Pairing: Snape/Lily
Summary:A letter from Snape to Lily Potter after her death.
Note: The long title is inspired by Neil Gaiman's short story "Pages from a Journal Found in a Shoebox Left in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Louisville, Kentucky".
I had to get this Snape/Lily story out there before HBP is released and contradicts something I really like about this fanfic and wouldn't have the heart to change. This way I can claim ignorance.
Disclaimer: If you don't know that J.K. Rowling owns all the characters in the Harry Potter books and universe you must be new to this planet. Incase you are I'm letting you know now.
A Letter Placed on the Grave of a Woman called Lily and Read Once by a Stranger
Before Being Taken Away by the Wind
Lily,
I should never have loved you.
It was your greatest misfortune that I did.
I was not made for so noble a feeling.
I was not taught how to love. It was never intended. Cruelty yes. This I learnt. Loneliness became known only as something to get the better of. I was never meant to realize that there was anything else my life could offer.
I yearned for a friend but it was a secret desire, something I was ashamed of because such a need made me weak. Weakness I could not permit. Strength was one of my only possessions. I held no beauty. I knew this. I was ugly, small and awkward. But strength and knowledge these I could find solace in for it was not a lie that I possessed them both.
Still I coveted friendship.
I time I was granted what I craved.
You were my only friend.
I wish now that you had never sought to break through the iron wall I so carefully built around myself. I wish you would have left me alone with my solitude and bitterness. But you were strong, as strong as I believed myself to be. My words could never have stopped you. Any attempt I made, any warnings I could have managed to offer, you would never have heeded. There you defeated me too. My own strength paled when placed next to yours. You were the strongest person I had ever known.
So I let you in. You became my one dearest friend. You understand that I could not help but come to love you. Why could you not have left me alone? You must have known that all I could give to you was pain. All I could bring to you was darkness.
In return you gave me pain as well: If I had not loved you I would have had nothing to lose. I would not be left with this grief.
You became my greatest nightmare because you could never be anythingless horrible than an angel. All I could ever be was a devil. My life was Hell. You were a glimpse of Heaven. You were the one prayer my faithless nature would allow me to make. You are gone now. I am abandoned to Hell. There is no longer any chance for escape. I will not try. I deserve to be here.
The first time I saw you, Lily, you were the collection of everything I had been denied: beauty, kindness, warmth…Love… You contained only light for you soul was made of it. Your green eyes shone with it. It is the shadow's curse to love and follow the light. You were everything I had been taught to hate. How I hated you… Because you made me weak… Because I wanted you… Because I loved you. You were the evidence of a certain weakness and goodness in what still existed of my soul. You were the proof that all I had ever been told were lies.
And now I am here, alone and devastated. I hate the earth because it is allowed to hold you. I envy Heaven for it brings you peace. Something I could never do.
I feel that my strength has been taken. The light has been stolen. The world is dark and the shadow that loved you grown cold.
In the end my knowledge has betrayed me, deserted me also. It is the most cruel joke that all the magic I have learnt, that which I taught myself or learned from others, spells the Dark Lord shared with me and me alone are worth nothing. The one spell I desire I can never hope to wield.
I cannot bring you back.
-S.S.