"Bloody git!" Ronald Weasley spat out in a hushed but bitter whisper, as Professor Snape calmly passed out the graded papers.
"Can't believe he'd give us such low marks just because he hates us," his friend readily quipped.
Severus smirked. The boy still thought he hated him, a lifetime later? No, not at all. Severus Snape had no need whatsoever to hate Harry Potter – not this Harry Potter. The boy's healthy face with its mane of dark hair so akin to his father's and his piercing blue eyes so like his mother's (blue, not green, blue, my friends!) evoked nothing but disinterested apathy on the Professor's part. The days of hating Harry Potter for his father's misdeeds and his mother's misplaced affections were not only long over, but – for all practical purposes in this impractical universe – had never existed.
And yet, it was ironic to note. Who would have thought that living his life over again, Severus Tobias Snape would once more be a bitter, sardonic Hogwarts professor accused of ill-favoring the universally favored Harry James Potter.
It was this little bit of semi-amusing irony that Severus chose to peruse as his students busied away on the assigned potion.
When he lay dying in the Shrieking Shed, and some metaphysical being offered his poor over-sensitive soul to relive his life, Severus Snape – the fool, the fool! – had acquiesced instantaneously.
Opening his small, gray, innocent, nine-year-old eyes, he remarked with palpable excitement that he was back on that day – the fateful day when he first saw his Lily. The dream he had just had – that vivid sequence of endless years of painful memories – made him sure of that. How he could be simultaneously convinced that his experiences were mere figments of his subconscious mind, yet so unfailingly believe that he would meet that same girl on that same day – was deemed too complex a query, and promptly put aside.
He rushed to the park. He awaited her behind that same luscious green bush.
Sunset, dusk, dawn, sunrise.
She never came. There was no red-haired girl with magic. And as Severus wept uncontrollably, he missed for the first time in his life even her pest of a sister. There was no plain magicless girl either. The Evans sisters never came.
Not on that day, or the next. Or any of the days to follow. This glorified afterlife was ingloriously Lily-less. The promised new life turned out lifeless.
He told himself diligently not to be a fool. He staunchly repeated – even then, even now! – that what he had lived through was nothing more than an overly elaborate dream.
Why then did he still possess every ounce of magic that he had learned in that prior doom life?
Why did he know with such precision all the other meaningless details – all those other people, who never mattered, but nonetheless did not quite fail to exist?
He saw James Potter in Hogwarts. The toerag did not torture him nearly as much as the first time around. With no Lily, there was likewise no competition. James happily settled for Mary Mcdonald, to whose affections Severus had no pretensions whatsoever. So the lucky little miserable Snape received no more bullying than what his bookish pursuits and unfortunate looks warranted. With his uncommonly honed magical prowess of a 38-year-old man and eerie foreknowledge of the future, Severus aptly escaped even that.
He knew enough of Voldemort's secrets to bring on a far more speedy end to the war. There was, of course, no joining of Death Eaters in this lifetime. He would heed his darling Lily's advice for hundreds of lifetimes to come, whether she graced them with her presence or not. And besides, he was far too jaded by now to delude himself with childish visions of power and grandeur.
He saw Harry Potter at Hogwarts too, looking once again disturbingly akin to his father. Only this time the disturbing did not disturb him. Severus had no scruples whatsoever in observing Mary's blue eyes in James's handsome face. Let them be, let them be, where is my Lily?
And that was the worst. In this world that was – for all intents and purposes – a far better place, as they would say, than the previous one – in this world of avoided wars and spared children, Severus Snape felt more stifled and bitter than in its bloody painful predecessor of a world. If sending him back to relive his life was nothing but a ruse to get him to contribute positively to the Wizarding World – even then why not give him his darling?
Lily, Lily, Lily, my Lily. Where are you, oh Lily?
Of all possible punishments, was this not the most cruel? Had he been sent to a new life with her, he would be eternally grateful. Had he been sent to a new life without her and with his mind a blank, he would at least have the possibility of some simulacrum of normalcy – conceivably, he might have even doused his overabundance of love on some other unfortunate sweeting. But no! No, he had to be sent to this hellish torture where no Lily lived, but where such vivid memories of her were alive and ablaze in his mind.
And so, once again, here he was. Thirty six years of age. Potions Master. Long black robes. Confident, prohibitive posture. Thin line for lips. Smirk, no smile. Large, hooked nose in a bitter face. Long black hair that he did not bother to wash as regularly as he should. And a snide, cynical attitude that he did not bother to curb.
"Has anyone gotten even remotely close to brewing something passable?" He addressed his students in a tired tone. "However much I might relish your company, we do not have forever. There is a second potion you need to be brewing today."
There was Hermione Granger's hand in the air, and sheepish looks of half-fright from everyone else. Boring. Boring.
"Professor?" This three-syllabled bit of music came from the classroom door, and Severus froze still, unwilling to turn. Hallucinating inside my own classroom? Oh gods, is there any punishment that you won't send me?
But this was no punishment.
There, in the frame of the open door, one hand resting on the side and the other playing listlessly with a fire-orange curl, stood his long-awaited reward.
Lily Evans. Brilliant emerald eyes under a well-calculated layer of mascara. Smartly-fitting Hogwards robes, with the hem raised a little higher than most of the other sixth-year girls, revealing a pair of perfectly sculpted knees above smooth, pale, alluring calves with no socks and delectable high-heeled shoes. Lovely fiery hair pulled into a casual bun, with one loose spark still twirling between pretty manicured fingers. One neatly-plucked eye brow raised in half-question. Delectable painted lips, one corner raised in half-smile. Sixteen years old.
Cruel, generous, ironic, diabolical, wonderful, fateful Face had placed the sixteen-year-old Lily Evans straight into the thirty-six-year-old Severus Snape's Potions classroom, after making him live through three repeated, empty, meaningless decades.
Severus could have laughed at the absurdity of it all, had it not seemed so perfectly natural after the unnaturally absurd three-quarters of a century he had already lived through in his two combined lifetimes. And had he not been overly preoccupied with an entire waterfall of more important feelings. This was not the time for his sarcastic humor.
He had not seen her in a lifetime, if he had ever even seen her at all. Yet her features were recognized by his parched mind instantaneously, as was her musical voice. Happy, aroused, relieved, terrified, shy. He was so terribly out of practice at this challenging task: beholding the Lily Evans.
His lack of response must have been beginning to show, since the girl stepped closer to him, and dropped the hair-fondling hand to rest gently on his arm, as if unaware of the bolt of electricity it would send through his famished body.
"Professor Snape? I am Lily Evans, the transfer from Beauxbatons." When did his Lily acquire a tint of French accent? "I am sorry to enter halfway through the lesson, but I have come straight from the headmaster's office, as soon as my schedule was finalized."
Steady, heart, steady! Let the mouth speak.
"A p-pleasure, Miss Evans." There, that was not so hard. Now direct her to take a seat. Don't mind that it will remove her divine hand from your unworthy shoulder, never mind it at all. Just do your job, Severus, NOW. "Please, take any available seat you like." I am missing her little hand already. "Yes, next to Mr. Parker is perfectly fine."
With some semblance of control, he continued his lesson. Perhaps, with some luck, he might finish the intolerable hour without breaking apart into a heap of tears, or cries of joy, or semen. Only sixty more minutes of self-restraint to save his blasted dignity.
But even that would be denied him. As he spoke in the usual, sarcastically bored tones, languidly imparting the knowledge on his uninterested pupils, he noticed his love, his life, his darling, leaning dangerously close to the now repulsive Mr. Parker.
Jealousy, oh the most vivid manifestation of love! How long it has been, since I last have felt thee?
"Mr. Parker, Miss Evans, is anything the matter?"
She smiled at him. She smiled!
"I am sorry Professor, but I do not have this textbook – we were using a different one at Beauxbatons. Frank has been so kind as to let me share his."
Share? Share! Lily and sharing did not cohabitate in Severus's overtaxed mind.
"I have some spares, Miss Evans."
"Oh truly? That is wonderful, thank you, Professor. May I have one?" And here, Severus found it quite singular to note that she did not make any move to get up to retrieve the book, instead merely extending her hand to him, awaiting the textbook to be deposited into her smooth, lovely palm. Her smile was broad and bright, but there was something more to it, a knowing twinkle in her beautiful eyes.
Somehow, Severus still had enough mental capacities left intact to debate whether it would truly be wise to do the short walk to her desk himself, fetching the book for one of his students. But he lasted all of two seconds.
And as he deposited his own copy of the textbook into her awaiting hand, he was more than amply rewarded for that simple errand by being able to touch, for only one delicious glimpse of a moment, the soft skin of her hand with his own coarse paw. His heart beat faster.
And Lily Evans, with a faint smirk and a curiously raised brow, replied with a coquettish "thanks."
