I'm trying for specific word counts in this story. Each chapter is to be 500 words, excepting this. (and that Word counts differently than ffnet!) For this reason, the disclaimer is up front and will not be repeated, but continues to apply: I do not own these characters, or their world, nor do I own the songs used for inspiration. (from the band Maximo Park). The name's from the first song on their first album. I am not sure exactly where this story will go. Right now, the writing style is inspired by coffeeonthepatio's, (do look her up, wonderful writer!) but I don't guarantee this will continue.
The train did not come, and so he had to wait for the later one, which was the one she had always—they had always taken before. He had not wanted to take it this year, because she had changed. They had changed. For the worse, probably, in both their cases. As a no longer welcome guest, he had witnessed the arguments (they were nothing, though), and the disintegration of the ties between her and her parents. She looked far fairer now, seemed far fouler, and he had kept his mouth shut, but it was really hardly him who ruined her. The lies were not likely to help her, in his opinion, yet as it was her doing entirely, he had no stake in the matter. Nor did he have any influence, the disgraced former friend.
And when she finally appeared, she was not the girl he had known. She was finer, somehow, of body and of carriage, and refused to face him, her former friend, instead staring worriedly and fixedly upon the outsized clock. He knew she was ever estranged from her once beloved sister, and that for whatever reason she was in ill graces with her parents, but more importantly he knew that he had thrown the last word that would break their friendship and that therefore she was no longer his Lily at all, to inquire about, to worry over, to comfort.
Their train pulled in, to a screeching halt, and he did not speak to her.
"I thought," she said, "that I would buy some better robes. Is that not a good enough reason?"
He had wandered into Madame Malkin's, where he did not belong, though she did (even if the Evanses could not afford the fanciest of her stock), and he had asked her what she was doing there. Perhaps he had meant to ask what was wrong, though the words did not come, and he offered no sign of intended sympathy.
"No. It's fine."
The apothecary's, where he went next, turning away from her in a billow of robes, reeked strongly of eucalyptus. She walked in after him, with a set of dress robes in emerald green, over one arm, but turned away from him and stared at the selection of cauldrons. He reached for a pot of daisy roots to examine their quality. He wasn't interested—they were merely a distraction to keep him from staring after her and those robes.
"Why do you care, Severus Snape? Why won't you stop following me? Don't want to associate with 'mudbloods'? Then just quit it!"
"I'm hardly following you," he retorted coolly. This was the first time she had mentioned the incident since, and he could not bring himself to apologize now, even though he hadn't really meant it—hadn't really ever meant it. They had not really spoken, either, which did follow from the grave insult. But it was an old wound now, at which he kept poking.
She swore at him, and she did not swear.