There was something about the slant of the moonlight on her red hair that made his heart break. When the sliver tears fell onto the glass they made it look as if she was crying with him. But her tears were happy, with the huge smiled on her face. She was dancing in a circle with a miniature of himself, happy as could be.
Severus couldn't set the framed picture down. He held it in his hands, crying onto it. He wanted to stick it in a drawer, to stop his own pain. However Severus felt almost… good, crying onto Lilly's picture. All he wanted to do was gaze at her all evening, thinking of what might have been.
He had this wonderful picture, the image had been firm in his mind since he had been eleven. Lilly always dressed in one of those fifties styled dresses she had liked when she was younger, him coming home from work, greeted by her smiling face. She'd kiss him on the cheek, and then he would kiss her lips and tell her all about his day. Sometimes his fantasy included children, a boy and a girl. Both always looked like Lilly, to avoid any resemblance to Harry, and subsequently James.
The little girl always looked like a carbon copy of Lilly at ten, maybe she sometimes had Severus' eyes, just to prove that she was his. The little boy always had red hair, but everything else varied.
Of course, the children weren't always part of the fantasy. Usually it was just himself and Lilly. They tended to be in their early twenties, a new couple. Lilly was a vision of beauty. Her eyes glowed the same unnatural green light that they had for her school days.
Severus finally snapped out of his reverie, the tears still falling onto the glass of the picture. It seemed that the image glowed, along with his tears, in the dim room. The only light was cascading through the window from the moon. All he'd wanted was to gaze at her, to be by himself. He didn't need the intrusion of the lights.
It was torture, torture, to be stuck each night in a room with the product of his loss of Lilly. Potter, he was insufferable, and simply the thought of him made Snape seethe. What had James Potter had that he hadn't? Potter had been the most arrogant arse Severus had ever known, and yet he had gotten Lilly.
There was nothing Severus could do. He was stuck with the knowledge that Lilly had chosen Potter, had died for her choice. No longer was there the small hope he had once had, that someday they would be together. He could not think that there was a chance to convince Lilly to come back, to take him instead.
No. All there was to think was that Lilly was dead, and that even in death she was with Potter. He would find no comfort in her image. She was gone, and he couldn't burry her. Instead, he simply placed her in a drawer to be gazed at another time. To be cried on another time. She would be there to provoke his tears, to remind him of the wrongs he had done. Her picture was his conscience. It was always there, heavy on his heart, just like her memory.
He would never put that picture away, he would never burry it. He needed her there to keep him sane. Or perhaps he needed her there to keep him insane. If he had been only a bit more masochistic, he may have displayed her picture. But while he liked knowing she was haunting him, simply to feel closer to her, he couldn't feel that close. He couldn't be weak. Severus Snape could never be weak. He must stay strong,.