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It was an ordinary day, all things considered.
She’d just finished the last of her OWLs and was talking with her group of Gryffindor friends about what they thought and what answers they had gotten. There were no signs that something would change, and Lily had no reason to believe they would.
Around mid-afternoon, she split off from them. Lily had promised Sev that they’d meet to discuss their exams, and he’d be by the tree by the lake. Honestly, they haven’t been talking as often as they used to—it’s always holed away in some private corner of the library, or those corridors that other students tend to use, or dusty abandoned classrooms that are so unused that not even the house elves clean it—so these meetings were some of the only times they would meet up.
It was just frustrating—Lily’s other friends didn’t like Sev, he was a Slytherin, and they’re all steeped in Dark Magic, you know; Sev’s friends didn’t like her either, because she was a muggleborn, and mudbloods don’t have a place in the Wizarding World—and it felt like they would never agree on those kinds of things. It was a circular argument they’d keep coming back to.
She would point out his housemates were reprehensible, he would do the same about Potter, and they would have to change the topic to keep the peace. It wasn’t a fair comparison, in her opinion, because the Slytherins were openly harassing every muggleborn they came across, while James Potter and his friend group had even seemed to mature as of late. Sev still didn’t like him, and made that clear enough, but had quieted down about them since January, so they couldn’t have been that bad.
Right?
She’d even heard something about James saving Sev’s life, though Sev refused to breathe a word relating to what that was about, so she could only assume that he was embarrassed about having to be saved by someone he hated. Especially when that someone wasn’t as blockheaded as they were before.
She had just stepped outside when she noticed a crowd beginning to gather around the tree she had meant to meet Sev at. She saw him sitting over a book, suddenly scrambling to his feet, posture defensive, reaching into his robes—presumably for his wand—before her view of him was blocked.
Lily runs over, pushing her way through the ever-growing crowd, and just makes out James’s figure, when he aims his wand at Sev and casts a spell that sends Sev upward—yanked into the air and dangling by his ankle.
What is going on here?
She thought James had stopped doing this kind of thing. He’d been much nicer over the past several months—only using spells to defend himself, or so he’d said. But this hadn’t been aggravated, all Sev had been doing was sitting there!
“LET HIM GO!” Lily shouts, suddenly furious. What was James doing?
“Evans!” James lights up with a smile, and it only makes her angrier. “Nice of you to join us.”
It’s then that she notices Remus sitting to the side, pretending like he couldn’t hear or see this entire confrontation. Why isn’t he doing anything? He’s got a prefect badge for a reason—and so does she.
“Enough,” Lily growls. “Enough of this. Let – Him – Go. Now.”
“It’s just a bit of fun,” James says dismissively.
“Why can’t you just leave him alone! He didn’t even do anything to you!”
He’s still smiling, posture relaxed, careless. “It’s more of the fact he exists, you know?”
Lily is fuming. “Fifty points from Gryffindor for harassing another student.”
His smile falters. “Come on. There’s no need for that.”
Sev is still dangling in the air, looking furious, but as soon as he opens his mouth, James is casting a Scourgify, and he can’t speak past the bubbles foaming out of his mouth.
Oh, for—Lily decides it’s time to stop being nice.
James turns to his friends, grinning; at the same time, Lily reels back and punches James in the face.
Several things happen at once: James stumbles back, holding his jaw; Sev falls to the floor, thankfully not on his head, but she hears a dry crack when he hits the ground and he lets out a sound of pain; Sirius Black whips out his wand and casts a Stunner she barely has time to block.
Thankfully, McGonagall chooses this moment to arrive, dispersing the crowd and demanding to know what is going on. Remus scrambles to his feet like he’s been doing anything useful this entire time, while James and Sirius begin to form excuses and assign blame.
Sev looks dazed, so she helps him by his arm; when his eyes land on her, his mouth drops open, eyes suddenly glassy. It’s the closest she’s seen him to crying in years.
He swallows visibly. “Lils?”
By the time McGonagall turns to her, she doesn’t have much hope that she’ll be listened to, much less believed. Still, she explains her side, hand moving down to clasp Sev’s, and tells McGonagall about how she saw James attack Sev unprovoked, how Remus did nothing, how Sirius tried to hex her—it helps that McGonagall witnessed that last part.
“She punched me!” James exclaims for what must be the third time now. It’s going to bruise, she can tell, but it’s nothing that won’t disappear within minutes in the Hospital Wing.
“And you deserved it,” she snaps.
McGonagall reprimands her for it, but Lily is unrepentant. She drags Sev away—ignoring the looks James is shooting at her—storming back towards the castle.
Once they reach the corridor, Sev takes the lead, still holding her hand, guiding her to a classroom tucked at the end of the hall. He steps inside, and she follows, raising an eyebrow at him when he waves a hand, the door swinging shut; she can almost feel magic settle on the entrance, like ward of sorts.
“When did you learn to do that?”
“Accidental magic,” Sev says, waving her off. She would take it as a joke, but there’s an odd note to his words.
Lily can’t discern what it means and it’s frustrating. It has felt like they’ve been drifting apart over the past few years; like she doesn’t even know him anymore. He’s a far cry from the boy she met at nine-years-old, but she is different from the starry-eyed girl dazzled by magic—she’s found her place, but she is uncomfortably aware how many people don’t want ‘people like her’ to be here at all.
“Bit odd to have accidental magic at this age, isn’t it?” Lily tries to go for a light, teasing comment in return. It doesn’t land though, because Sev’s expression twists in…consideration, maybe—or it could be frustration. It’s strangely muted, which is odd for him.
Sev always expresses his emotions on either extreme—if he’s angry, it’s explosive; if he’s sad, he turns inward and goes blank; if he’s happy, those rare moments of genuine joy are clear as a sunny sky; if he’s nervous, he tends to shut down entirely—it’s all or nothing. But right now, his feelings are tepid; so much so that they almost feel rehearsed.
After a pause, Sev mutters, “I suppose.”
Their conversation lapses into silence, with Sev unwilling to give anything other than clipped responses, and Lily unsure what to say. His gaze is heavy on her, and she doesn’t know why he’s staring at her like she’ll vanish the moment he stops. But more than that…he’s different, somehow.
“You’re different,” she says aloud.
She doesn’t receive a response immediately, but unlike prior times Sev has hesitated to tell her things, she can’t see him weighing his words—the debate had always been plain on his face, at least to her—he’s just blank. She can’t get a read on anything.
Eventually, he says, “It doesn’t get better.”
Lily looks at him, confused.
Instead of explaining, he takes a breath, changes tracks, and says, “Black sent me to the Shrieking Shack in January. There was a werewolf at the end of the hall. I nearly…Potter showed up at the last minute. I…”
What had started as a near-whisper gets louder, bordering on hysteria. Sev tilts his head so his hair covers his face. “I nearly died there. Dumbledore called Potter a hero for ‘rescuing me’, and I…”
Sev is so very still.
He feels small, even though he’s taller than Lily.
“I… refrained from telling you before because,” Sev took a breath, glancing over at her, before continuing, “because Dumbledore said I’d be expelled if I did”—a broken, bitter laugh—“but he didn’t make Potter swear the same, so…”
He waved a hand in a vague, helpless gesture.
James Potter got to control the narrative and no one could refute him, was the general gist that Lily could get. Suddenly, her feelings regarding James were sinking in her stomach, twisting into something sour and uncomfortable.
“Will you…” Lily began tentatively. She stopped. Swallowed. Started over. “Will you get expelled for telling me?”
Sev shrugged, too casual for their topic of discussion. “Most likely.”
“What? You – no. I’ll – I can keep it a secret,” she insisted. “No one has to know you told.”
Sev lifted his head to look at her, meeting her eyes, and he suddenly looked sad. He dropped his gaze a moment later, letting out a breath and pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes.
“It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t be able to continue my education after this anyway.”
“What? Why—?”
Sev reaches into his robes, pulling out—
Lily’s eyes went wide with horror. Oh.
—his mangled wand. It’s been broken into several pieces: the tip of it is missing, the handle cracked, and she can see a bit of the core sticking out of the splintered wood.
It looked beyond saving, but still, Lily asks, “Can’t you get a new one?”
“I can’t afford one,” Sev says plainly.
Once again, she was struck with the odd feeling of talking with a stranger. She knew, on some level, that the Snapes lived in poverty, but that was something Sev was touchy about, so they never talked about it. He certainly never brought it up, even when his robes were never replaced, barely held together with charms and fading fast.
“I could pay for one—” Lily starts to offer.
Sev shakes his head. “It’s not just that. Potter and his group won’t stop, they just get more clever about it—professors always take their side.”
Lily wants to say that McGonagall hadn’t taken their side earlier, but she has a feeling he’s not talking about today; Dumbledore let them get away with attempted murder and James had let everyone believe him to be a hero. The ‘House bias’ Sev mentions feels a lot more real now.
“And my housemates…it’s getting harder to just survive in there,” he swallows, looking up to send a furtive glance in her direction. “I know how you feel about them. You’re…not wrong. It’s just—there aren’t many options when I sleep with them.”
Lily bites her lip. Her first instinct would be to direct him to a professor, but if Dumbledore—the headmaster—is unwilling to take his side for life-and-death matters, she has a feeling he won’t listen for something like this either.
“What about Slughorn?” she asks, even though she knows that he wouldn’t.
Slughorn has favorites—he invites her to Slug Club, and praises her skill, but he ignores Sev outright, despite Sev being better at Potions than she is. She has the uncomfortable feeling that Slughorn only invites her because James Potter has made his interest in her obvious.
He doesn’t even bother responding, just levels a look at her, and she responds with a sardonic smile.
“Yeah,” Lily says, and they lapse into silence.
When had everything gotten like this?
It feels sudden, but realistically, she knows it hadn’t been. There had been a steady decline, a distance in their friendship that had kept growing, and now everything feels terribly stilted and awkward.
Lily still cares about him, on some level, and she knows he does too, but it’s not the same as before. She doesn’t know where it leaves them in the here and now, though.
“You’ll die, and it’ll be my fault,” Sev says suddenly, and Lily startles at the words, “and waking up on the floor by the lake made…several things clear.”
Lily frowns. “What do you mean ‘I’ll die’?”
Sev’s expression does the same twisting thing it had done earlier, the one Lily can’t discern for the life of her, and there’s a lengthy pause before he says, “The Dark Lord”—he stops, seems to chide himself—“this war is going to ruin everyone.”
“Sev, what are you talking about—?”
“I think it’s best if we leave it off here,” Sev says, “on something…on a positive note.”
Lily frowns. “What are you planning on doing?”
Sev starts for the door. “Leaving.”
***
Lily can’t get any more answers from him after that, and eventually, they part to their respective common rooms. Her friends ask her about the confrontation by the lake, and she doesn’t have much to say.
What can she say?
She plans to speak to him at breakfast, but she can’t see him at the Slytherin table. She understands why when he shows up halfway through the meal, and all eyes swivel to him.
Sev walks up to James Potter.
Says, “About yesterday…”
Tosses his broken wand on the table.
“You win. I hope you’re happy.”
She should be doing more, shouldn’t she?
Sev glances at her again, just for a moment, right before his focus shifts back to James.
“Have a nice life,” Sev says.
Since you ruined mine, goes unsaid.
He turns away without another word, out of the Great Hall, out of the castle, out of—anywhere magical. Lily doesn’t know where he’s gone. No trains leave Hogwarts outside of their breaks, but he can’t have gotten far on foot.
(She doesn’t consider Apparition for a moment, and, really, why would she?)
In the end, it doesn’t matter.
Sev’s gone.
Sometimes it feels like she’s the only one who is affected by it. Sirius Black had acted oddly triumphant about it until Lily had properly snapped at him. James had tried to approach her about how it was for the best, but what had been charming before feels condescending now. The Slytherins are restless in a way she hadn’t noticed before; it makes her uneasy.
It makes her wonder if, maybe, Sev had more influence there than he’d thought.
(Lucius Malfoy had spoken highly about him. Lord Voldemort was highly intrigued by the halfblood potions prodigy. No one wanted to be the one to say they could no longer deliver.)
(But Lily would know none of that.)
She sends a few letters, but she doesn’t know if she ever receives them. She only gets one back, two years later, right before she graduates; it’s a small note, unsigned, but the scrawl is familiar as ever.
Your life will be better without my interference.
Lily doesn’t know how to feel about that.
Life goes on.
She graduates. Attacks on muggleborns and muggles become more frequent. You-Know-Who’s influence grows. She pursues a Charms Mastery. She gets a job. It feels like the Ministry is limiting her options, like she keeps hitting walls because the school years taunts have not gone away, merely grown into politics and shaped a world where it doesn’t feel like she fits.
Your life will be better without my interference, says the note that she had never managed to toss aside.
She settles. It is certainly a life.
It could be better, she thinks.
Lily wonders where Sev has gone off to.
Maybe it’s time to stop wondering and find out.