Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
A/N: I wrote the majority of this fanfiction a long, long time ago, long before the movie came out. I always knew how it would end, but I could never get myself to finish it, like many of the other stories deteriorating in my Writing folder. I really love Snape's story, though he is supposed to be detestable. But even the most detestable people can love. Even the most detestable people can be redeemed. I finished this story listening to Ingrid Michaelson's "Corner of Your Heart." She's brilliant. Please enjoy.
Always
Severus was dying now, he knew it.
I have failed.
No…no…not after…all that…he had to know…the boy had to know…With a gasping breathe he whispered, "Take…it…" He gurgled, a sound like he was drowning. He barely registered the pain, his lungs collapsing, deflating, the blood draining from his wounds…
"Take…it…"
And finally, with his dying breath,
"Look…at…me…"
Green. Green eyes.
Forgive me.
Those eyes were the last he saw as the man Severus Snape died.
...
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not interested."
"I'm sorry!"
"Save your breath."
Lily was standing at the open portrait hole, her composure rigid, uncharacteristically cold. Snape was standing on the cold stone floor beneath her, and she was staring down at him.
"I never meant to call you a Mudblood, it just—"
"Slipped out?" Her tone was unforgiving, disbelieving. Then, she spoke those words:
"It's too late."
Each syllable pierced Severus like a steel point.
"No—listen, I didn't mean—"
"—to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"
Because I love you.
But he said nothing, and she slammed the door in his face.
...
Why?
Why?
What had he done to inflict this miserable existence upon himself?
What pained him was that he knew the answer.
Lily. His Lily. Not his.
Never his.
The pain in his chest roared and lulled. Severus busied himself by obliterating everything in the small, cramped cupboard he called his room, though his anger still dulled and flared. Glass shards cut at his feet, but he didn't care. His beloved books lay strewn out on the floor, pages ripped and torn.
Snape picked up the copy of the Daily Prophet he had seriously considered burning, turned to the Announcements section.
It read:
Lily Evans is to be married to James Potter this Sunday. The couple graduated from the prestigious Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The ceremony and reception with be held at…
He barely stopped himself from tearing the announcement to shreds. He couldn't imagine it, couldn't bear to imagine it. The prat's smug smile as the only thing that ever mattered to Severus was proclaimed his.
You have everything. Everything! And now you have her. You have everything I have ever wanted. Everything I always wished for. There is nothing left.
I hate you.
He looked at the smiling photograph of Lily Evans as she stood next to her fiancé and kissed his cheek, his arm around her waist. She was happy. She was happy.
Snape took one last look at the photo, tucking in neatly into his cloak. Slumped down in the ruins of his room, he pressed his hands against his eyes, willing it all away.
But it was real. So truly and painfully real. Snape was a grown man, but he was a broken one. And so, he broke down and cried.
I love you so much.
...
No one saw Severus Snape slip discreetly into the church. He was invisible, though he was sure his hammering heart should give him away.
Give up on her. Give up on her.
He stood silently in the back, watching as the couple made their vows. She was so beautiful, even now. Especially now. Snape could not take his eyes off of her, though the rest of him begged him to leave before it was too late and he was hurt.
He might have imagined it, but he swore he saw Lily's eyes flicker over to his, though she couldn't possibly see him. Tears filled her eyes as she uttered a faint but final, "I do."
Two words that shattered Snape's heart.
It was completely unfair as to how many times it had been broken to pieces, shards of glass that made him bleed, completely ridiculous that it had always been by the same person.
And completely insane that he still loved her.
Forget it. Forget her. Forget it.
...
"I do," rang James' confident voice. Lily loved him for it—his confidence, his strength, his faith. She loved him, she was going to marry him, she was going to have a child with him.
But…
A flicker of movement. She swore she saw it. But she convinced herself she was making things up. Wishful thinking. The tears came to her eyes as she realized what she was wishing for.
Who she was wishing for.
Severus.
But that was impossible, and she had made sure of that.
The tears were fine. No one would suspect they were tears of sorrow, mourning for her best friend. The man in front of her—he would never know. So she said it, willing herself to forget, to become James' and not…
"I do."
But it was useless, those two words. Because deep down she was still pleading…
Forget it. Forget him. Forget it.
...
No, no, no, no!
The wind and rain beat down on him, lashing at his face as he peered anxiously at the wild landscape. With a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning his wand was gone, and the man he had been waiting for appeared.
"Don't kill me!" he pleaded. He did not want to die. Not yet. Not now.
"That was not my intention."
The man in half-moon spectacles studied him quietly.
"Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?"
"No—no message—I'm here on my own account!" Snape was wringing his hands, shaking, looking like a madman. Dumbledore waited. "Please—" he was pleading. "The—the prophecy…the prediction…Trelawney…that is why—it is for that reason—he thinks it means Lily Evans!"
Please.
"If she means so much to you," said Dumbledore, "surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not, perhaps, ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?" His voice was mocking, surely derisive, though Snape continued.
"I have—I have asked him—"
Please.
"You disgust me," said Dumbledore, and at once, his heart fell. "You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?" Snape deliberated. Silence passed between them for a while as they listened to the whooshing of the wind, the roar of the thunder.
"Hide them all, then," he croaked. "Keep her—them—safe. Please."
I'll do anything.
...
That dark, grim night. Halloween. Severus lay in bed, worried. Scared. Worried.
Scared.
...
"Please! My Lord! Please spare Lily Evans!" he begged and begged, but the Dark Lord merely laughed at him, sending out a few Crucio spells. He loved watching them writhe, midair, crying out in agony as they pleaded. But Snape was becoming irksome. He let his screams linger a little more before his spell deposited Snape on the floor in a shuddering heap. "Please..." he was still mumbling, struggling to get up. "Lily..."
"If she is smart," the Dark Lord hissed, "she need not be afraid." His slits of eyes seemed to glow red for a moment, if not a forewarning of his next horrid and final crime.
"Now leave me."
...
But he had made no guarantees.
Snape slept, screams of terror ringing in his dreams…
...
"Lily!"
The green flash disappeared behind his eyes as he blinked back into reality. It was just a dream. Just a dream. Surely, the Dark Lord…
But no. A terrible sinking in Severus' stomach told him all was not well. It was no sooner that he leapt out of bed that Severus Snape willed himself away and Apparated to Godric's Hollow.
Night was in turmoil. Lightning and thunder crackled and shuddered in the black sky. Snape did not even look up, his gaze so intent on the house before him. It was obliterated, utterly in shambles. The windows gone, the roof caved in, the front door cracked in half. This is where she had lived.
Where she lives, insisted Snape, though he was growing more unsure by the second.
Cautiously, Snape moved into the wreckage. Glass and rock littered the front yard. Pages and photographs swept away with the wind. At last he had reached the door. Entering, he saw him at the stairs. The man he had always hated so irrevocably, so bitterly. For a moment triumph swelled in his chest, as terrible as it felt. James Potter dead. But the feeling disappeared quickly as it had come. James Potter dead. James Potter dead and Lily alone. James Potter, the great and mighty Potter, so arrogant and so sure of himself, was now dead on floor. He still hated the man—hated the man so well—but Snape now wondered, in death, did it matter?
Snape moved on. The stairway was mostly clear, but then, he saw the nursery. The door off its hinges. The door gone completely. The roof collapsed and crumbling. Toys strewn across the floor. The baby crying in his crib. Crying so loud, so long. Crying for his mother.
But none of that mattered to Snape. No, none of that mattered now. All that he could see was Lily, his Lily, but not his, now dead and gone and on the floor. At once she was in his arms, but not as he had dreamt so often, not as he had wished. She was cold, so very cold and lifeless. But still, still so beautiful.
So beautiful.
How long her held her there, he did not recall, could not recall. Did it matter? She was dead. The only thing that mattered to him was dead. Dead in his arms. Because of him. All because of him.
The baby cried again, and finally Snape turned to the boy in his crib. And because of him too, he thought bitterly.
But deep down, Snape knew better. It was Snape's fault. He had been so eager to please his master, so keen for power, for acceptance. But he had destroyed the only thing he had truly craved, truly desired. Why had it taken him so long to realize…he would've done anything. Should've done anything. But it was too late and she was gone and dead and in his arms and he was crying. Crying like the damn baby in the crib. Crying like he was dying as well, but slower, more agonized. His tears rolled down his crooked nose, and onto Lily's face. He wiped them away with his hand, and to touch her was too much. To hold her was too much. To even look at her had become too much. How could he touch something so beautiful, so irreparable and irreplaceable? Her murder was as good as his.
Suicide, it had been.
And so he vanished into the night, leaving the baby crying and the woman he loved dead and gone and on the floor, feeling like he was dead and gone, too, with no one left to mourn him. He could only think:
I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.
...
A year passed.
Two years.
Three years…Four years.
Year after year after year passes.
Each like a drop in the bucket, a bucket that will never fill.
How long,, thinks Snape, how long before I will see her again?
The answer is uncertain. Sometimes, Snape wonders if even death will end his misery. Shouldn't he be sent to hell, after all he's done? Can someone like him ever been redeemed?
But then the boy arrives. The Potter. That is how Snape thinks of him, the boy he claims has no talent or merit of his own. A spitting image of his father. A man deserving of his hatred.
But Dumbledore reminds him, Dumbledore insists, he is not like his father at all. And he is a boy, not a man. So young still, so good yet. Snape disbelieves him. Disbelieves him even when he says the boy may even be like Snape himself, raised in a home that was more like a prison, never knowing where or if he belonged. Snape disbelieves the old man, until, for a moment, he sees the boy's eyes.
Green. Green eyes.
Lily's eyes.
But then the boy turns away again, and his retreating figure is that of his father's, the man who stole everything, the man who Snape hates.
The years pass like a drop in the bucket, and Snape wonders if he is already dead, already in the hell that he deserves. It must be, in a world without those green eyes, a world without her.
...
Time goes on. There is not a day he doesn't think about her, try as he might. There is not a day he does not lament his actions and thinks "If only I had…" She plagues his thoughts: her smile, her eyes. Her so full of life and love and laughter. And then the images of her dead, lifeless form. Each thought brings equal agony. Dumbledore alone knows his guilt. The rest of the world thinks he is dreadful, hateful to the core. He prefers it that way, especially for the Potter boy. It would be unbearable for the boy to know, to sneer at him for his fragility. Or worse, to pity him.
For years he's been protecting the boy, the image of the man he hated, for—as Dumbledore had convinced him—Lily. In her memory. So her sacrifice had not been in vain. Snape had never thought himself brave, his cause noble. What he does for Dumbledore is penance.
But then Dumbledore says to him that night, so nonchalantly, though obviously aware of how it must affect him: "You know, Severus, I sometimes think we Sort too soon…"
If only…thinks Snape again. For a moment he can imagine it so clearly, so well. He would've been in that brightly lit, warmly common room instead of that dark, cold dungeon. And he would've been with her.
He would have stayed away from the Dark Arts, from the Death Eaters. James Potter might have been his friend. He would have not have lost Lily, at least not in that way. She would have not hated him so completely, broken their friendship, died by the hands of his master because of his foolishness and greed.
But that is only for a moment. It passes, and Snape thinks he could not have lived any alternative. He could have never been with Lily, for she was good and he was not. He was selfish, and she had warned him, pleaded with him to change before it was too late. But it was too late.
And to think Potter and him could ever have been friends…he shuddered at the thought.
No, this is where he belonged. This is what he deserved. He could have never been a Gryffindor.
...
He had been used.
"So the boy…the boy must die?" asked Snape quite calmly. Dumbledore affirmed it, his electric blue gaze steady as he watched for Severus' reaction.
"I thought…all these years…that we were protecting him for her. For Lily."
Dumbledore's gaze did not waver. No, he was telling Severus, though he spoke in different words. We've been protecting him for something greater. He shut his eyes. When he opened them again, Severus was looking at him with utmost horror. Like he was a monster.
"I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter's son safe." Snape felt the rage and anguish bubble up inside him, all the hurt and pain and loss he had suppressed for so long, thinking he could feel no longer., thinking he was as well as dead. "Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter—"
"But this is touching, Severus," said Dumbledore, sober and serious, "Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?"
"For him?" shouted Snape, his voice cracking. He closed his eyes, and every happy memory he had ever had burst to the surface. Every memory he had ever had of her beautiful, smiling face. "Expecto Patronum!"
And from the tip of his wand burst the silver doe. Dumbledore watched on as the doe floated about the room and flew away. And as her silvery glow faded, he turned back to Snape, his blue eyes full of tears.
"After all this time?" he asked.
"Always," said Snape.
Always.
...
But Severus was dying now, he knew it.
I have failed, he was thinking. I have failed you, Lily.
Forgive me, he thought.
Green. Green eyes.
And then the blackness.
It is a curious thing, dying is. One moment you are alive and bleeding, death in your ears like a lion's roar, and then you are dead and all is quiet.
You are at peace.
Green. Green eyes.
Those eyes were the first he ever saw, as the man Severus Snape died.
Death is not the end, but merely the beginning.