Chapter I – She Brought Him To His Knees.
In all his life, only one person ever loved him, and he loved her.
Severus Snape was sitting in the restricted section of the library, surrounded by at least six of his usual mystical tomes pertaining to difficult spells, curses and potions. Madame Pince allowed him to frequent the library whenever he pleased, as long as he didn't take any books out and due to lack of social occasions recently, that was almost every waking moment. Although he found night-time to be the best, there were fewer witnesses.
His eyes were hurting and his hand was cramping from so much studying but he continued scribbling furiously. He was halfway through writing out the ingredients and instructions of a potion that allowed the drinker to be invisible for extended periods of time, when a small barn owl softly and silently landed on one of the open books. He ignored it.
After a short while it chirped gleefully at him. He raised his head slowly and his hollow brown eyes regarded the small bird disdainfully. The two stared at each other.
"What?" he asked finally, echoing through the library.
The bird tilted its head unnaturally to the left and looked down. Severus followed its gaze to find a silver bracelet with a letter 'L' charm clutched in its left claw. He recognised it immediately.
It was her.
He lunged at the bird's leg and extracted the charm bracelet impatiently. He held it in his hand, staring at it, the moonlight reflecting the charm on to his face. He closed his fingers around it and it gave his heart an uncomfortable tug. He could feel the warmth of her skin radiating from it, filling him with a sad emptiness that made him sick. The backs of his eyes stung and he shook his head. Sniffing and letting a breath out he realised that the bird was still there, looking at him through beady black eyes.
Severus looked around for a spare piece of parchment, then wrote:
Where?
S
He held it out for the bird, who took it and flew out the window into the night. Severus followed it and watched it disappear into the dark night. It had been a miserably grey, rainy day and a fairly cloudy night but the stars were just starting to peek through.
Severus smiled to himself.
Then his smile fell.
He didn't even know if it was really her. It could be someone playing a hideous trick on him. God knows enough people hated him. He opened his clasped hand. The silver charm had made temporary indents in his palm. Anyone could've stolen it, anyone could be this cruel - to him at least.
His heart sank even lower than it had been the past three months. He'd grown tired of the aching pain in his chest whenever he saw her and the stabbing pain whenever he saw her with him.
Severus Snape had always prided himself on detaching himself from the world, pretending nothing could bother him, like everything just washed off him. When in truth, the only thing he wanted was..
His heart leapt into his throat. The owl was coming back. He watched the small bird grow gradually bigger, it seemed to take forever to arrive.
He held out his hand to the bird but it soared past him and landed back onto the open book of potions again. He ran over to it and took the reply, his heart leapt and fell at the same time:
Where else?
L
It was her writing.
He closed the books, collected his papers and wrote a hurried note of apology to Madame Pince for not replacing the books and as he held the bracelet tightly in his hand, bolted from the library. Severus had never run so fast in his life, not even to escape a jinx or curse. His feet barely touched the floor, he felt like he was flying; which after the torturous twelve weeks he'd endured without her, he could believe it. His heart and head felt lighter than a Hippogriff's feather. He reached the clock-tower courtyard and sprinted through the wooden bridge, his school robes billowing wildly behind him.
He glanced quickly to his left, then stopped suddenly.
There was someone by the water.
He held onto the spindly wooden architecture of the bridge, a bead of sweat collected and ran down his forehead. He wiped it away and squinted to see the figure more clearly, but it was no use. He brought out his wand and pointed it to his eyes.
"Magnifcantus," he muttered.
He felt his eyes begin expanding; they became large, heavy and annoyingly unfocused. He tried his hardest to make sense of the blurriness before his eyes but he couldn't concentrate. He located the person but his eyes were still blurred, he concentrated harder. He saw a thicket of trees, a haze of rippling water, a pale oval flushed with pink and a flash of red.
His breath caught in his chest.
He removed the spell and tore across the rest of the bridge, through the stone circle and raced down the mountain path, past the Whomping Willow and down to the water's edge. She became clearer, her outline, her hair, her body. Severus stopped running and nearly fell, he panted heavily.
She turned to face him. Her green eyes glistened and the moonlight cast a silvery halo on the top of her head.
Severus let out a strangled sigh and felt his eyes begin to tear.
Lily smiled sadly.
"Hello, Severus," she whispered.
He fell to his knees.