DISCLAIMER: I am making no money off of this, and this site isn't either. This is purely fan-fiction written by a weird person who has absolutely nothing better to do than write this stuff. I don't own Harry Potter, Hogwarts, Snape, etc. J.K.R. does.
I Dine with Fortune Tonight
"A table for two, please."
Lily Evans smiled to the waitress of the middle-class Italian restaurant.
Betsy, the head waitress, looked around. No company, man or woman, gathered behind this charming young customer. Betsy smiled conspiratorially. "Expectin' someone soon, miss?"
Lily nodded blandly. Betsy could not tell if "Yes."
With a cordial gesture, the waitress led Lily to a table in a very romantic corner of the restaurant. It was located at a small portico on the near-abandoned street, under the summer stars. No other tables sat outside the restaurant with it.
"Bring two glasses and a bottle of Merlot, please," Lily demanded, seating herself gingerly..
This was soon set before her, and Lily poured a bit of wine into both glasses. When Betsy reluctantly abandoned to her post, Lily picked hers up.
"So. It's just you and me, tonight, Fortune," she announced in a whisper, despairingly.
She moved the glass in a circular fashion, so that her drink rippled like a blood-red sea. "It's been a long time since I've seen you." She paused and sipped her wine, as though awaiting a reply from a nonexistent personage.
Lily evidentially got one. "I know what you mean. You set me up with me and James . . . as you can see, it has not worked well for us." She sipped again.
"Sometimes, he just . . . infuriated me so much I want to scream! After all, he never was quite as bright as I could wish. I often resented that." She took a bigger gulp.
"But now . . . now it is over with us, finally. I wondered for a long time if that was the way our relationship would turn out. You have shown my suspicions correct." She took another sip.
"Why did you allow me to like him? Why did you even bring us together? Was it to teach him something? Was it to teach me something?"
At this point, Betsy bounced over to her. "Well, miss, are you ready to order?"
"Yes." Lily had not even glanced at the menu. "The special of the house, please."
"The ziti with pesto, miss?"
"Yes, that." There was a pause.
"Anything for the gentleman, if I may be so bold to suggest? Men like a good thick steak most often--"
"No, he won't want anything." Lily's voice had a decisive tone.
Betsy was quick to take a hint. "Yes, miss." She departed with a flourish of her skirt.
Lily resumed her monologue. "Well, I don't know what purpose you had in bringing us together. It resulted in a whole year and a half of wasted life on my part. It gave me a year and a half of bad memories of fights, anger, and passionate discussions. Nothing that I could look back and say, 'Oh! We never had that problem!' For we had every problem in the book."
She frowned and sipped again. "I guess he just wasn't as serious about it. I mean, why else would he go out with Pricilla Turmonk, Eleanor Goonsbury, and Tibitha Thorndike in one day, and only come home to me reluctantly? I knew he sort-of had a fancy to other girls. And money. He liked showing off how much of everything he had. Outrageously expensive clothes, the best broom on the planet, and, I suppose, many girls. Funnily enough, though, I thought he actually had it in for me once in a while. As though none of the others mattered but me. What a fool I was." Here she drank the last of her allotment, and she poured herself another full glass.
"What bothered me most, though, was how he never could stop talking about himself. He just rambled on about how good he was at Quidditch, about how much he spent on his latest investment, and told stories about the expensive restaurants we attended--and all those stories true. I could not express the embarrassment and mortification I experienced when I was with him and he went on and on like that." She sipped gingerly.
Betsy came with the hot plate of pasta. "Sure you'd like nothing for the gentleman, miss? Are you sure he's coming?" she inquired as she gently placed the plate on the table.
"He's coming!" Lily threw a glare at the waitress. "Please do not ask about him again!"
Betsy whipped away indignantly to the front. "Poor dear," she murmured to the table-clearer, who was polishing the silverware. "There's another girl who thinks she's got a date but don't."
"As long as she pays, I don't care," replied the table-clearer, whose name was Bob.
Lily had settled back into her reverie as she slowly began to chew her pasta. "I did think I loved him, at one point or another." She thought a moment. "Nights were wonderful! He was so good at it. Made me feel like I was flying half the time, and the other half I was so safe in his arms!"
Then she went back into pessimism. "But I'll bet he got a lot of practice before my time. And during it, I'm sure." She ignored a single tear that dropped into her wine glass.
"It's not as though I didn't put my foot down, ever. I did. Almost every time. That's partially why we fought so much. The other reason was that his friends . . . that Sirius Black was giving him cocaine. I know he was. The whole Black clan has been so unscrupulous this generation. I suppose they're another respectable long-standing British family going to pieces. I mean, I couldn't care less about them, so long as it hadn't affected James so much."
She gulped a large portion of wine. "He denied it every time, sure. But I knew it, I found that powder in his snuffbox. He couldn't have been less than almost addicted! And he showed it in his actions and words!" The tears flowed freely now.
"The reason I finally ended it was when I confronted him about it. I told him, stop using it, he said he didn't in the first place! Then I showed him the snuffbox I'd found in his dresser. He did not deny it then! But he still protested that he was not addicted, until he fell over on the floor! I was mad, infuriated! If this was how he wanted to waste his life, fine. But he was not about to ruin mine!"
She took another large gulp, finishing the glass, and she poured herself even more. "So I put him in bed and called Remus, a sensible but feeble soul, told him to come over. Then I wrote a short note to James, telling him that I was leaving. It did not take me long to pack my bags, and I went home. Home to my mother and father, who did not know why I was crying. They helped me get a new apartment on the opposite side of town, no questions asked. My new lodgings are just around the block from here. I wanted to get as far as possible away from him without being unreasonable. After all, I have to keep my job at the Ministry." She sipped again, but less fiercely now.
"So now, here I am. I dine with you, place myself in your hands, oh Fortune. Do your best. Help me through this troubled time. It's been a week since I left him, and the pain will not leave me." She sighed, and lowered her glass to the table.
"I must go now." Lily Evans rose, her fingers shaking as she laid down the assorted moneys for her meal by her plate. Then, a bit unsteadily, she opened and walked through a knee-high gate onto the sidewalk. She proceeded home, leaving one full and one half-empty glass of red wine on the restaurant table.
………………
The next day, Lily came back to the restaurant. "Can I have the same table as last night? And Merlot for two, please."
Betsy raised an eyebrow at Bob, who was carrying a bunch of dishes, and he shrugged. Their nonverbal communication read, "Well! Here's one that doesn't give up easily!" "Damned if I care! As long as she pays!"
Nevertheless, the waitress led Lily to the solace of the portico table. Lily nodded in gratitude, then sat down. Again, she poured one glass for herself and one glass to set at the opposite side of the table. Then she began to talk again.
"I mused about it all night. I think you were right to give me James." She breathed in the fragrant wine, savoring the poignant odor.
"I asked you if you had a reason for it last night. You did not give me a satisfactory answer. But I think I understand you better, now." She took a sip from her glass.
"You gave me James in order to see what beasts men can be. How I must never give in to them. How the rational, well-reasoned woman should dominate the relationship. I thought, sometimes when we were in bed together, that I did dominate the relationship James and I had. But it was only for fleeting moments. Perhaps it was good of me to take the initiative to end it, showing that I did have some amount of power over him. I suppose." She drank a full swig of the wine.
"That's not quite what I meant, I think." She brushed a stray lock from her forehead and sighed bitterly. "I wanted to say how utterly he dominated me. He initiated every formal date we had before we officially got together. He was the one who first kissed me. He was the one who treated me like I was something special, not me him." She bitterly took another sip.
"I really thought so much of him, that with his stuck-up notions and his high expectations of life he actually was a good man. Pah!" She spit on the ground, a coarse but fitting gesture. "Here is what I think of him now! You have proved that I have, within me, a devil! A raging tiger! For what is that phrase 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' or something like that. I did not know my inner ferocity existed until James! I felt like doing some bloomin' damage to that cocky face more than once!"
She mulled over this, seeping anger from every pore. At that moment, however, Betsy came around to take her order.
"House special, please."
"Roast chicken feta penne?"
"Yes, that."
Betsy took on a delicate air. "And what about . . .?" she hinted tactfully.
"Nothing for the gentleman who's coming."
Betsy nodded. "As you wish, miss." She flounced away, shaking her head at the desultory Bob.
The brief interpose helped to cool Lily's anger.
"So you know have shown me what I want. What I need. Someone who will love me wholly, entirely, without exception and without malice! One who will take every request I make seriously, be it foolish or no! And one whom I can twist around my little finger, who will do virtually anything for me, within or even without reason! But, most of all, one who can carry a decent conversation and who is willing to take things slowly. After all, now that I think about it, we were absolutely stupid to be living together at the six-months point! Ah me! If my younger self, with all her vows of chastity until marriage and such nonsense, could see me now!" She took a deep swallow of Merlot.
"But it helped me learn, all of what you showed me. You did teach me something! I am not ungrateful! I just wish it had not hurt so much for so long!" Lily took another sip of wine.
Betsy appeared with her food. "You seem in good spirits, tonight, miss," she ventured.
"Of course I am." Lily proceeded to spear her food very hastily.
"She's mad at him, now," Betsy observed demurely to Bob as they met in the kitchen.
After swallowing her first mouthful of pasta, Lily declared to space, "I am full of vitality and healthy vigor. I do believe that I shall go running tonight, though I haven't done so in a long while."
She took a smaller sip of wine. "I can wait for a man who won't do me any wrongs. Like Preston, at the office. He'd be a smart choice, I think, if I can get to know him well enough. Strange thing about James--he went about with other women, but got fearfully jealous when I even ever talked to another man. Odd. Another score in his disfavor: he likes to possess things through and through, with disregard for their own feelings and emotions!" She sipped again.
"Or Jeckyll, the man at the Laundromat! He's a respectable, upstanding sort of fellow! And he always makes sure to check my numbers extra carefully, I see him. And he always gives me pocket calendars with pictures of flowers. So sweet!" She took another sip.
"Or Barnaby Q., the man who empties my wastebaskets every morning." Lily paused. "No, perhaps not. How would I feel if I walked into the office to hear everyone poke fun at me because I had found a boyfriend in a trash collector!" But Lily found the picture very amusing. She laughed the whole way home.
………………………
For a third time, Lily walked quietly into the Italian restaurant. Betsy recognized her well by now.
"Same place?" she asked when Lily opened the door.
"If you would be so kind."
"Come then." Betsy, very curious, had the hardest time refraining from questions.
"Could you bring--"
"--Two wine glasses and a bottle of Merlot coming now, miss." Betsy disappeared.
"She's back again!" was her only note of interest to Bob, who knew, without specifying, whom 'she' was.
Lily once more poured a glass for herself and a glass for Fortune.
"What exactly do you want of me?"
This first question she posed before even taking a whiff of the wine.
"Have I ever done you ill?" Then she tasted the wine, but laid it down.
"I do not know what you expect of me. Oh! I do miss James." She paused. "No. Wait. Not James. Not James at all. Just . . . someone to fill James' place. Yes." Lily smiled sadly. "That's all I want. A replacement. Soon. Quickly." She proceeded to down the entire glass in one gulp.
"I want someone who can just hold me, tell me that it's all fine. That no one needs me more than he does. That . . . that I'm more special than anyone else. And even if it's all lies, I'll pretend to myself that I believe him. Oh!" She fell to tears on the tablecloth.
She remained until she was aware of Betsy's quietly hovering over her.
"Miss? Do you want the House Special as usual?"
"Yes, if you would be so kind."
"Do you care what it is, miss?"
"Not really."
Betsy swooped away to say sorrowfully to Bob, "She's grieving. It's over."
"Poor wretch," was his only pronouncement.
Lily continued her conversation only reluctantly when Betsy left.
"I wish you would spare me the work of influencing you. You know best, obviously, but I don't want to have to beg you anymore. It gets so tiring, after a while, pursuing your good graces. Being fired down by your arrows while yet attempting to reach your mercy. I ask, do you have to send me through hell to find heaven?" The tears did not stop, and Lily's voice reached a dead whisper.
"I wish . . . I wish . . . I don't know what to wish for!"
Those were the last words Lily spoke that evening.
…………………..
Lily decided it would be the last time she'd enter the Italian restaurant that night. She came in, somber and drawn, almost seeming to have bruises over her white face. Or so Betsy told Bob later.
"Same place, same order?" Betsy queried when Lily came inside.
"Yes," murmured Lily, her very lips pale.
Betsy waved her hand. "You know the way."
"Thank you," Lily replied, barely audible.
"I don't know the matter with her tonight," Betsy lamented to Bob in the bar as she got the bottle of Merlot.
For once, Bob agreed. "Damn right."
Lily seated herself at the lone table on the portico. She then opened her handbag and drew forth a small vial of odious-looking, blood-red potion. This she turned over and over in her hand, either admiring or contemplating its concentrated beauty.
Betsy brought the two glasses.
"Oh, only one glass, tonight," Lily mumbled. Betsy, whom never had the best of hearing, did not perceive the comment, and poured wine for two. However, since the deed was done, Lily did not protest.
Lily took a sip of her wine, but found it bitter. She sighed, then addressed Fortune for what she knew would be the last time.
"Your ways of trickery are hurting me too much. I finally have decided that what you ask me to do is too difficult. I realize that the true fate you've decided for me is to be unhappy my entire life. I have decided to take things into my own hands. Leave me now, Fortune, for you will no longer have power over me when I am dead."
Lily brought forth the red vial and laid it on the table. She did nothing but stare at it meaningfully.
………
Severus Snape moseyed along, taking in the night. Damn, he'd taken too long in writing his research reports tonight. None of his usual haunts were open for his daily nightcap. And, if they were open, they were full of underage, wild student drinkers who never knew how to control themselves properly. So bothersome, really, being unable to find a decent pub . . .
He saw lights across the street from him, and squinted to read the words on the sign. Nel Mezzo. Italian, but he did not mind that. Besides, it did not look too crowded. A lone woman seemed the only customer on the portico outside. Although he could not quite tell who she was from a distance, he thought that perhaps he might recognize her profile . . .
Without bothering to look both ways, he jaywalked (rather, jay-ran) across to investigate.
It astonished him that his guess was actually correct. Indeed, it was Lily Evans sitting at the table of the Italian restaurant, all alone!
She had something in her hands. A small bottle. She was opening it slowly, yet determinedly . . .
"Miss Evans!"
Lily looked up, completely startled. A man with a dour complexion and a ruddily large nose gazed at her with an unfathomable expression.
"Why, Severus!"
Lily dropped the bottle she was holding. It fell to the stone tile floor of the portico, not breaking, but splattering every milliliter of its contents across the ground.
"I'm quite sorry. I did not intend to startle you."
(Here she was! Lily Evans! The only girl he'd ever crushed on since his second year! And, of course, he had to always muddle things like this.)
Lily gulped. She glanced at her untainted Merlot, then took it to her lips.
"No apology needed, Severus. Why are you around here?"
Snape's lip curled. Lily could not tell if his smile were treacherous or kindly. She decided it might have been halfway between the two.
"Not much, Miss Evans, just looking for a place to have a drink where no sweet young thing is going to vomit all over one or try to persuade me to spend the night with her."
"Oh. Don't call me Miss Evans; it's Lily. Are we not contemporaries?"
Snape shrugged. "It's been a few years since we graduated from Hogwarts, Lily."
Lily examined Snape's face as well as she could from a distance. She noted the intelligent, furrowed brow, and the thin, unhappy lips. His hair had gotten a great deal less greasy, she noted, probably with the settling of his hormones; she felt inclined to almost touch it. His upper lip and chin, she saw, had been divested of all hair--a refreshing novelty in these days where thick beards and moustaches were fashionable! His eyes, mysterious and impenetrable, beckoned in a challenge to her sense of investigation.
She gestured to the seat across from her. "Have you eaten?"
Snape shook his head. "No. I eat less these days, and work more."
Lily gazed at him again. She remembered his devotion to his schoolwork, how they had always competed in Slughorn's class at potions, how often he asked her to help him understand. Though she had never given him more than a passing thought, she saw now how intelligent, interested, and control of himself he was. He represented a pillar of rectitude and strength in this time where she had neither those virtues. Yet, she could recall times when she had seen him severely hurt and, once, even shedding tears. He had a heart, no matter what James said . . .
He was James' worst enemy, after all! His complete opposite! Why, everything she had hated in James she would not find in this man, for they always had aimed to have no similarities! Lily almost smiled, she could be happy with this man, if he so cared to have her!
She made a decision.
"Care to dine with me? I barely placed my order minutes ago."
Severus' heart, though long unaccustomed to being startled, gave a leap. It was all that he could do not to stutter.
"I . . .no . . . I mean, yes. Yes, of course. I'd be delighted."
Lily noted with pleasure the slight tinge of red on his ears and temple. Who ever said Severus Snape was a cold fish? Only the one who had wronged her so greatly that she wished he'd die.
She felt warmth rising to her own cheeks as Snape practically stepped over the short gate, instead of opening it and closing it. Lily had never noticed how long, aquiline and almost beautiful his legs and hands were. She also realized how eloquent and refined his accent was . . . not rich and brash, but soft, intelligent, and well-spoken. And, was it her imagination, or did a certain dancing light strike up in his eyes?
He stopped when he noticed the wine glass, the extra set at the opposing place. It reminded him of the fact that, not a month ago, he'd seen a picture of James Potter and Lily in the Daily Tribune.
"Pardon me, but what about James Potter? Is he not with you?" Severus paused and tried to collect his uncharacteristically scattered thoughts.
"No. Don't mention that name ever again."
Severus raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Why, might I ask?"
"He's a right rich bastard who can never again call me his whore."
Snape grinned, and he thought, "This is crazy, but I want to say I'm in love with this woman!"
Lily smiled too, and she thought, "Thank you, Fortune!"