Chapter 1: The End of the World
Severus awakened with his head stuffed under his pillow after a few hours of broken, nightmarish sleep. In the first few moments, he was actually groggy and exhausted enough not to remember what had happened, but then his stinging eyes and a nameless ache in his chest told him that something bad had occurred, and it all came rushing back with brutal clarity. ''What's wrong with you? And where’d you go in the middle of the night, anyway?'' Avery asked in a mocking tone, fastening the last button on his uniform shirt and then tossing a dirty sock that glanced off Severus's shoulder as he sat at the edge of his bed, trying to get his bearings.
Brushing it aside, Severus shook his head and managed to croak, "Nothing—nowhere," as he pushed himself up from the bed and stared into the mirror, realising that his hoarse voice and puffy eyes would be a dead give-away. And thus the rising panic of the first day without Lily gave way to the mundane details of living at Hogwarts without her.
Without her, or in spite of her? -- he had no idea which way to play it. What was more likely to make her forgive him? Pleading with her hadn’t worked, as his vigil the night before had demonstrated -- perhaps seeming not to care was the answer after all. Maybe she would come back to him if he seemed like he didn’t give a damn. He had never personally found being ignored to be much of an aphrodisiac, but for now, it was all he had, so he would ignore her. In the meantime, his roommates were heading down for breakfast without him. He scrambled into his uniform, ran to the bathroom to splash cold water in his face in a vain hope that it would do something about his bloodshot eyes, and pondered the fact that for someone who couldn’t care less, he looked truly awful. To make things worse, he was too late for a shower, which he really could have used the day before but had bypassed to study. He gave up and threw on his robes in an attempt to catch up with his roommates so that he wouldn't have to go down to breakfast by himself and appear any more pathetic than he already felt. To his surprise, he actually managed to catch up with them as they were walking into the Great Hall, and he slowed down from a canter to a long stride as he joined their ranks, and tried to control his breathing so that it didn’t appear as if he had just been running.
Step one was to look like he wasn’t looking for Lily. Glimpse of red hair -- no, not her, just the redheaded Hufflepuff with glasses. He trained his eyes away from the Gryffindor table and sat with the group of Slytherins he had walked in with, making sure that he faced away from Gryffindor so that he wasn’t tempted. Breakfast appeared and his companions tucked into it, but Severus found himself unable to stomach more than a couple of bites of oatmeal, despite his failure to eat anything at dinner the night before. Avery and Wilkes were giving each other significant glances -- had they noticed something? Did they know what was going on? Did he even want them to?
But he needn’t have worried. The turn of the conversation showed that they were merely making their usual knowing comments about the pretty dark-haired third-year Slytherin girl who wanted nothing to do with them and whose name Severus could never remember.
The atmosphere in the Great Hall was actually rather quiet. Many students who would normally have been talking were instead poring over thick texts or sheets of parchment, since O.W.L.’s were still going on. With a sickening wave of panic, Severus realized that he hadn’t studied for any of today’s exams in at least two days; instead, he had spent the previous afternoon and evening in a succession of unproductive activities including pacing, composing his apology speech in his head, and camping out in front of the Gryffindor portrait hole with the Fat Lady alternately teasing and harassing him. The night had been spent becoming reacquainted with the unpleasant sensation of trying to keep himself from crying, something he had not had to do in a long time, followed by a few hours of uneasy sleep. He felt groggy and he ached all over, and he realized full well that none of these things were exactly conducive to getting an “O” on History of Magic or Herbology, which were today’s topics. He forced down a couple of bites of oatmeal and a swig of pumpkin juice, not because he felt hungry but because he knew he ought to, informed his compatriots that he needed to go study, and hurried out of the Great Hall just as Lily was walking in with two of her friends. She made eye-contact with him for the briefest fraction of a second, then looked away. She looked tired, and he wasn’t sure whether that should give him hope -- they were studying for O.W.L.’s after all, and everyone looked tired. There were so many things he wanted to say to her, but they would definitely have undermined his intended appearance of not caring, so he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, regained his composure and kept walking. In the hallway outside the Great Hall, he stopped when he realized that he had been so focused on surviving his first encounter with Lily that he had absolutely no idea where he was going or what he wanted to do next. Study. He had to study.
He couldn’t study to save his life, he concluded, slamming the History of Magic text shut after staring at it blankly for an hour. He had read the same sentence at least a dozen times. A wave of murmurs and annoyed looks went through the library, where he had gone because Lily was unlikely to, and Madam Pince gave him an admonitory glare from behind her desk. The test was in less than an hour anyway, and although he always did study until the very last minute, he would just have to do without this time and rely on all the work he had done during the term. Why did this have to happen right in the middle of O.W.L.’s? Having given up on studying, he was in the middle of a reverie about what to say to Lily that would make everything better, with reunion scenes playing themselves out in his head, when the door opened and Lily and her friend Mary walked in. The sight of her had always warmed him somehow, like a pleasant surprise that the world had Lily in it, but now it was more like an electric shock coursing through his body, followed by a wave of nausea. He tried to relax his shoulders and look as if he hadn’t seen her and didn’t care, with minimal success. As he trained his glance on his textbook and tried to look interested in it, out of his peripheral vision, he could see Lily and Mary conferring with each other quietly, and then turning around and leaving.
Was she leaving because she didn’t want him to have to see her when they weren’t talking, or because she simply didn’t want to see him? He wasn’t sure anymore; he had thought he knew her, but the Lily he knew had never gone this long without speaking to him. When was she going to come up to him and say she forgave him? The moment that was hanging suspended over the two of them was somehow failing to happen. He felt sick whenever he thought about it, because Lily’s forgiveness was now ominously long in coming. Maybe she had meant what she said: maybe this was it.
As the girls walked out, he found himself slowly and almost automatically standing up to walk after her, as if being pulled up by strings like a puppet. But the door closed, she turned down the hallway, her voice trailing after for a few seconds, and he just as slowly sat down. He had to suppress an unbearable urge to follow her, just to know what she was doing. He knew it was ridiculous, because even when they had been friends -- just a day before, although it now seemed like an eternity -- he hadn’t been able to follow her everywhere and know her every conversation and activity. But the fact that now he couldn’t check up on her, ask casual questions that were actually carefully crafted to see whether he had any competition, the fact that he no longer even had any right to know what her life held, made him feel almost terrifyingly powerless.
Neither exam had been easy, he reflected a few hours later, but at least the pressure of the examinations had driven her from his mind for a few hours. His natural competitiveness had finally switched on, and he had plowed through the exams in his usual driven and compulsive fashion. When they ended, with his wrist cramped and aching from all the writing, he took his papers out to review them, with the realisation that he now had no one to go over the answers with: all the Slytherins he knew were either too competitive or too stupid, and he didn’t trust any of them. Any foolish errors on his part would be broadcast throughout his entire house within hours; there was always a malicious joy that went around when he made a mistake, since it was a well-known fact that he was, in most subjects, the one to beat. That he didn’t have any friends in the other three Houses went without saying. Not anymore.
Footsteps behind him alerted him to the fact that someone was following him out of the Great Hall after the History of Magic test, trotting at a fast pace to catch up with him and calling, “Snape! Snape! Wait up!” It was Mulciber. There was no point in ignoring him at such a short distance, so Severus halted but didn’t turn around, ready for a session of bickering about why he didn’t want to compare exam results. Because you’re a lazy idiot. Because I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you. Because I’d rather ruminate on my own broken heart right now. But Mulciber didn’t want to talk about the test. He wore a wide grin and extended his hand -- for a handshake, Severus realised belatedly, as he held out his own, tentatively, wondering what he had done to merit a handshake. Pumping Severus’s hand vigorously, Mulciber said, “So, I heard you finally lost the Mudblood girlfriend. Nice one.”
Severus nodded stiffly, hoping that Mulciber hadn’t noticed him wince at the term he threw around so casually. “She was never my girlfriend. She was always my friend,” he said quietly.
“Well, not anymore—good going,” Mulciber replied obliviously, slapping him heartily on the shoulder and taking off after a group of Slytherin boys that had headed in a different direction. Severus wanted to know where Mulciber had heard it and what he had heard -- was it from someone who had witnessed the scene yesterday? Or had Lily been telling people that she was finally through with him? He didn’t know any of her friends well enough to ask, and if he did ask them, he knew it would make its way back to her, but he was longing to know what this meant and how long it was going to continue, and there was no way to get an answer and keep his dignity intact at the same time. Sticking with his earlier plan, he opted in favor of dignity.
By dinner time, he was ravenous, which gave him an excuse to talk very little as he shoveled in whatever was being served; he didn’t care what it was. The news of his fight with Lily had apparently made it to most of his Slytherin companions by then, making him something of a temporary celebrity. Despite the fact that he was famished, he quickly learned that he had to eat carefully because the occasional thumps on the back from passers-by were vigorous enough on more than one occasion to nearly cause him to choke. At one point Rosier raised an informal toast to him -- “To Snape, for putting the Mudblood in her place” -- which had been followed by a hearty round of cheering with his name figuring prominently that drew the attention of the other tables, Gryffindor included. He could feel the intensity of Lily’s glare without even looking at her; she was no fool, and she had to know what this was about. He felt as though he were betraying her again by accepting all this praise and attention for doing something that he desperately wished he could undo. But Lily wasn’t talking to him, and these people were. Since there was no point in incurring the wrath of wizards who had access to him while he was asleep, he managed to conjure up an anemic smile and then returned his attention to his plate of stew and his own thoughts.
How long was this going to go on? One day was enough -- one day was killing him. The most chilling realization was that Lily had never actually cut him off for more than about five seconds before; twenty-four hours was exponentially more than that. How long would she be able to hold out, a few days? A few weeks? Forever? He had never pictured his life without her. His life had started when he had met her, really, and he had thought that they would always walk their respective paths at least in a close parallel, even if those paths might never intertwine the way he wished they would. In his amorphous vision of the future -- the alternative one that didn’t include her as his wife -- they remained best friends, maybe living near each other in some interesting city, maybe traveling together to see the world. They were brilliant and cosmopolitan and happy, and so much a pair that they wouldn’t even need to be a couple, somehow. Perhaps he might never convince her to go out with him, but that would almost be acceptable as long as she never went out with anyone else, as long as his friendship was enough for her and they were always together the way they had been since they met. Being best friends was almost good enough -- after the last day, best friends seemed like a very welcome option. But at this rate, he might always be as alone as he had been for his first nine years. Sitting with this group that persisted in cheering and congratulating him for something of which he was thoroughly ashamed, he felt more isolated than ever. The thought of his life without Lily made him so anxious and miserable that it ruined his appetite, and the meal that had seemed so appealing a few minutes ago was now tasteless. Pushing the plate aside, he got up, muttered a hasty farewell with the excuse of going off to study, and headed out of the Great Hall, head down with his gaze downcast, as quickly and anonymously as possible. He wouldn’t need to avoid Lily’s eyes this time unless she threw herself at his feet, which was seeming less and less likely as time went on.
In the quiet, dwindling light of the late spring evening, Severus took his books and walked outside, desperate to get away from any kind of company. He found himself wandering back to the tree under which he had had insulted Lily the day before, like a murderer to the scene of the crime, and he stood there looking at it, wishing he could turn back time and do everything differently. Why had he let that slip out? And why had she come down so hard on him? He knew it was a terrible thing to say, the worst thing he could possibly have called her, but this was Lily, and they had been friends, best friends, for seven years. He never would have believed that she would just cut him off after one mistake, with no way of making it up to her, with no possibility of forgiveness. He was angry at himself, but by now, he was becoming angry at her as well. He seemed to be able to focus better while he could actually find fault with her instead of just chastising himself, so he cultivated it, allowing the seething rage to flow through him as the scenes from the day before passed through his mind -- “And I’d wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus. ” God, she had actually called him that: his fists clenched and his shoulders tensed as he remembered it. He threw his books down and settled in under the tree for some reading while the light still held, taking advantage of his mood of grim determination. If living well was the best revenge, then Snivellus needed to stop moping and actually study in order to do better on the O.W.L.’s. For almost the first time since the events of the day before, his mind was actually his own.
When the last of the daylight was dying in the sky and the Lumos charm from his wand no longer gave sufficient illumination for studying, Severus reluctantly picked up his things and walked back across the lawn up to the castle to get cleaned up and go to bed. From the other direction, a couple he vaguely recognized was walking back toward the huge front doors, hand in hand. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the light tones of their voices and their laughter carried on the air to him, and something about the warm evening and the twilight and the sight of their obvious contentment and togetherness made him miss Lily again. The atmosphere was like that of so many summer evenings during school holidays when he and she had walked around the town together -- when she was all his, with no competition for her attention. His anger at her had abated for now, and he ached with her absence, even though he knew he had really seen her relatively little lately. There had been a lot to be said for just knowing that she was out there, somewhere, and was kind of his.
The shower didn’t make him feel any better, just cleaner. Back in his dormitory, he once again kept to himself as he got into his pajamas and into bed, laid his still-damp head down on the pillow and pulled up the covers, trying to make up for lost sleep and avoid any chatter with his roommates, who were all still studying in the library or common room. But although he was exhausted after the night before, he couldn’t sleep, and instead lay there in the dark with his eyes open and his mind racing. After all of his acting, his calculations and his planning, he realized at the end of the day that it had made no difference. No one else had even understood the earth-shattering importance of the terrible event that he was trying so hard to downplay. The Gryffindors were so oblivious that he had no need to put up a front for them to cover the magnitude of his loss -- as far as they were concerned, he guessed, he probably called Lily a Mudblood three times a day with meals and once more for good measure -- as far as they were concerned, he probably didn’t even notice her absence. The Slytherins had misinterpreted him, as usual. And the one person he so deeply needed to talk to about it, the one he always talked to when things were bad, was the one who had bid him goodbye.
Snivellus and the Head Girl by SeverusSempra
Story Notes:
The characters and settings of this story all belong to J. K. Rowling. I'm just tweaking with their destiny a bit. Regarding the warnings-- there shouldn't be anything worse than what you'd see in the later books of the canon.
Chapter Notes: Apology not accepted. What next?
Chapter Endnotes: Quote from Lily included from the chapter "Snape's Worst Memory" in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Many thanks to my kind and helpful beta, Fresca (Colores).