Alright, so.
"D'you think that could ever be us?" he asks her, and she just looks at him, in a way that is is so honest, so cruel. He's never been able to tell if he'd rather she'd lie.
"What're you talking about, Sev?" she laughs, all twelve years old. She doesn't even blush. She won't even give him that.
Her hair's redder than the scarlet trimmings of her robes. Her eyes are a hotter green.
He wants to grip her by the hairs at the base of her neck. It's an emotion too powerful and too raw for a boy of his age to harbor. Too adult. His hands sweat in his pockets.
"What're you laughing at?" he asks her instead, feels the ridge of his cheekbones growing warm, and turns his back on her hastily, hoping she hadn't seen. Hoping she didn't know. But she must know. She must. She wasn't allowed to make him want her so badly and not even realize that she was doing it.
"You," she rolled her eyes, and pulled the book of fairytales out of his hands, her thumb rubbing down the illustration of a dark haired prince. They all look like that, the princes. He looks like the villains. But Lily doesn't look like a princess either. They're all blonde.
"Don't be weird," she orders, and snaps the pages together, and she stands to return the book to the library's shelves. He watches her, hands fisted into hard knots beneath the table.
"There are muggle fairytales too," she tells him casually when she rejoins him, "They're similar. Silly. We aren't kids, Sev."
"No," Severus agrees, and goes on staring at her long after she's bent over her potions homework.