Choice and Consequence
Summary: Lily reflects on the choices she's made. This is a one-shot angst fic that is ultimately about the course of love. Lily/James Lily/Severus
A/N: Thank you all for reading. Characters aren't mine, not making a profit here etc. etc. the usual. And apologies in advance if it's confusing. I'm not totally sure where I'm going with this.
"You teach me now how cruel you've been — cruel and false! Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you — they'll damn you. You loved me — then what right had you to leave me? What right — answer me — for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart — you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you—oh, God! Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?" ~Heathcliff, Emily Bronte
He was outside her door again.
Lily was many things. Pretty, clever, funny, mature for her age, popular, a dab hand at charms. Professors smiled on her indulgently. She was friend to everyone and enemy of no one. Even the house elves left little chocolates on her pillow - muggle, because they knew she liked muggle chocolate best. But her biggest secret, the one she would take to her grave, was that she was also cruel. Selfish, vain, cruel, and a liar.
Ever since their fight he'd waited outside the common room for hours every day for three weeks, hoping to catch her. She'd begun to take extraordinary steps to avoid him, even going so far as to contemplate leaving the tower via broomstick. But that was ridiculous, and she had too much pride to be caught in such an embarrassing defeat. Far better to remain battered up in her fortress, with walls forged of an iron will. But his soulful pleading was beginning to weaken her defenses, though she pushed back with all her strength. She'd always been the one to bend between them, always been the one to forgive, looking past differences that could never be reconciled. Finally, she sent Mary to please, please make him go away. She couldn't bear it. If he spent one more night outside the door she knew she'd do something drastic. Like talk to him.
"Lily, he says he won't leave. He says if you don't come down he's going to sleep here. And he's going to sleep outside every night until you talk to him." Lily could have sworn as Mary spun away a whispered "wanker" left her lips, but she couldn't say for sure.
Severus could be so intense sometimes, brooding over his obvious crush with a kind of seething wistfulness. He thought he concealed it, but she'd known him since childhood, and she'd become a pro at reading her mercurial playmate. His love was obvious with every breath he took, and wholly unlike James' cheerful roguishness. It took a toll on her, drowning in his fathomless eyes and seeing the force of his feelings for her. It made her want to yield, to fall into the dream of her that he created. The dream, and the fantasy. They were made for each other; every beat of her heart was echoed by one of his. He was more herself than she – whatever souls were made of, theirs were the same. Everything in her yearned to reach out for that connection, to live inside him and be the person he craved.
But while her heart cried out to its other half, she knew their lives would never align. Loving Severus would be hard, and that love would destroy her. He had always been the stronger one, was already set on his course. Lily knew that one day Severus' rage and ambition would lead him down a path she could not follow. He always had to swim upstream, fighting tooth and nail for every victory. She had always been the one to yield, explaining him away to her friends and looking past every dark spell. No more. Tonight she knew she had to betray him, even if it meant betraying her own heart.
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not interested." Liar.
"I'm sorry!"
"Save your breath. I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here."
"I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just—"
"Slipped out? It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends—you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"
He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking.
"I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."
"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?"
He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole, leaving him behind.
After that night it was almost embarrassingly easy to start seeing James - he was always pleased to see her, always supportive, always undemanding. He surprised her with grand gestures of affection and weathered her tempers with grace. It had taken James all of three days to declare his love for her in front of the entire school in their first year, and he'd been unwavering ever since. Remembering the incident brought a small smile to her face. James had always worn his heart on his sleeve, since day one. Perhaps he didn't understand her as well as she might have hoped, and would never be able to meet her on her level, but his constant presence distracted her from facing the reality that she might be throwing away the one person she loved the most.
Besides, James was easy to love. He was effortlessly smart, handsome, athletic, wealthy but unpretentious, the envy of all her friends. Everything was simple and straightforward with James. He was everything she should want and everything Severus was not. No one had ever understood her friendship with Sev - he would always be the greasy misanthrope whose departure made the room breathe a sigh of relief. She'd never met anyone, except perhaps Dumbledore, who had more raw intelligence, but Sev squandered it with a social awkwardness and barely-suppressed fury that made her embarrassed to introduce him to people. His background had left him with an unshakable aura of disheveled seediness, making the crisply-pressed and well-loved children around him vaguely uncomfortable. Loving James was like loving the spring – bright and fun, ephemeral at its core. It was a poor fancy, but it was easy, and that was what she needed most.
Severus avoided her after her relationship with James became public knowledge, his lanky black shadow cowering away every time their paths crossed. After she started seeing James, Sev all but disappeared, appearing briefly in potions before stalking off the second his (perfect, as usual) potion was finished. So she started seeing James more, trying to blot out the hole Severus had left with James' cheery presence, until her nearly every waking hour was full of James' messy (not smooth) hair and warm (not icy) brown eyes. James was perfect for her on paper, and with each passing day she got better at willing herself to believe it could be enough.
But some days she just wanted to run away from it all, away from Severus' coiling passion and James' fervent enthusiasm. Some days she wanted to curl back into the gentle simplicity of her previous life and start anew, somewhere no one knew her, where no one could be hurt by her. Somewhere she could learn to be herself outside the omnipresent press of men's desire. But she was not that strong.
The day she found out she was pregnant, instead of bursting with the joy of new life she felt like something within her had died. James had been overjoyed, of course, and he'd proposed right then and there. She hadn't known he'd carried a ring on him for the past two years, but she should have guessed. She acquiesced easily. It wasn't really up to her, it never had been. James was so used to getting what he wanted, the idea she'd say no had never occurred. And she was so tired of fighting, of worrying whether or not she was making the right choice. It was easier to slip into James' certainty than lie awake at night wondering if she was making the right choice. Perhaps that was cruel.
He was coming to kill Harry. She'd heard James' shout, followed by an ominous, telling silence and the rasp of black silk up the stairs. It sounded for all the world like a snake slithering across a damp field. Tonight, she was the field mouse.
The Dark Lord was standing in the doorway and all she could think, somewhat ridiculously, was that he was shorter than she had imagined. Some part of her had expected something larger than life, something that filled the room, a grim reaper with an aura of death that seeped in like a fog and choked the room of air. He was telling her to move aside but she was frozen to the spot, Harry's wails twisting a knife into her heart. Both she and Harry would die tonight, but she'd be damned if she stepped aside. That wasn't even an option, not with poor James lying dead in the hall. It seemed everyone she loved was cursed to be taken by Voldemort.
Unbidden, Severus came to mind. She wondered if he would mourn her, and some part of her was oddly glad his was not the body lying downstairs. At least, in the end, she had the consolation of knowing he would be left alive. For a moment she marveled at how they'd come to this end, one little choice made years ago, a diverging road in a yellow wood. Perhaps she had parted them in life, but he was strong. He would overcome. Bright green light filled her field of view, yet she felt oddly at peace. She was grateful to discover dying was surprisingly easy.