She haunts him. His every waking moment teeming with her memory, his every dream abundant with Lily. He feels as if he cannot possibly face another moment without her. When he closes his eyes he can still conjure her lovely face, every feature exactly as it had been when he had last seen her alive. Her violently crimson hair caressing her shoulders, her ultra-green eyes ablaze, exposing the fervent soul within. Her striking cheekbones and her high, intelligent forehead. Oh, how his heart aches and yearns to be with her, to hold her as he had never had the chance to before. If only he had not meddled in that which he ought not to have: the Dark Arts. If he had chosen differently, might she have loved him back? Might they have built a life together, perhaps having children of their own someday? Growing old and grey-haired, and someday, at the end of a very long and blissful life together, dying natural deaths, satisfied and fulfilled with the life they had shared. Severus falls to his knees and he weeps. He weeps for the things that could have been, weeps for the things that have been lost behind the veil of years. His guilt consumes him, fills his head and his heart and his soul, and he cries out in despair, the pitiful, strangled wail of a man with a broken heart. Gone, was his dearest Lily, and the only blame to be laid was draped across his shoulders. He had dutifully returned to the Dark Lord, as if a trained dog to his master, with tales of prophecies and the Dark Lord's own downfall. It was his own error in ways that had caused lovely, innocent Lily Evans to perish. His own fault. It was this that would haunt him for the remainder of his days.