Severus attempted to wipe the exhaustion from his eyes with a weary hand. It was nearing midnight, and he still needed to make his way back to the Slytherin Common Room without detection. It wasn't exactly a difficult feat, but it wasn't one he felt particularly up to facing at the moment.
He stared down at the cauldron bubbling frothily on the bathroom floor. He'd never done anything like this before, and he wasn't quite sure how to go about testing it now that it was theoretically done. How was he to know that it had worked? He couldn't test it on himself, surely.
Lucius Malfoy had informed him and his housemates of the Dark Lord's request of the development of a potion, one that would make the drinker function as normal for several hours only for his memory to be wiped clean. He hadn't said for what purpose the potion would be used, only that the person who successfully brewed it would be greatly rewarded.
Severus had volunteered for the job, eager to prove himself to the Dark Lord. Potions had always been easy for him, and he'd already altered several established potions on his own. He'd reckoned inventing a new one wouldn't be too difficult.
He had been woefully mistaken. It had taken him the better part of fifteen weeks to work out how to do it, and once he had come up with a list of ingredients that should do the job, he'd realized it would take more than a month to brew. This posed a slew of practical obstacles: where would he brew the potion undisturbed for two fortnights? Where would he get all of the ingredients?
He'd eventually settled on brewing the potion in a small abandoned bathroom located off a hidden passageway that very few people knew about. The bathroom was tiny and cramped, and had the benefit of a magical lock. This was where Severus sat now, huddled in the small space between the door and the cauldron, staring into the depths of his creation.
The potion was finally done, but he didn't feel the sense of accomplishment that he'd thought he would. Instead, it was mostly fear and trepidation that filled him as he looked at the light green liquid. The extensive research he'd done seemed woefully insufficient in light of the prospect of handing the potion over to the Dark Lord. He couldn't possibly present it without having tested it first. What if it didn't do what the Dark Lord wanted?
He would have to test it. How, he was uncertain, but it seemed time was running thin on working out a stealthy plan. He would have to just slip it into some unsuspecting person's pumpkin juice and monitor them closely.
He sighed. He would figure this out in the morning. Sleep was itching at his eyelids, and his back ached from being hunched over the potion for so long. He needed to go to sleep, and he needed to do it now.
Opening the door carefully, he peeked out into the corridor. It appeared empty. He gathered his things and threw them unceremoniously into his bag. He slung his bag over his shoulder and exited the small space, casting his usual magical protections over the room.
He began making his way toward the Common Room. The biggest drawback of his chosen location was its great distance from the dungeons – he had to pass through patrolling teachers and prefects to make it back, and he had very nearly been caught on more than one occasion. He had no idea what he would say if a teacher asked him to give over his bag full of illegal potions ingredients.
Despite this fact, he wasn't being as careful as he should have been tonight; sheer exhaustion had made him lazy, and he took a more direct route than he ought to have done toward the dungeon. Though at the time it had felt like a necessary risk worth taking, he would come to regret that decision later in the evening as he lay in bed unable to sleep.
He heard them before he saw them. Or rather, heard her. He would recognize her laugh anywhere. It used to be that she laughed that way with him.
She didn't anymore, although that fact was neither here nor there.
"You can't be serious. That was you?" she said through her laughter.
"Of course it was me, who else would it have been?" he answered, and Severus felt his stomach clench in hatred. He would know that voice anywhere, too, although for very different reasons.
He had forgotten: James and Lily patrolled the castle together on Thursday evenings, their shared duty as Head Boy and Girl.
Severus wasn't sure why he stayed, why he hid in the shadows of the tapestry guarding entrance to a small staircase perpendicular to the corridor they were sitting in. Perhaps it was some sort of masochism that kept him there, paralyzed on the steps, or maybe it was something akin to morbid curiosity. It is worth noting though, that he could have left. He could have and he didn't. He would wonder about that, later, too.
"I can't believe you left that for me. I bothered Marlene about it for weeks thinking she'd done it and wouldn't fess up. You nearly caused the end of a friendship, you know."
James chuckled, and it was so different than the cruel snicker Severus usually heard directed at him that if he hadn't known it was Potter, he wouldn't have believed it was he who laughed.
"Well, you were just so bloody miserable, I was just doing the whole House a service," said James, although even Severus could tell that this was a boldfaced lie.
"How did you know I love Mars bars?" asked Lily, still sounding half amused but half something else.
"Ah Evans, I could tell you that but then I'd have to kill you, and I really don't want to do that," said James. Severus could imagine the arrogant smirk on his face.
"Stalker," she said, although she didn't say it in the way Severus wanted her to say it. She said it as though the fact that James Potter had stalked her was endearing and not as disturbing and wrong as Severus found it to be.
"Don't be insulting. I have far better ways of finding information than stalking."
"Where did you even find a Mars bars anyway?" she asked. Severus felt that providing a candy bar certainly didn't warrant the amount of gratefulness that Lily's voice was inflected with. "I can't picture James Potter traipsing about Muggle London looking for a candy bar."
"You keep asking me these questions as though you expect me to answer them. It's cute," said James, and although his tone was as nonchalant as ever, Severus thought he could detect something deeper in his words. He was far too experienced in toeing the exact same line with Lily Evans that Potter was currently tightrope-walking not to recognize it for what it was.
"You keep being evasive as though you're the only one in this conversation who has sleuthing abilities. I have my ways, too, Potter," she said, and Severus thought that he might be sick with how flirtatious her voice sounded. He wouldn't even let his mind form the consequent thought, which was that she'd never sounded that way with him.
"Oh do you?" asked James teasingly. "And what ways might those be, Lily Evans?"
"If I told you, then I'd have to kill you," she replied cheekily.
"Oh, you're in for it now," James replied, and he heard a faint scuffling and then Lily was laughing, her sweet husky laugh echoing melodically in the cavernous corridor.
"Stop it, James!" she shrieked through her laughter. "That's… not… fair!"
Severus wondered later why, even if he didn't have the self-preservation to leave when he'd first heard them, it didn't kick in now that Potter was fucking tickling her and she was laughing and shouting his name breathlessly instead of hexing him into next week for daring to touch her. But regardless, it didn't, and he didn't leave, and so he witnessed what happened next.
James apparently had stopped tickling her because Lily's laughter had faded away. "That wasn't fair," she said, and her voice sounded slightly breathless and quieter.
"Sorry," said James, somehow equally breathless even though he hadn't been laughing. He didn't sound sorry at all.
The ensuing silence was louder than anything he'd heard thus far. Severus couldn't take it. He pushed the tapestry to the side minutely and rearranged himself so he could see into the corridor through the crack he had created. James and Lily were seated with their backs to the wall across and diagonally from him.
They were sitting extremely close to one another. James was turned to Lily and thus Severus couldn't see his face, but he could see Lily's. She was staring up at James, her large green eyes locked with his. The ghost of a smile still painted her lips. Her dark red hair fell loosely around her shoulders and her cheeks were pleasantly flushed a pale pink.
Severus watched in slow motion as James Potter leaned down slowly, never breaking eye contact with her. He gave her more than enough time to push him away, so much time that Severus actually worked up infinitesimal hope that she would, but she didn't.
Finally, his lips touched hers, and Severus saw her large eyes close and her hand reach up around James' neck while the other snaked through his hair, and James' hand was cupping her cheek while the other pulled at her waist. Severus felt sick watching them, felt perverted that he couldn't look away; but it was like watching a train crash and maybe his mind wouldn't believe it unless his eyes provided evidence, or at least that's what he would tell himself when this scene replayed endlessly in his mind.
The kiss seemed to last ages to Severus, but it couldn't have lasted more than thirty seconds in reality. James finally pulled back ever so slightly. He didn't remove his hand from her cheek, and he merely pressed his forehead against hers.
Lily opened her eyes and she smiled, a small smile but it seemed to light up her whole face.
"I asked the shop owner at Honeydukes," said James huskily.
"What?" whispered Lily, her eyebrows pushing together ever so slightly.
"I asked the shop owner at Honeydukes and he ordered the Mars Bars for me."
Severus didn't think this was particularly impressive, but Lily chuckled softly and she leaned in for another kiss. This time, Severus closed his eyes and waited for them to speak again before he opened them. When he did, they were no longer holding one another, but they were still touching.
"You've no idea how long I wanted to do that," said James quietly. Severus hated him for saying that, hated him for sounding so bloody sincere and raw because that was how he had felt and he would hate James Potter forever for cheapening it.
"I think I've got some idea," said Lily, chuckling. "You weren't exactly subtle, you know."
Severus could see the profile of James' smirk. "Subtlety has never been my strong suit."
"No," Lily agreed. She paused, and looked down at her hands, carefully taking James' in her own. She looked back up at James, a blazing look in her green eyes. "James, d'you want to go to Hogsmeade with me? This weekend?"
James sighed in mock exasperation. "Lily, that was supposed to be my line."
Lily grinned. "Well you've asked me so many times, I reckoned it was my turn."
"Are you mental? Of course I want to go with you, I've wanted to go with you since we were twelve."
"Good," said Lily, and her eyes were twinkling with happiness.
Severus was glad for the fact that he couldn't see James' face, because the sincerity in his tone was already too foreign, too at odds with everything he'd ever thought or believed about James Potter that seeing any sincerity in his face would have been too much. "And just for the record, Evans?" said James, his voice sounding far more vulnerable and nervous than Severus had ever imagined him capable, "I… I know I've asked you for a date… well no, more like demanded a date more times than I can count. But I don't think I've ever… You're bloody brilliant, you know. I wouldn't have kept asking if I didn't… if you weren't so..."
Lily interrupted with a quiet chuckle. "James. I fancy you, too."
"That's… brilliant." The words came on an awed breath, and Severus did not think he had ever heard James Potter sound quite so happy before. It made his stomach turn.
As James leaned in for another kiss, Severus realized he'd finally had enough. He couldn't sit there any longer and listen to them profess their feelings for each other a second more. His sick curiosity had been satisfied and now it was bordering on torturous to sit there and to watch her with stars in her eyes as she stared at the prick whom she had always claimed to hate and who had made Severus' life a living hell for years.
He stood and crept back up the stairs, taking a circuitous route down to the dungeon. He didn't meet anyone and he was glad for it, because he didn't think he was even watching where he was going.
He'd seen this coming. He'd seen them in classes, laughing together at meals, patrolling on Thursdays. He'd seen it but hoped in vain that even if Lily didn't hate Potter anymore as she'd always told him she had, that at least she didn't fancy him. He'd tried to deny what had become increasingly obvious over the past few months, which was that Lily Evans and James Potter were actually friends.
It was sickly funny though, in the way that something can be funny without being funny at all. He'd considered the possibility that they would get together as the weeks had worn on and James and Lily had become annoyingly closer. He'd imagined how it would feel to see them together, perhaps in some sort of mental preparation for the inevitable, and he'd always imagined the worst part would be seeing her look at him like that. Seeing her look at him and laugh with him as though he weren't the absolute prick that he was. But now that it had happened and he stopped to ponder the matter with a sick sort of clinical removal, he realized that wasn't actually the worst part at all.
No, the worst part was that James Potter had sounded so fucking sincere. He'd wanted to keep imagining that James only wanted her for the chase or that he only liked her for her looks. Imagining the twisted, arrogant fuck who'd tortured him for years to have feelings was so horribly demented that he'd done anything to avoid considering it. Because if James Potter didn't have feelings, Severus could imagine that however fucking brilliant and talented James might be at everything else, he, Severus, could always cling to one thing: he had actually loved Lily, had really loved her, and for that reason alone, he would always be the better choice.
Now he tried mightily to ignore the truth that was staring him baldly in the face: that maybe, however arrogant and moronic and demented he was, James Potter loved her, too.
He hated him for it.
As he lay in bed that night, trying and failing to fight the images of her hands in his hair or his lips on hers, he realized with a deep sense of irony that he should, indeed, have tested his potion on himself.