Disclaimer: I hate these, so forget it.

Characters: Severus Snape, Lily Evans. Marauder days, before the rise of Voldemort.

Summary: She hadn't spoken to him in over a year, ever since he'd called her that unforgivable word. But, there he was, standing on the shores of a lake with her in the waxing moonlight, and she was beautiful.

Author's Note: It never occurred to me to write this pairing until last night. I do like them as a couple, though perhaps not as a lasting one. Kind of hard to get past the fact that she needs to be with James because, hell, they only spawned the son that their entire book series is named after. Anyway, this is a one-shot. Do enjoy.

I OPEN AT THE CLOSE

Summer vacation, the last summer before their final year at school. Severus scratched his head. He certainly hadn't pictured spending those few months at the vacation house of the Evans'. He pinched his arm and winced. It hurt. Not a dream.

Lily's eyes that night were quick and clever. In the bright light of a nearly-full moon, her copper hair danced in loose, care-free tendrils from the messy ponytail on her head. She was smiling at him again, and it frightened him. Circumstances were not in his favor, if he was to maintain his dignity that night. The air was warm and her smile was too easy. Very dangerous.

"Come on, Sev. Let's go swimming."

Said Slytherin cast nervous glances around the area. The lake, not very large in the traditional 'lake' sense, was dark and still. It had a few muddy, sandy shores, but was mostly surrounded by tall reeds. In the daylight, Severus was sure that it was lovely. Black trees ringed the area, shapeless and slightly forbidding against the equally black and shapeless night. He couldn't see beyond them. It was like he and Lily were in their own little confined corner of the world, that night.

"Sev?"

He could see stars scattered across an inky backdrop, but half the sky was obscured by thick clouds. Faint lightening flickered in the distance. A storm was coming.

Wasn't that the truth.

He looked at her again, still wondering vaguely what in Merlin's name he was doing there.

It had been over a year since they'd properly spoken, ever since fifth year, when he'd called her…

Well, after their last row, she brushed him off coldly. It was painful at first, oh yes, it was that, but the cold, nasty reality of the ever-darkening outside world quickly drowned out the dull prickling of his little teenage crush. The rise of Voldemort. The rise of the Death Eaters. Severus rubbed his arm.

He'd resigned himself to losing her. Oh, he'd seen the looks Potter gave her, the looks she gave Potter. (From afar, of course; he hadn't dared approach her after calling her that vile word) So, their sixth year had passed uneventfully. Uneventfully between them, anyway. He mourned her secretly, silently and placidly, as had always been his way. In fact, with his "new crew," as Lily always sneered, he felt a firm new resolve. He belonged somewhere. He was important to someone, even if it was only a lunatic wizard and his lunatic followers.

He'd made peace with that fact that he'd sold his soul for, in the end, he'd really done it for her.

So, when she'd appeared on his doorstep on the first day of summer, smiling that absolutely wonderful smile of hers, acting as if nothing in the entire world were amiss, Severus was genuinely shocked. She was just there that day. It still made him blush darkly to think of how he must have looked, standing with one hand on the doorknob and his mouth hanging open slackly.

"Sev," she'd said, "my parents and I are going on holiday next month. They've invited you to come along. They do miss you, you know."

And so, there he was, and there she was, and he still hadn't even asked her why.

Severus sighed gustily. Lily was several feet below, standing on the shore of the lake with her back to him. He sat perched on a rock and his sandals were tossed haphazardly into the reeds below. He studied his sand-caked feet. "Lily,"

"Come on," she urged. "I want a swim."

"Well, then go."

"Come with me."

The Slytherin frowned. "I've got no trunks."

She turned and smiled at him. "Those shorts will do. Or, if you prefer, you can swim in your briefs."

Snape blanched. "Right."

She gave a haughty laugh and tossed her hair, tossed it. Probably on purpose. Merlin. She trudged up to his rock and placed her hands on her hips. "Are you going to sit there and sulk all night or are you going to come play with me, like I ask?"

All he could do was stare at her. His mind could not really form a coherent way to voice what he was thinking; that lingering, nagging question of why.

"Um."

"Stop being such a bore. It's summer. We're supposed to be having fun." She cocked her head and he tried his damnedest to resist the magnetic pull of her eyes. "No one's around. We're alone, you know."

He twitched. "Um."

"Severus?"

"Um," he struggled for words, but apparently his entire vocabulary had been reduced to that one, idiotic utterance. "Evans—"

"Spit it out already."

He shook his head. "What happened?" Those hands on her hips slipped down a bit, shoulders lowered ever-so-slightly. She said nothing. "Why are we… I thought—"

"You thought what?" she challenged.

Severus bit his lip. "I thought that, maybe—"

"That I hated you?"

"Um. Yes."

Her green eyes closed. She seemed suddenly very weary, and ages old, much older than her seventeen years. Merlin, she looked as if she had the entire weight of the world on her shoulders. And she did, really, but so did he. So did they all. That world weight, felt so strongly down into the depths of the soul, did not lessen or ease simply because that world happened to be crumbling.

With a scoff, Lily Evans snatched up her best friend's wrist and yanked him from the rock. "Oi!" He stumbled through sand and reeds behind her, trying to keep his balance. "Lily, come on—"

"I said I want to swim," she said, "so let's swim."

"You didn't answer my question!" he said. "Why am I here? Why are you here?"

"This is my parent's place, silly."

"That's not what I mean!"

Her back was to him again. He dropped to the sand and crossed his arms over his knees. The night air, thick and wet with the slow, soft mystery of summer, clung to his skin and clothes and eyelashes. He shook the damp from his hair.

"Sorry, Sev," she said softly. She continued to stare out at the lake. The moon rippled its way across the surface, jumping and swaying violently when any creature moved beneath the water to disturb it. Frogs bellowed. Crickets sang. In his peripheral vision, Snape saw dancing lights. He turned. Fireflies.

"For what?"

She shook her head. It caused her coppery ponytail to swish to and fro, like a mare's tail, teasing the dips and curves of her back. Severus watched its progress with a little more hunger than he would have liked.

"I guess this is my atonement." The heavy sorrow in her voice made him cringe. He didn't have to ask why it was there. He knew. The shoreline of that black lake, with its murky water lapping across it, may as well have been the very same precipice he felt he was standing on at that moment. He knew she felt it too; the tide was coming in, not just for them, but for all of them

The world was about to change, and they were still just children.

"Well," she said briskly, "come on, then." And then she pulled her shirt over her head.

Severus dug his heels into the sand and pushed backward in shock. "Evans!"

She turned on him with a wicked smile. "What? You've seen me in a swimsuit before. This is hardly different." She slid out of her denim shorts and Severus made a guttural choking sound in his throat.

"You, Lily—what are you—for the love of Merlin, put your bloody clothes back on!"

She threw out her arms and stood, unashamed, in the silvery darkness. "What? You expect me to swim in my jeans? That happens to be one of my favorite tanktops, you know!"

Severus tore his eyes away from her mismatched underwear; a pair of green and blue striped panties and a black bra that had a tiny little wilting, pink bow sewn onto it. His cheeks, normally pale and sallow, flamed bright red. "Lily—"

"Oh, come off it, Sev. Look, you can close your eyes, if you want, just come on." With that, she marched into the water and, with a stiff salute, dove beneath the surface of the lake.

Severus clapped a hand over his mouth. She was insane. The bloody Gryffindor skirt had gone insane. Stripping off her clothes like that, for him, in the nearly palpable moonlight, and all after having hardly spoken a word to him in over a year…

This would happen. The Slytherin felt a sick, horrified chuckle rising in his throat. This would be happening; on the very eve of their destruction, Lily Evans would be prancing about in her underwear on the shore of this obscure lake. Maybe he was going insane, too.

She surfaced a few feet out and waved at him. "Come on, Sev. It's warm. Toss off your clothes and jump in."

"How about no?"

"Come on!" she shouted. Severus cringed and looked over his shoulder at the darkened windows of her parent's summer house.

"Be quiet, they'll hear you!"

"So?"

"So? So maybe I don't want, oh, I don't know, your father to come storming out of that house to see me, and to see you, swimming in the lake in nothing but your panties!" Muggle or no, Severus most certainly did not want to come face to face with an enraged Evans Senior, on a rampage to protect the virtue of one of his precious daughters.

A soggy object smacked him wetly in the face and Severus squealed. It was high and girlish. Lily laughed from her spot by the reeds.

"Cor," he scoffed. Severus peeled the wet thing from his head and stared at it in horror. It was her bra.

"All right, that's it, I'm going inside."

"No!" she cried. "Severus Snape, get in here right now or I'll hex you into next week!"

He scoffed and tossed away the tainted piece of clothing. "I wonder how you'll do that with no wand, Evans."

"Please?"

Her pleading tone made him stop. Halfway up the beach, he turned and looked at her. All he could see was her head emerging from the still water, just a black shape, but he didn't need to see her eyes to know that she was desperate.

He felt his toes sinking into the warm, soft sand and thought, here, at the end of all things, why do you still torment me so?

With a heavy sigh and a maddeningly quickening heart, Severus peeled off his dingy T-shirt and took his time in folding it neatly and placing it over his arm. He heard her giggle from the water.

"Blimey, you are pale, Sev."

"Yeah, thanks," he snapped. He turned and dropped the folded shirt into the reeds. "I'm not taking off these shorts, though."

"Why?" she asked. "Going commando today?"

He blushed. "Yes…"

Lily gasped and dissolved into riotous laughter. "Severus, I was only joking, but Merlin, really? You've been going around freeba—"

"Shut up!" he shouted. He waded into the water until it lapped at his ankles. "Lily, it's dark, and who knows what horrid things could be swimming around in this slimy lake."

"Ooh, scary, right? Well, Sev, you're a wizard, so, I'm pretty sure you could handle any sharks or grindylows or man-eating eels that happen to be swimming around in here."

Severus yanked a foot from the water. "Not funny!"

She only shrugged and held out her arms as if to say, get to it, then.

Tentatively, he stepped forward. Merlin, did the frogs and crickets have to pick that very moment to pause in their infernal night-singing? It was like the entire world was holding its breath. God may as well have reached up and halted the wheeling and spinning of the stars above their heads. Well, he suppose he felt like that as soon as he stepped out into the night, hours before. He'd felt like that all summer, really.

He saw her vague, black shape moving closer to him. Her arms were out, slicing cleanly through the warm lake water. Now he could see her face. Her eyes were glittering enticingly at him. "What?" she asked as she watched him self-consciously cross his arms over his naked chest. He'd never liked to be shirtless. She sighed and tugged at the band that held her ponytail in place. "What are you, a bloody girl? Come on, stop being so shy."

"Ok, I see a big difference between being shy and not wanting to be completely immodest, like you. By the way, if you stand up, I'll kill you right here and now. Don't think I won't."

She smiled. "I hadn't planned on it. You're not that lucky." She raked bright eyes over his body. "As I thought, very pale and skinny. But that's not necessarily bad, Sev." She flicked water at him. "You're not bad looking for a bloke, you know."

Severus sighed and dropped his arms. He waded farther out into the water, cringing at the feeling of mud and reeds oozing up between his toes. He passed Lily without looking at her and made his way out into the open water.

"It's not very deep," he mused aloud.

"No. That's why it's an ideal swimming spot at night. We won't drown or anything."

The dark-haired boy bent his knees and let the water rise to his chest. She was right; the water was warm and quite comfortable. However, the dank smell of decomposing reeds from the shore, combined with the stagnant smell of the lake water, made him wrinkle his nose.

He took a stab at idle conversation. "What do you mean that it's not bad for a bloke to be pale and scrawny? I don't exactly have girls breaking down my dormitory door back at school, you know." He turned to look at her and saw that she was wading her way over to him, swimming in a dog-paddle fashion. Every once in a while, he saw one of her pale feet kick out of the water, like a white fish.

"I didn't say you were scrawny," she said calmly, "I said you were skinny. There's a difference. You haven't been scrawny for years." To his relief, she maintained a respectful distance, coming to rest a few feet away from him. She stayed submerged up to her the tops of her shoulders. "You're thin, sure, but not bone-thin or anything. I can't see your ribs." She moved closer and poked him, as if to prove her point. "And as for being pale, well, I guess in this light, your paleness suits you."

He frowned. "In the darkness, you mean? Thanks."

She laughed and splashed him. "Come off it, I mean the moonlight. It's fitting."

"Right." Severus raked shaking hands through his hair. "So, um… where's Petunia?"

"Tuney? Oh, well, Tuney wanted to stay the summer over in Manchester. Said she wanted to finish school faster by taking a summer course or two. But I know better…" Lily batted at the water's surface with her fingertips, watching the succession of ripples that spread outward from them. "She wants to stay with the handsome, dashing Mr. Vernon Dursley, don't you know. Mommy and Daddy are thrilled, naturally."

Severus stuck out his tongue. "Yuck. He was most certainly not handsome, or dashing. Probably the most boring bloke I've ever met."

"I know!" she giggled. "He was so pudgy and awkward. Leave it to Tuney to find the least eligible boy at school…"

Severus watched her poke at the bubbles floating on the surface of the lake and thought, yes, even here, with water weeds stuck in her hair and the freckles on her shoulders, standing out so sharply against her pale skin in this moonlight… yes, she's still achingly beautiful.

Lucky her.

"You still never answered my question," he said suddenly. "Why did you bring me here?"

She regarded him thoughtfully for a long time. Her lips were pursed in that ever-so-delightful way that he loved. After a time, she turned and began to paddle out into the middle of the lake.

"Evans!" he hissed, splashing his way after her. "Stop and answer me! Damn it, come on! You show up at my doorstep after ignoring me for the better part of two years and suddenly invite me back into your company? Lily, what happened? I thought you hated me!" Though she was only dog-paddling, she was keeping an infuriating distance ahead of him, making him wonder whether or not she was propelling herself forward by magic. "Stop! Seriously, answer me! Why did you bring me here?"

"Shh, Sev, look!" She stopped and pointed across the lake. More points of light were gathering and dancing over the water, flitting their way closer to the pair.

Severus stopped. The water had gotten deeper and had now risen to his neck while he was fully upright. He scowled. "Lily."

She'd made her way to a gathering of lights, keeping low in the water. Every once in a while, she'd reach up and clap her hands over one of the lights, miss and fall unceremoniously back into the water. The effect would have been comic, had Severus not still been so incredibly frustrated with her.

Bloody Gryffindor prat.

Finally, she'd captured her quarry. Her laughter came, light and innocent, over the rippling surface of the water. Her smiling face was devoid of any of the sorrow that had clung to it previously. It almost tugged his own sour-looking lips into a smile. Almost.

"Look," she said. She held out her closed palms and opened them slightly under his nose. Three fireflies danced around on her pruning skin. They winked at him, mockingly, and briefly brightened the contours of her face.

His anger subsided a bit.

"Just tell me," he said quietly. "I—I know I was a git. A complete, insufferable git. But, git or no, I at least deserve to know why I'm here. With you. In this place."

She smiled at him and he felt his insides chill. Not with that look. Anything but that look.

"Please. Talk to me. I'm just… I'm sorry—"

"That stuff doesn't matter anymore," she said quietly to the dancing light in her cupped palms. "I realized that at the end of the term. With everything else going on in the world, all this mad stuff, this plotting and intrigue… our little trivial fights and nonsense just don't matter. You matter, though, and I matter, and that's why I brought you here." She looked up at him, eyes illuminated with the ghostly green glow of the firefly in her hands. "It just doesn't matter anymore, Sev."

"I'm sorry," he stammered. "I'm so sorry, Lil."

"I know."

"I didn't mean to call you that."

"I know that, too."

"And I don't mean to run around with those idiots, those filthy little aspiring minions of that insane old wizard… Merlin, Lily, I don't want this, any of this, but—"

"Then stop," she said. "Just stop. Drop them. You don't need them."

He shook his head. "You wouldn't understand."

She took to studying the firefly again. It buzzed about in her open hands, lighting on her fingers and winking in and out at them. "I laughed at you," she said. "I'm sorry."

"What?"

"That day. I laughed at you. That's why you called me a Mudblood." Her expression was sad. "I'm sorry. I deserved it."

"No." Severus moved closer to her. "No, you don't deserve that, never that."

"Either way," she cut him off, "it doesn't matter. Not anymore." In one swift movement, Lily threw up her hands and let the firefly sail off into the night. She watched its progress, watched it join its other little glowing friends. Her back was turned to him again.

"Lily."

"Sev, there's another reason why I brought you here. I feel like—like this will be the last bit of my life as a child that I'll ever get to enjoy. The last bit of innocence I have left. You, too. All of us. This one summer… it feels like it'll be my last happy, care-free one. Things are coming to a climax, I can feel it. I feel like I'm… like I'm crouching on the edge of a cliff. Any minute, the rocks beneath me will give out. We're facing something awful, Sev. It's all going to end soon, it's right around the corner." She looked over her shoulder. "I feel like this is the last bit of you I'll get to enjoy, too. Of you, the real you, the one I've known since we were kids together. I—I couldn't have let this time pass without reaching out to you once last time, reaching out for you."

Severus felt awful, sickening, traitorous tears welling in his eyes. He jerked his chin away so she wouldn't see them. She didn't have to say it, but he could almost hear the last thought going through her head.

And this is the last bit of room in my heart that I have left for you because, once Potter sticks so much as a toe in, you'll be lost to me.

She was so painfully right.

"Lily," he gasped. "Why—"

"I wouldn't have brought anyone else here, Severus."

"Liar." He hated the way his voice broke. "You would have brought him."

"I'm not lying." She moved closer to him, rested her forehead against his chest. "I wanted this time with you because I have a distinct feeling that we'll never be together like this again, like two innocent kids."

"Kids… ah, Merlin, how can we talk like this? How can the world expect us to accept this, this—?"

"I don't know. We'll have to take it in stride, I guess. But that time's not here yet, which is why I wanted to spend the last bits of our childhood together."

"I love you," he whispered.

Her eyes closed. "I know. I love you too, in a way I can't really express. It's not romance or destiny or little pencil-drawn hearts scribbled into the margins of notebooks, or giggling or secret love-notes or any of that other silly playground nonsense, but it's there, whatever it is, just a deeply-running bond that I don't want to lose just yet. Not just yet." She sighed. "Not on this night."

"But you love him."

"I don't know. Maybe. Probably." She felt his body convulse into a trembling sob and brought her hands to his chest, pressed them flat against his cold skin. "But you were there first. You were always first, before him. I won't forget that."

Severus shook violently, whether from the chill in the air or in his heart, he wasn't sure. "You were the only one—always. There's none but you."

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

No two words could have come out of her mouth and shattered his heart into tiny, innumerable pieces better than those two words. His face contorted and his teeth clenched against tears. She didn't move, just kept her palms pressed flush against his aching skin. In a final desperation, he clutched her wet face and kissed her. It was quick, it was awkward, and it was wet with filthy lake water, and when she didn't pull away he knew that it was because she pitied him.

I don't want your pity. Not yours.

He pushed her away, swallowing a sob and fell backwards into the water. His body hit the thick, congealing mud below, his hands tangled in the weeds, and he felt as if he may as well die there on the bottom of that lake. It was over. She would never be his.

But I already knew that. I knew it, and still… hearing it only adds salt to the wound.

He felt her feet move past him in the water. Surely she'd be retreating inside, away from his pale, scrawny figure that dared lay a hand on her… He pushed himself up from the lake bottom and emerged, coughing and spluttering to see her grabbing at the fireflies again. He didn't bother to hide his pathetic crying. He sobbed and hiccupped into his hands.

He could have handled hiding away at his parents' awful house the whole summer, convinced that she'd given up on him. He could have survived the next school year without her, too. But this… no, he felt like this was too much to handle, to have it given to him and yet so quickly taken away again.

"Sev," she said quietly. He could hear her swimming back to him.

"No. Just leave me be," he gasped.

"Can't," she said. He could hear the smile in her voice. "This is my place, so you're rather stuck with me, my friend."

"Merlin…" He wiped at his eyes and nose, still gasping quietly.

He must have looked dreadful, with his black hair plastered in messy clumps to his cheeks, eyes and nose both running, but still, she said, "You're handsome, Sev. It's just occurring to me, in this moonlight."

He jerked suddenly as if shooing away a bothersome insect. He wouldn't meet her eyes. He wouldn't meet her eyes.

"Here," she said, holding out her hands. Severus extended his palms, sniffling miserably, not really caring whether or not she could see how pitiful he was. She'd already seen him at his worst. What did it matter now?

"You're right, it doesn't matter, because right now, I'm seeing you at your best." She smiled, and it was then that he knew he'd spoken his thoughts aloud. He blinked at his open palms. Three fireflies were crawling over his fingers. They glowed steadily, rather than flickering in and out at him.

His arms reflected the eerie green light. It made him hate his white skin, and made him feel nothing but absolute loathing for the black mark that marred the ghostly surface of his left arm. Lily was staring at it with sad eyes.

"Don't." He jerked his arm away.

"Why, Sev?"

"It was unavoidable. I couldn't—I couldn't stop them from marking me."

With one last, long look at the mark on his arm, Lily turned and began to swim slowly to the beach.

"Stop," he breathed. "Don't. Please don't. Don't turn your back to me!"

I think this is that last time you'll do that. She'll never again look me in the face after tonight.

"Let's go inside," she said quietly.

"No!" He tore through the water after her. "Lily, I had to! I had to! Don't you understand? Lily, if I join them, I can protect you, you and your family. I, I don't have anything outside of it, nothing to give you, other than that—"

"You could protect me with them? I wouldn't take their protection if you paid me for it! Severus, what about the Order? What about Dumbledore? Are you mad?"

"Dumbledore is a meddling old coot," Snape spat. "He'll fall, they'll all fall, don't you see? You can't stand against Voldemort!" He ignored the way she seemed to go rigid at the mentioning of the dark wizard's name. "You need to stay away from the Order. Do you hear me? Stay away. They're being targeted! Lily, please—" He surged forward and slung his arms around her small shoulders. She didn't protest when he buried his face into her wet hair, when his mouth pressed against the flesh of her neck, which was now rising in cold goosebumps. "Don't, don't leave me."

"Severus," she said, "you surprise me. You're so bold."

"If not now, then when?" he moved his hands over her shoulders across her hair, smoothing across her ears and down across her cheeks. She leaned back against him. He decided to ignore how stiff she was.

"I love you. Please, I love you so much…"

"I know."

His fingers dipped into the hollow of her collarbone. "Lily—"

"Come on" she pulled away. "It's getting late. I'm going to bed."

He let her go, hands still clutching at the empty air before him. She was right. It was getting late. She'd said that, but she meant that it was too late.

Oh, he knew that…knew it all too well.

He stood in the pond, still waist-deep, and watched her climb up the sandy, reed-strewn shore. In a parallel universe, it would have occurred to him to stare avidly at her bare back and at the way her underwear clung wetly to her shapely backside. But, all he could see was her hair, still hanging in limp, wet clumps over her shoulders. Her white skin was suddenly cold and forbidding. She didn't look back.

That's what Severus Snape saw as he lay dying at the feet of the Dark Lord; Lily Evans' retreating back, her hair, and the memory of her bright green eyes, swimming with tears that she would never shed, not for him.

No, never for him.