Crescendo
This was not their kind of love.
Their kind of love was laughing at Potter in the library where they spent most of their time together. When they would sit under a tree by the lake in the grounds and have wars with twigs or rocks they'd enchanted. Their kind of love was fighting about everything and being oblivious to everything else. Petunia coming home to find them there together, and shouting the little freaks out, we don't want that kind of diseased creature in here! And Lily crying and apologizing and Sev holding her hand and awkwardly patting her on the back, he didn't mind it really, he was used to much worse. And his father coming at him with those iron eyes of his that made you want to sink below the floor and his mother sobbing in the background without the intention of doing anything in her son's defense. Their kind of love was her being a (m u d b l o o d) and him being the first real wizard she had ever met. It was him thinking about her and her dreaming of goblins and spells and cauldrons. It was James Potter sneering and Severus shouting and Lily trying to help and how he couldn't bear to have her see him like this and how he wished that this crescendo could all just stop! . . .Their kind of love wasn't really love. It was like a misspoken spell, a potion missing the key ingredient. It was like a day-dream or a mirage. It was an almost and a maybe. Something that was only real from a certain (his) point of view. It was something only one person (he) could feel and the other person (Lily) could only acknowledge, understand, maybe believe. But never feel. That was for him, (Severus) to feel. And to feel alone.
That was there kind of love. Not this
...angry
...betrayed
...unforgiving
...disappointed
...cold
...Lily.
This wasn't his Lily. This was not their kind of love.