I've been trying to study for my midterms, but I couldn't focus. This was the result of me being distracted. So...drop me a review?
Severus Snape studied the fragment of the photograph he had taken from Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. A young woman laughing, shaking back her hair.
He was careful to keep his face as impassive as possible. The photograph was in black and white, yet he could see the colours in his mind's eye. The long hair should be red, those almond shaped eyes green. A green he had only seen in one other place. Looking at her had never been as painful as looking into the other place that green could be found.
Snape's lank hair hung around his face in greasy curtains, his cold, black eyes fixated greedily on the woman's beautiful face. She was younger than him, perhaps late teens or early twenties. She carried a wand in her right hand, gazing and smiling at something he couldn't see.
Fifteen years.
Had it really been that long? How could it have been? He felt the pain of the loss like a fresh wound
Oh, he didn't show it – he wasn't a fool to wander around displaying his heart for all to see. The Dark Lord, the greatest Legilimins of all time, hadn't been able to uncover his true thoughts. His thoughts were his own. His mind was his own. His last true sanctuary.
He returned his attention to the photograph, to the face that rarely left his mind.
Lily.
He, the one who should be dead, was alive, more than a decade later, while she, Lily, the brightest witch he had ever known, was dead just past twenty. He remembered studying with her, debating how to improve a potion. Most of their ideas had been theoretical, but Lily had insisted that they try some of them in practicality. He had agreed. He had rarely been able to say no to any of her wishes. The one person he couldn't refuse. Strange.
He stood, striding across the small bedroom to the desk. The surface was bare, save for a sheet of parchment and a quill. Papers were neatly arranged in the drawers.
Snape violently yanked open the second drawer. He threw the neat stack of papers to the bare wooden floor, dropping to his knees to paw through them.
Parchment flew everywhere, until he found it. Then at last, his fast breathing began to slow.
The photograph was small, about the size of his palm. But it was theirs, not one he had stolen of her and him. It was whole, not torn in half.
Fourteen years old, her arm looped through his. A bright smile on her face, a small, reluctant one on his. His eyes not on the person wielding the camera, but on the girl next to him, her face alight.
Wormtail wasn't there anymore. He was no longer living within his house, no longer spying on him. It was almost funny, how much the rat feared him now.
Snape allowed himself a small grin, a bitter expression. It was ironic. With all the years he had spent being tormented by the group Wormtail had hung around with to be feared by him...Pettigrew had laughed, stood by and laughed at him, all to be liked.
Potter, the idiotic, arrogant boy, who had gone around, strutting around the castle, the stupidly lucky boy, had been the one to earn Lily's love.
She had hated him. She had told him that. An arrogant toerag. Those had been her exact words.
He could remember her better than anything else. She was his strongest memory. Her friendship – he could remember that even more clearly than his hatred for Potter. He loved her even more strongly than he hated her son.
He didn't need a photograph to remember what she looked like. He could see her face every time he closed his eyes. He hadn't mourned so long when his father had died, or his mother. He had almost forgotten what they looked like. They weren't Lily. Neither of them had been the first person to actually care about him.
She was gone. Lily Potter was dead. All that was left of her was her son. Her legacy.
And Severus Snape would protect him until his last breath.