Severus Snape returned to his seat after handing Professor Slughorn his essay about the Confusing Concoction and its affects. His head remained down the entire time, eyes fixated on the floor so he wouldn’t have to look at James Potter or his juvenile friends. He also wouldn’t have to look at Lily Evans, who sat in the seat directly behind him.
“Hey, Snivelly,” Sirius Black taunted. “Thanks for the help with the essay yesterday. We couldn’t have done it without your inspired work.”
Of course Severus knew they would steal his homework and use it to cheat on their own essays. That’s precisely why he wrote two essays and planted the decoy, terribly written and terribly wrong, for Black to find. Really, with all that Sirius and his friends got away with at Hogwarts, they surely had to be cleverer than they acted. Well, maybe with the exception of Peter Pettigrew.
But for all the good their cleverness did them they might as well have not even bothered. In a few days' time when the professor had finished grading their papers, Severus would have the last laugh.
He sat now but still kept his neck craned forward with his gaze locked on the desktop in front of him. Chancing a response, Severus’s deep, soft voice was barely audible over the general classroom noise. “I assumed that since you four would be out all night that you might appreciate a head start.”
James stifled a yawn and quickly jabbed the sleeping Peter with his elbow just before Slughorn’s suspicious eyes befell them. They sat up studiously and smiled to the professor, who nodded and returned to his place in the front of the class.
“Listen here, scumbag. I don’t know what you know about us, or what you think you know, but you’re wrong. There’s nothing to know, anyway, so just keep your greasy nose out of our business.” Masked underneath the insults and warning, a hint of worry resounded in Sirius’s normally over-confident voice.
“If you keep your fleabag paws off my essays,” Severus retorted.
Sirius clenched his fists, ready for a fight, and began muttering some very impolite names under his breath, just loudly enough for Severus to hear.
“Sirius, you stop that right now!” came Lily’s reprimanding voice from behind him. “James, stop laughing! You’re just encouraging him.”
Severus’s cheeks flushed a deep pink, so he lowered his head even further to let his long, black hair cover up the color. He pretended to take notes on Professor Slughorn’s lesson on hellebore, even though he already knew most everything there was to know regarding the ingredient.
“I’m not kidding! Peter, you too!” Lily was fuming, and Severus could only imagine her angry cheeks being the same bright red as her beautiful hair. “I’ll dock house points if you don’t cut it out this instant!”
“I don’t need anyone to defend me, least of all someone like you.” Severus said it deliberately and without forgiveness. Lily never understood how standing up for him only made the situation worse. As if his pride weren’t wounded enough on a day to day basis, he also had to constantly deal with the fact that a girl”a Muggle-born girl”was always trying to defend him.
“Someone like me?” Lily asked, clearly offended.
Now Severus just wanted it all to end. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, least of all Lily Evans. If he could just disappear right now, just sink right into the floor and make it all go away… “Just stop it and leave me alone.”
And suddenly Lily’s scorn shifted to a new subject. “Well, sorry for trying to live up to my responsibilities as Head Girl,” she said bitterly. “Sorry for even giving a damn about you.”
Don’t be sorry, Severus thought to himself. You never really gave a damn about me, and you never will.
He tried to lock his heart away from anyone who dare wandered near. He convinced himself that Lily never cared for him at all, even in the smallest way. Severus never allowed himself to believe that he was worthy of someone else’s tender feelings”least of all someone like Lily, someone as brave, kind, and…beautiful…as Lily Evans.
That was just one of the thousand painful memories that came flooding back the moment Severus Snape received his invitation. At first he couldn’t bear to open the shiny, pearl-colored envelope simply because of the name on the return address. He knew what this was.
After it sat on his desk for a week, he finally decided to open the potion and ink splattered letter. The parchment inside matched the shiny envelope and was tied at the top with a sheer white ribbon. Severus frowned as he read the fancy lettering.
Henry and Wanda Evans
Invite you to attend the wedding of their daughter
Lily
to
James Potter
On this Twenty-Seventh day of July
In the year Nineteen Hundred Seventy-Eight
Ceremony and reception to be held at…
Severus couldn’t stand to read any further. He knew this would happen. He could tell just by the feel of the letter, the look of how joyous the shiny envelope was, that it meant the end. A knife shaped like a folded piece of paper stabbed his heart. He wouldn’t go. The idea itself was preposterous”Severus Snape at Lily and James’s wedding “why, the whole thing was utterly laughable.
So then why did he even open the letter? Why didn’t he just chuck it in the bin where it belonged? Severus dared not think too hard on it.
He expected it to happen all along, whenever Lily wasn’t sticking her self-righteous nose into James’s stupid antics…and whenever James wasn’t being an attention-hogging ignoramus by trying to win her affections in the most ridiculous of ways. He expected that two people so aptly compatible would vow to torture only each other for the rest of their lives by the bonds of matrimony. However, Severus never expected to be invited.
He spent hours upon hours working on his potions, experimenting with new ingredients, doing anything to keep his mind off the wedding. By the end of the second week he still hadn’t made a decision about whether or not to attend. Every gut instinct he had told him to stay away, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to throw the invitation out. He knew in his head that somehow he would end up going, but for now that was just too much for him to handle.
The day of the wedding inevitably came and Severus stood in his dingy flat, unable to move. Barely half a day was left until the ceremony, but to him it felt like an eternity. Scenarios played in his head of how everyone would react to seeing him there. He knew people would turn their heads and whisper about him, asking each other why he was there and who in the world invited him. He knew that the majority of guests would throw all propriety to the wind and gawk openly at him.
But still he had to go. Hours too early, Severus Apparated to the address on the invitation, which now bore several worn crease marks in every direction. He landed in the rose garden on the backside of a charming little church; immediately the bereaved young man regretted his decision to come. A wooden bench in the garden was welcoming, but its unlucky location next to all the cheerful flowers prompted him to rethink.
As Severus crushed a marigold underfoot and pulled the leaves off yet another, he suddenly caught a glimpse of red hair flash past a window. Lily was up there getting ready. He watched silently and hoped against hope to see her again just one last time. The orange petals that fell to his feet continued to count the moments away.
Then it happened. She looked out the window and saw him, at which point Severus’s instincts took over and he walked away at a brisk pace. He felt completely foolish being here.
“Severus!” Lily called from the window. “Severus, is that you? Oh, please don’t go.”
Severus detected what he interpreted to be real sincerity in her voice. He had come all this way and after so much strife; he couldn’t just leave her now when she was so close, when she actually wanted to see him.
He dropped the flower stem to the ground and nervously wound through the garden to the back entrance of the church. He still had no idea what he was doing there or what in the world would happen once he finally got to see her and talk to her. His mind was mush. The best Severus could do was hope that the right thing would come to him when he found Lily in her private room. If not, he feared he would wind up standing there, completely silent and dumbfounded in the presence of Lily in all her beauty, with nothing to say and no willpower to force polite, if awkward, small talk.
And that’s exactly what happened. Severus hadn’t once rehearsed what he would say to her, so when the desperate moment came he was totally unprepared. She opened the door and instantly he was awestruck.
Lily’s wedding gown flowed off her slim frame and highlighted her best features. In addition to the white silk, the light that flooded in from the window surrounded her silhouette and gave the bride an angel-like glow. Severus stood mesmerized and would have darted from the church, had he the strength to move his legs.
“Hi, Severus,” Lily greeted him with a warm smile.
Severus scarcely managed a nod in response.
“I’m glad you were able to make it. Won’t you come in?”
“Is Potter here?” he asked while sweeping the room for any signs of his former schoolmate.
Lily took Severus’s arm and gently pulled him in before closing the door behind him. “Oh, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere, but the groom isn’t allowed to see the bride before the wedding. Don’t worry; we’re alone.”
Severus had almost immediately loosened himself from Lily’s hold, though he wasn’t sure if it was because of nervousness, spite, or just pure heartbreak that he couldn’t stand to be touched by her. For ages, it seemed, he simply stood motionless and stared at the carpet.
Eventually, Lily spoke again. “Well, you’re a bit early but…I want to thank you for coming.”
“I’m not staying,” Severus confessed, turning from her.
“Oh.”
“I just wanted to…” his voice trailed off.
Lily kept trying to catch his eye and make him look at her, but every single time he shifted his stance or his stare away from her. He walked to the window and looked down at the much too gleeful garden. Though the delicate touch of her hand on his shoulder made him flinch slightly, Severus forced himself to remain rigid and calm.
She noticed the smell of asphodel on him; no doubt he had just come from his lab. It also appeared to her that Severus had even washed his hair today”or maybe yesterday. But it never made any difference to Lily. She was just glad to see him, the same old Severus.
He tried so hard to finish that sentence. Unfortunately, no amount of effort does any good if you don’t actually know what you started to say in the first place. You have to know what you want to say before you can say it.
Severus could have finished that sentence with any number of phrases. “I just wanted to…see you one last time,” or “I just wanted to…say congratulations,” or “I just wanted to…say goodbye.” He could even have said, “I just wanted to…say thank you for defending me when no one else would.” In retrospect either of these options would have been better than the one he ultimately chose.
“I must be going.” He turned, took Lily’s hand from his shoulder, and hesitated only briefly before kissing it.
This time Lily was the one who nodded back. A thin, lamenting smile spread across her glossy lips. She managed a quick, “I understand,” as Severus headed towards the door. Once there he glanced back at her, the anguish bleeding from his eyes as he looked into hers. He felt he should have been more gracious and given her his congratulations”but the fact was that Severus was not at all happy and definitely not in the mood to wish others well, even if it was Lily.
The redhead bride stood by the window and watched Severus exit. He was halfway down the carpeted staircase by the time she caught up to him.
“Severus, wait!” But after that, Lily found she didn’t have much else to say. The fact was that there was simply too much to say and to narrow it down to fit in the time span of a few seconds seemed unfathomable…so she said nothing. Instead, she stood on her tiptoes and pecked him lightly on the cheek.
The rigid man melted on the inside, though his outside grew cold. So cold, in fact, that the hair on his arms stood up. No woman had ever attempted to get that close to him before; indeed, no woman was ever as brave as Lily Evans to approach a man like Severus the way she always had. The affection she showed for him, if only compassionate and friendly, was still much more than he had ever received. His inexperience with such actions left him clueless as to how to react.
“We’ll see you around,” she said, after a prolonged silence between them.
“Yes. Very well.”
He nodded, trying not to envision her on the altar with James. He couldn’t let himself think about how the next time he happened to “see her around” she would be Lily Potter, wife of the enemy and the love he could never have.
Fin.