Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any related characters, themes, places or anything else. I make no money from this.

AN: Not sure where this is going, but I've had this bug up my butt to write some Snape/Lily stuffs and so this is what I present to you:

Always

"I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."

"No – listen, I didn't mean –" Severus stammered, pleading with her to understand.

"β€”to call me Mudblood?" Lily softly asked, staring back at him with pain in her eyes. "But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"

Severus struggled to say something, anything, to make her understand. Lily waited for him to find the words, but when he didn't have them, she shook her head sadly and turned to portrait of the Fat Lady and entered the Gryffindor tower once more. She let the portrait swing slowly shut behind her before she leaned against it. She slowly slid down the wall until she was curled up at the base. It was then that the first tears began to fall and the reality of their ending friendship hit her. It was over. It was truly over.

For two weeks, Lily went through the motions of classwork and tests in a haze. Life without Severus was not the same as before. She saw him in the hallways, having his brand of "fun" with all of the friends she couldn't stand. She saw him in their mutual classes and pretended that she didn't care he was there. She saw him at meals trying not to look her way and felt her heart break. She realized, after those two weeks, that she felt more like she was going through a bad breakup instead of losing a friend. Her words echoed in her head. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine. She couldn't believe she'd said them.

She wanted to take them back.

It was by accident that she literally bumped into Severus. She had been on her way to her last potions class of the year when he had come out of the boys' lavatory. They collided in the middle of the empty hall and Lily froze. Severus glowered at her. "Watch where you're going, Evans," he snapped.

He started to walk away from her. Lily's heart raced. The words were on the tip of her tongue. She reached out to him as he started to walk away and caught the back of his robes. He froze.

"Wait," she whispered.

"Evans, you made yourself clear last time we talked. If you do not remove your hand from my person, I will make things very uncomfortable for you. You are on the verge of giving me a second chance and if you go down that road, I will not contain myself."

"What does that mean?" Lily nearly whispered.

"That means I still have feelings for you and if you allow me into your life again, I will act on them. If you do not want me to do so, let go."

Lily didn't know what to do. Her hand tightened around Severus's robes. In the last two weeks, she had come to the realization that she didn't want to lose Severus as a friend. She didn't want to let him go. But, could she truly allow him to reenter her life after the tendencies he had been displaying over the years? He was an aspiring Death Eater, wasn't he? That was his goal?

"I don't want to lose you to him," she whispered. "Can I be the lifeline that keeps you good?" she whispered.

Severus slowly turned around. Lily let his robes go as he moved. "You can't be a lifeline if you push me away," he said softly, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes. "You can only be a lifeline for as long as I have you."

Lily nodded. "I understand," she said softly.

"That means if something happens between us, the precarious balance I have is going break and I will fall. That means this isn't idle fooling around. I'm not asking you for a school fling. If this starts tonight it goes as far as it possibly can. It goes until we either call it quits and I become the Death Eater you're trying to prevent me from being, or we die of old age in our bed."

Lily swallowed the lump in her throat and took in a deep breath to calm the pounding in her hearts. "Okay," she whispered.

Severus pushed her up against the wall as his lips came crashing down on hers. Lily wrapped her arms around his neck and breathed in the smell of herbs and potions. His hands wrapped around her slender waist and he pressed against her possessively.

"You're mine," Severus whispered in her ear. "Forever."

Lily nodded. "Always," she replied.

It was like a new life had been breathed into her. Lily suddenly perked back up and was excited to go home. They would have an entire summer together with no distractions. Mary knew what had happened immediately. As Lily entered the sixth-year girl's dormitory, Mary stood between the door and Lily's bed with her hands on her hips and anger flashing in her bright blue eyes. "How could you?" she demanded. "I know what you're doing. How could you?"

"He can change," Lily promised. "We talked about it. He's not going to do any of that stuff anymore. He's going to change."

Mary shook her head. "I know that you're Muggle-born and that you think a bit differently than the rest of us, but you don't seriously believe him, do you?" she demanded. "Think about it logically, Lily. Snape has been groomed to be a Death Eater by the people he continues to associate with. You are not going to change him."

"You don't know him," Lily argued.

"You've been saying that for five years!" Mary cried. "He keeps proving me right, not you! You're grasping at air, Lily. He will not change."

"Because people like you don't give him a chance!" Lily snapped. "He hasn't had anyone give him a chance to prove that he can be someone different. I didn't give him a chance before. I yelled and I complained and he didn't want to hear that. We talked. I told him that I didn't want to see him become that monster. He listened to me. He's going to change."

"When?" Mary asked.

"Keep watching," Lily said before she pushed passed Mary and crawled into her bed. She rolled onto her side and waved her wand to close the curtains. She just wanted to be alone.

On the train home that summer, Lily and Severus managed to find a compartment all to themselves. They sat and talked about everything during the trip home. Severus even let her in on the plans that he and the others had been making. He told her about how they had planned to quit school for their Seventh year so that they could join Voldemort's ranks more quickly. He told her what he found so alluring about being a Death Eater and why it was so tempting for him to continue on that route. He told her that she had always been the only thing that kept him from completely turning and that those two weeks had been the closest he had ever been to truly being what she hated.

He promised to stop hanging out with them when they got back to school. He promised her that he would stay away from Potter, Black, and Lupin. Lily made him promise to stay away from Pettigrew as well and Severus promised that it wouldn't be an issue.

The summer flew by in a breeze. They spent every day together, going on dates or spending time at the park. Her parents didn't really care for him and he refused to bring anyone to his parents because of the way they had treated him all of his life. Still, their summer was happy and they approached the coming school year with a feeling of excitement mixed with apprehension. Severus hadn't had time to distance himself from any of his old crew before they left Hogwarts. Going back and them discovering the changes he had made would be difficult for them both. Lily knew that there were going to be days that Severus would want to fall back into the old habits, but she had worked with him so much over the summer. He didn't even call anyone Mudblood anymore. She was changing him, slowly, and for the better.