Severus was falling apart. His world was crashing down around him. Shattered into tiny, irreparable pieces.
Mudblood.
He could still taste it. Foul. Vile. Rotten. Like dirt in his mouth.
Huddled against a tree, his mind was torturing him. Replaying the incident over and over again until all he could see was the terrible anguish on Lily's face. And all he could think was that he'd caused it, that in the one moment, with that one word, he'd destroyed everything.
Lily was everything that was good in his life. From the first time he saw her, Severus knew, he knew how special she was. How important she was, and would become, to him. Life without Lily was too painful to even consider. The mere thought of it made it hard to breathe, twisting, mangling his insides.
And yet, what he'd just done, said, had ensured exactly that.
In those few, heated seconds of mortification, his explosive reaction had frozen time. Painful, sharp, every detail magnified, made a million times worse. Echoing around inside his head. And then lily turned away and reality came crashing back, harsh, angry and smacked him right in the face.
It all went so fast from there. Lily walking away, head hold bravely high, his Slytherin 'friends' cheering, the rage on Potter's face. And Severus stumbling backwards. Frozen.