Letters
The letter had lain untouched at the bottom of Lily Potter's cabinet drawer for six years now, and in that time the ivory parchment had turned yellow with age and the seal had crumbled and fallen off, leaving a green-tinted mark where the wax serpent had once been. The words however, scrawled across the page in oil-black ink, were as dark and bold as they were the day they had been written, telling tales of love and friendship that Lily had never valued nor believed.
It had arrived late one February evening by owl, and Lily had recognised the thin, angular handwriting at once; she'd seen it a hundred times. But instead of throwing it to the fire like she wanted to, she peeled back the envelope and took out the parchment to read. Though she had never heard Severus Snape tell her he loved her, his voice had whispered to her as she read the words, guiding her through his confessions and apologies in the same reckless way he'd begged for forgiveness after breaking her trust and calling her a mudblood.
Now her long fingers brushed the dust off the creased paper and smoothed it out on her lap to read for the first time in over half a decade. At first the words felt stiff and unnatural in her mind, but soon they flowed with the same passion with which they had been written and Lily felt her hands begin to shake. She hadn't seen this man in years, and yet after all this time she wondered if he really had loved her as much as he'd have had her believe.
Albus Dumbledore was not lying when he told her that Snape had begged for her protection last month, when rumours had begun to spread that Voldemort had been sighted near London … but why? After all this time, did he still really love her?
Lily found that her refusal to believe Snape's letter was starting to ebb. She felt pity for the man whom she had never felt anything more than friendship for, and eventually, after tucking the letter neatly away again in the depths of the cabinet drawer, gratitude. He had been the one to tell her she was destined for things greater than what she had always believed; he'd introduced her to the world of magic, before Hogwarts and her teachers and friends made her feel normal again.
For a while, he had made her feel special. He'd breathed life into something that had been dormant for all of her life, and she thanked him for that.
I will always love you. His letter had told her this, but his actions, his fierce protectiveness that she only just could begin to appreciate, made her believe it. Now that she had stopped looking for lies she could finally see the truth.
Severus Snape had loved her.
And even though she could never love him in the same way, Lily Evans felt for the first time in years the trust and friendship she had once had for the man that loved her.
Review? :)