Part 1
Chapter 1
**DISCLAIMER**:These are Ms. Rowling's toys, and I'm just playing with them. I promise I'll put them back when I'm done!
A/N: Something I've wanted to do for a very long time. Hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing.
He was kneeling in a darkened room that appeared to be an infant's nursery. Even in the dim half-light, he could see that the walls were brightly decorated, and what could only be the room's resident sat, screaming, in a crib pushed against the wall. In his arms he held a woman, whose face was lined with years that he had not witnessed, but was unmistakable all the same. Lily. Lily Evans. Dead. Gone. Lily.
He was alone.
He was alone and in the dark.
He was alone and in the dark, and he could not move or see.
And then, quite suddenly, he was being shaken awake….
"Sev? Sev, wake up! We're almost there! We have to get changed!" Lily Evans's voice forced open the eyes of Severus Snape faster than any sound could. He touched his forehead: it was slick with cold sweat. She didn't seem unnerved, so he must not have called out in his nightmare.
At his lack of a reply, Lily's brow furrowed, and she tipped her head to the side very slightly. Severus, a veteran of reading her emotions, knew that she was concerned.
"It's nothing," he said, smiling reassuringly. He stood, hefted her trunk onto his shoulder, and lowered it gently to the seat across from them. Yes, Severus was rather slighter than most fifteen-year-old boys. But he wasn't weak. His body was muscular yet compact, like a runner's. So unlike the perfect Quidditch-player's build of James Potter, who ensured that Severus did plenty of running.
Lily, occupied with pulling on her Hogwarts robes over her Muggle attire, neglected to notice Severus's sudden scowl. Once finished, however, she frowned at him once more. "Aren't you changing too, Severus?"
He grinned at her again. How easily she could make him smile, even without trying. "I already am, remember?" He held out his arms as best he could in the narrow space.
Lily's face broke into a smile then too, and it was like the sun's first peep over the horizon at dawn: no less magnificent for all the times he'd seen it.
The train, already slowing, now began its lengthy halt, and Severus took his trunk in one hand and Lily's in the other. "You don't have to do that!" she said crossly, attempting to relieve him of her belongings. "I can carry it!"
Severus defied her attempts to take the trunk, saying only, "I know you can. But so can I."
Once Severus ensured that Lily was safely ensconced in a circle of friends at the Gryffindor table, he took his place among his fellow Slytherins, though he did sit rather apart from them.
There was the usual "first day back" events—the sorting, a speech from Dumbledore, keep out of the Forbidden Forest, then the magnificent feast, which Severus's stomach welcomed after months of near-starvation. Then they were dismissed for bed. Severus rose quickly, hoping to catch Lily, but in the bedlam that ensued once the students were dismissed, it was nigh impossible, and he gave up and followed the Prefects down to the dungeons. After Lucius Malfoy gave the password—"family tree"—Severus followed his fellow fifth-years up to the dormitories, drowsily collapsing in his familiar emerald-hued four-poster bed. Full of good food and warmth from the crackling fireplaces, he undressed and piled blankets over him, welcoming a full night's sleep for the first time in months.