Chapter Text
The sky bleeds with sunset when Lord Voldemort walks down the cobbled path of Godric’s Hollow, drowning in shadows as the defences of the house in front of him melt before him. The curtains aren’t drawn; he sees them quite clearly in their little sitting room — the tall, black-haired man in his glasses, a child sitting on his lap and grasping at glittering puffs of smoke spiralling in the air. A door opens and a woman with dark-red hair walks in, her clothes smudged with white flour as she wipes her hands on her apron, face lit up with a smile. The two exchange a few words, their mouths moving, but silent through the window. The man jokingly hugs his son to his chest, twisting out of the woman’s reach in a clumsy pirouette. They laugh and she pulls out her wand, but it’s clear her threatening pose is for theatrics only.
Lord Voldemort’s wand slides into his palm and the gate creeks a little when he pushes it open, but neither James nor Lily Potter hear it, too absorbed in their own tiny lives. They don’t notice the Anti-Apparition Jinx snapping into place either. He sends a blast strong enough to explode the front door, splintering it to pieces that he steps over effortlessly. At last, he can hear the panic from the sitting room, and Lily Potter runs in, her wand in her hand and her loose hair falling in her face.
She is a good dueller, but she is no match for Lord Voldemort. Nevertheless, she puts up a decent fight for being so young — her eyes terrified, but bright with a sort of feral determination. She falls, eventually, as they all do, but Lord Voldemort is merciful. He promised Severus to spare her, and the instinctive taste of the Killing Curse on his tongue is replaced with a simplistic Stunner.
He ignores the woman’s prone body and continues his walk through the house. Hastily thrown protective enchantments are easy to detect, nearly radiating from the nursery upstairs. What an obvious choice, what a foolish choice. He climbs the stairs without hurry, secure in his victory. He doesn’t bother with dismantling the offensively simple enchantments pulled all over the doors, instead blasting a hole in the wall.
He spares a moment of amusement for all the amateurs who always make the same mistake, protecting the doors and not the perimeter. It doesn’t quite matter anyway as he enters the room, his shield up against the barricade of spells James Potter tries to send his way. It’s for nothing though, and both him and the young man know that. A single well-chosen hex reduces James Potter’s wand to splinters, exploding in his hand as he valiantly tries to protect the child’s crib with his own body. How pathetic.
“You could have been a great Death Eater,” he remarks, just because he can. James Potter glares at him with intensity impressive for someone this defeated, the courage of a true, soon-to-be-dead Gryffindor.
“Go fuck yourself,” James Potter spits at his feet. Lord Voldemort doesn’t bother himself with trying to convince him to anything — no one asked to spare James Potter ’s life, not even his dear little traitor of a friend.
Green light fills the room, lighting up the windows with an eerie glow. James Potter’s lifeless body crumbles to the ground before his son’s crib.
The child isn’t crying, Lord Voldemort idly notices. He hasn’t cried all this time, looking up at the intruder with a kind of bright interest, perhaps believing it’s another one of his mother’s jokes and his father will jump up from the floor happily any second now, more pretty lights curling at the tip of his wand.
He points his wand very carefully at the boy’s face — he wants to see it happen, he wants to watch as life leaves his eyes. The destruction of this one, inexplicable danger; a pudgy obstacle in Hippogriff-themed pyjamas. The child begins to cry once it sees it’s not his mum with her dark red hair hiding under the hood of his cloak, and it grates at Lord Voldemort’s nerves. He does not like crying, never liked it since the orphanage, could never stand the whining and pitying —
“ Avada Kedavra!”
And that is the moment his world shatters.
Unimaginable tides and stirs of pure agony course through his very being, disintegrating his bones, turning his skin into ash and destroying every inch of what makes him himself. He is nothing — nothing at all but the ever-present pain, his thoughts and emotions cracking and leaking away, washing in the rain starting to pour steadily outside.
Something — someone — is coming, is running up the stairs with a shriek of pure terror. He knows it, but he doesn’t know who he is, where he is, what happened. He needs to hide and he needs to hide now , before the danger rushes in and sees him, time ticking away with every second. He latches onto the closest thing he can and melts into nothingness, held to reality only by a feeble string.
Then, everything drifts away.
***
James Potter’s funeral is a solemn affair.
Few people are let in. Few of his friends survived the war, and others are press hyenas, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous Boy-Who-Lived as he lays asleep in his mourning mother’s arms, a raised scar in the shape of a lightning bolt red against his pale forehead.
The wizard in dark grey robes leading the ceremony says a few things, but they fall through Lily’s ears unheard. Her eyes are only for her beloved, dead husband lying down in a coffin below, his face set in a determined sort of peace. His sacrifice saved Harry’s life, Albus Dumbledore told her hours before, but somehow that doesn’t help to soothe the piercing pain in her chest.
Her injuries are healed — all in all, she was hardly damaged, survived with just a minor concussion. Her Harry is also miraculously deemed healthy, only shaken and crying, the scar on his forehead unexplainable. Yet, despite knowing she should be grateful, Lily sometimes catches herself regretting she didn’t die with her husband.
She knows it’s an awful and selfish thought. Most of the time she is thankful that she got to stay there for her son, or else where would he go?
Where would he go, indeed. She tries not to look around, her eyes not leaving James’ face. She knows how very few people came to the funeral. Some professors — some distant schoolmates — some surviving people from the Order of the Phoenix. There’s Mary Macdonald, one of Lily’s closest friends and the only other one who survived the war from their Hogwarts’ friend group. Neither Sirius nor Peter the traitor are present — Sirius’ funeral is scheduled for the next week, with whatever remains of him the Aurors found. Peter’s as well, organised by his elderly mother, but Lily can’t bring herself to go to it.
Remus is standing in the corner, his face pale and eyes puffy from tears. They have barely exchanged a few words since the tragedy. Lily finds out later from Mary that Remus is moving abroad within the next month. She can’t bring herself to blame him.
Severus — Snape, she corrects herself — also is somehow let inside. It has to be Dumbledore’s courtesy, who on Lily’s request took over the planning of the funeral. She wants to go up to her old professor and yell at him for it, but she has no energy to do so.
Harry begins to stir in her arms and she rocks him steadily, unable to stop the tears from flowing again. The wizard leading the ceremony finishes up. No one stands up for a speech, so Dumbledore takes the mantle and talks. Lily can’t hear him, crumbling all over again. She leans her forehead against Harry’s, her tears falling down into his hair.
She isn’t quite sure what happens next, but she knows Mary carefully takes Harry from her, sweet comforting nothings spilling from her lips. Lily’s ears are ringing and she can’t stand straight, the grief suddenly too heavy on her shoulders. All the funerals — they never get easier, but she somehow never thought she’d attend one of her husband’s. She’d always assumed that if they died, they did it together.
Yet, hours later, she is left alone — a twenty-one year old widow, with no idea where to go, what to do. She kneels before James’ grave for an eternity, barely able to breathe through the sobs. The fresh headstone of shining white marble haunts her whenever she closes her eyes — the smell of flowers littering its surface stuffs her nose as she scratches the skin off her knees against the grave’s harsh stone.
James Potter , it says on the headstone in straight, neat letters. Born 27 March 1960, died 31 October 1981.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
***
Mary Macdonald and Lily Potter — then Evans — aren’t the closest of friends during their Hogwarts years. They are friends, certainly, but it stems more from being in the same circles and spaces rather than any actual interests. Lily hangs out with Severus, puts her effort into Charms and Potions, has a sharp tongue and an uncanny ability of being able to cause trouble wherever she desires. Mary, all bubbly and cheerful, sticks closer to her Gryffindor roommates and Hufflepuff younger sister, getting into the Quidditch team at a young age as a Chaser and studying to become a Healer in their later years.
It is only tragedy that brings them closer — with Mary losing her girlfriend Marlene McKinnon and Lily suffering the loss of her husband. Most of their friends are dead unfairly young, and they both come from Muggle families. They spend countless nights trying to console each other through their grief over bottles of wine as little Harry sleeps peacefully upstairs. They reminisce on their Hogwarts years, they bicker about old-forgotten spats and they cry together. More than once, Mary is the one who helps Lily up when she is unable to get out of bed — when bad days come, during which Lily can barely move in her grief, Mary makes sure Harry is fed and clothed. Lily in return supports her financially with her freshly inherited fortune and is there every step of the way as Mary goes through her accelerated medical training at a severely understaffed St. Mungo’s Hospital.
They celebrate her success together. Mary buys a nearly two year old Harry an animated toy train with her first paycheck. Lily jokes that she is becoming his official godmother.
The mood falters as the comment brings up the memories of late Sirius, but after half a year of constant and choking grief, they manage to push past it. Soon enough, Mary suggests that Lily could join the Auror Academy as a distraction. Lily, with her high marks and sharp reflexes, lets herself be convinced.
She never expected herself to be an Auror before that — it was always James’ dream, while she preferred more theory-based jobs. But soon enough, she is swept in the adrenaline of fighting, fueled by her own burning grief. Her son’s fame eases her way through the training and before she knows it, purple robes of an Auror are covering her shoulders and there’s a shining badge pinned to her chest, a grimly smiling Mad-Eye shaking her hand in congratulations.
She and Mary work out a system of taking care of Harry. It’s not all that difficult: despite their taxing jobs, all it takes is a mention of needing to look after the great Boy-Who-Lived and their employers immediately see no problem in letting them get off an hour or two early, or shifting the schedule a bit to accommodate it.
It isn’t the most ethical solution, at least Lily says so, but Mary tells her to appreciate it. Harry is growing and learning how to run around, bumping into everything in his way. He still sometimes asks for his dada, but Lily just shakes her head and explains to him time and time again that daddy will not be coming back. That daddy is in a better place now. (Each time she has to see the confusion in Harry’s innocent eyes breaks her heart, but she isn’t strong enough to lie to him.)
Harry is too young to understand exactly what happened and Lily wishes to save him from the truth as long as she can. She and Mary take Harry outside on the weekends — to their favourite childhood spots, to Muggle parks, to nearby playgrounds — but they need to keep him away from the public that is swallowed up by the Boy-Who-Lived craze. Lily asks Dumbledore once whether he could do something about it, yet he just shakes his head sadly. The people are celebrating, and becoming a fabled hero is a price Harry has to pay for being responsible for Voldemort’s downfall.
Lily sometimes hates it. It means that they cannot show him the beauty of Diagon Alley or the wonders of Hogsmeade in fear of being mobbed. It means they cannot arrange any meetings with children his age in case all they want is just a glimpse at the hero. It means yelling at the Ministry workers as they come in front of Lily’s house and try to set up a war monument dedicated to their family, a charmed statue of all three of them. Lily is in tears by the time she finishes shouting and the Ministry workers are hurriedly apparting away.
(A day later, she receives an apology letter issued by the Minister herself, but she just burns it in the fireplace and drowns her worries in a bottle of wine, comforted by Mary’s familiar presence as she rants angrily through the sobs.)
***
The day Severus Snape first comes around, Mary isn’t impressed.
Harry is two years and three months old, and all fussy about not wanting to eat his veggies, splashing them at Mary as he sits in his little chair. Mary tries to distract him when Lily cusses Snape out, her yells loud through the open window, lasting for a good five minutes before Snape Apparates away.
“Good riddance,” Lily mutters when she comes back into the house, her face red and splotchy from anger.
Yet it isn’t the end of troubles with Severus Snape — in fact, just the very beginning. He comes back, time and time again. He manages to get through the enchantments Dumbledore himself set up to discourage reporters and fans. He begs for forgiveness, he tells Lily about his input in the war effort, he explains his role as a spy.
It takes weeks upon weeks, but eventually, Lily forgives him. Mary doesn’t — she doesn’t even try to hide her disapproval for her friend’s decision.
“He’s my childhood friend,” Lily defends when they talk about it over dinner. “Albus forgave him — I know he was shitty during our school years, but he isn’t entirely rotten. He’s had a hard life.”
“He is a Death Eater, Lily.” Mary is unmoved in the slightest, stabbing her potatoes with fervour. Her long ponytail splashes against her cheeks as she shakes her head. “Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater.”
“A spy,” says Lily, but doesn’t look Mary in the eyes. “He changes sides.”
The truth is, she is lonely.
She doesn’t want Mary to know — Mary has other friends from the hospital, while Lily hardly manages to make any connections in the Auror Office besides some casual acquaintances; the type that you send a generic “Happy Christmas!” card to, but nothing else. Most of them only ask about the Boy-Who-Lived. Not her son — just the worryingly fast-growing urban legend, a boy-hero, the next coming of Merlin.
Lily hates it, hates that her son will be crushed by those unrealistic expectations, always judged through other people’s distorted lenses. When one of her fellow Aurors, Istaniel Jackson, asks for the hundredth time about how her “little boy hero” was doing, in those exact words, her patience snaps.
(After that, few people talk to her anymore.)
She can’t let Mary let that know. Mary is an amazing friend, naturally, but Lily needs to do certain things by herself. She already feels guilty that Mary is basically co-parenting a child that isn’t her own, but she isn’t able to settle for anything better — she wouldn’t trust that a babysitter or a nanny wouldn’t be one of those unhealthily obsessed, creepy fans. Or worse, the ones wishing to punish her baby boy for vanquishing their delusional Lord.
Therefore, she keeps quiet about her loneliness. She writes off her newfound forgiveness for Severus as wanting to connect with a childhood friend — eventually, she almost believes it herself. The war is over, she can afford it. They can all finally relax; after all, even Dumbledore vouches for him.
Severus is both a familiar presence and an entirely different man, now. There is darkness in his face that his teenage self lacked — but then, Lily isn’t innocent either. The amount of times her and James returned from battlefields and skirmishes covered in blood that wasn’t their own is countless. Mary can’t quite understand Lily’s view on that, and Lily is incredibly glad that at least one of her friends managed to avoid the bloodshed.
It is probably the only reason why Mary is still alive, unlike so many others.
Still, her friendship with Severus is tentative and fragile at first. It’s very apparent that they’ve been in terribly different social circles — Severus’ sense of humour, “dark” in his words, is just plain offensive in Lily’s. Often, their friendship cracks to an extent when Lily is inches away from kicking him out before he backtracks like a kicked puppy. Lily reluctantly forgives him as long as he swears to stop with his idiotic bias against all Muggleborns with an exception for Lily. (If he ever insulted Mary, he would have been gone in a blink of an eye and he knows it, sensibly keeping his mouth shut.)
Yet, as weeks pass and turn to months, Severus starts to grow on Lily again. Under all his grumpy behaviour and bad hygiene hides a brilliant mind she missed when their friendship ended. He doesn’t quite get her like Mary, but he does become a friend and a frequent guest, eventually. He has an understanding of things Mary lacks; when he minds his tongue, he can be witty and enjoyable to be around. Lily missed his dry sense of humour over the years.
“Maybe he isn’t that bad,” Mary finally admits one day and Lily beams at her.
Their life slowly falls into a comfortable routine. Severus isn’t good with children — quite ironic, considering the new job Dumbledore arranged for him as a teacher at Hogwarts — but he does agree to babysit Harry from time to time when Lily and Mary are busy. Lily builds herself a reputation in the office, loading all her anger into frequent missions and chasing the stray Death Eaters and Dark Wizards.
She still grieves James — his death an always fresh wound, like a piece of her heart was chopped off and died with him, leaving a hole that could never be filled, no matter the passage of time.
Summer blooms again, Harry’s third birthday comes and goes. They celebrate. Severus gets chocolate for Harry and gifts Lily a nice teacup. Harry smashes the teacup the same day by accidentally flying into it on his toy broom. He apologises, glueing the words together with a determination of a three year old, but Severus still looks miffed.
By the time winter rolls around, Mary finds a new girlfriend; a friend of a friend from work, she explains excitedly. Lily is there for her, supporting her and assuring that she would be perfectly fine to take care of Harry more. After all, she is his mother, even if Mary grew to be as close as family to her. She is just happy Mary is moving on from the grief of losing her partner; Lily doesn’t think she herself will ever be strong enough to do so. Losing James hit her too hard.
Severus steps up and offers more help. Mary laughs and says it’s only an excuse to spend more time with Lily, but she only rolls her eyes.
“Severus is a friend, and I’ll always love James,” she says firmly, and Mary just pats her on the shoulder.
“I know,” she replies with a small smile, eyes twinkling.
During spring months, one day Harry runs in proudly and shows Lily how he can make flowers bloom on his hand. Lily is beside herself with pride. Mary throws a small party in celebration and even Severus congratulates him, if reluctantly.
That night, Lily goes to James’ grave and sets the blooming flowers on the marble gravestone.
“I wish you could see him grow, see him do it. He looks just like you,” she says quietly. Before she manages to get another word out, a tell-tale snap of a camera sounds from behind her and an excited reporter rambles something, a question that doesn’t manage to reach Lily’s ears. Rage tears through her chest like a live animal, and she quickly Apparates away without turning around to not risk accidentally attacking the vile intruder.
She does her best not to cry when in the next morning’s newspaper there’s a photo of a teenage James and her on his grave plastered all over the front page.
“THE BOY-WHO-LIVED RESEMBLANCE TO HIS HEROIC FATHER IS STARTLING — A MAUDLIN MOMENT OF A WIDOWED MOTHER ON A GRAVEYARD,” screams the headline. Lily tears the newspaper into shreds before she does something she’ll regret later.
She Floo-calls the Auror office, asking for a day off.
“Of course, take your time for your son,” says her supervisor, Auror Robards, and she shuts the connection before he gets another word out, nearly burning her fingers when angrily putting out the fire.
Mary drops by that day and comforts her. Severus doesn’t show up, but he’s at school and Lily doesn’t blame him. Harry figures the best way to cheer her up is to bring her more blooming flowers. Lily breaks down seeing them, but hugs Harry tightly. She tells him how much she loves him, her voice cracking. Harry just tilts his head, confused at his mum’s behaviour.
Mary offers to take Harry to a playground for the rest of the day. As soon as the crack of Apparition rings in the air, Lily summons her newest bottles of wine without a word.
Severus comes in the evening and sits with her as she rambles drunkenly. He stays with her long after Mary returns with Harry and puts him to sleep, and Lily couldn’t be more grateful, especially once he is still there when she wakes up in the morning with a terrible hangover.
“Don’t you have classes to teach?” she asks weakly as Severus hands her a potion to help.
“They’ll wait,” he brushes her off and she sends him a thankful smile. Severus makes sure she is better before he goes to Apparate back to Hogwarts.
Soon enough, the newspaper moves on onto more interesting topics and Lily gets a grip on herself, going back to her work and trying to ignore all the pitying stares. She does blow up again when Robards tries to take her off the field to do paperwork, to help out — she isn’t a damsel in distress, she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself and her family, and they would do well to remember that.
They do, eventually, and life moves on. Months slip between her fingers like water. Mary is enamoured with her girlfriend and Severus comes by more often, complaining about school life. Lily, on the other hand, becomes the proudest mum under the Sun when in May Harry starts reading a book out of his own volition — it’s one of those popular books for kids with animated dragons and a few inches big letters, and Harry loves it. (Lily suspects he focuses more on the animated dragon pictures rather than the text itself, but it doesn’t matter in her eyes.)
“He’s turning into mini-you, Lils,” Mary jokes as she comes by for dinner. Severus also shows up and doesn’t say anything, but the next day he brings a pack of other books from the series Harry is reading.
Lily is delighted. Harry is taking to reading like a fish to water, and for the next few weeks dragons become his all-time favourite animals. Mary thinks it’s adorable and buys him a set of dragon plushies that hover in the air by themselves (to Harry’s infinite excitement) and helps Lily and Severus paint a dragon on his room’s wall, as the one with the best artistic skills of them all.
Soon after, Harry’s fourth birthday comes and he gets even more dragon-themed presents, even from Severus. His favourite is a toy broom stylised to look like its handle changed into a dragon head, given to him by Mary — or Auntie Mary, as Harry comes to call her. Auntie Mary looks after him as he happily zooms around their backyard on his new broom, while Lily and Severus take a break in the kitchen, making sure that the birthday cake won’t burn in the oven.
That’s when Severus tries for the first time to ask Lily out.
It comes out of nowhere with no warning, truly, leaving her quite thrown off balance and looking at him weirdly.
“Go out? To a restaurant?” she repeats, unable to hide her confusion. “Why? We went out for dinner last Friday.”
“Not that way,” protests Severus, his pale cheeks tinted pink. “Not with Macdonald or Harry. Just — the two of us.”
“The two of us?” Lily echoes again, blinking rapidly. “As friends?”
Severus shakes his head emphatically. “No, as — well, I like you, Lily.”
Lily stares. Her heart skips a beat — not in a good way — but it’s mostly even more confusion that seeps forward.
“Severus —” she starts, but cuts herself off. “I’m not interested,” she says finally and Severus’ hopeful face crumbles. “I’m sorry, you’re a great friend, but I see you as a friend. A brother, maybe. I don’t — I’m not interested in starting to date anyone, anyway. I have a career and a son, and I’m not — after James — I don’t want to.”
The explanation is hastily strewn together and Lily’s head is a mess, but Severus ducks his head in a way that she can’t see his expression. He stays silent for a beat.
“I understand,” he replies in the end, his voice neutral. Lily relaxes and leans in to hug him.
“Thank you,” she says with a breath of relief. “I would hate to lose you over that.”
Before Severus can get another word out, the oven dings and the cake is ready. Lily smiles at him awkwardly as they decorate it, trying to lighten up the heavy atmosphere. Severus gets himself to smile too, and then the tension is broken by Mary walking in with a cheerful Harry babbling about the Common Welsh Green dragon, his new favourite. (Two days ago it was the Chinese Fireball, but Lily didn’t point it out, happy to engage in his story.)
Mary, of course, is not as easily distracted and catches on that something happened. Lily appreciates the way she keeps to herself though, and Harry’s birthday is a success.
It’s only later in the evening, when Severus is gone and Harry asleep, that she asks Lily what happened and she reluctantly tells her. What follows is Mary’s long tirade peppered with curses on “the bastard Snape” and “his sneaky fucking antics”. Lily calms her down, regretting actually sharing the truth, and defends Severus.
“He understood, Mary,” she tells her. “He wasn’t angry or pressing or anything. It’s not his fault.”
Mary is rather unconvinced, still insisting that Severus is a “lying cunt”, but agrees to keep her opinion to herself and not “hex his ass off” as she threatened.
“Though don’t expect me to go easy on him if he pulls shit like that again,” she warns and Lily just sighs.
“It was one time,” she says, tiredly rubbing her eyes. “I love James and I won’t get with Severus. Maybe he got the wrong impression, I don’t know. In any case, everything is cleared now, he will know not to do it again.”
Mary’s face is doubtful, but she just shakes her head.
“I sure hope the cunt won’t try again and understands ‘no’ is a full sentence,” she says sternly and Lily hugs her tightly.
“He won’t,” she promises.
Three months later, Severus asks again.
***
Severus used to think that once James Potter is out of the picture, his life will improve.
In many ways, it did. The Dark Lord’s fall being just a side-effect — now, he once again had a chance with Lily, who was definitely too good for Potter. Yet, when he first sees her at her pathetic husband’s funeral, it’s like a shell of a woman he once knew.
Her hair in the colour of dark rust unkempt. Her eyes hollowed out by the deep sleep bags under them. Her skin pale and stricken with rows of tears. Most of all — the awful toddler in her arms stirring, causing her to cry, again.
Severus never wanted to see Lily cry. He never had, before that day. She always yells when upset, or goes quiet. Never cries. Yet at that funeral, he watches from afar as she bawls her eyes out — all for the sake of Potter . He has to fight the urge to walk up to the asshole’s coffin and spit at him one last time, for making Lily cry.
He stops himself and goes home that day. There’s no time to contact Lily then — she is a wreck and Severus isn’t equipped to deal with that. He has enough issues at hand: his fresh employment at Hogwarts and his destroyed reputation as a Death Eater, protected from Azkaban only by Albus Dumbledore’s good word.
So he focuses on his life. He gives Lily time to grieve that deadbeat husband of hers, and promises himself to wait, looking through the meagre collection of her photos he keeps from their school times and childhood, the longing to see her again lodged in his chest like a boulder.
Once he decides to make his move, it takes time to convince Albus to let him through the enchantments surrounding Lily’s house. All of his skills gained as a boy, spy and a Death Eater go into that: weeks of coaxing the headmaster with tales of his and Lily’s friendship, of how he wants to comfort her, of how he regrets his decisions, of how he changed and worries about Lily being alone, especially now.
Finally, Albus caves in, his second-chances policy and post-war relaxation kicking in. It takes time, yes, but after months and months Severus is back in Lily’s life.
Things have changed, of course. Lily is much more unhappy and there’s less life in her — but she is no longer an empty shell. Severus has to cut out all of his opinions and jokes, but it doesn’t matter if he gets to be around her. He hasn’t even realised how much he missed her, how it hurt to be away and watch her form a perfect life with his childhood bully. Naturally, he isn’t stupid. He knows to keep that thought to himself lest he wanted to get kicked out in an instant.
Just as he would never tell Lily how happy he is with the way things turned out and that both Potter and Black died almost on the same night.
But the longer he spends around Lily — despite those being some of the best years of his life — the more he longs . Lily is perfect, of course, but he sees how her grief kills her. How it chokes life out of her voice by the day, how it dampens the sparkle in her eyes.
Severus understands, more than she knows. Same grief was killing him for years, when Lily was as good as dead to him. Nevertheless, he thinks it’s ridiculous that she is losing so much sleep (she isn’t fooling anyone with the poorly applied charms masking her eye bags) over someone like Potter. Someone as selfish, as arrogant as him should have never even come close to someone as sweet as her, let alone married her.
And now he left her and she is suffering.
Severus knows he could be better than Potter ever was. His childhood crush on Lily never died off; his love for her never faltered and it doesn’t falter now, either. He stays with her when she has bad days. He brings her coffee, and helps Macdonald cook when Lily can’t, and buys toys for Lily’s annoying son.
In all honesty, while Macdonald is tolerable, it is Lily’s son that’s the biggest obstacle. He is an obnoxious, spoiled brat — just as his father, and looking at him makes Severus’ teeth hurt. It’s unfair that Lily is forced to raise a child with someone like Potter for the sperm donor, even if he knows Lily thinks she loves him. Still, Severus isn’t fooled for a moment with the child’s true nature. Even during the first time they meet, he is already a menace, spilling his vegetable mush all over Snape’s brand-new robes (bought specially for the occasion of joining Lily for dinner).
Both Macdonald and Lily laugh it off, but Severus never forgets.
If he was the child’s caretaker, he would have made sure he never grew up to be his father. If Lily could only see — if Lily could only look past her grief to understand how ridiculous it was, how Severus was there for her .
Yet she never did. Since the first time she rejected him, he asks time and time again. To a point where the annoying brat of a child asks cheekily, “came to ask for my mum?”. Severus has to employ all of his composure not to hit him.
It’s getting harder, too. Staying away from Lily. Waiting between the asks. Each rejection hurts deeper than a knife wound, each one worse than the other. Macdonald nearly foams at her mouth when she sees him, but it doesn’t matter — Severus is there for Lily.
He tries everything. Asking politely, asking in a joke, begging, bringing flowers, bringing gifts — everything . Lily turns him down each and every time.
It’s alright though. Potter did it. Severus will, too. He will, because Lily just doesn’t understand. She is blinded by love and hormones. She will come around, he knows.
But months pass and Macdonald mocks him constantly about his attempts while Lily does nothing to stop her. The brat is learning to poorly sing obnoxious songs from the wireless that grate on Severus’ nerves, and Lily just goes on and on about his phase with dragons slowing down, about her job and asshole coworkers (Severus wants to strangle them just hearing how they refer to Lily), about Macdonald’s girlfriend…
Severus is patient. He can wait, even as Macdonald is insufferable and she must be teaching the brat to do the same. Or maybe it’s his father’s genes surfacing already.
Autumn rolls into winter, winter melts into spring, spring changes into summer — he tries time and time again.
Asking after Potter’s death anniversary earns him a solid slap. Asking during Christmas makes the brat laugh at him (at least Macdonald isn’t there, too busy with her girlfriend, which Severus personally finds repulsive). Asking when the first snow melts isn’t romantic enough, apparently. Asking via owl post results in the letters simply being sent back in a barely opened envelope. Asking in a fancily decorated Easter egg makes Lily sigh tiredly. Asking during her off-days results in another polite turn-down.
The last straw breaks a day before the brat’s fifth birthday. He tries again — all with kneeling down, a bouquet of red lilies in his left hand and a heart-shaped box of chocolates in his right.
“Severus,” Lily snaps at him, setting down a ridiculously big gift. Probably for the brat. “Stop it, for Merlin’s sake.”
“Lily —” he starts, but she cuts him off rudely.
“No, Severus. I’m serious. It’s not funny, okay? I am not interested. You are like a friend to me, I have no feelings for you. Understood?” she asks, visibly annoyed. Severus gets up from the floor, feeling his own temper rise.
“No, I don’t understand,” he snaps right back. “You picked fucking Potter” — he doesn’t try to hide his disgust — “over me. I’ve been there all along . Who told you about the Wizarding World? Me. Who taught you accidental magic? Me. Who protected you from the Slytherin bullies? Me. Who is the entire reason you’re alive to raise your son? Me! Me. Me. It was me all along! And then you went angry over an innocent joke and went and hooked up with Potter, of all people.” He spits the name out like poison. “Potter, who bullied me and others for years — Potter, who almost got me killed — Potter, who strutted around the school for ages and harassed you since I can remember.” He snorts out a bitter, ugly laugh. “ Why? Why him?! Why him, Lily, why not me?! I’ve been in love with you forever! I thought that now that he’s gone — gone for four years, entire four years — you would have gotten over him! You owe me this!”
Lily looks at him like he grew a third head. Her lower lip is quivering and Severus sees the signs of incoming tears. He takes a step forward, mouth falling open with an apology already stirring on his tongue, but Lily pushes him away.
“You bastard,” she hisses. A hiccup tears from her throat and she takes a trembling breath. “You fucking bastard! I should have trusted Mary! She told me — she told me you were like that! I didn’t believe her, I thought you changed, but you — you’re still the same old Snape who bullied Muggleborns, supported the likes of Rosier and Mulciber, and joined your beloved Dark Lord, are you not?!”
Her face is nearly as red as her hair. Severus fights the urge to try to touch it, brushing a hand through his hair in frustration.
“I am not!” he protests, willing, hoping she will understand. Why can’t she? It’s so very simple in his eyes, terribly odd that a witch as brilliant as Lily is so deep in denial. “I would have never joined the Dark Lord had I known he would have targeted you, I swear — Lily, I love you . I’ve never loved anyone else, it’s always been you! Please — please just give me a chance! Just once!”
Lily’s eyes grow dark and Severus knows he’s made a mistake, somehow. Her lips twist in fury and she shakes for a second, as if at a loss for words (Severus’ hopes that it’s in a positive sense melting with each moment), before she simply explodes .
Severus isn’t quite sure what she is screaming, her words too mushed up together and distorted by both anger and tears, but she is hitting his chest with her finger and he is backing away, trying to unsuccessfully calm her down.
“GET OUT!” she shrieks in the end, a wand snapping into her hand. “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, GET OUT OF MY LIFE AND NEVER, NEVER COME BACK!”
Severus wants to argue, but Lily has always been a talented dueller and now has additional two years of experience as an Auror, so he complies with a sigh and Apparates away.
His heart is crushed as he makes his way to his rooms at Hogwarts, barely able to breathe through the grief. Lily didn’t mean it, he knows she has an awful temper, but it still hurts.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that she is not in the right mind to be left alone, certainly not with Macdonald. It’s very clear now why she was rejecting him so much, with that bitch poisoning her against Severus from the very start. He feels stupid not have seen it sooner. His love for Lily must have blinded him — he was even prepared to accept Macdonald for Lily’s sake, how stupid of him.
By the time he reaches his office, his mind is set in stone. He will protect Lily, and he will do what’s right and what both he and Lily deserve .
His private potions cabinet is small and squashed into the back of his office, but he reaches it easily. A tap with his wand is all it takes for the doors to pop open, revealing three humble shelves inside, stacked with little bottles.
Severus reaches for the one on the far right, pulling out a vial with a characteristic mother-of-pearl sheen. The cork pops off easily. Transparent steam raises from it in spirals as he leans in, taking a whiff. It smells like Lily — like marzipan and cherries and that floral shampoo she always uses for her hair. He smiles to himself.
It was in good condition. Soon, he would save Lily and they would both be finally happy, he thought, sealing the vial back and putting it in his pocket. The dim light of his office bounced off the label glued to its front, marked by a tight cursive curling into a single, hastily scribbled word.
“Amortentia”