Lily laughed.
They were sitting in her bedroom on the floor, and bright afternoon sunshine was pouring in through the open window. Severus had been spending more and more time at Lily's house as his father grew more and more unpleasant over the course of the holiday.
On the floor before them were two long rolls of parchment, one covered in a looping tidy writing, the other in miniscule spidery scribbles. After they'd double checked one anothers work, and were satisfied that they had missed nothing (The essay was 'Varieties of Perceptions of Witchcraft in modern Muggle Society'), they had Fizzing Whizbees and Chocolate Frogs to celebrate.
When Lily told her mother that they had finished with all of their homework for the holidays, Mrs. Evans insisted they come downstairs for large bowls of ice-cream with hot fudge and cherries. Severus ate his reservedly, having refused the treat the first time, and eating it now only because it was foisted upon him by Mrs. Evans, who never dared say it out loud, but thought that Severus was much too thin.
Mrs. Evans had plenty of opinions, (That Severus needed new clothes, needed a wash and a haircut, that it was a crime that his mother didn't take more interest in him, that it was no wonder he liked to come over so often) but as these opinions were kept to herself, they were never communicated through more than a vaguely disapproving air that leaked out any time Severus' parents (and especially his mother) was mentioned.
Eileen Prince-Snape never served ice cream. And that wasn't the only difference between Lily's house and Spinner's End.
At Lily's house, things were tidy and well maintained. The carpets were vacuumed. Things were dusted with at least semi-regularity. In the evening, the family talked together over the gentle burble of the television playing in the background.
The kitchen always smelled like something good, and the avocado colored linoleum counter tops were shiny and clean. If something broke, it was fixed, not left in a state of disrepair.
Severus and Lily made peanut butter and banana sandwiches, spreading the slices of bread thick with peanut butter, standing in their sock feet as Lily slid around on the waxy, slick surface of the kitchen floor and Severus smiled in an un-self-conscious kind of way, watching her.
Sometimes, in the afternoons, Lily would roller skate the fifteen blocks to Spinner's End and wait for Severus by the gate that led in to his stark little yard, but Lily had never been inside his house, and only met his mother a few times.
When they got back to Lily's house they listened to records like Led Zeppelin or David Bowie in Lily's room, laying around on Lily's bed reading Petunia's diary (which was all about the latest fashions, other girls at school, and a muggle called Vernon), or watched Top of the Pops with Lily's parents.
Severus sat through television programs and commercials alike, enduring a constant diatribe of muggle nonsense so he could sit on the couch with his thigh against Lily's, feeling the vague heat of her body, smelling the faint waft of sweet shampoo smell that came from her hair when she turned her head. Sometimes, if it got late, she would fall asleep on him, her head tucked against his shoulder.
He loved that, and would remain as still as possible in order not to wake her, until it was time to go.
Later, after they weren't friends any longer, Severus would think angrily of all the time he wasted watching stupid television just so he could be close to Lily, who never wanted him at all, Lily, whom he would always love.
Lily liked to play Slade or T-Rex for Severus, who preferred Black Sabbath or Alice Cooper if they were going to listen to muggle music, even though he was always willing to comment sardonically on the fact that they were muggles singing about dark magic, something that amused him in a mean kind of way.
Though he'd never admit it, some of his fondest memories were of sitting with Lily in her bedroom among the feathers and seashells and glitter and cracked tea-cups that were sometimes turned in to rats, listening to her music and staring at her as she told him all about this charm or that potion.
It was always mostly easy for Severus to talk to Lily, except about his personal feeling for her. Despite his inability to communicate his feelings, or perhaps because of it, he was possessive in an unspoken way- she was his girl.
The way she met his eyes so readily, the way she always seemed to understand what he was trying to say, even when he stammered vulnerably and stumbled so weakly over his words- these things were like constant reminders that he was not brave enough to say what he needed to say, because Lily and her manner toward him was so encouraging and honest.
They met at the playground and impressed one another with bits of magic they had read about ('Have you ever heard of splinching?'), and talked often of what they thought they might like to do after they left Hogwarts ('Did you know that the Ministry pays witches around 15% less than they do the average wizard?')
Together they discovered that potion making did not violate the restriction of under age magic, and they brewed all sorts of interesting things without getting in to any trouble at all.
They experimented with Essence of Euphoria (adding roses and mint to cut the taste), and found themselves in a floaty haze of pleasant feeling all that afternoon.
Shortly thereafter, Severus was proud to present Lily with liquid extract of the essence of the Venemous Tentacula, which he had made himself, secretly, for one particular potion that Lily had wanted to brew.
Sometimes, when Severus' dad was being particularly nasty, he was allowed to sleep over. After Lily had asked permission, Lily's mum would nod her head in an understanding fashion and make up a nice place for him on the couch with crisply clean mismatched sheets and a fresh flowery printed pillow case.
On these nights, Lily and Severus would stay up late, brewing potions or talking, playing cards and records loudly as they could without waking up Lily's parents or Petunia.
Around midnight, Lily's dad would come upstairs and check in on them, turning out the lights throughout the house as he went. He would poke his head in to the doorway, tell them not to be too loud, and say goodnight. Assured of his daughter's safety in Severus' company, he would go to bed and rest easy, and smile at Severus at breakfast.
When they were awake together in the quiet hours of the early morning nothing else seemed to matter, the stillness of the night would steal over the rest of the house except for Lily's room, which was like a little island of light and life and activity.
She would sit on the floor beside him, a jumper pulled over her summer dress, her pale, naked legs curled beneath her as they thumbed through their combined collection of potions manuals and books, looking for new things to try and cook up.
There were times when they talked about potions and it was as though they were talking about something else entirely- talking about themselves, perhaps. The subtlety and sensitivity of their potion making skills were mirrored in their responses to one another.
They were an excellent team, a perfect blend of logic and intuition, right down to the receptive gestures of their body language; a flick of the wrist towards the other, a slight tilt of the head as Severus leaned forward to pluck a white feather from Lily's dark red hair, the inclination to sit facing one another.
All these unconscious choices on their part began, over time, to build up in Severus' mind, forming in to a kind of crazed certainty. Never before had he felt so sure that they would be together, that they were together. They had never been closer.
Of course, it was easy to feel that way over the holidays. The holidays were different.
With the long, warm days stretched before them, the promise of afternoons by the river, or of evenings spent in Lily's back garden could not be spoiled by the fact that they would return to their separate houses at Hogwarts with their separate classes and separate sets of friends.
There was an upside to this- even though they saw much less of each other over the school year, it meant a little more when they did.
Somehow, it was almost worth enduring Potter and Black's awful torment; Seeing the look on Potter's face as he was led away by Lily, her hand in his. She would squeeze his fingers encouragingly and pull him along with a determined air, destined for some secluded nook where they could talk undisturbed. Her beautiful mouth would utter reassuring phrases as she straightened his tie or tucked his hair behind his ear, unfailingly, a soothing hand to smooth his troubled brow.
..."Don't listen to them, Sev. Look at me."...
It was easy not to listen to them when they were alone, unhindered by gossip or the opinions of their friends, which were generally negative- Lily's friends thought Severus was creepy; His essays in defense against the dark arts were prolific, even reverent, and as his interest in the dark arts grew, so did the time he spent reading in the restricted section. Everyone knew he was studying up to join You-Know-Who. Or at least, that was what Mary Macdonald said.
Severus' friends' opinion of Lily, while much less founded, was also more crude: to them, she was just another stupid mudblood.