He had not expected any callers on a cold night in early March, with freezing rains sheeting down from sullen cloudbanks and the cobbled street scattered with patches of ice and mud. A quick rap on the door jerked him suddenly from confused dreams, and he rolled over on the moth-eaten sofa, pulling his cloak more tightly about his shoulders. A fire crackled greasily beneath the chimney, but the house was drafty, fallen into disrepair, and he hadn't yet gotten around to patching it up. He left it exactly as he had found it, not so different from how he remembered it. Those memories there were grim and bleak; perhaps they had leached into his dreams. But he had no where else to go.
The knock came again, more insistent this time though no louder. Groaning, he threw off the cloak and swung his legs around, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes. A choice between the prospect of whatever lay on the other side of the door—apart from stunted weeds and peeling paint—and the consolation of his own lonely dreams was no choice at all.
Stumbling in his stocking feet through a litter of old newspapers and firewhisky bottles in varying degrees of emptiness, he shook his head slightly to dislodge the residual buzzing behind his eyes. His tongue was fuzzy and too thick for his mouth, and stringy black hair hung lank with oil around his shoulders. He hadn't bothered to shave for a few days, and coarse stubble peppered his jowls and chin. The doorknob was cold against his hand and his fingers fumbled and slipped a few times before he realized it was locked. When he opened the door, a blast of cold air laden with grey and feeble snowflakes rushed passed him and into the house, but all his eyes saw was the dark and murky street beyond, the eaves of houses bowing over a shadow-hung alley. The river was frozen still and so could not give off its usual odour, a scent burned into his nostrils with the bitterness of bile. Again he shook his head and blinked hard, wondering if perhaps that small noise had been a fantasy of his desperate imagination after all.
"Bend down and pick up that paper," ordered a soft voice near his ear, and instantly he knelt and riffled through the slush for the soggy broadsheet, his stomach lurching and his heart leaping as a frission coursed through his blood, up his spine, and the hair on the nape of his neck stood on end. He would have plunged to his death in the icy waters off of Dover for that voice, a voice he had never expected to hear again.
She passed by him through the open doorway, and he swiped his hands across the stoop once more, obliterating the indention of her footprints through half-frozen water against the concrete. He held his breath as her willowy form slipped by him, and he caught the heady scent of her perfume, cloves and lavender, different than the patchouli he remembered but still heady-sweet, and the icy air rushed passed him in her wake as he rose and shut the door securely behind them. As the lock clicked into place, he heard the silvery rustle of cloth as she slid the invisibility cloak from her shoulders. He whirled at once and watched the auburn cascade ripple down her shoulders and breast, falling lower as she bent to brush snow from her front. She wore still a heavy travelling cloak of deepest black, so that her fair skin shone unadulterated against the dim brilliance of her hair.
"I just wanted to make sure you're all right," she informed his shoes, slightly sheepish, but then her head came up and her strong jaw was set in an unflinching line. In the next heartbeat, before his brain could comprehend the movements, his feet had swept him across the gap between them, and his arms went to her waist as his lips fell firmly across hers. For the barest second, she stiffened and moved as if to pull away, but then her arms too were around him. Her hands moved up his shoulders to embrace him, cradling his neck in her hands, and hot tears started in his closed eyes. He painted a picture of her in his mind with the movement of his hands, exploring her back and hips, then the heady softness of her hair, throat, eyelids. The passion of his kiss was spent utterly on her, and if her ardour did not match his own, it at least received him unquestioningly, with a perception and empathy only Lily was capable of bestowing. Perhaps she knew him better than himself, for she stood receptive in his arms, and kissed him back. She granted him this small release of the mixed and terrifying emotions that had bottled within him since both of them had been young, together. She kissed him back.
She ran her fingers through his hair, caressing his neck and jaw. At first he had pressed his mouth on her with frantic aggression, a desperation neither of them could acknowledge. But now their contact mellowed out into a warm, deep river, a liberation so exquisite, a passion so perfect, that a few tears seeped from beneath his eyelids. He had never kissed her before, and in that moment, where all his soul hoped he would go on kissing her forever, knew he never would again. His hands searched along her arms and shoulders, breasts, waist, and still she did not resist his touch, passive and yielding to a desire that burned as a fire in his breast he saw mirrored as banked embers in her. He would make them flare up again.
His hands at her hips again, and he forced himself to draw away, drew in a deep breath of air though hers was sweeter. He could go on breathing her forever, and live on nothing else. The silence went unbroken but for the beating of their hearts, pounding united in a single chest. She rested her face against his collar bone, and he felt the tears on her cheek, too, burning cold on his skin. He raised a hand to wipe them away. Lily should never cry again. Still cupping her cheek in his hand, he bent to kiss her once more, obliterating those tears with the comfort of his lips, drawing comfort from hers, a resting place after a long and harrowing journey. He would never leave this haven. His placed his hands on her waist, pulling her tight to him.
As her lissom body pressed up against his, an electric jolt of something like dread spread through him like poison, and he froze, unsure, screaming a silent prayer. He moved back, feeling her retreat from him as his hand defined the rounded surface of her belly, swollen several months with child.
He moved away and sunk onto the couch before his feet gave way, and raised a shaking hand to dash away the tears that hazed the tattered carpet between his knees. She stood still, rooted at the same point since she had entered, moving neither in denial or repentance. He sat still, breathing hard to conceal the sobs that surged up from his lungs as he listened to all the hopes his racing mind had thrown together in that single moment of their kiss came crashing all to ruin. If he had been alone, he would have wept outright, so great was his love of her, his grief at this total sundering of them ever being together, truly, forever.
Biting her lip, she sat down beside him on the couch, the robe clustering around her knees so as to make her pregnancy all the more apparent, and inescapable. She stroked the hair back from his face with long fingers gentle and cool — oh, Lily! — her expression so kind and compassionate. "I'm sorry," he told her, taking her hand in his and placing it in her lap. It hurt too much to have her touch him.
"I'm sorry, too, Sev." Her lips were smiling, but the deep emeralds of her eyes were grave and bespoke a lingering sorrow. "I'm sorry for the way things have turned out. I'm sorry for the way things have to be. Life isn't fair sometimes. You're like 'Tuney that way; ask her, she'll tell you. I don't understand why some people's straws are bitten off at the end, or why the most undeserving people get dealt a gypped hand." She took a deep breath and smoothed the robe across her legs. Severus thought she looked more vulnerable than he'd ever seen her, childlike and frail, her bourgeoning womanhood lending her an ethereal quality that wrenched his heart, seeing her more beautiful than every before in this unattainable status. She went on. "But I'm here, and I'm happy, and I can't change anything that's happened. Sometimes I wish I could, for your sake and everyone's. Things might have been so different, Sev... I've always loved you, and no matter what, I always will. You're my brother and my best friend." She smiled at him, but his mouth was filled with bitter ashes. Since he was a boy hiding out in the bushes in a rundown city park, since he was the irregular kid whose awkward shyness held him back, when he was alone in a world populated by jeering laughter, she had been his friend. She had been a shining beacon of hope that maybe someday things would get better, and he could become the man his father never was. He wanted so much more than to be her brother. But as her guidance would have him see it, he was at least proud that he was the one who held her trust, he was the one who she turned to in all this darkness. She lifted his chin so that the blackness of his eyes, glittering with tears, were forced to meet hers. "I love the little boy who taught me not to be afraid, and assured me I was special. You opened up the door to magic for me, Sev. But things have changed so much. We're not who we used to be, no matter how much we want to pretend. I love James, and you're…" She broke off, her thoughts forever unfinished, or, at least, unspoken, to him. He nodded, unable to speak, his throat blocked by all the raging emotions she had roused in him, then shot down.
"The Death Eaters are after us." she informed him so coolly he would have thought it did not trouble her more than the prospect of rain. "We have to disappear." It was the closest she could have come to saying, good-bye. Neither of them had to speak to know that this was perhaps the last time he would see her again. In the despairing misery, the bitterness of that simple pronoun cut into his soul. 'We,' meaning James, James Potter. But that was her name now, too, he assumed. So he held close to him the memory of Lily Evans, the Muggleborn who had been his first and only love, who had befriended him when the world had been at its darkest, who had been his constant and his lifeline when the malicious laughter of others had threatened to drown him. When his refuge had been filled with hatred and his home was none at all, she had offered him a place to recuperate, and to feel loved.
"Voldemort wants us dead, you know." He did know, and that knowledge was the most abhorrent sin he could conceive of. The Mark on his arm burned as fiercely as if the Dark Lord pressed for him, an accusation branded in his flesh. Involuntarily, he covered the adulteration with his hand, uncut nails digging into the skin through the sleeve of his robe. Lily put her hand on his, the warmth of her touch forcing him to look up, to meet that verdant gaze. His shoulders bowed in shame and quickly he was forced to look away from her, his insides aflame with guilt.
"I'm so sorry, Sev. I know sorry doesn't mean anything. I know it's nowhere near enough. But sorry is all I can say." She knew as well as he that there was no changing the past. He couldn't even remember now how it had all happened. He'd fallen in with the wrong crowd, turned to masochistic escapism when she who was all his world could no longer look him in the eye. And one thing lead to another, and each effected either, and before he could stop, plunging headfirst into the sucking black whirlpool that was his life, he had passed by the point of no return, and there would never be any going back.
"I've stayed too long as it is," she told him gently, rising. He rose as well, reaching out a hand to hold her back, to stay her here, but it fell lamely back to his side, and he burned with remorse and chagrin. There was no holding Lily back from anything. He dove hastily and scooped up the cloak for her rather than her bend to retrieve it herself, and in that awkwardly tender act, he was rewarded with a smile that made his heart burst painfully in his chest. He could never redeem himself, though he saw in her eyes that she held nothing against him to be forgiven for. "I haven't been here. You haven't seen me," she cautioned, and he nodded hastily, placing a hand on the small of her back, touching her one last time as he gestured for her to Disapparate directly from the room. He knew what she wanted him to do, but he could not do it. To erase this memory would be more than he could endure. As well be in for a dragon as for an egg. At least he would have this memory of her, the last and first touch, to warm him on the darkest nights when the fire of liquor could not even thaw his blood, his heart, and the tears were frozen on his face.
They exchanged a last smile, his rather forced, his heart melting in the open humanity of hers. She leaned in to place a lingering kiss on his cheek before throwing up the hood and disappearing from his mortal sight. He heard her whisper, "I miss you, Severus Snape," and then she was gone.
After standing there for a long, long moment, chest heaving up and down as he controlled the urge to cry, he lurched forward and began to stumble about the room, hands outstretched like a blind man — for indeed that's what he was — groping for her and calling out her name. Sobs overcame him, and he staggered blindly, kicking the litter about on the floor, an uncontrolled panic ever rising in his chest. With each round his voice escalated, and his movements became more desperate, but he knew he would not find her. She had gone from him, and could not foreseeably come back.
Collapsing onto the couch, he jerked his wand from his sleeve. Tears hotly blurred his vision, and he invoked again the sensation of her mouth on his, the feel of her hands on him, and bellowed, "Expecto Patronum!" A delicate silver doe erupted from the tip of his wand, and cantered around the waste-strewn drawing room, round and round in circles like his tortuous thoughts. He watched the silver figure through tear-clouded eyes, and continued to sob, hugging himself like a child and shaking long after the apparition faded once more into ether.
No, sorry was not enough, would never be enough. But it was worth more than his soul to hear her say it.