Lily prayed for Severus every night in her fifth year. She didn't call it praying though, but that's what it equated too. Every night she'd write in her old notebook, one of the school books she hadn't filled from primary school, and every thing she wrote was a list, always the same list really, but titled differently, worded differently and with the points in a different order.
After their fall out Lily still kept on writing her lists, but had more points to add to them. There were more points and more desperation for each point to happen as she turned the simple lists into pages of numbered paragraphs saying the points and why they were so necessary for Severus.
Looking back through the lists on the train journey home at the end of her fifth year, Lily began to weep, heartbrokenly about what she read and what had happened to the boy who had introduced her to the wizarding world. She remembered a lot about Sev as she read, her mind replaying memories as she read. The memories were sometimes random, but most often they were connected to her noticing what needed to change or happen to help him.
The last list in the book was the hardest for her to read, even though she had already read most of the points written in different ways a few times over by then.
The Things That Make Sev Become Snape
The Friends he has made in Slytherin. I tried telling him before, so many times that what Mulciber, Avery and Nott do is wrong but he never seemed to hear what I said, or at least listen to it. Before he started hanging around them he would never have called anyone with my upbringing and family a 'mudblood' but now he calls us all that, even if he has still only called me it the once.
His fascination with the dark arts. I've seen those notes in his potions book, and even if most of them are entirely notes on potions or counter spells to undo the childish hexes I've seen Potter use on him, I think some of the ones left unidentified are his own curses, and dark magic. He might actually use them too. I think he almost did the last time James was annoying him in the hallway. He was muttering 'sectum…' when Professor Slughorn came along. That's the start of a spell I found in his potions book and I tried it on a tree the other day to try and convince myself he wouldn't have dark spells noted there, but it was dark, and dangerous. I think if it was used on a human it would slash them open badly enough to kill them.
James Potter's possessive jealousy of me, even though I will not date him. I know the antagonism between Sev and the Marauders started on the train in first year because of them, but it doesn't help keep Sev from turning dark. Especially when James uses antagonising Snape as an excuse to try asking me out like he did before That happened.
His father's drunken abuse and insults. Through all the time I've known Sev, he's fought against being told he's worthless and pointless while at home, argued with himself until he has some sense of self worth left. I could help him with that before he called me that name, and if he would only learn to stop it, I would try again. Now I fear he's given into the temptation to become what he's told he is, what his entire house is told they are. I think he's gone bad.
Vol- He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Name's followers and want-to-be followers gaining influence over him. He's already gaining some of the pureblood supremacy thought process and attitude, and that scares me. He's powerful at magic, even though his focus is almost entirely on potions. He's so passionate about potions, and I think, if he didn't have friends pushing him to become a death eater, he could really do well with potions. The only thing Sev is ever really interested in is Defence against the Dart Arts and I worry about how interested he is in finding out more about the magic and creatures we're meant to be defending against.
The discrimination against Slytherins. Everyone knows that it's there, the dark smudge against Slytherin's name, even though we don't have any knowledge of the events that truly started it, or none which we can guarantee is unbiased, or uncontaminated by time. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is just as bad for adding to it. Everyone in the school except for perhaps Professor Slughorn is certain that all Slytherin's are dark wizards in training, just waiting to leave Hogwarts and join the Death Eaters. The problem with that is that if you tell someone they are this enough times, with enough other people telling them the same thing, is that they will eventually become that thing whether they want to or not almost, because they begin to think what they are told is true.
The way he views the world. I've noticed it for a long time that in Sev's view, a thing is either his side or the opposite and it doesn't really register when something should be the opposite to the one it is according to his other views. Looking at how he treated and apologised to me over The Fall Out I think I must have been one of those things. He saw me as good, and in some ways perfect in his eyes, but he thinks muggle-borns aren't as good as people with magical parents, completely ignoring that I am a muggle-born. To him it is perfectly fine to hate anyone who is half-blood or muggle-born, even though he is a half-blood and I am a muggle-born who he wants to reconcile with. If I thought I could get Sev to change sides in the war we'll be faced with as soon as we're out of Hogwarts just because I am myself then I would do it, but it would make me feel very sad. Getting him to change sides just for that is a stupid thing to be possible, and leaves Sev's loyalties far too susceptible to change. If someone offered him guaranteed safety for me from either side then they could probably get him to do anything for them if I was the only reason for him being on our side.
I just wish I could work out how to reach Sev, or even get Sev back because the Snape who replaces him, or the Half-Blood Prince as he once called himself while among the Slytherins (not realising I could hear I think), is almost as bad as I've experienced in my life so far.
Reading that list, even though she had written it just the night before, broke her heart after reading everything else she had written in the lists over the year. She had to do something, or at least try to do something to make her Sev understand even if Snape never would be able to.
That was why she got out some parchment and scribbled a short note onto it, intending to send the book of lists down to Sev, or even take it down herself if she could manage that. She paused once in her plan though, thinking about the other childish work she had in the front of her book and how that would look, giving Snape a primary school workbook and asking him to read anything after so many pages.
Instead she got out a spare special notebook she'd gotten on her first ever Hogsmeade trip, intending to make it a diary but never actually using it because it seemed so small, and the cover was quite plain but resisted personalisation due to a damage resistant charm that apparently prevented writing, painting or sticking things onto the front cover.
The charm to copies all her lists onto the notebook and change her handwriting into something neater was simple enough, and a matter of moments latter, a copy of all her lists about Sev was being taken down the train by her owl with a simple note reading:
Dear Snape, I don't know if you care about what these say, and I don't know what else to do but let you read them. I can only hope that just maybe while you're at home this summer, with your dad shouting as always, and your mum moaning, you might just pick it up and understand what I'm trying to say in them all. If there is any of Sev left in you, please read it for me. Lily.
Lily had broken down weeping again once the notebook had been sent and without her concentration taken by reading her sobs were loud enough to attract the people outside her locked compartment, as the knocking a few moments later told her.
"Go Away! I Don't Want Company!" She yelled at the door, not caring how upset she sounded.
The sensation of her spell being broken down hit her a second before the compartment door slid open. "You might not want it, but you sound like you need it. Do you want a shoulder to cry on?" James Potter asked quietly, locking and silencing the door behind him so nobody else would hear Lily's sobbing and come to investigate.
"Don't expect me to tell you what this is about. I'm fine." Lily insisted, turning her back on James.
She was shocked then, when she felt an arm turning her around and pulling her into a hug. "You don't have to, but it's easier to let all your tears out when there's a shoulder to cry on, or someone to shout meaningless insults at. I'm a willing volunteer for either, so just for a while, let go." James murmured into her hair, stroking her hair a little as she began to cry into his shoulder as though she had been left broken hearted by someone.
They sat for almost an hour like that, with Lily weeping and James murmuring small comforts that however little she could believe them still made her feel better, if only a little, and helped her calm down.
"I still don't want to explain what that was all about." Lily whispered a short time after she had stopped crying.
James looked down at her head on his shoulder. "That's fine, Sirius never has told me when I've been his shoulder to cry on and shout at either, although Peter and Remus usually do. We might be the marauders at school but the amount of breakdowns caused by outside of school among us always seems extraordinarily high." He said, smiling at little that Lily had stopped crying.
"Sirius Black cries on your shoulder?" Lily asked, utterly shocked.
"Only occasionally, I think it's because someone insults his hair most of the time." James joked, trying to get a laugh, or maybe just a smile.
She couldn't help but snicker slightly at the idea of it, but still seemed upset.
With a small sigh, over Lily being so upset whatever the cause, James reached over to the opposite seat where he'd put a bag down as he came in without Lily noticing. "Come on, let's have some chocolate. I stole Moony's stash since he seems convinced it cures all ills." He offered, pulling some chocolate frogs and a bar of Honeydukes finest chocolate out of the bag.
"Thanks." Lily muttered, taking a chocolate frog off him, silently thanking the world for letting the train journey between Hogwarts and Kings Cross Station take as much time as it did.
The next fifteen minutes for Lily were spent eating chocolate and with James trying to make her laugh and smile after her earlier weeping. They were comfortable somehow, even though there was some embarrassment there over having her breakdown on the shoulder of somebody she claimed to hate. The end to the time came when someone knocked on the door to the compartment.
"Prongs, if you're still in here with whoever was sobbing earlier, then Moony says he wants any of his chocolate that's left and Padfoot tells you to get your butt back to our compartment and change into muggle clothes in the next five minutes because we've got about ten minutes before we reach Kings Cross." A confident voice called through the door, unmistakeably belonging to Black.
James muttered the charm to bring down the silencing charm he had blocking noise in the compartment from reaching outside it before calling back. "Sure thing Padfoot, give me a few moments to check she'll be alright now though."
"Who was it by the way?" Came the return curious call, but Lily was frantically trying to sign that James was in no way allowed to tell Black it was her. She was embarrassed to have broken down on James Potter's shoulder already and didn't want anyone else to know she had.
James nodded once in understanding, replying to Black by calling, "Someone a year or two below us who'd gotten some bad news, nobody you need to worry about."
"Fine, just hurry up, Prongs." Black called, his voice fading as his shadow left the clouded window in the door of the compartment.
James turned to Lily once Black was gone, smiling slightly. "Look, don't be embarrassed about this, Evans. I promise I won't tell anyone it was you, but if you need a shoulder to cry on again you know where I am, don't you? Even if all you want to do is shout and insult me for half and hour, I can take it." He said quietly, making sure nobody outside would hear anything even with the silencing charm taken down.
"Thanks, Potter. You didn't need to be this nice about it all, And thanks also for not bugging me about what I was crying over." Lily muttered, smiling a little at him. "Now get back to your friends so I can work out some way to cover up the red rings I bet I have around my eyes still."
"Alright, I'm going. See you around Evans." James laughed ducking out of the compartment.
Moments later, getting out onto the platform nobody would be able to even guess she'd been crying thanks to her emergency makeup bag, even if she didn't like to use it very often. Lily absently ate the last chocolate frog she'd nabbed before Potter had left, looking around as she tried to spot her parents, having said her farewells to friends before she got her own compartment to hide in.
Her eyes settled on Snape further down the platform, and registered he looked a little more like the Sev she had known before that year than the Snape he had been for most of it. The notebook with the lists copied into it was in his hands, open as he read it, even while pushing a luggage trolley he'd gotten hold of and heading through the barrier to find his parents there.
For one brief moment he looked up at her, sadly. There was indecision in his eyes alongside the sadness, and he mouthed two words at her that he knew she would understand. 'I'm Sorry.'
Then he was reading her lists again and leaving the platform, and her life until the next term began and they came back to Hogwarts.
Lily only sighed and smiled a little, happy now she had done what little she could and gotten all her hurt feelings off her chest finally. Spotting her parents looking for her she headed towards them, ready to regale them with stories of her school year and if she only danced over her argument with Sev and how it ended her friendship with him, well, her parents weren't the type to pry.