This was done for the 34 stories; 106 reviews competition. I am very proud of this story. Main character is Severus Snape in case you don't guess. :P Enjoy!
I own none of these charaters, they all belong to JKR.
Learn to Live
It was his smile that taught me to live again. It was in his eyes that I re-found my soul. Lost in the cold for so long, I would have taken any warmth I could get. His heat came with a price, one I was all to willing to pay. A small stain on the porcelain skin of my forearm, deep seeded pain slicing towards my heart whenever the master called. These things I could live with as long as they came with his tender hands, his passionate kisses and his lust filled eyes.
So I thought.
She had turned her back on me, on the friendship we had shared for so long. She had pulled me from the dark once as well. That was when we were much younger, before I met him. We would lay in the trees behind her house, talking for hours, laughing over nothing. Her small head resting on my stomach as we looked up through the canopy of leaves at the fluffy white clouds drifting by.
That was all it ever was. Friendship. Sure we loved each other, I would have died for her and I like to believe that in the beginning she had felt the same, but it wasn't the same as the love I shared with him. Her's was light and filled with giggles and girly talk, his was deep and filled with passionate touches and eager kisses. I loved spending time with her, but if I could I would have given all the hours I spent with her to spend merely minuets with him.
Life with her all those years was magnificent, I never realized anything was missing. I knew there was nothing between us but friendship, but I never realized I wanted more, nay, needed more. I thought I was content laughing with my Lily, watching her smile. She was a beautiful person, I don't mean just out side, she was a kind soul. She took me in when I had no one, she loved me when all others laughed. She was my angle, she still is my angle.
I met Evan my first year at Hogwarts. He was a first year as well and we shared a dorm room, there was no instint spark, no love at first site. In fact I rather disliked him when I first laid eyes on the prat. He was rude and arrogant and thought the world of himself. I ignored him the first few years, studying the dark arts alone in the library or secretly at night. I would spend time with Lily between classes and eat alone.
Around my third year I noticed a small group of my house mates forming. Evan was one of them and soon so was I. I didn't let Lily know right away. I had been interested in the Dark arts ever since I could remember, but she was against that sort of thing. I didn't want my friendship with her to dwindle because of the newly formed friends I had made. Eventually though it leaked, they called us the Deatheaters, we supported the rise of the Dark Lord and dabbled as much as we could with the dark arts.
We didn't scar ourselves with snakes and skulls until later, but we were followers none the less. The more I hung around the group the more I could see myself loving Evan. True he was an arrogant prat, but he was gorgeous and intelligent and oh so passionate. I began spending less and less time with Lily and more and more with the Deatheaters.
Some where in my fourth year I gained the courage to ask Evan if he would study with me alone. I remember the way my stomach fluttered and my heart beat wildly as I waited for him to ponder my question. When he finally said yes and directed that dazzling smile at me, I think I almost fainted. That was the night our whole relationship changed.
As we sat there studying, our heads bent over the same book, watching as the drawings battled with spells forbidden to us, I thought about Lily. I thought about what she would say and what she would think if she walked in and found us hunched over such an incriminating book, but when his head tilted up and I could see the excitement in his eyes all thoughts of her fled. His hazel eyes dropped down to my lips and I thought my heart beat itself out of my chest. I remember leaning in ever so slightly, hoping I wasn't judging this all wrong. I wasn't because when I stopped his lips came forward and met mine in a heated kiss that fed my passion.
That was as far as it went for a long time. Stolen kisses in dark places. I didn't tell anyone, not even Lily but she knew something was up. We would wait until the rest of the dorm was sleeping before sneaking into each others beds and kissing until our lips were raw and swollen. We gradually moved from merely kissing to groping and touching and eventually in my fifth year we took the last step and became lovers.
I knew I loved him long before it ever happened. I can't tell you exactly when I fell for him, but I know it was well before I fell apart. Well before he rescued me. It all started with Potter and that scraggly mutt he hangs around with. I can't rightly tell you what I did to deserve such treatment, could have been nothing, but they figured I needed to be humiliated.
Flipping me over and showing my underthings to everyone in view, including Evan, wasn't enough of an embarrassment. No, Lily, my precious friend had to step up and try to save me. I couldn't let Evan see a muggle born Gryffindor save me, so I lashed out. I know it was my fault and I tried to resolve things, but the tension had grown to tight and had finally snapped our friendship in two.
She fled and when I tried to talk to her, she told me I had chosen my side and she had chosen hers. I knew that I would never be able to have both my Lily and Evan so I sacrificed her for him. I left her with that comment and hid in the Library my face in a book. Tears drenched the page I was reading, but soon I was strong enough to hold them in. I was sitting there searching for myself when Evan found me.
He didn't say a word, only came and sat next to me. He wrapped his arms around my shoulder and held me until he felt it was safe to talk, but he didn't talk about her. No he talked about the master, and his plan to follow him when he left school. He talked about how he was going to take the mark when he was of age and become an official Deatheater and how he wished I would accompany him on the outside.
I listened to his voice and somehow became stronger, I fed off his love for the Dark Lord and basked in his smell as he held me. I know that as I sat there something in me died, but something else grew to completion. I found my path that day. I would follow him to the end of the world if he asked, and in some small way I believe that was what he was asking.
When I was ready we stood and made our way back to the common room. It was dark, well past curfew and the room was empty. Every one had settled into bed for the night. We sat on the couch in front of the dwindling fire for along time, holding each other. That was the night I gave myself to him completely. I looked up into his eyes and told him I loved him. I told him I wanted to make love to him and feel him inside me. I know that sounds ridiculous and to some maybe even a touch morbid. To me it felt right.
It felt right every time after that too. I loved him uncontrollably and couldn't stop myself from saying yes when he asked me to join him in taking the mark. That was sometime after Hogwarts, I still thought of my Lily, but she always seemed to seep to the back of my mind whenever I was around Evan. He filled me up so completely I didn't have room, at the time, for regret. That came later.
This time it started with the plot to kill the Potters. My Lily was a Potter now. She had married James, the one we had both been repulsed by in school. The fact that she married him didn't matter to me, she seemed happy. In fact she had a son. That was the reason the Dark Lord plotted to kill them. He needed to rid the world of the baby. Something about a prophecy, I didn't pay much attention to it at the time, I would spend years later involved in that same prophecy.
I followed the Dark Lord for such a long time with no question, he was the one Evan had pledged himself to and so I would not question his reasons. I blocked out the fact that the one who needed to die was my Lily's child. I pushed aside the fact that she would try to protect him and figured she would get over the loss eventually.
When the Dark Lord went out, I was with Evan. I was loving him and he was loving me. I was absorbed in the feelings, not just the physical but the emotional. I felt his soul mingling with mine, I felt as if we had become one person. I had no thoughts for the fate of my Lily. Nor was I thinking about my new alliance with Dumbledore. My whole hearted attention was on the man I loved. Evan Rosier.
When the news hit about my Lily and her beloved family, it about tore my insides out. Evan didn't come to me that time, he left me to grieve on my own. I don't know where he was but for the first time since I had been with him, I wasn't thinking of him. I was thinking of all the ways I could have saved her, of all the things I didn't get to say to her, of what a bad friend I had been to her.
I still loved him after that, truth be told I still love him today. The Dark Lord didn't accomplish his goal, he killed my Lily and her James but he failed to kill the boy. His powers fled him and he vanished to some where no one could find him. Evan came back to me for one night, he held me and kissed me and loved me with everything he was. He told me he'd come back for me and he apologized for the path he had forced me to take. Before he left he kissed me and whispered, "Forgive me for your Lily."
I never saw him again. The Aurors caught him and fought him to his death. He fought for what he believed until his dieing breath. He might not have had the same morals as everyone else, but he was a strong willed man. A passionate, soulful being that will for ever own my heart.
There are things I regret doing in my past. My Lily never knowing the true depth of my love, never being able to forgive me and never knowing how truly sorry I was for losing her. I should have never followed Evan into the dark, whether his warmth protected me or not. The one thing I will never regret is loving him.
He was my salvation, my very life force. I will never regret him, never could regret him. For as long as I live I will love him, I will grieve for him, and I will remember him.
