A Twisted Love Story
Summary: A twisted sort of love story, pieced together from the uncandied letters of a man who loved and lost thrice. Or perhaps not lost; to lose something, you must have it, after all.
Pairings: Severus / Harry, Severus / Lily, Severus / James, James / Lily, Voldemort / Harry
Warnings: Alternate universe, strange characterization, tentative rating (may change to M), mostly slash
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
- Part I -
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
Live fairy-gifts fading away,
Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.
It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,
That the fervor and faith of a soul may be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear!
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets
The same look which she turned when he rose!
Thomas Moore
Never let it be said that Lily Evans was a breathtaking woman.
I loved Lily. There are few words that adequately describe her without falling into telling half-truths and inventing new facts about her to pad her image post-mortem and to lengthen her obituary.
The words that can be used are mundane words. Kind, thoughtful, giving – we toss these words around like candy; ascribe them to the first person who will show evidence of having a heart.
This does not mean Lily was a soft soul; she was passionate, filled with fire and fearlessness, and much as I loved her, I must say that sometimes, she did not know when to shut her mouth. Is it disgraceful to say such a thing about someone merely because they are dead? For it is true, that Lily was not always the most prudent or tactful of people and that more than once, she ran her mouth on issues that did not need to be ran off about – and I cannot imagine Lily lying by omission about someone either – even if they were dead.
Perhaps Lily has imbued me with a bit of herself.
Lily Evans was an earthly thing. She was not heaven. I imagine that heaven sucks the air from your chest, leaving you gasping and breathless until you have nothing to live on but for your reverence. Lily put me at ease. She tugged my hand, took it in her dirt smudged fingers and pulled me along to run barefoot in the grassy fields that were the brilliant colour of her – your – eyes.
We said nothing; nothing needed to be said.
Mind you, running through a grassy field is nothing like what the romantics would have you imagine. It is painful; the grass is soft beneath your feet but it is not silky, and beneath the grass the earth is beaten and rugged.
Lily did not care that at the end of our aimless journeys to the seaside her feet were cracked and bleeding. She always made a grimace of pain, and told Petunia varying stories for how the blisters on her feet came to be, and gave promises to her mother to never do it again; but she never stopped and later, in our Hogwarts years, she found that not even magic could entirely soften her feet.
Lily's hair was a peculiar shade of red. It burned like fire when the sun shone through it, as it often did during our trips to the seaside. One day, as early spring wrapped us in its cold arms, I succumbed to my curiosity and asked Lily if I could touch it.
And I did. I combed my fingers through it, expecting to feel the shiver of water against my skin, and was surprised to find that it was not as soft as I had dreamt it to be; it was like running my fingers through the brush. It scratched at my skin and Lily yelped, startled at the rough way I combed out knots and dried leaves lost in her hair.
Why, my own hair was softer!
I told Lily so and she did her best to glower at me. "That's because you comb it, ponce," she had said, and then jerked her head abruptly to send her hair flying in my face. I winced for it was, indeed, like being smacked by a bush.
"You'll have to pay my hospital bills when I need to get the scratches on my face stitched up," I informed her.
She threw her head back and laughed, mane flipping up. "I won't."
"Really, though. Your hair is going to hurt someone someday, by Merlin. Invest in a comb."
"I won't," she said again.
And she didn't.
In all the years I had known Lily, I never saw her try to polish her appearance. And perhaps this is another reason why I cannot think of her as breathtaking.
She was, by appearance, almost completely ordinary – maybe a little less. Her face was covered in a dusting of freckles and dirt. She washed it – or so she told me – but she tumbled in the dirt, soiling Petunia's dresses to the point where Petunia would not lend her any more. It was rare to not see a smudge of dirt on her skin, or stray blades of grass in her hair; even when she could have used magic to rid herself of the marks of the earth, she kept them. Her lips did not look velvety soft; they were chapped and bleeding and split more often than not. I often imagined kissing those lips, feeling the peeling skin move against my softer skin (I used chapstick; no more must be said here) as her hair had scratched my skin.
Her lack of effort detracted from her looks, added to her raw charm, upped the contrast between her and the girls who were the sort of breathtaking Lily was not.
Narcissa Black was one such girl. She was in fifth year when I began attending Hogwarts, and was inexorably lovely from the first. She had skin that looked as if though she bathed in milk; it was as luminous and shining as her hair, which was pale like winter sunlight and tucked up into chignons. She moved with effortless stateliness that I could not find in Lily's wild gait. She was promised to Lucius Malfoy far before she even stepped foot in Hogwarts, but the boys were ravenous for her all the same, adoring her perfect manner, her smooth bow lips, her swan's neck.
Narcissa Black was a living Venus. I watched, cowed into reverence, as Narcissa swept through the halls, snuck glances at her as we dined in the Great Hall.
She was a living Venus, but I still loved, wanted Lily, dreamt of Lily, with her brilliant green eyes and kind smiles and pure laughter, with her rough feet and chapped lips and smudged, freckled skin.
She was Lily, and I loved her for it.
Author's Notes: This is terribly experimental. I'm pretty undecided as to whether to continue or not; it could serve well as a one shot, I think, after changing the story name... /shrug Anyone actually want to see this continued?