Work Text:
It is unbearable, this distance. It picks at him, like a vulture picking at his emaciated corpse. In a desert where she is the only oasis.
It’s not just the physical distance - though that, too, though not insurmountable, is a cruel thing. She’s so close. She stands across the Great Hall, a cascade of auburn hair catching the candlelight. He can hear her; her laughter echoes, louder than the clatter of goblets and silverware and the chatter of the other students eating dinner. Potter, Black, Pettigrew and Lupin are making her laugh. Potter, insufferable, is at her side, his hand brushing hers in a way that makes something rancid curdle in Severus’s gut.
No, it is the other distance—the one that cannot be crossed, the one that widened the night she turned her back on him. Since he pushed her away.
It has been months. Four months and twenty-three days, actually, since she looked at him with anything but disappointment or worse, pity. Months since she spoke his name in the way that made him feel like it belonged to him. He should be used to it by now, this absence. But some wounds refuse to close.
He had seen her in the corridor on the way out to Herbology last week, and she was – for once – alone. He had panicked; he was not expecting to find her like this. The silence expanded between them, growing larger and larger. He tried to speak, but it came out too high-pitched and she turned around, glared at him.
“Well?”
“I- Lily, I- You must know I’m so-”
She just stared at him. He couldn’t continue.
“How am I supposed to believe you’re ‘sorry’ if you can’t even say the word, Snape?”
‘Snape’. That was new. He’d always been Severus to her, or Sev, which he allowed only her to call her. He supposed it was a small mercy she hadn’t called him ‘Snivellus’.
Now, Severus tightens his grip on his goblet, the cool metal grounding him, the sharper edge of the bevelling cutting into his hand. He tells himself he is not looking at her. That he does not see the way her green eyes soften when Potter makes some self-satisfied remark. It’s probably something brainless, something about Quidditch. Or some stupid prank. Nothing that would stretch or challenge Lily like his conversation could have. Used to.
He tells himself that even if the look on her face as she regards Potter is affection, or even – though he hopes not- lust, even then, it it does not matter.
But it does. It really does.
The worst part—the truly hideous part—is that Potter does not deserve her.
James Potter is arrogance personified, all ruffled hair and smirking bravado. An heir to small a fortune with the ego to match. A boy who hexes first and thinks later. A boy who has tormented Severus for years, who has reduced him to nothing time and time again, and still—still—has the gall to take her from him. To win her over with cheap tricks and Quidditch medals and that effortless, insipid charm.
It makes Severus sick.
The last encounter he’d had was not so public as the time he’d lost Lily. Black had cornered him first, as he emerged from the Slytherin common room. He’d been waiting, it seemed. Severus had tried to turn on his heel and go straight back to safety, but Black had grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the entrance. Severus struggled, trying to break free of his grip. Potter rounded the corner, advancing on him, wand held in front of him.
“Hello, Snivellus. We noticed that you’d been creating some of your own spells. And two can play at that game. We wanted to try one of our own… on you.”
How can she like someone who behaves like that? Lily turns, just slightly, and the light catches her face in a way that makes his breath falter. She is talking—animated, laughing—and it is so achingly familiar that for one terrible moment, he is thirteen again, sitting by the lake, watching her conjure perfect silver shapes from the tip of her wand, sunlight tangled in her hair. She had turned to him then, eyes bright, saying, ’See, Sev? You try.’
He had. She was the only thing ever worth trying for.
That was before. Before his world splintered into black and white. Before his mistakes became insurmountable.
She does not turn to him now. She does not look.
He forces himself to take another sip of pumpkin juice, though it tastes of nothing.
Across the hall, James leans in, says something in her ear. Lily swats at him, laughing, shaking her head—but she does not move away. A slow, agonizing burn spreads through Severus’s ribs, and he hates that it still hurts. That she can still carve him open without meaning to.
Once, she had been his world. Now, she is Potter’s.
And Severus—Severus is nothing.
He swallows, eyes fixed on the table, and forces himself to breathe.
It is unbearable, this distance. And yet, he will bear it.
Because there is no other choice. But he can choose not to watch. He pushes away his full plate and swiftly walks from the Great Hall, back to his bed, pulling the hangings around him. He does not want to be interrupted.
Pain is simple.
Unlike love—unruly, mercurial—pain is something he can grasp. It does not shift beneath his fingers, does not betray him with laughter meant for someone else. It does not walk away.
Severus sits in the shadowed corner of the Slytherin dormitory, wand pressed against the pale skin of his forearm. His sleeve is rolled up, the candlelight flickering over the ridges and shallow lines crisscrossing his wrist. Some are old, ghostly white, forgotten wounds that never quite fade. Others are fresh, angry red, barely scabbed over. Proof. A map of his own failings, written into flesh.
He presses harder, a sharp intake of breath, and draws the tip of the wand down, slow and deliberate. The skin parts like it is meant to. Like it understands. Like it does not fight him the way she does.
A bloom of red wells to the surface, warm and glistening. He watches it bead, watches the way it trembles before spilling over, carving a path down his wrist. There is a moment—a single, exquisite second—where nothing else exists but this: the sting, the slow ebb of something deeper than blood.
And then, release.
He exhales, shoulders slumping, and the world dulls. The ache in his ribs, the rotting jealousy in his gut, the sick, endless longing—it quiets, if only for a moment.
He does not sob, not this time.