently been lost in before she arrived, and he tried to hide the basin under the bed as soon as he noticed her coming.
“Don’t bother; I already saw it.” Lily waved a hand dismissively, sitting down on the bed next to his.
She wished he wouldn’t feel like he had to hide things from her. They were supposed to be best friends, weren’t they? They were supposed to be able to share everything, and help carry each other’s burdens.
“It’s gross,” Severus mumbled.
Lily shrugged.
“Couldn’t be any grosser than those pictures of the Entrail-Expelling Curse you tried showing me the other day.”
That earned one of those laughs that was really just him blowing air out of his nose harder than usual, and, more importantly, a momentary wisp of a smile, practically undetectable to the untrained observer, but good enough for Lily. Severus’s smiles were becoming rarer and rarer by the day, and Lily would take what she could get.
Still, ultimately she needed to know what was wrong. He looked paler than usual, and there was a sheen of sweat on his brow. And Lily knew something had to be wrong for him to miss his favorite celebration of the year.
She was about to come right out and ask when he turned away from her and only managed to croak out a “Don’t look” before throwing up God-knows-what into the basin.
Oh.
When he turned back around he looked even more haggard than he had before, and Lily felt a pang of sympathy in her chest.
“I imagine that’s why you’re here?”
Her attempt to cheer him up evidently did not land as Severus looked rather unamused.
“Obviously.” He dragged out every syllable with his dry, humorless voice as if scolding her for even commenting on the situation.
“Sorry,” Lily mumbled, shrinking under the glare he was giving her. The darkness of Severus’s eyes was always alluring and would light up with warmth if he was happy, but it also made you feel as if he was piercing your very soul if he was angry at you.
Lily stood up from the bed and sighed. Maybe he just didn’t want her to see him like this, but clearly her presence was only making things worse.
“I should leave you alone. You look really ill.”
That made Severus sigh and drop his gaze to the floor.
“No, sorry. You don’t have to.”
His response was mumbled and she could tell he was trying to sound detached and above it all as he often did these days, but when he looked back up at her, the piercing glare was gone and Lily could detect a hint of pleading in the emptiness it left behind.
She knew that as much as he wanted to pretend that he didn’t care and that he was fine by himself, he had a longing for someone to comfort him—for someone to care, really—that cut too deep for him to hide. And that even though he didn’t always like to outwardly show it, he had a deep regard for her, a love that was vast and sacred, going back to their innocent childhood days. And she knew that both of those feelings were stronger than his fear of embarrassing himself in front of her.
She could tell what he really wanted to say was Don’t leave me.
And who was she to deny her best friend such a simple request?
She went over and sat down next to him, gently pushing back the inky strands of hair that were plastered to his forehead with sweat.
“What happened?” She asked softly.
Severus sighed, and this time when he looked at her, he didn’t look angry. Mostly just defeated, with a tinge of sadness.
“You can look.” He gestured behind him at the basin.
Lily shuddered when she saw what was inside it. It was filled with giant, slimy slugs, and she almost threw up herself when she realized those monstrous things had been coming out of his mouth. And obviously, one couldn’t sit in the Great Hall among hundreds of people if one was regurgitating slugs every few minutes. Lily figured it must have been a curse, but she had certainly never heard of it before.
“That’s awful! Who did that to you?!”
“Take a wild fucking guess,” Severus deadpanned.
Lily nodded solemnly. She knew the answer. Potter, Black, and their gang hadn’t left Severus alone since they had stepped on the Hogwarts Express for the very first time four years ago. They were probably the main cause of that hopeful boy she had first met in Cokeworth being reduced to the wilted, hollow state he rarely came out of these days. And they were apparently dead set on taking every bit of joy he still had left in him and squeezing it out until he had nothing left and that empty husk of a person was all he ever was.
But God, Lily would do what she could to try and prevent them from ever succeeding.
The gears were already turning in Lily’s head as to how she could make this better, how she could try to restore some of the happiness that they had stolen from him tonight, when he grabbed the basin and turned away from her again, and she figured she had better focus on making him feel better now first. She rubbed his back in soothing, repeated motions until he finished, trying not to worry too much about how she could feel every vertebra in his spine with alarming ease.
He turned back around with a sigh and rested his chin on his hand.
“I’m sorry you missed the feast,” Lily said quietly. “I know you’ve always liked it.”
“It’s fine.”
Severus shrugged, but Lily thought his eyes looked a little glassy, and she decided it was probably best not to push the subject. So she said nothing, just laid her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arm around the other one, rubbing circles on it with her thumb.
He didn’t say anything either. They never needed to.
They sat there like that, in comfortable silence, for a few more minutes before Severus broke it.
“How did you find me here?” He didn’t look at her as he spoke, and although he was clearly trying to make it sound like simple curiosity, Lily knew why he was asking.
“I noticed you weren’t at the feast. Obviously.”
Severus smiled at her snark, but there was something hopeful in his eyes that tugged at Lily’s heart when she looked up at him.
“Really?”
“Of course!” She pushed away the hair that had fallen in his face again before adding, “You dunderhead!” for good measure.
Lily wished she had a camera on her to capture the crooked grin—her favorite sight in the world—that resulted from that remark. Although she was already scheming a way to get another one out of him rather soon...
Unfortunately, it didn’t last too long as he turned to the side again and she could hear more slugs falling into the basin with a sickening splat. When he turned back around, some of his hair was plastered to his face with slug slime, and Lily figured she had better take care of that before she made any bigger plans. She pulled a hair tie out of her pocket and grabbed a tissue from the box on the bedside table, and was about to clean off his hair and pull it back for him when an idea struck her.
“Sev?” She asked.
“Yeah?”
“Can I braid your hair?”
She had always liked to do it when they were younger, although these days, he seemed more and more concerned with looking “cool” (whatever that meant), so he wasn’t as keen on it anymore. But maybe something that reminded him of simpler times—of days in the summer sunshine in Cokeworth with no Potter or Black, no Mulciber or Avery, no Gryffindor or Slytherin—might make him feel a bit better.
Severus sighed, but it was not without a smile.
“You can do whatever you want.”
As Lily kneeled on the bed behind him and got to work, threading her fingers through soft, dark strands in perfect synchrony with Severus’s breathing, everything felt a little lighter. And when Severus looked up at her with love in his eyes and a soft smile on his face, Lily knew they would be just fine.