It was sometime during second year that Snape realized that his feelings for Lily were much more complicated than pure hatred. He had always hated muggle-borns but he ceased to use the nick name "mudblood" after he had heard her parents were muggles. He had always had feelings for Lily, feelings he hated, and tried so very hard to squash , feelings that would not go away. He had not thought then that she was very pretty, he liked more the blonde-blue-eyed type but he had admired her sense of determination. She never let anything past her, and if she didn't agree with you then she told you. She was a model for what he thought was a perfect witch, his only problem being she was a mud-blood. And look at him, he was nothing more than a greasy-haired loser, not athletic, and nothing like the boys she occasionaly hanged out with. There was no common thread between them, there was nothing he could do but worship her from afar. The more his eyes followed her, the more brilliant her red hair and piercing green-eyes head seemed, the more he could not get her out of his head, despite the fact he hated everyone but pure-bloods. Despite the fact he hated mud-bloods, but could not seem to hate her.
It had been the very end of fifth-year she had defended him. Potter had humiliated him in front of everyone, and she had come to his rescue, she alone hadn't laughed and jeered as he hung upside down, held in mid-air by Potter's spell. But Severus hadn't liked the idea of a girl standing-up for him. He could not bring himself to swallow his pride, and so he had said the one thing he would always regret. He had called her a mud-blood, and there was no turning back from that. He remembered how her face had looked as he said it, for an instant, the smallest tiniest nano-second she had looked crushed, defeated, but a nano-second later had again looked again nuetral, and unconcerned. His dear Lilly...
He had never thought she'd fall for Potter, not for the arrogant bastard who hexed people for the fun of it. He had never foreseen their relationship, Lilly and James', forged at the beginning of seventh year, a mere two years after he had called her that horrible, filthy disgusting word, that word that had nothing to do with his beautiful Lilly, his proud, strong, intelligent Lilly, but what he had called her nevertheless.
When they had all graduated Snape had not even said good-bye to her aloud, despite his dreams every night of taking her in his arms and telling her how he felt, how he had always felt, how he would always feel, but every time he came close he pictured his own beaming parents, his parents who so desperatly wanted him to be a death-eater. His parents who would rather he kill a mud-blood than ever, ever marry one. That was out of the question, absurd. So he had never told her and had always regreted it. But he had always carried the memory of her in his heart, always dreamed of her at night.
He had already started work at Hogwarts when he had over-heard the news that Lilly had married James Potter. It had been coincidental really, almost by accident. He had knocked on Professor Dumbledore's office one evening to ask the date of the O.W.L.s to start preparing his students, when he had seen an old friend of Lilly's in his office, informing the headmaster of some terrible news of an attack, and then mentioning briefly to Dumblodore how beautiful Lilly and James' wedding had been, and how dissapointed they had been to not see him there. Snape had closed the door quickly and shut it out of his mind, if anyone mentioned so much as either of their names he would leave the room, using some pathetic excuse to not hear the news. The next time he ever heard of her again was in the Daily Prophet. There was an article detailing the murder of two aurors and the miraculous survival of their son, who had come out unscathed with the exception of a lightning bolt scar on his forehead. He had had to lean in to make sure of the name, his eyes already swimming with held-back tears since he recognized her picture, even if it was a particularly bad one, he knew there was no fooling himself who the face belonged to. Lilly. The name of her son was Harry Potter and Snape knew from the start he would loathe him, the only remaining reminder of his shame, the love he had held for a mud-blood, still held, even though she had died with her arms around her husbands dead body, had crawled there after she had been struck with the death curse, knowing she would die.
Harry was a constant reminder of his hatred towards James Potter, the only thing he had of Lilly's was his eyes, and Snape hated how much they reminded him of his lost love. When baby Harry had grown up, and entered Hogwarts Snape had purposly treated him worse than everyone else in the class, worse even then the five or six pupils of his that were much more horrible than Harry. And he favored the Malfoy's boy, Draco because he was who Snape had aught to have been, would have grown-up to be had he never loved Lilly Potter. He was malicious and he hated mud-bloods and he was everything Snape's parents had wanted Snape himself to be. Looking at Harry he was reminded of what he had become, a good-guy, perhaps not as nice or good as most, but a member of the Order nontheless. Looking at Malfoy he was reminded of who he had once been, who he should have turned out to be. And yet even as he thought this he still kept the newspaper picture in his wallet, the only picture he had of her, despite the fact the black and white picture did not do justice to her flaming red hair, nor her soul-piercing emerald eyes he had dreamed of one day looking in to forever, he still glanced at it at least once a day and allowed himself to remember what a fool he had been, and still was.