House: Gryffindor
Year: 4 (stand-in)
Category: Drabble
Prompt: [Song] Can't Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley
Word Count: 253
A/N: I get married in August and this is the song I'm walking down the aisle to!
It was four PM on a Tuesday when he realised it. It was an odd thing, really, because even though the realisation hit him with all the speed and force of a freight train speeding downhill, when the moment passed, he was left with the very real impression that, somehow, he had always felt this way.
Severus Snape was in love with Lily Evans.
And, much like that freight train headed resolutely downhill, the falling was fast - too fast - and entirely beyond his control. It had the kind of inevitability of all of life's great truths: dawn always comes, no matter how dark the night; the river, heedless of the obstacles in its path, always flows to the sea; everything that lives must one day perish.
It was four AM on a Saturday when he realised it. It was an odd thing, really, because he had thought himself fully aware of his own emotions. He had thought himself in control, which was silly, because who can control a speeding freight train? Only, this time, instead of falling in love, he was falling into something far sharper, like a thorn-covered devil's snare. But wasn't this another of life's great truths? The inevitability of his love for Lily. The inevitability of her death. The inevitability of him sacrificing his life to her memory.
He couldn't change any one of those things. He couldn't rewrite what had been fated. He couldn't prevent the inevitable. And he couldn't help falling in love with Lily Evans.