It all begins at the end. The darkness spread across the country. The cruel laughter, the green Avada Kedvra all culminating in the the boy who wouldn't die: dead. And then there is the night with the tower, him invisible, hidden. The green Avada Kedvra aimed at the man with twinkling eyes. The fifth year is full of hurts and losses. Even that wasn't evil, but rather some fucking shade of grey. The death of a man who hated his father, but the messy haired man had loved you. Then there is fourth year. Cedric, this is the first death, it changes him. He comes back without the easy laugh. Third year, in third year, he finds out that not everyone thought his dad was a hero, that some people hated him even though they loved his mom. He was his father's son Remus said. Second year filled with the random murders around the castle, battling a snake, an image, a dream. First year, in first year, it was only him. Him against an evil so much larger than he could understand, he fought. In first year he fought only for himself and your memory.
The images rewind slowly then more quickly Harry trekking through the country barely surviving. Harry insulted and ignored by classmates who are rampant with fear; Harry at a ball with a beautiful girl; Harry alone in the dark under stairs. You see Harry miserable living like a muggle, without family or love; the night that Harry lived and you both died.
Your hand is clasped by someone else's as these images assault you. Someone who has messy hair like this boy named Harry, but greasier. He is someone who does not have a lightning scar; someone who does have deep dark wounds. No this someone is not Harry. This someone is Severus. A Severus you are just beginning to let in. Just beginning to love and just beginning to realize you can never have.
You wake up in his office alone. Dumbledore's eyes are not twinkling as he sits in the chair next to the vibrantly purple lounge you are slumped against. You feel something cold and foreign on your cheeks, tears? His hands are clasped in his lap, arms slightly clenched, and he is leaning towards you waiting.
"Is that, is that how it is?" you ask this man across from you "is that the only thing that can happen if we, I mean if he and I" you stop. You can't let yourself even ask about a possibility you had only just begun to consider.
"Yes" the man replies. Just a simple yes to a question you cannot even find words to express. Yes he tells you. Yes your dreams cannot come true unless you, unless you do not care about the world; unless you only care about the two of you.
You think about that little boy, about your Harry, who you truly do not even know, how he will die for this choice you are expected to make.
Your only friends with Snape, best friends, but only friends you tell yourself. But he was beginning to, you thought that he might, maybe he and you were going to be something. For the boy Harry that possibility must be gone. The boy Harry who must sacrifice everything to save the world, and you, you must sacrifice everything to save him.
You return to your everyday life somewhat more broken then you had been before. You feel yourself growing distant from Sev, talking to him, but not really listening. And then there is that day, that awful day at the tree where his anger at your distance comes out in those hurtful words. And you think 'yes, yes this is the way for Harry to live' and so you do not forgive the boy who you might one day have loved. You cry alone at night in your dorms, and your dorm-mates are worried. They tell you "he's just a slimy git" "don't worry Lily no one can talk to you like that" "you're better than him" and other meaningless placation that do not touch on the real problem, your guilt. You turned away from him so that you did not have to be the bad guy. You let him and Potter be the bad guy. You were a coward.
You've always known you weren't a real Gryffindor. You hid behind the brave actions of your classmates and friends. You let them believe that you always supported and understood their actions, that you were right behind them. In truth, all you wanted was quiet support and friends who cared. Secretly, though you would never admit such a thing aloud, you wanted to be a Hufflepuff. You just wanted to be loyal and loved, not brave and fearless. You wanted to be able to love whomever you desired without the fate of so many on your head.
'You don't have a choice' you tell yourself every morning in the shower as you lean against the walls your arms wrapped around you as the water slowly goes tepid then cold. You bolster yourself in the shower every day for Snape's sullen and angry glares that have just that slight hint of desperation around the eyes. Regardless of what he might or might not have said, he doesn't want to lose you. You know that you couldn't stand up to an apology from him, from a boy who doesn't apologize, and so you don't let him near you. You sit near Potter in class, sure that this, this must piss him off. And you walk between classes with the Marauders and you laugh at Potter's asinine jokes. And you succeed. He doesn't look desperate anymore he looks furious. He doesn't look like he will apologize; he looks like he'll throw a curse. And in some sick backwards way that makes you happy- because if he hates you, well that's how it should be.
He should hate you, not feel bad. Because really, really, really it's you that's too weak to tell him the truth, to tell him that you are dumping him, even though you never really dated, to save the world. What a ridiculously pompous thing to tell someone, how insane that who you date literally decides the fate of everyone. So you don't tell him that the thing with Potter, it's just a thing to make him hate you, and so he hates you. But he doesn't stop following you with his eyes, and as this thing, whatever it is, with Potter starts to involve holding hands and lips meeting in the dark his anger with you turns into rage at Potter. It's OK if he hates Potter, because you hate Potter more than words can express. You hate him. But it is Potter who will help you save the world, and so some small part of you loves him, loves him for the Harry that will grow up and live. His hair will be a little lighter, and less greasy, but he will win. And it's only because of Potter.
Potter becomes the center of your world. You forget about that strange day with Dumbledore in an office on a lounge chair, and you begin to plan what your future will be. When his fingers brush against your back in class or the hallway you shiver. When you're in some dark alcove together and his fingers brush up, up under your shirt all the way up your body tingles, and you feel the disappointment that he stops. He stops, until that one time when he doesn't stop. And you're together and its right and you almost cry, but you don't because that will ruin the moment. And you're laying spread over him afterwards, straddling, and you feel his heart beat under your head and this, this thing, this thing with Potter it's everything. You forget that Sev watches you, and in that forgetting Snape finally loses all hope that he will have you back. He sees the casual touches and the frantic kisses when no one should be watching. He sees how you never say no to Potter, and go and do whatever he wants. Your askew glasses and rumpled hair and the awful rumors going around the school about what you let Potter do, they are all he hears.
He joins the people that hate you one day, because he decides if he hates you this much he must hate all muggles. And he feels dirty the first time he tortures a muggle, it's a little brunette girl who looks nothing like you, but he cries afterwards in his rooms. He remembers swinging on the swings with you and telling you that you were a witch. He remembers the way everything to do with magic made you light up. Curled into a ball in the corner of the room he sobs. He doesn't hate you afterwards, he can't hate you, but he hates Potter.
It all begins at the end. Then one day, some random day that he can't even remember, he ends up in Dumbledore's lounge on a chair and he see what you saw the reverse images of a life that will never be and he cries again. On that day he breaks. On that day he loves. On that day he loses. And he sees what you see, and all he wants is for Harry to live. He still hates Potter.
And then there is the day when he stumbles into the burnt and broken house too late. And he sees Potter at the bottom of the stairs slumped as if in sleep. And he feels hope because you are not next to him, maybe you had time to get away. And he climbs the stairs hoping that nothing is at the top. And he hears a quiet wailing. And he knows fear. When he opens the door that is partially open already he sees you slumped on the ground your arms splayed across the floor and your hair in a pool behind your head. There is a little boy in the crib screaming. And then he too is screaming. And he is on his knees holding your head with the hair and sobbing and he send his patronus to someone who can help. And he holds you when they take the baby away. And he does not even know his name. And it doesn't seem like anything can be worth this loss. Not even the visions from the day on that couch are worth it. And he is alone and he is alone.
And thirteen years later when that little boy that you still named Harry, that little boy that is not his but Potters, arrives at Hogwarts he doesn't know how to feel anything but the deepest love and the deepest hate. And he is torn. And he knows that the little boy thinks he only hates him. but he is scared by how much he wants that boy to live, how much he wants what you, what both of you sacrificed to be worth it. And so when he is lying beaten bleeding and he tells him that he must die, he knows that it was not worth it. That what he had given up had not saved Harry and he dies. He dies knowing what Dumbledore has told him, that regardless of what he, and what you, have given up Harry must die to save everyone. And it isn't worth it. And he dies hating you.
But it's not true. The sacrifice saved the little boy who saved everything, but two people lost what could never be. He died before he knew if Harry would live, and you died to let him live. Harry the boy who lived saved many people, but you, you saved him. He lives, and it all begins at the end.