That summer felt like an eternity of lazy days, floating by one by one and slipping into a blur of buzzing flies and rippling river-sounds, as though there would always be another day, and then another.
She looked like a character in a book, sitting there in the grass in a spot of light, wearing a flowy purple dress and a string of pearls which her mother had tied around her neck, her hair a wild and tangled cascade of red curls. He thought of those post cards he had seen at Mrs. Hume's paper shop, with little girls who were kissing little boys, both of them wearing fancy clothes and reaching for each other over charmingly worn out fences or rustic bicycles; lacy white dresses for the girls and suits and berets for the boys, miniature adults in their formal clothes. He was wearing a suit too, an ugly, dirty, too-big thing, not at all like those tailored miniature suits the boys in the post cards wore.
The grass had erupted into a yellow sea of dandelions around her, and he felt almost like he was intruding on her private girly world, where flowers always bloomed and the wind toyed lazily with tufts of hay, and the sun was always shining in a warm, orange-peel shaded way. He was coming from another kind of world; the kind where light was always grim and grey and pushed through ragged curtains, where things were dirty and dusty. But she made things shine, she and her bright colours and magical, never-wilting flowers and smiles that made him smile.
"Sev! Come here! I've been waiting for you." She giggled and her voice was like a silver bell, in her plump hand a flowery something.
He approached her, slumping down on the grass next to her, but in the shadow of an oak tree because all the color blinded him. He felt guilty for messing up some of the dandelions.
"What are you making?" He asked her, looking at the thing in her hand.
"A wreath", she said and lifted it for him to see. It was almost done, green stems bound in intricate forms which he tried to understand but couldn't. He supposed it was a girl thing; maybe all girls knew how to do that, how to twist and bend flowers to make these things that only girls wore.
"That's nice", he told her, thinking she would look like a fairy if she put it on her hair.
"It's for you", she told him.
"I'm not wearing that!" He spluttered.
"Why not?" She asked him in a surprised tone, her eyes meeting his. They were green like the grass and the stems of the dandelions and his black eyes sucked in all the colour it could.
"Because those things are for girls! I can't wear that – I'm a boy, you're a girl. You should wear it."
"I don't need to do anything", she told him sternly. "I made this for you, so you're wearing it, and that's that."
"I don't want to", he pleaded, flushing as he thought of that bright yellow-green thing on his lank black hair, and what the boys at the playground would say if they knew. He thought about what his parents would say; his mother perhaps looking away and his father's eyes darkening because boys should act a certain way and at least they should never wear flower wreaths.
"Yes you will. And then you will kiss me."
He paused.
"What - why would I kiss you?"
"Because Tuney said that that's what boys and girls do together."
"But –"
"You just said you're a boy! So you have to kiss me. And that's that."
And she tied the rest of the stems together like a braid, and was suddenly holding a round wreath in her hand, looking happy as she looked at her handiwork. Then she reached for him and pressed the wreath on his head ceremoniously, like it was a crown and he a prince to be crowned. He felt utterly ridiculous as she peered at him expectantly, and so he pressed down his chin to hide behind his hair. She leaned towards him and swiped a lock of it behind his ear. Her touch was like the July wind in the dandelions: warm and sweet.
"I feel ridiculous", he muttered petulantly, his cheeks red. "And I won't kiss you."
"Fine. I will kiss you then."
And she did, her lips plump and wet and a little sloppy against his. It wasn't all that horrible, he thought as he closed his eyes too late, when she had already withdrawn her lips. She giggled and he opened his eyes.
"There", she said happily. He pulled the wreath off his hair, trying to hide his embarrassment. Then, hesitantly, he put it on her curls, and she looked exactly like he had thought she would; like a fairy princess, a wild thing which belonged in the woods and onto meadows full of grass and flowers and morning dew.
The boy and the girl got up, and for a moment they looked like they were photographs on a post card, their hands in each other's, no fence or bicycle between them. A fairy princess standing in a spot of light and a dark mountain elf standing in the shadow of the oak.
Severus Snape turned away from the two, and everything turned into a steamy haze of orange-peel coloured light and bright green grass, things dissolving slowly into the harsh light of his office, into all things grim and grey.