Disclaimer: Recognised Harry Potter characters are not mine, just borrowing….you all should know that.
A/N: I have so little time for the other story, but this idea will not go away, so here it is…..
"I am sorry Lily, please, I NEVER meant to say that."
"You did though, you've been hanging around with them, that's what you really think."
"It is not! Please, Lily, I hear it, regularly, I have to eat with them and share a dorm room with them. I did not mean to say it, it's just in my head constantly and slipped out."
"Leave me alone."
Severus stared at her. "In other words, you've lied like everyone else. We were never really friends. You are just like everyone else." He turned. "No one really cares about me, waste of space . . . . it would be better if I was dead."
Lily watched him walk away, not registering his final words for a moment. No. Something inside her rose up, something that felt very, very wrong. What had she done? Lily knew he would not likely listen to her so she ran towards the hospital wing.
She was in tears by the time she reached Madame Pomfrey. The older Witch listened to her and gave her a calming draft, telling her to sit down and stay put until she returned.
Severus was standing at the edge of the Astronomy Tower, he could see himself going over and ending it all, but something held him back. He had heard in some fuzzy memory from the few times he had gone with Lily's family to the church that they attended that suicide was a sin . . . well, Hell did not sound like a place he wanted to end up, but where he was wasn't much better. He gripped the railing and stared at the ground below. No. Hell could not be any worse than being beaten physically and verbally by his father at home and humiliated and ridiculed by Potter and everyone else at school.
"Severus?" The soft voice behind him made him freeze.
"Go away." He did not turn, not wanting the one adult in this place he trusted seeing him cry, again.
"Severus, I just want to talk. Please?"
"I'm not a child anymore."
"No. You're not. You're a young man with a great deal of potential, a wizard with the potential to become as great or greater than Dumbledore himself. Please, Severus, turn around and talk to me."
"You don't really care."
"Yes, I do. I would not be here if I did not care, Severus. Now, please, step away from the railing."
Severus was silent. "They're right, you know."
She could barely hear him. "About what?"
"I'm a weak, sniveling, no one. . . no one wants me around."
Her heart broke for the boy, she had tried so hard to comfort and guide the child since the first day he showed up in her infirmary in the first week of his first year, bullied and injured she had discovered older injuries. She had done everything she could to be the mother at school that Severus did not have at home.
"They are jealous Severus, they are wrong. You are not weak, you have a heart. You are brilliant in potions and if that sycophantic idiot Slughorn cannot see that, he's blind as well as stupid."
He felt her hand on his shoulder and somehow the desire to be held by the only person he knew as a mother overcame his teenage pride and he turned and collapsed into her arms.
"Lily lied to me."
He felt her stroking his hair and holding him in a motherly embrace. "Severus, do you remember when we talked about growing up?"
He nodded.
"Well, Lily not only has that happening, but she has a temper her own, I think she truly regrets what she said to you. I think you two need to talk and I would be happy to sit with you while you do. I knew you were here because she came to me, in tears, realizing what she had said to you and regretting it."
"I thought she was my friend. . . . I . . . I love her." He whispered.
Poppy was silent for a moment. "Severus, I truly think you two need to talk, but it can wait a bit, for now why don't you just come and have some tea with me, all right?"
He looked at her, dark eyes puffy from crying. He finally nodded.