Forgiveness by Pondering

Lily sat patiently in her favourite armchair of her childhood home, her hands folded carefully in her lap. She did not mind waiting as she had been doing it for so long now.

The fire in front of her roared merrily. When she had first returned here, the fire had been completely bare and dead. The only place she ever allowed herself to go anymore was the small clearing just outside the house to collect firewood. When she was not tending the fire, she was waiting. Waiting for the man she had to forgive before she could move on.

Recently, the fire had been growing larger and larger. She took this as a sign that he would be coming soon, and she waited.

Even though people often told her she had the patience of a saint, sometimes she grew restless and roamed around the room. She even hung Christmas stockings up to hang above the fireplace, one for her and one for him. His was full with presents she had never had the chance to give him. Her own was completely empty. But maybe she deserved that.

She had even set up a small Christmas tree in the corner, but it hurt to look at it, because whenever she saw it out of the corner of her eye, she did not take in the magical beauty of the tree. She only saw the ornament he had made her as a Christmas present when they were eleven, when she was full of childish fantasies and imagining that they could have a future together.

But along the way of growing up, they soon learnt that it could never be that way. She was too perfect, and he was too broken.

The fire crackled and without any assistance, it grew larger. Could this be it? She felt her fingers and toes tingle, she knew he was coming soon. Then she heard the unmistakable sound of a soft knock on the front door.

“Come in,” she whispered quietly, half afraid that her voice had broken from lack of use.

The visitor did, she could hear his careful footsteps treading softly up the hallway.

She rose from the chair and turned around, facing her visitor straight in the eyes. She could see the hard look in his eyes, but she could not tell if they were portraying fear or anger. She wasn’t scared, but she was angry. Not at him, but only at herself.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Severus,” she said, a smile spreading across her face.

Severus Snape’s eyes remained cold and suspicious. “…Lily?” he asked. “Where am I?” He did not let her answer the question however, and continued to speak. “This is all a trick,” he said, trying to convince himself of the truth of the words. His hand plunged into his robes, but it came back empty: he could not find his wand.

Lily shook her head. “This isn’t a trick.”

“Then what is it? How else could I be here, in the house Lily Evans grew up in?”

“This,” Lily said gently, “is death.”

The lines etched in Severus’s head grew deeper as he frowned to himself and looked at his empty palms. “I do not understand,” he said, mainly to himself. For a moment, Lily thought he looked like a lost little boy, the little boy she lost when she entered Hogwarts. “I took all the precautions I could, leading up to the final battle,” he whispered. “There is no way I could have died.”

“You did,” Lily told him with a nod of her head. “I saw you. Then, I waited. You took a long time coming here. Did you get lost on the journey?”

Severus glared at Lily. “You watched me die, then?” he asked sardonically. “For what purpose? Did you want to gloat at me? Did you want to see me suffer in retribution for all the suffering I caused you?”

“No!” Lily yelled, effectively stopping Severus’s tirade. “I wanted to say thank-you.”

“Thank-you for what?” Severus asked cynically. “Thank-you for ruining your life?”

“Don’t you understand?” Lily asked, trying to lay a comforting hand on Severus’s shoulder. “You didn’t ruin my life. I ruined yours.”

The anger in Severus’s face evaporated, only to be replaced with a look of ultimate confusion. “You hypocrite,” he breathed. “Didn’t you tell me the last time we talked that I was the worst thing that ever happened to you?”

Lily’s face tightened, and for a moment she refused to speak at all. “I was wrong,” she choked out. She had not thought that he might need to forgive her as much as she needed to forgive him. “You have every right to be angry with me.”

Severus looked at the ground, at the walls, at the Christmas tree, anywhere but Lily’s face. “I can’t be,” he whispered. “I could never be angry at you.”

The admission seemed to make the room spin, and Lily felt dizzy, as if she did not have a very firm grip on reality any more. But then again, maybe she never did. “Why?” she asked.

His hands tightened on the folds of his robes, he was gripping them so hard that Lily thought they would tear. He did not relinquish an answer and Lily knew he would never tell. Even though she thought that they had grown apart ever since starting school, she still knew him entirely too well.

A silence passed between them, and Lily watched Severus’s chest move up and down, found it ironic that his breathing was coming quicker when there was really no need for him to breathe at all. “I still haven’t said thank-you, have I?”

Slowly, Severus shook his head. “I still don’t see what you have to thank me for.”

Tears started to form in Lily’s eyes, tears that to her, smelt of the salty tang of regret. “You never let yourself see the good side of your own personality.”

Severus crossed his arms defiantly across his chest. “I do not have one. I fail to see how anyone could ever call any side of my personality good at all.”

Lily persisted; knowing that somewhere inside the shell of this grown man was the boy she had grown up with, the boy that, sometime in her childhood, she had loved. “You were good once. You were always kind to me.”

“How easily you forget,” Severus snorted. “Was that the reason you barely ever talked to me again after fifth year?”

“I was a fool,” Lily admitted. “I was too proud to say sorry, but now I have outgrown that stage.”

Severus shook his head. “You were never the fool. I was. I could never see the good side of myself because before we went to school, I always had you to do that for me.”

“I know,” Lily murmured, “that I failed you. I should have spent more time with you. We were best friends, but I could go weeks without sparing you a single thought.”

“This is not your fault, Lily.”

Lily shook her head. “For too long, Severus, you have been living with the guilt of everything on your shoulders. After I was gone, everything you did, everything you lived for, was because of me. I should never have allowed you to grow too devoted to me. Our relationship back then was too uneven. But still, I’d like to thank you for saving Harry.”

“It was for you. It was always for you.”

Lily’s smile played lightly behind the strands of her dark red hair. “Don’t let it be. Say you did it for yourself, because you are a good person.”

“But I’m not,” Severus told himself. “I did everything for you because no matter what I did I could never be as perfect as you.”

“I’m not perfect. For example, I am a horrible friend. Last Christmas, I wrote you a card. I explained everything to you, explained that I forgave you for everything that passed between us in the past. In it, I also gave you my apology. I told you I was sorry for not being everything I always seemed to be in your eyes. Sorry that my pride stopped me from being with you, because I was too perfect, and you were too broken. That I was sorry. For everything.” She looked over at Severus; saw the look in his eyes. The look that seemed to be half-way between awe and disbelief.

“You never received it, did you?” she asked.

Slowly, Severus shook her head.

“That was because I never sent it.” Lily admitted. “I was too ashamed.” She let the rest of the words go unspoken; she would let Severus make up his own mind about who she was ashamed of.

She watched Severus’s face change as he digested this information, and when he opened his mouth again she thought that he would yell or scream at her. But instead, he asked a question. “Why are we here?”

Lily was slightly taken aback. “We’re here because we’re dead.”

“But why are we here, in the house that you grew up in? Why are we still here? Why is that Christmas tree there? And why are there stockings hanging up?

“Don’t you remember the winter we were eleven?” she asked. She was determined to only answer half his question, because she was starting to think that Severus would not accept her gifts.

“Yes,” he answered, “but what does that have to do with this?”

Lily smiled at him. “Don’t you remember? You came to my house.”

Severus mused on this, and he turned away from Lily before answering, “And I never came again. Your family was too happy, they were singing Christmas carols and they were even roasting chestnuts. It was just all too…perfect, and I was too broken.”

“We’re here because it’s the day my view of the world shifted. The day that I truly realised we came from different backgrounds because I could see you looking enviously around every time you thought that I wasn’t looking. The day that I realised we were too different to ever truly be together.”

Then there was silence again, and she could only hear their breathing, which seemed to be happening in some sort of unison. “Do you still believe that?” Severus asked.

“No. Because now I know that I’m not perfect. That you’re not broken.” She held out her hand, offering it to Severus.

He eyed it wearily. “What does this mean?” he asked suspiciously.

“It means that I’m sorry that we never gave ourselves a chance,” Lily told him. “It means that we shouldn’t waste time here talking in circles, and that we should get a move on.”

“Oh, so there’s more to death than this?” he asked sarcastically.

Lily smiled. “Definitely.”

“There is still one last thing that I cannot comprehend,” he told her, the lines of his face deep with confusion.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Why were you waiting for me?” he asked. He looked straight into her eyes, straight into what seemed to be her very soul. Then, he quietly slipped his own hand into hers.

“I thought that I had to forgive you before I went back to my family. But I didn’t. It was myself I had to forgive.”

His hand tightened around hers. “The last thing I saw before I died was you,” he told her. “That I had to forgive you for what I did to you.”

The side of Lily’s mouth quirked upwards. “It’s funny that we both thought we had to forgive each other, when what we really needed to do was to forgive ourselves.”

“Is this it, then?” Severus asked sadly. “Are you going to go back now?”

Lily deliberated for a moment, but then she took a step forward, pulling on Severus’s hand so that he would follow him. “I thought I was going to,” she admitted, “but I’m not.”

“Why?”

She had no fear of answering this question, because she knew the perfect words to say. “Because I’m not perfect,” she told him.

“But what about Potter?”

Lily’s hold on Severus’s hand loosened slightly because of his tone. But he had voiced an interesting query. “With him, I’m too perfect. With you, I’m just broken enough.”

Severus did not understand how Lily could ever think of herself as broken when she always knew the right things to say.

But he said no more as they walked quietly out the door together, as they did not need to talk anymore. All the talking that had to be done had already been done and now they could enjoy their silence together. As they walked farther the house disappeared, along with everything else. The only thing he could discern now was the ringing of church bells in his ears and he wonders why it reminds him of something.

After spending Christmas Day at Lily’s house, Severus just wanted to go home, which was strange because he never usually wanted to go home after spending a day with Lily. But going to her house gave him a glimpse of the world he knew he would never be able to experience again, a world that was too perfect to hold him in it. He wanted to go back to his little, broken, rundown house because there was a place where he fit in. He never wanted to go to Lily’s place again because he knew that the more time he spent there, he would only become more disappointed when the rest of the world could not live up in comparison. The world wasn’t a very kind place for horrible people as himself.

But then again, Lily didn’t think he was horrible. She held out his hand towards his, and he held it. Together, they sat quietly in front of the fire place which seemed to grow larger and larger of its own accord.

"Did you like my present?" Severus asked, looking at the tree where the ornament he gave her is hanging.

Lily stared at it for a few seconds, but then it hurt to look at it because it was bright and it reflected so much light into her eyes. It was so cheerful.

"It reminded me of you," Severus told her, but Lily did not know if he means that it is because the little ball is the same shade of red as her hair, or if the meaning is deeper, that maybe he means Lily reflects so much light into his life.

"How?" Lily asked, but then she looked at Severus and she knews that he will never tell.

Then the church bells rang outside and Severus knew it was time for him to go home.

Lily’s eyes looked sad as she followed him to the door. She leant in closer to his ear and whispered, “We’re best friends, okay? We’ll be together for Forever.” Then she waved him goodbye and he left to walk home by himself.


Severus knew that he and Lily were walking to a place that they could call home. But this time, he would not be alone.