Regret

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling is the brilliant creator of Harry Potter, and I take no credit for her world.

Author's Note: This is just a short Oneshot, a drabble about Severus and Lily, written in honor of the upcoming final film.

It feels wrong, somehow, to breathe when she isn't. To live while she doesn't. To feel anything at all when you know Lily can't.

It's your fault that she's gone, and you know it. And that knowledge eats its way into your heart and through your soul. You've made mistake after mistake, and each time you try and fix your errors, you end up in a worse state then when you first screwed things up.

First, you lost her in a stupid moment of fury and humiliation. You have her husband (you still hate that word) to thank for that. It was a moment of weakness, and this is what you get for letting down your guard.

Then, you helped him. The man you now despise even more than James Potter. (You didn't think it was possible, but you were proved wrong). You gave him information you never should have had, and now Lily's the one that's had to pay the price for your idiocy.

Lily. It hurts just to think her name, for it conjures up recollections that you'd so much rather forget. She's gone but still haunting you, and you wish that if she had to go, she'd take her memory with her.

You wonder whether she'd want you to feel this pain that you know you've brought upon yourself (and of course, upon her). Probably not. Revenge and ill wishes were always your department, never hers. But it's not as if you don't deserve them.

But she doesn't deserve what you've done to her. None of it. And you'd rather suffer yourself than for her to be hurt, too.

That's what makes this, this feeling of hopelessness and pain and sorrow and regret, so much more unbearable than anything you've ever felt before. That's what makes you envy her. She doesn't have to live. Doesn't have to feel. Doesn't have to breathe.