Hey guys! This is another story I wrote to try to get myself back in the swing of writing FF.. No flames please, but feedback would be helpful! Please R&R. I listened to "Bloom" by The Paper Kites while writing this, I recommend you listen to it while reading.

"I don't need help from a filthy mudblood!"

He had regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Perhaps if they hadn't, it wouldn't have ended like this.

Because now here she was. Dead in his arms and still so beautiful but missing everything that always drew him to her; the pure good he saw when they were little, and she was playing with flowers. The sheer determination he saw in her eyes when she stood up for him at school. The adoring set of her face when she looked at her newborn son, which he saw in St. Mungo's when he snuck in if only to see if she was happy. Even if it was with Potter.

He'd almost fallen over Potter's body on the way up here. He had stared longer than he should have at the unmoving form of his childhood tormentor. He thought the day James Potter died would be one of the happiest of his existence, but it only instilled in him the worse fear he's ever felt in his life.

Because Lily wasn't there. She wasn't weeping over the body of her bastard husband, or more likely hexing Snape into oblivion for his part in it. The house was silent, but for the faint cries of a child.

A child. Lily's child.

Lily.

Snape ran to the stairs, tripping and stumbling his way up in search of the wailing infant. When he'd finally reached the room his path was blocked by a door painted baby blue with an inscription carved into it.

Harry.

He skirted around the door. His breath stopped. Time stopped. His heart shattered.

There was a woman on the floor. Her hair the most beautiful shade of strawberry blonde, that he knew would shimmer in the sunlight. She was lying face down. She wasn't responding to her distressed child.

No.

"Lily!"

He fell to the floor and pulled her to him. She was cold. Lily had never, ever been cold. Even in the winter months when the ice seemed to melt into their bones, she'd always seemed like his own personal sun.

But she was cold now. Her emerald eyes stared, empty of the sparkle they'd always held. He'd never see that sparkle again.

The child had stopped screaming.

For the second time that night, Snape felt his stomach drop. He set Lily gently down on the floor and tenderly kissed her forehead before releasing her entirely and rushing over to the crib.

He looked down at the baby. Its face was scrunched up, wet with tears and an unpleasant shade of red.

This child was James Potter's spawn. It was the product of a man Snape thought he hated more than anyone else on the planet. He should hate this child.

But then the baby opened his eyes.

And they were her eyes. Precisely her eyes, staring up at him through the face of another. That sparkle of life Snape thought he'd never see again was shining up at him.

And he knew that he would one day give his life for this child. This baby, Harry, was the only thing of Lily that survived. Snape would protect him for her no matter what the cost. It was a pitiful attempt to atone for demolishing her family, but his life was all he had left to offer.

But Snape would also protect himself. He wouldn't let himself love this child. He couldn't even let himself like this child. He refused to feel his heart destroyed this way for anyone else. He would focus on everything that resembled James Potter in this boy. He would try to hate him.

And if Snape sometimes flinched away from the boys hurt gaze, well… no one else need know.

"James! James- no!"

Someone was downstairs. It was time for him to leave. Snape looked back at Lily's fragile body one last time, and then turned back to the baby.

"Lily? Lily, where are you?! Harry?"

Feet were thundering up the stairs. Snape leaned down over the infant and allowed himself to search Harry's face one last time for a resemblance to her. He kissed the baby gently on the forehead and stared into his emerald eyes, committing them to memory.

He disapparated just as he heard an agonized "Lily!"

He wondered briefly if that was what he sounded like when he saw her body. The horrific scene vanished from sight.

He could still see her sparkling eyes.