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December 1975
Lily’s parents’ bedroom was really not where Severus had thought he would end up tonight, but here he was nonetheless.
He was sitting gingerly on the edge of their bed, trying to leave as little of a trace as possible, in no small part due to just how wrong it felt for him to be in here at all, while Lily, in quite the opposite fashion, was rifling through her father’s closet with reckless abandon.
She had invited Severus to a holiday party hosted by one of her old primary school friends, and when Severus had shown up in his usual generic slightly-dressed-up look (a white button-down shirt tucked into brown pants, which was really all he had for a fancy occasion and looked just fine, thank you very much), she had been appalled at the lack of festivity in his attire. Severus supposed she had a point; wearing an emerald-green dress that sparkled with flecks of silver under the light, her hair spilling down her back in waves of scarlet and adorned with white barrettes, Lily looked like the Ghost of Christmas Past herself. Or perhaps a well-decorated Christmas tree.
Still, there were numerous things making Severus nervous about this party. For one, he had no idea why Lily would even have invited him. He wasn’t likely to know any of the attendees, and any he did know likely only remembered him as that odd little unwashed Snape boy in the ill-fitting clothes, which was not a reputation he was especially keen to have to contend with.
What’s worse, they were all going to be Muggles. By this point in his life, Severus was getting ready to leave the Muggle world behind. He had made peace with the fact that the world he was born into had never wanted him there, and he was content to move forward in the magical world, the world that held his future. Yet Lily seemed stubbornly rooted in the Muggle world even as she displayed capabilities in witchcraft that constantly awed Severus despite having known her since they were children. And she certainly loved the magical world too, it just seemed that she wanted to have both. Not just a past in the Muggle world and a future in the magical world, but a future where both could coexist.
Maybe it was idealism, maybe it was naivete. What it wasn’t, was reality. At this point, Severus was sure it just wasn’t possible.
He just hoped a situation like this party tonight wouldn’t lead yet again to one of their arguments over these matters, that had become more and more frequent over the past months.
There would certainly be fodder for one. Severus could only hope the fuse wouldn’t be lit.
But declining an invitation from Lily—with all this baggage left unsaid, but he was sure Lily would understand it implicitly; she always had—was certain to be worse for their increasingly strained friendship. And maybe a night together would do them some good in the end.
Besides, Severus was never one to deprive himself of time with the person he loved more than anyone else in the world. He’d deprive himself of a lot, but Lily was someone to be treasured, kept as long as humanly possible.
Even if her ideas were completely and utterly ridiculous.
“You’ve got to be taking the piss.”
Lily’s pleading eyes indicated that she was not, in fact, taking the piss.
“It’s the most festive one he has!” She protested.
She was holding up a long-sleeved button-down shirt in quite possibly the most garish orange Severus had ever seen.
“It’s not even Christmas colors, Lily!”
She sighed.
“Well, I’m not working with much, he’s gained a bit of weight these past few years.”
Severus stood up and took a look for himself, but he had to (begrudgingly) admit that she was probably right. The more tasteful maroon or deep green shirts that Severus could maybe actually see himself wearing looked to be at least a few sizes too big for him.
“What would he even wear this to?!” He said in a voice laden thick with disdain, picking up one of the sleeves with two fingers as if it were a piece of rubbish from the side of the road or the like. Really, he knew he had no right to act like this when some of the clothes in his own closet were close to actually being rubbish, but this was certainly a special case.
“Dunno. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him in it. Probably hasn’t worn it since Tuney was born, I reckon.” She paused, and a playful smile spread across her lips. “Maybe it needs some love. It’s probably lonely back here in the closet all alone, never being picked out.”
Severus grimaced.
“Come on, Sev, I know being joyless is sort of your thing at this point, but won’t you please wear something bright tonight? For me?”
The begging in her voice was accompanied by the return of that damn pleading look in her eyes. It was her secret weapon, and she knew it. Severus had never once said no to that look, and he certainly wasn’t starting now.
(To be fair, he had certainly used puppy-eyes on Lily more than once, too. It was sort of a mutually assured destruction situation.)
So despite the shirt looking rather like a traffic cone and smelling faintly of mothballs, Severus dutifully took it from her.
“You owe me one,” he grumbled, beginning to unbutton the shirt he had come over in.
“I’ll pay you back right now,” she said with a light tap on his nose, then turning and leaving the room before Severus could respond.
Severus didn’t know whether he should be disappointed that Lily apparently hadn’t been interested in seeing him without a shirt on, or relieved that he could change shirts in peace without trying to flex what little abdominal muscles he had and worrying whether his bony physique would put Lily off from even wanting to be seen with him at this party after all.
Because there was no denying he wanted her. That he cherished every look, every touch, even if it was only a brief moment of contact between her index finger and the tip of his nose. Even if he didn’t know what to do about it.
And when she walked into the room wearing a wrap dress in just as garish of an orange as the shirt he was now wearing, he could do nothing but smile in awe about how she somehow made the color look effortlessly beautiful, vivacious, exuding joy—festive, one might say. Her crimson hair, her verdant eyes, the flush in her cheeks accented by the lightest dusting of freckles, her body draped in vibrant orange—she was color, life itself.
“Now I have an excuse to wear this,” Lily said, her smile pervading her voice. She did a little twirl to emphasize her excitement, and suddenly Severus felt like none of the potential embarrassment mattered. Not when Lily was happy.
“You look great,” he somehow managed to say without his voice shaking, and Lily smiled even wider, which made it all worth it.
“You don’t look so bad yourself,” she replied, “and I think we both look quite festive. Like a couple of Christmas oranges!”
Severus laughed, a laugh that almost caught in his throat when Lily threaded her arm through his. She nodded resolutely, and they headed downstairs, tossing Severus’s old shirt into Lily’s bedroom on the way.
As they made their way to leave, they came across Petunia in the living room. She had been there, sitting on the couch, since Severus had arrived, but now he thought she looked rather dull in her muted blue sweater.
She looked up from the magazine she was reading (surely a vapid gossip rag, Severus thought) and cocked a judgmental eyebrow at the two of them.
“You’re wearing that?” She asked, wrinkling her nose as if she had smelled something rotten.
“Yes,” Lily answered matter-of-factly. “Have you got something to say about it?”
“I suppose if you want to wear orange as a ginger, be my guest,” Petunia said, rolling her eyes and turning back to her magazine.
Lily didn’t reply, only gave Petunia a quick two-fingered salute as soon as she was sure she wasn’t looking, and pulled Severus out the front door behind her with more force than usual.
Even in the dim moonlight, Severus could see that Lily’s expression, just moments ago brimming with joy, had gone stony.
He didn’t know what to say to fix it. It was something he had never quite understood, why Lily—someone who could move mountains without lifting a finger—gave any sort of thought to the opinions of a mere Muggle—Petunia, at that.
He would never understand what it was like to have a sibling, he knew that. He had always been alone. But he had Lily.
And Lily—he hoped—had him.
So instead of the more practical advice he would’ve given in the past, tonight he just said, “You know, we’re a couple of Christmas oranges and she’s just a lump of coal.”
At that, Lily laughed, and the smile slowly crept back across her face. Her eyes shone under the moonlight, green and gleaming, like a holly leaf shimmering under the glow of a Yuletide moon—or hell, like the perfect little stem on an orange.
Right now, she was joy itself. And Severus would do his level best to share in it.
—
Maybe Severus wasn’t so great at the whole “joy” thing. Or at least he wasn’t good at parties.
Sure, Lily had introduced him to her old Muggle classmates. None of them had gone to the same school as Severus (none of them were from his side of town, of course, and besides, he tried his best to block primary school out of his mind as much as possible), but some of them appeared to remember him from the neighborhood if the slight trepidation he could detect behind their eyes at hearing his name was any indication. They were polite enough, complimenting his and Lily’s outfit coordination, which admittedly always made Severus smile, if only slightly; he was beginning to quite enjoy their little numbers, even if just because Lily was clearly having fun with it.
But the rest of their conversations ended up being rather dry. The most interesting thing about him was the magic he was forbidden to speak of in this company—that was where his passion lay, and he wasn’t good at feigning interest in the mundane. So he mostly hung back as Lily and her friends discussed fond childhood memories, trying not to feel resentment at the fact that most of his fond memories from childhood revolved around Lily, when he wasn’t even present for some of hers.
“Do you remember that time Phil Thompson managed to sneak a whoopie cushion under her chair?” Lily’s friend Diane was saying through tears of laughter.
Lily nodded through her giggles in response. The three of them were sitting at the kitchen table, laughing over stories of yet another one of their old teachers—or at least Lily and Diane were. Severus was just sitting there trying to force a polite smile and feeling rather extraneous.
He gently nudged Lily and told her he was going off to the loo. That at least wasn’t a lie for the first few minutes, but eventually, someone began knocking at the door and Severus figured he couldn’t stall there forever without causing a scene, and then he’d really have a problem with Lily. So he found a little corner in the living room with a chair he could sit down in, as far as he could from the Muggle partygoers milling about and conversing, seemingly having much more jolly of a holiday that he was having now. Easy for them to do when they didn’t need their best friend like they needed the air they breathed, while that very friend had all these memories, all these portions of herself—a whole nother life even—that they could never grasp. Easy for them to do when the world they shared and even the in-between-ness that tied them together wasn’t feeling further and further away by the moment.
He tried to push down his feelings of neglect, of not being wanted, of not being needed, and to just focus on the tangible, the here and now.
A radio sat on a small table next to him, tuned to the Christmas station, of course. Karen Carpenter crooned through the speaker, sort of a soppy number that Severus would normally have scoffed at, but right now, it managed to cut straight to his heart.
Holidays are joyful
There's always something new
But every day is a holiday
When I'm near to you
Suddenly, he began to wish he wasn’t wearing orange.
He crossed his arms and looked down at his feet, letting the music go in one ear and out the other until he could gather the composure to go find Lily again and have another go at this party business.
It was only a few moments later, however, that he felt a tap on his shoulder and looked up to see Lily standing over him, looking a bit sheepish. She pushed back the cascading waves of hair falling in her face, and Severus thought her cheeks might have looked a little pink as she sat down, cross-legged, on the floor in front of him.
“Sorry, Sev. I know those conversations probably aren’t all too interesting to you.”
Severus shrugged. She was right, of course, but admitting to Lily that he had felt hurt—that there were chinks in his armor, that he was soft and fleshy enough to be hurt—was not something he very much wanted to do.
Clearly, she sensed his need to change the subject without him saying a word, asking instead, “What are you doing?”
“Listening to the radio.”
“And how’s that going?”
Now, it was John Lennon, with that “Happy Xmas” song that had already become rather tired and trite to Severus even after only a few years of radio play.
“Pretty shit, to be honest.”
Lily began to laugh, and Severus couldn’t help but laugh too.
“This song’s a bunch of sanctimonious tripe, don’t you think?” Severus said as their laughter wound down.
Lily shrugged, a bashful look on her face.
“I dunno, I think it’s sort of nice.”
They were both still and silent for a moment while the song continued to play, and for the first time, Severus didn't just listen to the lyrics. He felt them.
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear
War is over
If you want it
He thought of the struggle between the two worlds they both precariously straddled, of everything going on around them in the midst of this holiday and the ever-forward march of time its coming signified. And he looked into Lily’s eyes and saw fear, but also a glimmer of hope fighting through it. And then he understood.
“No, you’re right, it is sort of nice, isn’t it?” He said instead.
Lily’s eyes crinkled with joy, her smile widening. She leaned forward, on her knees, so that her face was only inches from Severus’s. He could feel her breath, and if he listened close enough he thought he could hear the steady thumping of her heart. Or maybe it was his own.
She lowered her voice, looking around to make sure none of the surrounding Muggles were listening in on what she was about to say.
“You know, Sev, to be perfectly honest, half the reason I brought you here is because I sort of have trouble talking to Diane these days. It’s sad because we were such good friends back in primary school, but it’s tough when there’s this whole thing I can’t share with her, my whole present and future really. All these forces shaping my life that she can’t even know about.” She paused and looked right into Severus’s eyes. “But you get it, Sev.”
Severus nodded. It’s not like he had any friends before her, but he had felt similarly unmoored being bounced around by the chaos of two worlds he didn’t fully belong to.
Maybe they were both unmoored. Maybe the only thing they were moored to was each other.
Lily leaned in so close he could smell the fresh, clean scent of her shampoo. She whispered in his ear, a giggle lacing her words.
“And the other half was to do this.”
That was when she caressed his cheek and brought him in close to her, looking into his eyes for a brief and wondrous moment before planting her lips firmly on his. She was soft and she was warm and she was sublime.
And when she finally broke away, a sheepish smile gracing her lips, she looked like hope itself. She was red and orange and green; she was a tree standing in the bleak, colorless winter refusing to give up and shed its leaves.
In the midst of decay, she was life—radiant, heartrending, resplendent life—persevering. And Severus wanted nothing more than to stand defiantly in the snow beside her until the spring broke through again.