50 Scenes Challenge
Lily Evans x Severus Snape
#05: Blankets.
Winter was always chilly, snow or no snow. This year it had come in the form of slowly drifting little puffs that melted on everything, but left them feeling icy. The wind was harsh and blew out the shivers hiding in every living creature's spine, rattling leaves and swaying them in its wake.
A little hand in purple mittens knocked on the door of a battered-looking shack of a place. The brick was filthy with blackish soot, likely from towering chimney of a factory nearby, and it seemed that everything else on the home was tattered, as if it had been dragged around in a bag for years before being sloppily tacked onto the house. Even the glass on the windows were weather-stained, an ominous-looking one in the corner bearing an eerie spider-web crack.
Lily Evans looked around nervously, huffing into her puffy scarf. The dead winter trees shook in an apparent mirror of nerves – or perhaps, as she thought, the wind.
After some time the front door creaked open cautiously. A little boy in a battered-looking shirt and patched-up shorts stood there, his figure abominably pale and his hair sticking to his head in an oily craze. All together he looked like the shadowy ghost of a boy than a real person standing at the door.
Still, a small spark lit in his eyes when he saw Lily standing at his front door. "I'm sorry I took so long to get at the door." he whispered. "I had to be sure that they weren't going to… do anything." Lily nodded at the explanation.
"So, um, what are you doing here?" young Severus asked, motioning to the bundle in her arms. "What's that?"
"Oh, um, these are for you." Lily said, her face lighting red, although it might have been the sudden movement of her face from the warmth of her scarf to the chill of the air. "My great-aunt knits us dozens and dozens of these things every year, and I thought that… maybe… you might like some." She shrugged a little bit before thrusting the large bundle into the arms of a frozen-looking Severus Snape, eyes wide with shock – or maybe just frozen open along with the rest of him.
He looked at the bundle of knitted wonders. "Blankets?" he asked, his face contorting confusedly. The menagerie of colors in his arms seemed as confused as he did.
"Our house is so overflowing with the things, we could tripe-insulate every house in the neighborhood." Lily re-explained. "And they are very comfy. Our house is a fireplace at their fault, but I'm sure this time of winter, the heater's not the best all of the time. I'm sure they'll keep you nice and cozy." She smiled, her face now flushed, and stepped down the broken-down porch to the beat-up pathway. She turned back and waved at Severus, stiff as a statue in the doorway.
"Bye." she said. "And you should shut the door soon, before your house becomes completely frozen."
Snape shivered back to life before trying his best to hold the blanket bundle and wave ferociously back at her simultaneously. "Goodbye!" he exclaimed, forgetting his whispering precaution, "And thank you very much!"
Lily giggled and took off down the cobbled road.
Severus smiled, his face igniting to a fire-truck level of red, before creaking the door shut with his leg and carefully kicking it closed. He turned and sighed. The ghostly figure of a pale woman greeted him, and he came close to falling backwards in surprise. Lily had captivated him so greatly that he hadn't noticed his mother coming into the room – though she might have simply become that good at creeping through the house.
"Your friend?" she asked, her voice soft and a little crackly. Severus shook his head and up down so quick and hard he might have ricocheted his head off. Eileen chuckled quietly and pulled a blanket from the bundle in his arms, popping it open in the air above his head expertly before wrapping it around him like a glorious cloak.
"There now," she whispered, "Doesn't that seem splendid, my little Prince?"
Young Severus' face lit aglow with warm smile, transforming his former sickly appearance into that of a fair young man.
"Indeed." she said, ruffling his hair, then kissing him lightly on the forehead. "Now, let's get to the study, before your father finds it."
Little Severus trotted off determinedly, the mission his mother assigned taken with great seriousness in his mind. Eileen watched him go and followed him down the hall, taking the door after he went inside.
She glanced back from the doorway. Tobias stared coldly back at her from the front staircase, grimy and unshaven, shadows cascading over his form. Eileen's face broke a little before she near threw the door closed – all her weakness pouring from her back. She pulled her wand from where she had hidden it on her person, and with a quick flit, she locked the door.