Do You?
A/n: Songfic. Song: Do You? written by me.
Do you know how much you're treasured?
He focuses his black eyes upon her: Lily Evans the girl who won't admit to being beautiful, the girl who, at eleven years old, manages to make his heart skip more than one beat. He thinks if he stops breathing, that might be normal too.
She laughs – twinkling – so his whole being pulses with appreciation.
Do you know there's people
Out there with broken hearts, who
Can't be apart from you?
It hurts to know.
James Potter is the very bane of his existence, the polar opposite of Lily if there ever was one. When Severus is around him, he quivers – quivers – with detest. The only thing they have in common – the only thing Severus understands about James – is a wont of Lily's companionship.
Except, Severus knows, Potter only has a smug, fleeting fancy. Severus loves Lily – is wracked with love – so much it hurts, sometimes – and he fails to notice the same pain in Potter's eyes, too many times.
Do you notice what you see in the distance?
He's done it: he's spilled the secret. Now that she knows Potter has taken an interest, she'll be tempted – tempted to stray, to make the other boy more than her friend.
The thought is unbearable.
Do you blink through
Your own blind eyes to realize what's too true?
And Severus can almost not bear the pain of it, the anguish, of even thinking thoughts like that. Lily is his friend, first and foremost and – and only. She is his only friend, the only person he doesn't wear a mask around.
Oh, it hurts to see.
He never even thinks about James Potter, think he is out of the running now. Severus has a vantage point. He has the true, beautiful friendship of a true, beautiful girl.
He fails to see what is happening as he melts into that old mask, and she into hers…forever parted.
Tend to me
Dance on light feet, you're free
To kiss who you want to,
I guess.
Then you see
What they'll be needing
To sew is to reap, sweet
To dance is to sing.
Do you love any of those boys out there?
"I – didn't – no, I didn't mean –" He almost breaks into sobs at the portrait hole. Never had he willed something so strongly as he wills her now to come back.
Can't she see? Is she so blind? He'll gladly give his life for her, his very life and breath and blood.
My soul, he thinks. I'd give my soul, and anything else is superficial.
Do you even think about
Their lonely aching souls? You're making heartbreaks.
It hurts to love.
Is fifteen too young to die? Is it too young to, for example, kill one's self? Severus is sorely tempted for a moment or two – but then he thinks that would be the stupid, stupid brave thing to do – after all, doesn't he get a second chance?
Doesn't Lily always give second chances?
Do you care about the politicians?
Do you ever wonder
In the dead of night if you're right or numbly wrong? And
Do you know you can't even care
If your love is true, as true as you can say?
You lost echoes in Severus's mind.
For a second, he wants to believe it, wants to fall and let go. He wants to leave and rejoin people he should've forgiven.
he wants –
"Look…at me…"
And those green eyes – wonderfully honest green eyes – are Lily's, not Harry's, and she's telling him it's okay to let go now, because he has that one – beautiful – memory to sustain him.
So he does. He lets go.
It hurts to know.