Chapter Text
The thing about dying friendships, was that they never had the decency to end properly. No dramatic row in the courtyard, no declarations of eternal enmity, no clean break that would let you mourn and move on. Instead, it was like watching someone walk away from you down a very long corridor, getting smaller and smaller until you couldn't quite tell if they were still there or if you were just imagining the shape of them in the distance.
It began with small disappointments. A Tuesday in September when she waited by the greenhouses after Herbology, their usual spot for walking to Transfiguration together. She stood there like a proper mug for ten minutes, watching the Hufflepuffs stream past, before Mary McDonald mentioned offhand that she'd seen Severus heading to class with Mulciber and Avery twenty minutes ago.
The smiles died first. Those rare moments when she'd catch him off guard with a terrible joke or a bit of gossip about Slughorn's latest party, when his face would crack open and show the boy underneath all that defensive posturing, they became extinct sometime around Christmas. She'd tested it, made increasingly desperate attempts: remembered that he kept losing his good quills, brought him crystallized ginger from Honeydukes, even nicked a rare potions text from the Restricted Section that she knew he'd been after. Each offering met with the same flat stare, the same muttered thanks that meant piss off, can't you see I'm busy becoming someone you won't recognize?
By Easter, their conversations had dwindled to nothing but faint echoes. "All right?" became their entire vocabulary, two words that had to carry the weight of seven years. All right meant I see you've chosen them. All right meant I still check if you're at meals. All right meant I hate this but I don't know how to stop it.
"All right?" she'd say, passing him in the corridor.
"All right," he'd respond, already moving past her.
She learned to calculate the exact angle needed to avoid his sight lines in the Great Hall. Thirty-seven degrees northeast from the Gryffindor table, blocked partially by the Ravenclaw fifth-years if she sat between Dorcas and that tall boy from Hufflepuff. But sometimes she'd miscalculate, look up from her meal to find him glaring at her with such undisguised disgust that her appetite would curdle.
It was the laughter that did it, she realized later. Her crime wasn't sitting with the Gryffindors; it was laughing at Sirius Black's impression of Professor Binns. The impression was just genuinely funny, Black had charmed conjured chalk dust to swirl around his head like Binns's ghostly aura, and she'd laughed without thinking, a proper belly laugh that made her snort pumpkin juice. When she'd looked up, still giggling, Severus was staring at her like she'd personally betrayed him. Like her finding anything about James Potter's best mate funny was equivalent to choosing sides in a war she hadn't realized they were fighting.
After that, she stopped looking for him in the halls.
The summer between sixth and seventh year arrived heavy and inevitable. Lily had prepared for it like a general planning a campaign: library books stacked by her bed, letters half-written to Mary and Marlene, a summer job application to Boots. Anything to fill the Severus-shaped hole in her days.
Her mother found the wine on sale at the Co-op, three bottles of something German with an unpronounceable name and a label featuring a castle that looked like it was melting. "For Petunia's visit," she had said. Christmas had gone well enough. Petunia seemed determined to forget about the singing teapot and what had happened at Grunnings, willing them into just distant memories that could be smoothed over with enough wine and careful conversation. But Christmas had been without Vernon, whose presence turned Petunia's careful tolerance into brittle anxiety.
Petunia arrived the next Saturday in Vernon's new Ford Cortina, mustard yellow and polished to a shine that hurt to look at. She emerged from the passenger side clutching a bottle of wine, proper wine, with a cork and everything, and wearing a dress that looked like it came from somewhere that wasn't the church jumble sale.
"Lily." She nodded, carefully. "You look... well."
"Liar," Lily said, but not unkindly. She knew what she looked like: hair gone mad in the humidity, last year's sundress let out at the seams, ash on her fingers from the cigarette she'd been smoking when the car pulled up.
They drank Petunia's wine first, the three Evans women arranged in their lawn chairs while Vernon nobly volunteered to fix the boiler, which mostly seemed to involve banging things with a wrench and asking loudly where they kept the proper tools. By the second bottle, back to the cheap German stuff, Petunia had loosened enough to complain about Vernon's mother, who kept suggesting they serve ham at the reception, while pointedly ignoring the garden gnome rummaging through her hydrangeas, drawn by magic she refused to really acknowledge.
"Remember when you used to put on shows? Pretending to be me when I was young?” their mother said, absently stroking the cat who'd grudgingly accepted her lap as acceptable. "In the front room, with the curtains as a stage?"
"Lily always forgot her lines," Petunia added, almost smiling.
"Did not!" But she had. Every time. She'd get distracted by the way the light hit the curtains or the pattern on the carpet or the sound of her father laughing from his chair.
"Whatever happened to that awful boy?" Petunia asked, three glasses in and pretending she didn't know his actual name. "The one from the playground?"
"Nothing," Lily said, the word dropping like a stone into her wine glass. "Nothing happened to him."
That was the truth of it, wasn't it? Nothing had happened.
The Head Girl badge arrived with her Hogwarts letter on a Tuesday that smelled of rain about to happen. She'd stared at it for five solid minutes, turning the metal over in her hands, checking the letter twice to make sure they hadn't sent it to the wrong student.
The badge felt heavier than it should, all that responsibility compressed into a bit of metal and enamel. It was a fierce but private pride. They'd chosen her. Dumbledore himself had decided she was worth this, despite her background, despite her lack of discipline, despite not being the kind of perfect student she had tried to be.
She practiced her badge-wearing in the mirror, trying different positions on her robes. Too high looked eager. Too low looked like she didn't care. She settled on just above her heart, where it caught the light when she moved.
"He'll have to acknowledge this," she told her reflection, and hated herself for the very thought. But it was true, Severus had always respected achievement, had always noticed who got what marks, who earned what recognition. Maybe this would be enough to warrant one of his rare nods, a "well done" muttered in passing, some acknowledgment that she still existed in his universe.
The platform on September 1st was its usual chaos, but Lily felt different walking through it, the badge a small weight that changed her center of gravity. She saw him by the train, already in his school robes, surrounded by his usual crowd, Mulciber laughing at something, Rosier demonstrating some wand movement that looked like nothing good.
Their eyes met across the platform. She straightened, throwing her hair over her shoulder so the badge was visible, catching the morning sun.
Then he turned away from her, without even a nod.
But the real knife didn't come until the Prefects' carriage, where she walked in to find-
"Evans!" James Potter practically bounced out of his seat, his own Head Boy badge gleaming like he'd already polished it three times. "Can you believe it? McGonagall must've put in a good word, though Merlin knows why she'd recommend me after the whole incident with-“ He caught sight of her face and his grin faltered a bit. "You all right?"
"Fine," she bit out, throwing herself into the farthest seat. "Just… processing. Obviously."
"Yeah, bit of a shock, innit? Me being responsible?" He was trying to make her laugh, she realized, trying to ease whatever he saw on her face. "Look, I know we haven't always... that is, I've been a bit of a prat-“
"A bit?" The word came out sharper than intended.
"A lot of a prat," he amended, having the grace to look embarrassed. "But I promise I'll take this seriously. No more hexing Slytherins in the corridors, no more setting off dungbombs in-“
"It's fine, Potter." She was already exhausted, and they hadn't even reached Scotland. "Just... let's just get through the meeting."
The meeting was torture. Sitting next to Potter while he charmed the other prefects with his easy confidence, watching them warm to him despite his reputation. He was good at it, she had to admit, knew everyone's names, made jokes that included rather than excluded, took notes in handwriting that was surprisingly neat. Everything about him was surprisingly something: surprisingly thoughtful, surprisingly organized, surprisingly not hexing anyone for the entire train ride.
It made her angry in ways she couldn't really articulate.
They had to patrol together after the feast. Castle corridors after midnight, making sure the younger students found their dormitories, that no one was already planning first-night mischief. Potter kept trying to make conversation, pointing out portraits he'd discovered during various escapades, telling her stories about the castle that were probably fascinating if she could focus on anything besides the echo of their footsteps.
That's when she saw him. Severus, coming up from the dungeons with a group of seventh-year Slytherins, their faces sharp with contempt. He stopped when he saw her, his eyes tracking from her face to Potter beside her to their badges to the careful foot of distance between them that still felt too close.
His face went through a series of expressions too quick to catalog before settling on disgust. Not just disgust: revulsion, like she'd finally confirmed every worst assumption he'd been nursing. She felt herself shrink, actually felt her shoulders pull in like she could make herself smaller, less visible, less of a disappointment.
"All right, Snape?" Potter said, and there was something in his voice that made Lily want to hex him severely. Not cruelty exactly, but a kind of casual superiority, the voice of someone who'd won without trying.
Severus didn't answer. He pushed past them, his shoulder hitting Potter's hard enough to make him stumble, and Lily caught a whiff of something acrid, whatever potion he'd been brewing, probably, something that burned and transformed and couldn't be taken back.
"Charming as always," Potter muttered, but when he looked at Lily his expression softened. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," she said automatically, but her voice came out wrong, too high, like she'd been running.
"We don't have to patrol together if you don't want," he offered. "I can talk to McGonagall, work out different schedules-“
"I said I'm fine." The words came out harsh enough to make him step back.
She was not fine.
But she straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and continued the patrol. Because what else was there to do? Severus had made his choice, written it in every sneer and silence and turned back. She could make hers too, even if it was just choosing to keep walking when everything in her wanted to run.
"Come on, Potter," she said, her voice steadier now. "Let's finish this round."
She could have Apparated straight home, but the cat, that still half feral beast, currently yowling from inside her carrier like she was being murdered, didn't take to Apparition well. Last time Lily had tried it, she'd arrived home covered in sick and claw marks, and spent an hour coaxing the traumatized creature out from under the boiler. She stood at the stop with her trunk and her violently annoyed half feral beast, watching the drizzle turn to proper rain, the kind that seemed to fall upwards as well as down.
The bus to Cokeworth was late, because of course it was. She stood at the stop with her trunk, watching the drizzle turn to proper rain, the kind that seemed to fall upwards as well as down. Her Head Girl badge caught the light from the street lamp, and she unpinned it, shoving it deep in her pocket. Two weeks without having to be responsible for anyone but herself. Two weeks without prefect duties or arbitrating dormitory disputes or sitting through meetings with James bloody Potter.
James. She worried that thought like a loose tooth as the bus finally wheezed to a stop. He'd asked her out again yesterday, right in the middle of the Great Hall at breakfast. Down on one knee like they were in some ridiculous romance novel, offering her a chocolate heart the size of a Quaffle.
"Evans! Light of my life! Fire of my-“
"Get up, you prat." The whole thing was so absurd, so perfectly Potter in its complete disregard for dignity and good sense.
"Is that a yes?"
"That's a 'get up before I hex your knees permanently kneeling.’”
He'd bounced up, undefeated as always. “I wouldn't mind that, actually. The position has its charms if you know what I mean. I'll take that as a maybe.”
The worst part was that everyone expected her to say yes eventually. Mary had actually taken bets on when she'd crack, with half the common room joining in, and even McGonagall had given her pointed looks after James volunteered to help with the first-year orientation, looks that clearly said "he's trying, dear."
The house was cold when she let herself in, the damp cold that settled into brick and wouldn't shift. Her mother had left a note on the kitchen table: "Double shift at the pub. Food in the fridge. Don't wait up."
Lily turned on all the lights and the telly, needing noise and warmth to fill the empty spaces. The kitchen table was swamped with bags of sugared almonds waiting to be wrapped in little net bags waiting to be made into wedding favors. Some detective program was on, the kind where everyone spoke in clipped accents and the murder was always committed by the person with the fanciest hat. She peeled off her school robes and collapsed on the sofa in her jeans and jumper, already feeling her bones go loose with the promise of nothing to do.
Maybe she should date James.
Not because she wanted to… god, the boy practically preened every time she was within ten feet of him. But because... because what else was there?
She pictured it: saying yes to James in the middle of the Great Hall, letting him crow about it to the whole school. Would Severus even look up from his breakfast? Would his hand tighten on his fork, just for a second? Would he care at all?
Probably not. He'd probably just share another of those cryptic looks with one of his friends, the kind that made her skin crawl because she knew they were planning something, knew it was probably dark, knew she couldn't do anything about it because he wouldn't talk to her anymore.
She grabbed a handful of the sugared almonds from the cupboard instead of bothering with what was in the fridge, figuring her mother wouldn't notice. They were stale, the sugar coating gone gritty, but she ate them anyway, standing at the kitchen counter instead of sitting down like her mother always told her not to.
She'd thought about going to Petunia's for Easter. Her sister had invited her, in that careful way that meant Vernon had probably protested. "You could help with wedding planning," Petunia had written. "We need to finalize the table arrangements."
But the thought of two weeks discussing napkin colours, nodding along as Petunia insisted everything be "absolutely normal, not a hint of oddness," and whether Vernon's sister, who was "absolutely ghastly, Lily, you have no idea”, could be seated near the back without causing a scene made her want to scream. At least here she could sprawl on her bed until two in the afternoon, reading terrible romance novels she'd nicked from her mother's collection and eating beans on toast for every meal.
The telly detective was explaining his convoluted solution to the murder. It was the butler, because it was always the butler, except when it was the spurned lover or the secret heir. Lily pulled the afghan from the back of the sofa and wrapped herself in it, breathing in the smell of home: her mother's cigarettes, the lamb fat from a thousand Sunday roasts, that peculiar mixture of hairspray and chip oil that was uniquely theirs.
Two weeks. Sixteen days really. Sixteen days to sleep and read and eat crap and not think about Severus or James or N.E.W.T.s or what came after. Two weeks to pretend she was just Lily Evans of Cokeworth, not Lily Evans, Head Girl and maybe top of her class and going places, according to everyone but herself.
The third day of Easter holidays, Lily found herself standing at the corner where Spinner's End should be. Would be, if she let it. The secret sat heavy behind her ribs, a key she could turn whenever she wanted, but turning it felt like she was about to die.
"Going to the shops," she'd told her mother that morning, pulling on her jacket with studied casualness. "Might be a while. Thought I'd walk around a bit."
Her mother had barely looked up. "Don't forget milk on your way back."
It was a lie, but what was the alternative? "Actually, Mum, I'm going to sit in Severus's abandoned house like some pathetic ghost because I can't let go of someone who's already let go of me"? That would go down well with the tea and biscuits.
She whispered the secret, and the house materialized like a photograph developing in reverse, all the details filling in until it stood there, solid and undeniable. The door wasn't locked. Why would it be? Who else could even see it to break in?
Inside, the house held the silence of places that had been abandoned. Waiting for someone. Dust motes floated in the weak sunlight that filtered through the boards over the windows, and she could see her footprints from last time still visible on the floor. His were there too, larger, leading to the kitchen and back, to the stairs and up. She followed his path, had to stretch her stride to match his. Recent enough that the dust hadn't settled over them yet. So he had been here over Christmas. Just not when she was.
The sitting room pulled at her. His books were still there, lined up on those makeshift shelves with the kind of precision that was purely Severus. She stood in the doorway, hands shoved deep in her pockets to keep from reaching out. Once, she would have pulled down a volume without asking, sprawled on the floor to read while he worked on their potions. Now the books felt like museum pieces, things to be looked at but not touched.
A mug sat on the arm of the chair, the one that didn't quite match the others, with the chip on the rim. Tea had dried in the bottom, leaving a brown ring that looked like a watermark on old paper. She could picture him there, folding himself into the chair with that improbable angularity of his, probably reading something Dark and theoretical while the tea went cold. He'd never remembered to drink tea while it was hot. She'd always had to remind him.
The stairs creaked under her weight, each sound too loud in the silence. She hadn't been up here since that summer before sixth year, and part of her expected to find it changed. But his room was exactly as it had always been: narrow bed pushed against the wall, desk under the window, everything sparse and clean and careful.
What was wrong with her? Mooning about in his empty house like some character from one of her mother's romance novels, the tragic heroine pining for her lost love. Except they'd never been that, had they? Just friends. Best friends, but still just friends, at least in his mind. All the wanting had been on her side, locked up tight where it couldn't ruin everything. Fat lot of good that had done.
She sat on the bed, then immediately stood up, the mattress springs creaking accusingly. This was his space, his bed where he slept and dreamed and probably never once thought of her the way she thought of him. Sitting on it felt like a violation, like reading someone's diary or going through their pockets.
A piece of parchment on the desk caught her eye. His handwriting, that cramped script she knew better than her own, but she forced herself to look away. Whatever it was, spell creation, essay draft, letter to someone who wasn't her, it wasn't her business anymore. She had no right to his thoughts, his plans, his secrets. He'd made that clear.
Time went strange in the empty house. Minutes or hours, she couldn't tell. She drifted from room to room, careful not to disturb anything, like she was visiting a crime scene where the crime was the death of a friendship. The kitchen still held their sandwich plates from that last summer, washed and stacked neatly by the sink. The table where they'd worked on the Felix Felicis instructions, where she'd watched his hands move so carefully, where she'd swallowed down confession after confession.
What did it say about her, that she kept coming here? That she couldn't move on, couldn't let go, couldn't accept that some things just died no matter how hard you tried to keep them alive? Petunia had Vernon now, was building a whole life without magic, without her weird sister complicating things. Mary had Bertram from Hufflepuff, they were probably snogging in some corner of the castle right now. Even her mother had the pub regulars, the salon gossips, a whole world that didn't include Lily except as a footnote.
And what did Lily have? A badge that meant nothing outside of school, top marks that would matter until the moment she graduated, and a boy who might love her but not the way she needed. Oh, and this: sneaking into an abandoned house to not-quite-touch things that belonged to someone who'd made it clear he didn't want her around anymore.
Pathetic. The word tasted bitter, but true.
The front door slammed shut, the sound explosive in the silence. Lily's heart jumped to her throat, but it was just the wind catching it. Time to go.
She left the way she'd come, but this time careful to step in her own footprints. Outside, Spinner's End vanished the moment she stopped looking at it, folded back into whatever pocket of reality held things like that.
The walk home was longer than it should have been. She stopped at the shop for milk, the normal world reasserting itself in the form of prices and small talk and the headlines on the newspapers. "Economic Crisis Deepens." "Callaghan Promises Action." The regular world, carrying on while she played ghost in houses that didn't exist.
Her mother was home when she got back, feet up on the coffee table, painting her toenails a violent shade of coral.
"You were gone a while," her mother observed, not looking up from her careful strokes. "Nice walk?"
"Yeah," Lily said. "Really nice."
She'd go back tomorrow. And the day after. She knew she would, knew it like she knew her own name. Because what else was there to do with love that had nowhere to go? You haunted the empty spaces where it used to live, touching nothing, disturbing nothing, just existing in the remnants of what had been.
She was eighteen years old and already a ghost.
The sofa at Spinner's End had developed a deep sag that fit her body perfectly, like it remembered her from all those summers ago. Lily hadn't meant to fall asleep, but her nights had gone all arse-backwards lately: up until three reading her mother's Mills & Boons, then dragging herself out of bed at noon, then unable to sleep again until dawn. A proper mess of a sleep schedule that left her foggy and strange, existing in the wrong parts of the day.
The afternoon light through the boarded windows had been hypnotic, striped shadows moving across the ceiling as clouds passed overhead. She'd only meant to rest her eyes for a moment, curled on her side with her jacket pulled over her like a blanket.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
The voice cut through the dream like cold water, but for a moment she couldn't place it. Dream-Severus was still fading on the horizon, still walking away, so who-? Her eyes opened slowly, the room swimming into focus through the haze of sleep. A figure stood over her, backlit by the amber window-light, and for three heartbeats she couldn't tell who it was.
Then her vision sharpened and it was Severus, actual Severus, standing over her with shadows under his eyes and his jaw tight.
She scrambled upright, her heart hammering against her ribs. The indent her body had left in the cushions was still warm, but the light had changed completely, late afternoon now, maybe five o'clock. How long had he been standing there? His coat was dry despite the drizzle outside, his breathing even.
“I-“ Her voice came out cracked. She cleared her throat, tried again, but what was there to say? Sorry I broke into your abandoned house to moon about like some pathetic ghost? Sorry I can't seem to let go even though you clearly have?
He just stood there, looking down at her with an expression she couldn't read. Not angry exactly, but not... anything else either. Blank as a wall. He was thinner than at Christmas, she noticed.
"I'll go." She pushed herself up from the sofa, her knees protesting. "I'll just… I’ll leave."
Her feet had gone numb. She stumbled slightly, caught herself on the arm of the sofa, face burning with embarrassment. Of all the ways she'd imagined seeing him again, this wasn't it. Not clumsy and sleep-stupid and caught somewhere she had no right to be.
He didn't move, didn't step back to let her pass. Just watched her struggle to find her balance like she was something mildly interesting happening in his peripheral vision.
She was almost to the door when she heard him move, the hollow creak of the floorboards by the bookshelf. She glanced back to see him pulling volumes from the shelves, stacking them on the floor. Taking inventory? Looking for something specific?
Her hand was on the door handle. She should just leave.
Instead, she heard herself asking, "Was it all bad?"
He paused, a book half-pulled from the shelf. "What?"
"Us." The word came out small, almost lost in the dusty silence. "Was it all bad?"
For a moment, she thought he wouldn't answer. He stood there with his back to her, one hand still on the spine of whatever Dark Arts manual he was retrieving. She could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers tightened on the leather binding.
"No." The word was quiet, but it landed like a stone in still water. "It wasn't."
"Then why?" The words tumbled out before she could stop them. “Why was it worthless to you then? Why did you throw it away? For what? For them?" She didn't have to specify who 'them' were. Mulciber with his cruel laugh, Avery with his pureblood sneers, all those boys who collected around Dark magic like flies around rot. "For all your Dark Arts books and your new friends who think I'm dirt under their shoes?"
He went very still. Not the stillness of thought, but the stillness of someone deciding whether to speak or stay silent forever. The book in his hand trembled slightly, just once, before he placed it carefully on the stack.
The silence stretched until she couldn't stand it anymore. All the hurt and anger and confusion of the past two years compressed into a single moment of fury. She grabbed the nearest thing, a slim volume from the pile he'd made, and hurled it at him.
Her aim was terrible. It hit the wall a foot to his left, pages fluttering before it landed spine-up on the floor. But it made him turn, finally, and the look on his face-
"Is it because I'm a mudblood?"
The word tasted badly in her mouth, but she spat it at him anyway. Let him hear it. Let him choke on it. Let him remember that this was what his new friends called her, what they all thought she was, what he apparently thought too since he'd chosen them over-
"Don't call yourself that." His voice cracked like a whip, and suddenly he was moving, crossing the space between them in three sharp strides. Not touching, he wouldn't touch her, hadn't touched her in years, but close enough that she could reach him.
She laughed, ugly and bitter. "Why not? That's what I am, isn't it?" Her voice was rising, going shrill, but she couldn't stop it. “Why shouldn't I call myself what you apparently think I am?"
She was picking the fight on purpose now, hurling the word at him like a curse because after graduation there would be nothing left to fight about. No more shared corridors, no more chance encounters, no more pretending they might somehow fix this. If this was their last time alone together, she'd make him say it out loud.
She could see his hands clenched at his sides, see the muscle jumping in his jaw, see him struggling with words that wouldn't come or couldn't come or that he wouldn't let come.
But he didn't deny it. Didn't say she was wrong. He just stood there, looking at her like she was breaking his heart and he hated her for it.
The moment stretched until it snapped. Lily turned, wrenched the door open so hard it banged against the wall. She didn't look back, couldn't look back, but she heard him move, one step forward, like he might follow, might finally say something that mattered.
But no words came. Just the soft thud of him picking up the book she'd thrown, the whisper of pages being smoothed back into place.
She walked out into the grey Cokeworth evening and the door clicked shut behind her, and Spinner's End vanished like it had never been there at all.
Just like they had.
The drizzle had turned properly cold, the kind that worked its way through your clothes no matter what you wore. Lily walked fast, arms wrapped around herself, trying to outpace the trembling that had nothing to do with the weather. Her shoes slapped against the wet pavement, each step taking her further from Spinner's End, from him, from whatever that had been.
Don't think about it. Don't think about his face when she'd said that word. Don't think about how he'd moved toward her, how for just a second she'd thought-
Footsteps behind her. Quick ones, almost running.
Her body knew before her brain did. The stupid, pathetic hope that lived in her chest like a disease flared hot and bright, even as she told herself it was nothing. Someone hurrying home from the shops. Kids running from trouble. Anyone but-
A hand grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around with enough force that she stumbled, catching herself against a lamp post. The metal was cold and slick under her palm, real in a way nothing else felt.
Severus stood there, chest heaving like he'd sprinted the whole way. His hair was plastered to his face with rain or sweat or both, and his eyes-
Christ, his eyes.
Red-rimmed and wild, the careful blankness from before completely shattered. He'd been crying. Severus Snape, who'd endured the entirety of his life with his jaw locked tight, had been crying.
She opened her mouth to say something, what? Get away from me? I'm sorry? Why now, why couldn't you have cried for us two years ago?, but no words came.
He was still gripping her shoulder, his fingers digging in through her jacket like he was afraid she'd disappear if he let go. His mouth moved like he was trying to speak too, but nothing emerged except harsh breathing.
The street lamp flickered overhead, casting them in and out of shadow. She could see every detail of his face in those flashes: the way his jaw worked like he was grinding glass between his teeth, the tear tracks still visible on his cheeks.
This was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? Some sign that she'd mattered. But now, faced with the evidence, all she felt was a terrible ache, like something vital had been torn out of both of them and left them bleeding on a Cokeworth street.
One moment she was just standing there. The next, she'd grabbed his face between her hands and pulled him down, crushing her mouth against his with all the desperation of years of wanting, of loving, of losing.
His lips were cold and tasted of salt. She kissed him like she was drowning, like he was air, like she could pour all her fury and hurt and pathetic, endless love into this one moment and make him understand what he'd thrown away.
For a heartbeat, he froze. Then his hands came up, whether to push her away or pull her closer she'd never know, because reality crashed over her like ice water.
What was she doing?
She wrenched herself back, stumbling, her lips burning, her whole body burning with mortification. His face was a study in shock, mouth slightly open, eyes wide, and she couldn’t, she couldn't look at him, couldn't face what she'd just done, couldn't stand there and wait for him to reject this too.
The crack of her apparition split the air before she'd even properly formed the thought. One moment she was on that wet street with the taste of him still on her lips, the next she was in her bedroom, soaking and shaking and wanting to die.
She collapsed onto her bed, still in her wet clothes, and pressed her face into her pillow hard enough that breathing became difficult. But even that couldn't block out the memory of his face, the salt taste of his tears, the way she'd grabbed him like she had any right to his mouth, his grief, his anything.
"Stupid," she whispered into the pillow. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
Her lips still tingled where they'd pressed against his. She scrubbed at them with the back of her hand, trying to erase the sensation, but it was branded there now. One more thing to haunt her, one more moment of weakness to cringe about at three in the morning for the rest of her life.
Downstairs, she heard her mother come in from her shift, calling up to ask if she wanted beans on toast for tea. Lily buried her face deeper in the pillow and didn't answer.
The bedcovers became her world. The duvet hadn't been washed in weeks and smelled of her own sweat and desperation, but Lily pulled it over her head anyway, creating a cave of shame where maybe she could cease to exist. Under here, in the dark, she could pretend she hadn't just ruined everything.
Her mother knocked twice, called about tea going cold, gave up. The sounds of evening telly drifted up through the floor: Crossroads, then the news, then nothing. Still Lily stayed under her covers, curled tight as a fist, replaying those seconds over and over until they lost all meaning. His face. His tears. The salt taste. The way his mouth had been cold and still against hers for that endless heartbeat before she'd run.
Time went liquid under the blankets. She dozed and woke and dozed again, never quite asleep, never quite awake.
She dreamed of windows and stones. Always the same dream lately: the soft click of pebbles against glass, two quick, pause, three more. Their old signal. In the dream, she always rushed to the window, always found the garden empty, always woke with her heart hammering and her eyes wet.
Click. Click. Pause. Click. Click. Click.
The sound pulled her from sleep, but she didn't move. Just another dream. Had to be. She'd trained herself not to check anymore, not to put herself through the disappointment of an empty garden.
Click. Click.
She opened her eyes to her dark bedroom. The alarm clock's glowing hands showed half-past midnight. She'd been asleep for hours then, hidden under covers that now felt suffocating.
Click. Click. Click.
Not a dream. Someone was throwing pebbles at her window at half-past midnight, and she was going to murder them. Unless-
No. It couldn't be.
She kicked free of the blankets, stumbled to the window on legs that had gone numb from being curled too long. Her hands shook as she pushed back the curtains, and for a moment she couldn't process what she was seeing.
Severus stood in the back garden, a handful of gravel from the path in one palm, arm drawn back to throw again. He looked like he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards. His black hair was wild, his clothes were askew, and even from her window she could see he was trembling.
They stared at each other through the glass. Her heart was doing beating violently in her chest, trying to escape through her ribs. This was happening. This was actually happening. After years of empty gardens and silence, he was here.
She fumbled with the window latch, her fingers clumsy with sleep and shock. The window stuck, because of course it did, this house was falling apart at the seams, and she had to throw her whole weight against it before it finally screeched open.
“I-“ she started.
"Lily-“ he said at the same time.
Then they were both talking, words tumbling over each other like water over stones.
"I'm so sorry about earlier, I didn't mean to, I just- I was upset and you were crying and I shouldn't have-“
"I need to tell you something, I should have said it years ago but I couldn’t-“
“-kissed you like that, without asking, without- Christ, Sev, I'm so sorry, I know you don't feel that way about me but I love you and I-”
“-been trying not to feel this way, trying to kill it, to cut it out of myself because it's wrong, because you could never-”
“-understand if you never want to speak to me again, I've ruined everything-”
“-loved you for so long-“
The words crashed together, neither of them hearing the other, both desperate to confess, to explain, to apologize. But then one phrase cut through the chaos, sharp as glass:
“-loved you for so long-”
Lily's voice died in her throat. Had she heard that right? Had he just?
She stopped talking. Stopped breathing. Stopped existing except for the act of listening.
Severus was still going, the words pouring out of him now like blood from a wound. "I tried to stop. Tried to hate you for making me feel this way. Tried to convince myself it was just friendship, just gratitude, just, anything but what it was." His voice cracked. "I knew it was impossible. Knew you could never, why would you?"
He was crying again, she realized. Not the violent tears from earlier, but steady streams that caught the light from the street lamp.
"I joined them, Mulciber, the others, because being near you hurt too much. Because watching you smile at other people, it was killing me. I thought if I could just stay away, if I could find something else to care about-“ He laughed, bitter as burnt tea. "But it never worked. Nothing worked. I've loved you for almost half my life, Lily, and I've hated myself for it every single day."
The garden had gone silent except for the distant sounds of the night. Severus stood there, shoulders shaking, looking like he'd just performed his own autopsy and was waiting for her to pronounce him dead.
“If you don’t feel the same way, I will never bother you again,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. "I just- after today, after you- I needed you to know."
Lily stared down at him, her mind a complete blank. All these years. All these years of hiding her own feelings, of swallowing down confessions, of watching him pull away and thinking it was because she wasn't enough. And he'd been-
"Half your life?" Her voice came out strangled.
He nodded, not looking at her now, staring at the ground like it might open up and swallow him. Which, knowing Severus, he probably wished it would.
The world had tilted off its axis. Everything she thought she knew, every assumption, every carefully constructed explanation for why they'd grown apart, all of it crumbling like wet paper. He'd loved her. Loved her while she was loving him. They'd been two idiots circling each other in silence, both convinced the other couldn't possibly feel the same way.
She wanted to laugh. Wanted to cry. Wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled for being so spectacularly stupid.
Instead, she just stood there, gripping the windowsill hard enough to leave marks, staring down at the boy who'd just rewritten their entire history with a handful of words.
"Say that again," she whispered.
He swallowed hard enough that she could see his throat move. "Which part?"
"The- the loving me part. That part."
He looked away, jaw working, and for a horrible moment she thought he might take it back, might say she'd misheard, might-
"I've loved you for almost half my life," he said quietly, still not looking at her. "Seven years, give or take. Tried to stop. Tried to... rip it out.” His laugh was bitter as winter. "But it just grew deeper. Rooted into everything until I couldn't tell where it ended and I began."
The world tilted. Lily grabbed the window frame to keep from falling out into the night.
The silence stretched between them. He'd loved her. All this time, while she'd been writing his name in the margins of her notebooks and lying awake imagining what his hands would feel like in her hair, he'd been doing the same.
All those times she'd caught him looking at her and convinced herself she was imagining it. All those moments when their hands had almost touched and he'd pulled away like he'd been burned. All those years of thinking she was pining alone, that her feelings were this shameful secret she had to hide-
"Lily?" His voice cracked on her name.
She didn't think. Thinking had gotten them into this mess, years of overthinking and under-speaking. Instead, she swung one leg over the sill, then the other, perching on the edge of the rest of her life.
"What are you- Lily, no-“
But she was already pushing off, already trusting the magic that had always come easier when he was watching. The fall lasted forever and no time at all, her nightgown billowing around her knees as she floated down like dandelion fluff, like hope made visible. The ground rushed up and then didn't, her descent slowing until her bare feet touched the wet grass gentle as a whisper.
His arms caught her anyway, automatic, like his body knew what to do even if his brain was still catching up.
"Are you mad?" The words came out very strangled. "The neighbors- if anyone saw- the ministry- the muggles-“
"Let them see." She was trembling too, she realized. Her whole body shaking with the magnitude of what was happening. "Let the whole bloody street see. I don't care."
"Lily-“
"I love you." The words came out fierce, almost angry.
His face crumpled. Actually crumpled, like paper in a fist. "You can’t-“
"I can. I do. I-“
She grabbed his face again, but gentler this time, her thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. He was crying again, or still, she couldn't tell. Didn't matter. She pulled him down and kissed him, properly this time, with intent and purpose and years of want behind it.
It was awful. Their noses bumped, her teeth caught his lip, and she was pretty sure she was doing it wrong. But then his hands came up to tangle in her hair and the angle changed and suddenly it wasn't awful at all. It was desperate and clumsy, but it was them. Finally, finally them.
When they finally broke apart, gasping, she kept her hands on his face. He looked destroyed in the best way, eyes wide and dark, mouth swollen. He looked how she felt: like the world had just rearranged itself and they were the only two people who'd noticed.
The next morning arrived like a hangover. Lily stood outside Spinner's End for a full five minutes, her hand raised to knock, paralyzed by the memory of his mouth on hers, his hands in her hair, the words "I've loved you for almost half my life" still ringing in her ears like church bells.
What now? What did people do the day after they'd kissed in a back garden at midnight? The romance novels never covered this bit, the awkward morning-after when you had to look at each other in daylight and figure out what came next.
She knocked before she could lose her nerve. The door opened immediately, he'd been waiting.
"Hi," she said, the word coming out strangled.
"Hi." He looked as wrecked as she felt, shadows under his eyes, his hair still damp from washing. He stepped aside to let her in, careful not to touch her as she passed.
The kitchen felt different even though it was the same transfigured table, same cracked walls.
"Tea?" he offered.
"Yeah. Yes. Tea would be... tea."
Christ, she couldn't even form complete sentences.
He busied himself with the kettle, movements too precise, too careful. She watched his hands, those clever fingers that had tangled in her hair last night, and felt heat crawl up her neck.
"I thought," he said to the kettle, "we could work on the Draught of Living Death. For practice. N.E.W.T.s and all."
Right. Potions. Safe ground. They could do potions.
Except they couldn't, apparently. They kept reaching for the same ingredients, jerking back when their fingers almost touched, muttering apologies like strangers. She added the powdered moonstone too fast, he stirred counterclockwise when it should have been clockwise, and they both pretended not to notice they were brewing what might generously be called a Draught of Mild Sleepiness.
The afternoon had turned brutal, that thick British humidity that made everything damp and miserable. The cauldron's heat made it worse, turning the small kitchen into a sauna. Sweat beaded on her forehead, trickled down her spine. She could see damp patches spreading on Severus's shirt, the fabric clinging to his shoulder blades.
They moved around each other, maintaining careful distance, as if touching might set something on fire. Which was mad, wasn't it? They'd spent years pressed together over cauldrons, her hand over his to correct his stirring, his breath on her neck as he read instructions over her shoulder. Now they could barely exist in the same room.
Why was this so hard? They loved each other, had apparently loved each other for years. Shouldn't that make everything easier? Shouldn't they be... what? Snogging against the wall? Holding hands while they measured ingredients? Acting like the couples she saw at school, easy and comfortable in their closeness?
"I need to change," he said abruptly. "This shirt is-“ He plucked at the fabric, soaked through with sweat and potion steam.
"Me too." Her blouse was clinging uncomfortably, the cotton gone heavy with moisture. He went upstairs and came back with shirts that smelled of mothballs and dust, pulled from some forgotten drawer.
They stood there for a moment, both realizing the logistics. One kitchen. No privacy. They'd changed in front of each other as children, unconscious and easy, but that was before. Before everything.
"I'll turn around," he said.
"Right. Yes. Good."
They turned their backs to each other, the kitchen suddenly feeling smaller than ever. Lily pulled her damp blouse over her head, hyperaware of every sound: the rustle of fabric, his breathing, her own heartbeat loud as drums. She grabbed the clean shirt she'd brought, her hands shaking slightly.
She made the decision before she could think about it too hard. Still in just her bra and shorts, she let herself fall backward.
Her back hit his, bare, warm, slightly damp with sweat, and she felt him go rigid with shock. For a horrible moment, she thought he'd pull away, that she'd miscalculated again, ruined things by pushing too fast.
But he didn't move. Slowly, incrementally, she felt him relax against her. The knobs of his spine pressed against hers, his shoulder blades sharp and real. She could feel him breathing, the expansion and contraction of his ribs, could feel the heat of him seeping into her skin.
It was the most close they'd ever been, and somehow easier than looking at each other. Like this, back to back, they could pretend it was accidental. Could pretend they weren't choosing this closeness.
"I can't lose you again," she said to the wall in front of her. "I can't go back to not talking, to walking past each other like strangers. I can't."
She felt him swallow, the movement traveling through their connected backs.
"I know there are things pulling at you," she continued, her voice barely above a whisper. "Mulciber and the others, what they're planning, what they're becoming. I know they want you to- to join them."
His breathing had gone very shallow.
"Don't." The word came out raw. "Please, Sev. Promise me. Whatever they're offering, whatever they're saying about power and respect and making the world better for wizards- don't."
The rain picked up outside, drumming against the windows.
"I choose you," he said, so quiet she almost missed it.
They stayed like that, back to back, hands clasped, while the potion simmered forgotten and the rain finally broke outside, drumming against the windows like applause.