He strode through the corridors, which were blessedly empty, both the fact that it was late at night and before school started did not escape Severus. He checked the moon quickly, no it was only a half moon, he would be safe, he had given Remus Lupin Wolfsbane before, so unless he was attacked by an Acromantula or some other dark creature in the Forbidden Forest he was quite safe, of course he still had his wand, he might be a dark Slytherin bastard but he was no fool.
Snape stepped out of the castle and breathing in the smell of the grass, the trees and just the night air made him calm down. He made his way to the Forest and begin to follow the path he had taken with Lily many times in his youth.
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
He knew this path mechanically, it was there as solid as Dumbledore's belief in love. Snape saw no reason to believe that love would conquer all, but Dumbledore protected him, so who was he to argue with the insane mans convictions? True, in all times in Hogwarts when he had stepped in to save Harry Potter's neck had been out of love for his mother Lily Evans. To the rest of the world she was known as Lily Potter but to Severus she would always be Lily Evans, he could never believe that she had married that toe rag James Potter.
Sat by the river and it made me complete
He came to the river and thinking off all the times he had spent with Lily here before that unfortunate event in their fifth year when he had called her -THAT- word, called her a mudblood, a memory that still made him cringe, had stopped. He had still came out here even back then but respecting Lily enough made him stop at the tree line and just watch her. The Maruaders could use the pranks and spells in the book, even his own creation septsumcera, but nothing would ever make him feel as useless as when he saw her crying. He was the one who had put the tears there, he was the reason she was crying, the reason she was upset. It killed him to think that he had done that.
I came across a fallen tree
Picking himself up from the ground, he dusted off any dirt that had clung to him since his little sit at the river, he began to wander back to the castle. He knew the path but all his heavy thinking slowed him down as he began to think of Lily, of her red hair, her pale skin, the freckles that were dusted across her nose, her almond-shaped green eyes. All of it was so painful to remember, yet so easy to recall, after all he still thought about Lily every day. He thought it had calmed down, that he could live in peace without thinking of coulda-beens, shoulda-beens but then her son had started. Harry. He looked so much like his father, it was hard to look at him and not recall all the tortures he was put through, it would have been so easy to hate the child. He even walked like his idiot of a father. But his eyes were exactly like Lily's, so he had conflicting notions about the child, he was here because his mother, Lily had sacrificed herself to save Harry as a baby, but every once-in-a-while he, Harry, reminded Snape of Lily.
I felt the branches of it looking at me
That day when he called her a mudblood would be forever etched on his memory. Nobody would ever call him Sev again, he only ever got Snape or Snivilus. He wished dearly he had never said it, he pushed into HIS arms. But Severus thought quietly that as long as his Lily was happy then so too was he, he just wished that he could be the one that made her happy. Life had never been fair to him, he had been sorted in Slytherin and all because of his supposed stupid purebloodedness. Snape had to laugh at that one, a bitter laugh, he wasn't a pureblood, his father was a Muggle, he was a halfblood and you know what? He was proud of it. He wasn't some snobby, aristocratic tit of man like Lucius Malfoy who believed that simply because he was a 'pureblood' that made him better than everyone else. If you considered it a muggle-born's blood was probably purer in some respects than a 'pureblood', the pureblood lines were all intermingled, so incest was never entirely out of the question. Especially when you had people like Walburga Black was so fanatical about all the blood nonsense that she would probably had made Regulus or Sirius marry a cousin like Bellatrix.
Is this the place we used to love?
Snape liked to consider how this world had changed, he was now a teacher. Mind you he had always wanted to be a DADA (Defence Against The Dark Arts) teacher, he was now a Potions Master. He knew that Albus had his reasoning for not giving him the post, probably didn't want him to fall back into his old ways and practicing the Dark Arts, at least that was the obvious reason. He didn't want Severus to fall prey to Tom Riddle's/the Dark Lord/He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named/Lord Voldemort's jinx of the post, no teacher had ever lasted longer than a year. The year with Harry Potter had started two years ago, Hermione Granger was in his year, she was called 'the smartest witch of our age' something that caused Snape to rankle, that title belonged to Lily. And of course Nevile Longbottom, who he had taken an immense dislike to, if the Dark Lord had just went after the Longbottoms first then Lily would still be here. Lily wouldn't have had to die, he would still have Lily.
Is this the place that I've been dreaming of
Snape stifled a huge yawn and continued on his way back to the castle, he thought that now with Sirius Black on the loose from Azkaban, he had every right to be angry. To the average witch or wizard he was angry because Black had constantly tormented his along with Potter and the other Maruders in his days at Hogwarts. Only Dumbledore knew that he had loved Lily, Snape blamed Black for sending Voldemort to Godric's Hollow.
Sighing Snape made his way through the entrance hall and down to the dungeons to prepare lessons, completely unaware that a pair of blue eyes had been watching him.
