AN: QFLC Season 5 Round 1. I used the prompts lovely, yesterday, and the quote "The problem with people is they forget that most of the time it's the small things that count" (prompts 1, 2, and 14, respectively). I wrote the HallowRain8587 NOTP, which was Severus Snape/Petunia Dursley.
I'm messing with the timeline a bit. Petunia never met Vernon and Severus either hasn't met Voldemort or thrown in his lot completely with him, and though it hasn't been stated, the prophecy either hasn't been said just yet, or Severus wasn't there to here it. And FFnet is eating my linebreaks which is frustrating.
As a final note, this story's title comes from the song Piledriver Waltz by the Arctic Monkey, which is basically this story's soundtrack.
Total word count: 2,666
The card is a cream colour. It's thick and lightly perfumed with the scent of vanilla. On the front of the card is script in gold ink, every flourish sharp and elegant.
You are invited to the wedding of
Lily Evans
James Potter
Severus flips it over. On the back is the more familiar looping scrawl of Lily's that he grew up reading.
Severus,
I know that we've grown apart, but you're still my childhood friend. I have a feeling that this might be the last time I see everyone from Spinner's End, so I would appreciate if you were there too.
From,
Lily
He puts the card down on his desk with Lily's note face up, stares at it for a moment, and considers what he knows.
Fact: Lily Evans is already Lily Potter. Their wedding was a year ago. He had not been invited, but he had heard that it was lovely. Potter himself had transfigured a hundred paper doves to fly around during the reception. As the night had wore on and the transfigured doves had one by one become paper again, guests would open the paper to read a quote from the muggle book The Little Prince, much to their bafflement.
(Fact: Lily's favourite book is The Little Prince. A few years ago, Severus was the only one in the world to know this, since Lily thought that it was embarrassing, how much she loved a children's book at fifteen. Severus is no longer the only one who knows.)
Fact: Lily's parents had not been there either, but that was because they were muggles, and as much as they loved their daughter, they weren't comfortable with the world that Lily had fallen in love with, or the man.
Conjecture: This is the muggle wedding. Severus is invited only because of their childhood friendship, which Lily's parents know of. The question is, why now?
But even as he wonders, he's already pulling a parchment and quill out of his drawer to confirm his attendance.
A week later, he's in the Ministry dealing with some paperwork for his Potions Mastery certification. It's all bureaucratic nonsense and filing, which leaves him bored and short of patience as he waits for the man doing the filing to finish the process.
He's tapping his wand on his knee, a slight sneer on his face as he stares down Gregson, or whatever the man introduced himself as. Gregson is trembling slightly as he fumbles through the numerous pages of the application, double-checking the authenticity of Severus' Apprenticeship results. The cold sweat on his forehead gives him an unhealthy looking sheen.
Gregson drops his quill on the floor for the third time. Severus' sneer deepens slightly, but noticeably enough that Gregson laughs nervously as he ducks away to pick it up.
Behind him there is a loud laugh, one that Severus remembers vividly. It sounds like a dog barking. He tenses, posture ramrod straight.
"Congratulations, mate!" Sirius Black.
"Pipe down, Padfoot, would you?" Potter says back. Severus carefully does not turn around. He stares instead at the grainy surface of the desk in front of him. Without even thinking about it, he casts a silent Supersensory charm on himself, and listens to the conversation happening behind him. They're already moving past his location, not having even noticed him. He doesn't know if that makes him feel better or worse.
Black's next words are much quieter, but Severus can just barely make out the words with the charm on him. "Still! Just a year of being a married man and you're already going to be a dad. This why you're having that muggle wedding?"
Severus cancels the spell. His vision suddenly tunnels so that he sees only the grain of the wood, and noises become muffled, like static, which is what his body feels like in that moment, and he has to swallow around the lump in his throat a few times before he realises what's happening and he breathes in for five seconds, holds it for seven, and exhales for nine, and does it again, then again, and once more so that he feels a little more in control, Merlin he's over her, he is, he has to be-
"-nape? Mr. Snape?" Gregson's voice filters through the white noise. Severus focuses again.
Spinner's End is just as wretched as he remembers. He arrives two weeks in advance of the wedding with clouds and rain following on his heels.
With no sunlight, his childhood home looks gloomy and foreboding. It's even more dilapidated than he had predicted, considering that he had only left it alone for two years. The wood of the porch looks saturated, like water had seeped through the old resin and stayed there. The windows are shuttered tightly, with bits of paint peeling off. The front garden is overgrown with weeds and flowering plants. In the riot of colours, he recognises the flowers his mother had planted, once upon a time, next to an overgrown patch of weeds. Plants for potions that were safe to have around muggles.
Severus stands on the gravel path leading up to the front door, taking it all in. He sticks out like a sore thumb in the riot of green and grey - a figure dressed all in black, hovering on the precipice of a memory.
Severus hasn't been back to Spinner's End since he organised his father's funeral, but he feels like he's never left. Still an outsider, still a looming figure at the edges.
He spins around, shrinks his luggage and stuffs it into his jacket's inner pocket. With that done, he stalks away from the house and towards the local motel to rent a room.
Two hours later, he's at the pub a block down from the motel, drinking in a quiet corner. It tastes nothing like the fancy wines and drinks that Lucius occasionally tries to ply him with, decidedly worse, in fact. Despite that, Severus has grown up with this, so he drinks it mindlessly, where Lucius surely would have spit it up. He looks up from his drink to scan the bar periodically, his back comfortably against the wall.
He takes another sip, and considers what he knows.
Fact: Lily is pregnant.
Conjecture: Her muggle wedding is so that her parents aren't scandalised by a baby supposedly out of wedlock.
Fact: Spinner's End hasn't changed.
Conjecture: Maybe Severus hasn't either.
"Severus Snape?" he hears to his left. He turns, and is surprised to see someone he knows. Standing in the dim light of the pub is Petunia Evans, her hair longer than he remembers, in a dress that one would wear to the office. Nothing about her stands out, which is familiar.
He has not seen Petunia for even longer than Spinner's End, but he can see the traces of the face that he used to know. She's fully grown, and the pinched look that was only beginning years back is fully articulated now.
"Petunia," he says flatly. She looks oddly relieved then, shoulders sagging a bit from the perfect posture that she stood with. Her eyes flick from him to the empty chair in front of him, and back. He purses his lips for a moment, and then with some reluctance, says, "Would you like a seat?"
"Yes, thank you," she says, and sits down. Her glass of wine clinks a bit as she sets it on the filthy table. She must have come back from either class or work (he doesn't know which, since he never bothered to keep track of her), because she waves at a couple of people around their age that exit the bar, laughing loudly as the thoroughly intoxicated tend to do.
They sit in silence for a moment, eying each other over their drinks.
"It's been quite some time," Severus opens up with. He shifts his arm and feels the reassuring weight of his wand holster press against his inner forearm.
"Has it?" Petunia says, like she honestly can't remember, which they both know isn't the case. "Maybe. We never spent enough time together for it to matter." She taps a fingernail against her glass nervously. The rest of her is stiff and in control, which Severus would find admirable if it weren't so obviously forced.
Severus holds back a snort. "Yes," he says flatly. "We weren't that type of acquaintances."
"No, we weren't," Petunia agrees. "Which is why I won't bother with pretending otherwise. I want answers, Severus."
"I see," he says.
Petunia gives him a scathing look, but gets to the point without the dithering that some of Severus' acquaintances would have done, even the Slytherins. "She sent me a letter with my invitation, you know? She begged me to come. She said she wanted to see me at least once before or during the wedding, and hinted that she wouldn't be able to do so after. Since she'd be leaving. For your world. Entirely."
"That's not a question," he says. They both know that he's stalling though.
Petunia tips her head, "Why now?"
This is the least he owes Petunia, he supposes, for those moments she decided to be almost kind or helpful in their childhood, this honesty. He can't watch her expression, because her eyes reflect his face. He looks at the table as he says it instead, "She's pregnant."
Each vowel feels like it's being torn out of his throat as he says it. He scratches out the loops of the words in the tabletop for something to do with his hands, ignoring the way black dirt gathers underneath his fingernail. He hears Petunia's gasp, the strangled noise at the back of her throat.
"With him?" she murmurs. "We're going to need more alcohol."
It shouldn't be comforting, that little 'we,' but it is.
He keeps running into Petunia after that.
He sees her at the swings where they all had originally met. He sees her sitting at the corner of the small stream that they sometimes tried to catch frogs in, running her hand on the bench of the corner store (still miraculously open) where they used to share snacks and ice lollies. Yesterday, he met her in the forest near his childhood home, inspecting an old sign that was faded to the point it was indecipherable. Later, after she had left and he had squinted at the sign for a good ten minutes, he realised that it was a sign for a campsite.
She seems to have the same idea as him. She's visiting the spots that she shared with Lily before Lily comes and inevitably brings Potter to them. Taking these spots in one last time before they no longer become private moments shared with her sister. These spaces of theirs from before Hogwarts was even a twinkle in their eyes, and before Severus knew them, in some cases.
They're both at the swings again when they finally broach the topic of Lily once more.
"Has she changed a lot?" Petunia asks, kicking at the soft dirt beneath their feet. "I don't - I don't see her a lot. Didn't."
Severus watches her for a second. "I wouldn't know. I haven't been close to her since about fifth year." It hurts to say; an old ache, but it's still difficult to make his mouth form the words. It feels strange at times, to be so honest with someone else.
Petunia nods like she understands. Maybe she does. She used to be close to Lily as well. It's partly why they're here, mourning the loss of a part of Lily that used to be theirs, and won't be in a few days.
"Sometimes," Petunia says after a long moment, "It feels like nothing has changed. Spinner's End feels the same as it did when we were still kids."
Severus knows, but instead of saying so he scoffs, turning his face away to look at the sky above. It's grey, but the clouds don't look heavy with rain. He buttons his jacket anyway. "I would hope that something has changed. Us, maybe. Me." His clothes at least fit him now.
He sees Petunia shake her head in the corner of his eye. "You look different," she allows, "but you still came back here for her. You haven't changed much."
"You're here too," he points out, and she laughs without any humour.
"Yeah. I am."
This feels like too much of a trap, somehow - meeting someone who feels just as trapped as he in the same place and a similar way he does. Then again, that's part of magic: brief, strange coincidences that lead to terrible, extraordinary moments that change your life forever. It's how he met Lily; how he met Potter and the rest of his gang.
In this moment, it's how he ends up holding Petunia Evans' hand. It feels warm against his, more slender and thin than he anticipated, but still reassuring.
It may be a trap, but at least he's not alone.
They dance together at the wedding reception.
Lily is so caught up in her (second) wedding with Potter that she doesn't notice it. She's giggling as Potter jokes about something or other, trying to teach him about the muggle world a bit before he looks too terribly strange to one of her completely muggle friends. He makes suspicious faces at the drinks, and is not very subtle in making sure that none of the alcohol goes near Lily.
The dance floor is filled with people, so Severus and Petunia take a small corner and shuffle around in a circle for the slow dance.
Petunia feels very light and thin, next to him, but her steps and grip are firm and confident. Her posture is poised, and only noticeably tense whenever she catches sight of Lily or her parents across the room.
Severus gently spins them in a circle so she doesn't have to look, anymore, even though that puts Lily in his sights. She frowns, and spins them again so that the both of them can see Lily if they look to the side. It's not particularly kind to either of them, but at least this way they can endure this together.
Severus looks Petunia in the eyes and considers what he knows.
Fact: He loves Lily. Perhaps he always will.
Fact: Petunia loves Lily in her own way. Perhaps she always will.
Fact: They understand each other.
Fact: It hurts less, with someone next to him who's going through the same thing, who understands what it's like to let go of someone dear, someone who was such a big part of your life.
Conjecture: Maybe this is what he needs.
The thing is, Severus is sentimental. He keeps his mother's wand in a locked box in the drawer by his bed. He still has the copy of The Little Prince that he had loaned Lily before she got her own copy. He secretly fantasised about falling in love with someone and confessing it in those big dramatic ways you see in Hollywood. He believes that love is all fireworks: the noise, the spectacle, the lights.
The reality of love, he finds as he watches Petunia watch Lily, is much different. It's the smoke instead, the moment in the dark that lingers after the bang. He'd forgotten, in the glamour of Hogwarts and the dramatics of the magical world, what he'd learned in quiet moments in Spinner's End: most of the time it's the small things that count.
The small things are the tenderness in Petunia's eyes that he recognises in his own, and the gentle but reassuring squeeze she gives his hand when she catches him staring. It's the company she gave him when he needed it. It's the honesty he gives her.
It's not love as he knows it, but the only love he's known ends tragically for him. This might be the alternative instead, a softer kind.