As the Swan in the Evening

by Morrighan

Lily tells Snape of her engagement to James. Songfic to 'She moved through the fair'.

AS THE SWAN IN THE EVENING

by Morrighan

DISCLAIMER: All herein are the property of J K Rowling. The words of 'She moved through the fair' belong to Padraic Colum. The line 'O brave new world ...' is from Shakespeare's Tempest.

CENSOR: PG for a little light angst.

NB: This isn't in cannon with The Long Road to Damascus. It was when I started it, but LRtD has evolved considerably since then, so it's now just a stand-alone. About the song, I suspect it's not terribly well known, but http://www.mp3.com has various versions. This one is probably my favourite.

My young love said to me

my parents won't mind

and my father won't slight you

for your lack of kind

Then she stepped away from me

and this she did say

"It will not be long love

'til our wedding day"

"James! Earth calling James."

James looked up to see Sirius and Remus standing by his table in the Three Broomsticks. "Oh, hi. How long have you guys been there?"

"Oh, about two hours," Sirius said airily. "Maybe three."

"Four, actually. You were miles away."

"Watching Lily - again."

James smiled, but less animatedly than they were used to. "Oh! So I'm not allowed to look at my own girlfriend?"

"Certainly not! Strictly forbidden, in fact," Sirius answered. "Especially in front of Padfoot and Moony, who are both reluctantly celibate at present."

James's only reply was a slightly secretive smile. If only you knew, friends, he thought.

It was now twenty minutes since he'd managed to ask her the question. He'd been tempted get some artificial courage in the form of alcohol, but decided that it would be insulting. A refusal might be hurtful, but not half so humiliating as 'ask me when you're sober'. In fact she had simply said 'what took you so long?' with such serenity that he'd wanted to laugh, cry and shout at the same time, and settled for hugging her enthusiastically instead.

"There! He's doing it again."

"Knut for your thoughts, Prongs."

"Well ... Just nostalgia, I suppose. We're leaving tomorrow, forever, and then everything's going to be so different. I'm really going to miss the old place, you know."

"Oh, it's the end of an era. The world is changing, changing, and we'll never be the same again," Sirius intoned in a voice of mock-solemnity. "What brought all this on, James? We came out to get a drink and paint the town red, and here you are getting all philosophical on us."

James shrugged and smiled, but said nothing.

"At least you've got a good job to go to," Remus added. He almost managed to keep the envy out of his voice.

'You've got everything, James.' I have, haven't I? And here I am being melancholy at my best friends on graduation night. He smiled, in spite of himself, and let his eyes wander over to where Lily was sitting with her best friend, Ailsa Grey, talking in hushed voices with their heads close together. I bet she's told Ailsa , he thought grumpily. So why isn't she letting me tell anyone?

"Oh, leave him be, Remus. It's just Lurve. We'll get the drinks while he does the lovesick calf act."

Sirius and Remus walked over to the bar and James looked towards Lily and Ailsa again. A tall, thin, rather athletic boy with ginger hair had just joined them - George McKinnon, the Ravenclaw Seeker. George and Ailsa had got engaged a month back, and they'd announced it right away - in the middle of breakfast, no less - and had one hell of a party. Lucky things.

He watched them leave, his arm around her shoulder, as Lily came over to join him.

"You've told Ailsa, I suppose?" he said crossly.

"Not yet." She sounded amused. He found he couldn't stay angry.

"I'm dying to tell them, Lily. Won't you let me?"

Lily smiled as if she understood. "Very soon, love, very soon indeed. But there's someone I need to tell before you start shouting it from the highest tower."

"Oh? Who's that?" James was puzzled. Someone I need to tell? Someone I need to tell?

Lily merely tapped the side of her nose at him, and turned towards the door of the pub. "I'll see you at dinner," she said lightly. "You can tell the world then."

James watched her walk out into the street outside. It had been market day - Fridays always were - and the streets of Hogsmeade were crammed with stalls and hand carts for market day. He watched her as she made her way between the stalls and barrows, until she disappeared from his view. There was nobody like Lily, he thought. She was always so calm, so peaceful, and when they were together it was as if that calm filled his universe.

He turned to see Remus putting down three tankards of butterbeer on the table. Sirius was still at the bar, trying to chat up Madam Rosmerta. "You're lucky to have her," Remus said, seeing the direction of James's gaze.

"I don't have her. Not really. You don't own someone like Lily." Remus raised his eyebrows. "Lily belongs to herself, and herself alone. But you're right - I'm so lucky that she loves me."

She stepped away from me

and she moved through the fair

and fondly I watched her

move here and move there

Then she went her way homeward

with one star awake

as the swan in the evening

moved over the lake

It was the end of the market day for the traders, and those she passed were already packing up their stalls. She passed a watchmaker's stall, the bench littered with cogs and hands and tiny blue gemstones, a barrow full of bunches of dried herbs, and another, stacked high with jars and bottles. It was a shame, really. She'd always wanted to explore the magical markets. Still, she had a whole life before her to do things like that - all the time in the world. O brave new world, that has such people in it! She laughed out loud, but there was an edge of sadness in the laughter, as she passed the last of the stalls into the open roadway beyond.

Severus was still where she'd last seen him - sitting on a pile of rubble at the edge of the market. The house had been destroyed in one of the Dark Lord's attacks, and only the fallen stones were left - a crumbling memorial to the Mendel family who had lived and died there. None of his cronies were with him, which was just as well. To tell him in front of his friends was out of the question. It would be unthinkable cruelty.

"May I join you?" she asked him, as though she always sought the company of Slytherins. She looked down at him curiously. He had never been good-looking, but it was only in the last two years that his eyes had gained that perpetual hostile expression that was so repellant. She glanced down at his hands instead. He had delicate, thin fingers - watchmaker's hands or perhaps pianist's hands (girl's hands, Sirius would undoubtedly have said, grindylow fingers). Lily had always been fascinated by his hands. So skilful, but so fragile-looking.

Severus shrugged. "What do you want, Evans?"

"To tell you something." Not waiting for an invitation she sat down beside him.

"If you want. Does it look like I'm stopping you?"

"Severus, I'm engaged. To James."

He tried to come up with a spiteful remark to throw at her, but the reserves of sarcasm and bitterness that were his most formidable defence seemed suddenly to have dried up. "Oh," he said hollowly. "Why are you telling me this?"

She said nothing, but looked him straight in the eye. He looked away quickly, feeling uneasy under her gaze. She had a tranquillity and stillness which drew him to her like the moth to the flame, but that same stillness reproached him constantly, as if she was privy to some deep knowledge that he would never reach. "My conscience required it," she said simply. If there was another reason she knew he would never accept it.

"Oh," he said again. It was four years ago, and nothing really happened anyway, he thought, she's just a pretty Mudblood. Nothing to get worked up about. Get over it, Sev. The words rang false and hollow in his head. "Congratulations, I think. I hope you're happy with him."

"Thanks. You're the first to know, you know."

"Why?" He sounded suspicious.

Lily hesitated for a moment before she spoke. "I thought if any of your friends were likely to start making trouble you'd prefer to be forewarned. That's all." He stared at her mutely, and for a second the mask slipped, revealing a look of longing and grief and deep, deep bitterness. It was only there a moment before it vanished. Lily wanted to reach out and touch him, to reassure him, but she was the last person who could help him now, and certainly not in that way. "I'd like you to promise me something as well," she continued softly. "I want you to promise you'll never do anything I'd be ashamed of."

He managed to meet her gaze for the first time at that, and abruptly the hostile, suspicious look vanished from his eyes. Suddenly he was again the quiet young man who had once kissed her behind Greenhouse Two. He looked silently at her for a moment, and she had the impression that he was drinking her in, memorising her face. "I promise," he said simply. His voice was almost inaudible.

Whatever he may have done in later years, in that one moment he meant it with all his heart.

"Thank you, Severus," she said, as she stood up again, carefully brushing brick dust from her robes. "I'll see you later, then."

He lapsed abruptly back into sullenness. "See you, Evans. Have a nice life."

She walked back to the Three Broomsticks feeling subdued and melancholy. Please God, never let him turn to the dark, she thought, because I'm so afraid he will.

The people were saying

no two were e'er wed

But one had a sorrow

that never was said

She went her way homeward

with her goods and her gear

and that was the last

that I saw of my dear

Severus watched her walking away from him - back to the Three Broomsticks, he thought bitterly, where no doubt Potter would be waiting for her. So she was engaged - big deal. It had no right to hurt so much after so long. Anyone would think he hadn't got over her - and that was just ridiculous.

He got up from his pile of rubble and went to join his friends in the Hog's Head. There was no point in sitting around doing nothing.

* * *

James announced his engagement to Lily to the entire school at the Leaving Feast that evening. Severus was not present, and did not look for her on the Hogwarts Express the following day. He was invited to the wedding five months later, but did not attend, and he fully expected never to see her again.

Two months after the wedding he joined the Death Eaters. He was an exemplary recruit.

He met Lily again just once, quite by chance, five years later. It was a short, awkward meeting, and caused both of them great pain. But whether because she could reach him where others could not, or simply because she was in the right place at the right time, it was as a result of that one encounter that he turned away from the darkness into which he had been drawn.

He turned to Dumbledore, and would have given up the dark arts completely, had not Dumbledore sent him back into the shadows as his spy. His links to the dark, which he would so gladly have severed completely, were to be his assigned penance, his redemption.

Neither Lily nor James ever heard of his change of heart.

When Voldemort fell a year later, Severus returned to Hogwarts, crippled and twisted, and almost destroyed, but freed of the Dark Lord's influence. In those first days at the school he slept almost incessantly, through the night and most of the day. He dreamt constantly of James and Lily, painful dreams of a past that could not be changed, and futile ones of a future that would never be. But always, on waking, the dreams would dissolve like shadows before the sun, and when the mornings came he would not even remember that he had dreamt.

Last night she came to me

my dead love came in

so softly she came

that her feet made no din

She put her hand on me

and this she did say

"It will not be long love

'til our wedding day"

PERPETRATOR'S NOTE:

This was an experiment that wasn't a particular success, but there's bits of it that I like well enough to risk posting it. I'd be interested to hear what people think.

I first heard 'She moved through the fair' at a singing masterclass, and it was sung unaccompanied, as a straight folk song, but with a sincerity and simplicity that was simply devastating in impact. None of the recordings I've heard have even come close. My beta, Earthwalk (All hail, Earthwalk!) tells me that there is a Sinead O'Connor version where the protagonist is a man rather than a woman, but the trad version & the original poem are always female.

I usually manage to prevent myself from writing songfic, which is necessary because of my very strange taste in music. This was since an attempt five years ago to write a Mortal Kombat songfic on Schubert's 'Der Doppelgänger' (don't ask). Unfortunately or otherwise I never finished it. Even worse, I now have half a fic lurking at the bottom of my hard disk on a song by Stephen Sondheim, of all people. This, alas, is what comes of hanging around with singers. ;-)