For Her
(he reminds himself that he is doing it for her. only for her)
If he's honest with himself, which is rare, and always causes a spine-tingling jolt within him, as brazen and as shocking as a bolt of lightning piercing through the heart, January is the month when he and Lily begin to drift apart. Severus always knew, somewhere deep in the most incorrigible crevices of his heart, that this was going to happen, it was unavoidable, they were simply not compatible. But he lied to himself, deluded himself, and told himself that she would always be there.
Because Severus feels as though he's nothing without her, nothing more than an empty shell, simply existing and not really living, when she's gone. When she's there, he feels like he's drifting between dreams and reality, and when she's not, he's helpless in devastation's wake. Severus is simply going through the motions, and she's always making excuses, running off to meetings and seeing her Gryffindor friends and she's never there.
It's got nothing to do with why he's started scribbling violent, bloody spells in the margins of his potions book, he tells himself. It's got nothing to do with why he feels the urge to test them. It's got nothing to with why he feels the urge to use them on himself when he's alone in the dormitory, thinking of her and pondering the fact that she's gone. Absolutely nothing at all.
-:-
February comes, and the snow that has unleashed its fury on Hogwarts during the preceding months dissipates. Lily comes bouncing back towards him, brighter and more vivacious and perfect than ever before. She's complete with fervent apologies for her scatty behaviour, saying that the Christmas holidays left her with a tumultuous workload. Severus doesn't really believe it, but she's back, and he doesn't care, so he avoids opening wounds by asking too many provocative questions.
Instead, they stick to discussing other things, such as potions and their owls and whether or not Dumbledore is a loony old bat. He even manages to ignore that awful, fluttering, sickening, crucifying feeling in his chest and ask her about it, about that exhilarating and yet awful feeling that's been plaguing him.
"Lily," Severus askes, caught between spitting it out in a flurry of tossing and tumbling or churning words and phrases, or being slower, more deliberate and waiting patiently for her reaction. He feels like the Muggle donkey, caught between two haystacks, with each as tantalising and tempting as the other.
In the end, he goes for the first option.
"Everthou-ght, bout you andme?" he mumbles, and she stares at him as though she is in a dream and she is the imaginary creature bought to life before him.
"What?" she asks.
"Have you ever thought about … you … and me, as anything else other than friends?" he says again, and it feels as though every word is puncturing his heart, and the stray thoughts like what if she hasn't, what if this makes her angry, what if …, seem to help it fracture and decay.
"No," she replies, "why?" and he gets that same, unadulterated, destructive feeling that empowers him when he stares at his textbook, that same rush of emotions and that same thought of destruction, and pain and agony.
He shrugs it off though, and turns to her as she shrugs clearly bamboozled.
"Well, I've never imagined us as anything other than us, really," she says, "You and me, the overachieving Muggleborn and the Slytherin who's as brave as a Gryffindor."
He can feel a feint tinge smothering his cheeks, and he buries his head in his hands to hide it.
"Never imagined us as anything less … or as anything more."
"No," she says again, and Severus can see her face is etched with lines of confusion.
"Look," he says, stuttering like that stupid Hufflepuff girl that his friends (although really, they're more acquaintances, people he's forced to like) attacked last week, "I … I really like you Lily"
He'd always thought such announcements came with fireworks, with tender kisses, with honest outpourings of emotion and declarations of love.
Instead, she ran away. He stared after her, wondering what had gone wrong.
-:-
He does test the spells, one vivid day in March. Severus is wandering the grounds, each step seeming to last an eternity. He feels separate from everyone else; he's a listless, lifeless ghost amongst the living, who are as bright as the spring flowers that are appearing everywhere.
With no idea of his true destination, no idea of his path beyond the next step forward, he walks. And then he sees it. Lily, with her mouth entangled around another's. Severus can't see the boy's face, but they're under a tree, and the boy seems to have wandering hands, and Lily's face is blissfully happy. Severus feels as though he's been stabbed in the heart, stabbed by the unknown face, the boy who is shrouded in mystery and intrigue that has walked away with his life. Anger pours out of him, it's not smouldering gently like campfire but bursting out with loud bangs and puffs of smokes and smothering him and he feels like he is dying …
"Sectumsempra."
He's never tested it before, it was never anything but a fleeting dream, and something he always told himself he's use but never would normally have the courage to. And as he falls, he can almost hear himself wishing that every feint, raspy breath he takes would be his last.
It's Regulus who finds him, with gaping holes in his chest and blood splattered on his clothes as though nothing more than the stains of red wine are befouling his robes. Regulus drags him to the hospital wing, and he is offered counselling, labelled by those people who put everyone in baskets, they use words like "mentally unstable," and "possibly disturbed," and he really hopes they won't use the word.
Suicide.
-:-
Severus might as well have killed himself, he thinks, because his life is still as full of cloudy days and pouring rain as ever. Lily is back with him, and the school gossip trees are rustling in the wind caused by the fervent rumours that she left that bastard because he slept with a friend of hers. If anything happened, her face betrays no emotion, she might as well wear a mask, for how much her face is revealing.
They discuss a lot of things, it's as though their friendship was never shattered, never placed in the volatile hands of fate and time. A lot of time is taken up by studying for OWL's, but she helps him in Charms and he explains the finer workings of Transfiguration, and they giggle and laugh their way through study sessions in the library, and if one were to look down from up above, it would almost seem like they were Lily-Severus the couple, the people in love and lust and living in pure happiness, not Lily and Severus, the on again-off again friends.
It's perfect, and Severus wants to pinch himself, reassure himself it's not a all a dream, and that he's not going to wake up to return the feverish nightmare that is his life.
"Lily," he askes, wanting to so desperately know exactly how much she cares, but at the same time afraid because, in some kind of weird outer body experience he knows that if she doesn't love him he will do it, again.
"What." She is lying stretched out on her back beneath the beech tree, a thin strip of pale stomach poking out from beneath her shirt, and he resists the temptation to tickle her, because tickling is for pansies and idiots like Sirius Black, not Slytherins like him.
"When … when I was in the hospital wing, did you worry about me?"
"Of course I did," Lily laughs, emitting a tinkling sound so unlike the brazen, sarcastic side of her that he has come to love, "We're friends, why wouldn't I worry?"
Severus nods, as though he believes every word that pours from her mouth. But he doesn't, she's lost her sharp edge, the words seem manufactured, mass produced and false even. He wants to tell her that he loves her, and he thinks she is not telling the truth, and it kills him, it shatters his heart into even tinier pieces.
They are both wearing a mask of their own.
-:-
It's maybe not ironic, but certainly a strange coincidence that the more he gets attached to her, the more she flits away. They are still friends, but they it is as though they are ruled by science, two different elements that are unable to end up together, they just don't fit.
Lily's sarcastic nature returns during May, and Severus allows himself the fleeting fantasy that his self-attack (he still cannot bring himself to say "suicide.") traumatised her so much that she became more reserved. But then, one afternoon in the Great Hall, she comes running over to him, dragging along a boy who can only have produced muscles like that through steroids.
"Sev," she says, "this is Lucas."
Lucas only grunts, and Severus cannot understand why she would date such a thick moron, it's not at all Lily, but then he sees her intrigued glances at James Potter, the stupid bastard, and he understands why.
Potter wanders over a minute later, smirking at Lily, who proceeds to hex him, violently, and Severus watches in fascination as he writhes around on the floor as though he is having a seizure, covered in jellyfish tentacles, and an odd, euphoric feeling washes over him like a breaking wave.
Later, he realises it is the same feeling that he felt when he tried to commit it.
-:-
It is exam time in June, and the castle is ablaze with students bent over their textbooks, hurriedly cramming in some last minute revision before opening the door upon torture. Everything is fine, Lily and Lucas have discarded the fragments of their short lived relationship already, because rumour has it that he too cheated on Lily. Severus can't help but wonder why she seems to attract the wrong sort (except him of course), but he pushes that stray thought to the back of his head, preferring to focus on Transfiguration and Care of Magical Creatures than how fragile the pieces of relationships are and how easily they disintegrate.
He doesn't really remember feeling anything when those bastards attacked. He must have blushed, must have felt shame, but he isn't entirely sure. All Severus can remember is willing himself not to try it again, and he remembers the panic that shot through like lightning bolts at the fact that he could not say the word again. It's the fight afterwards, which was less harsh, but just powerful and full of ammunition that made him want to try Sectumsempra again. He snaps back of course, as much as he loves Lily, she does not deserve to belittle him, but it's all for nothing.
She leaves. Severus feels like a ghost, drifting along, floating in and out of the lives of others and never really being there. He wants to try it again, because even though he knows the consequences, love is reckless, and he's in love, and he wants to be reckless.
He can't do it. Because she would hate the thought of him, sitting alone in a dingy corner, trying to commit suicide. He will resist, just for her. Only for her.
(and, as he puts his wand away, he realises it is the first time he's used the word).
Suicide.
(he reminds himself that he is doing it for her. only for her)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/N: Ok, so I'm procrastinating on Snapshots, I know, but this hit me a few days ago, and I just had to write it.
Much Love,
-Cuba...x