Night
"Severus," she murmurs, "what do you suppose will happen to us?" Her voice has that quiet knowing to it, as if she already knew the answer and is too scared to admit it to herself. His eyes follow her like a pained man in the presence of a physician – her hair is spread over the stone floor of the Astronomy Tower like starlit tendrils of fire and her face is made pale by the moon – he gives her a glare that is habitually detached. She seems to recoil at his seeming indifference, before she prods him with one childish finger and scowls her demand for an answer.
"I suppose we were born, we're living now and then we'll die." He doesn't say aloud what he wishes would happen; he avoids his dreams like a shaman avoids voodoo. She laughs a bit too shrilly, as if she were trying to hold something back too.
"But I wish – I wish that I (no, we) can die for a reason." She sits up, her face still tipped toward him: "War is shaking the castle around us." She feels it, shaking them by the shoulders even now. Hands seem to scramble at them from all sides, clutching at the pieces of them left behind. She is scared, but she doesn't want to tell him – he has always needed the courage she lends him – what would he do if she was not there?
"You can die for a reason, Lily. You can die for whatever you want. I just wish you wouldn't; no – live forever." He says it like a little boy, the same tone of voice she heard in the park all those years ago. She is old for her age, her mother says; and the prospect of living forever makes her shudder in despair.
Softly, she whispers, piercing him where she knows he will recoil. "That's what he says, you know?" He was clamming up the air around her; her heart was coolly forgiving, but her mind screamed. "In your house – even I hear them whispering behind doors, and I am just a silly mudblood Gryffindor." There, she has said it, laid it on the table like a contract waiting for signatures.
"Lily," he trails off into silence, holding his mouth closed around his heart.
She stands, warm tears trailing long snail trails over her cheeks. Severus stretched his hand toward her, catching the tips of her fingertips, before her hand slips like ice out of his grip. He stares at the place she was, long after her footsteps have disappeared. He is frozen until the sun rises over the lake, and the floor is awash with the haunted red rays of morning.