Wow, guys, I hope you liked Chapter 1! Erm, I'm bad at composition/dialogue balance, I know, but bear with me! And this is kinda short... but that's just how I roll. Read and review, and here's Chapter 2! **JKR owns everything!**
Lily followed Severus down the alleyway and up some stairs. Before she could think to ask questions, she found herself in a cold, dark apartment with very little furniture.
"Sit," Severus said, pointing to the threadbare couch by the fireplace. He put a kettle on the stove and sat across from Lily on a little green chair. "Lily. I am sorry about... joining Lucius in the Death Eaters. I'm sorry for calling you what I did, but Lily..."
"Why did you do it? Why did you choose...this?" Lily gestured towards the tiny place curiously. "Where are we, anyway?"
As Severus got up to get the tea, he thought about how to answer. "Well... When I'm not with the rest of them, I come up here, to hide from everything. They don't know I have this place." He brought a cup of tea to Lily, and sat back down.
With a slight shiver, Lily cocked her head and stared at Severus. "I don't get it. If all you do is run from them, then why join?"
"I had to," he whispered. With a flick of his wand, he lit a fire in the fireplace. "I didn't have a choice."
"I got into a fight with James," she blurted.
Severus restrained himself from grinning like a mad-man. "About?"
After several minutes of silence, Lily replied cautiously. "Well... about you, actually."
"Me?" A million things ran through the Death Eater's head. What could they possibly be saying about him?
It was hard for Lily to think about the things her husband had said to her, but she relayed them to her oldest friend anyway. Sometime during her tearful recounting of the fight, Severus moved to sit next to her on the couch and put his hand gently on her upper back.
"It's just—my husband shouldn't say things like that to me, he's supposed to... take care of me, right? To protect me if someone like Sirius were to say those things. But who's here to stand up when he's the one saying it?" Absent-mindedly, Lily turned to her forgotten tea. It was cold, but crying made her dehydrated, so she drank it anyway.
"Me." Severus said softly. "I'll protect you, and stand up for you, and take care of you... you just have to let me."
She reached for Severus' other hand. "You could have, before... but now oh, Merlin! I love you, Sev—as a friend—but the thing is, how can you protect me when you're part of the very thing we're running from?"
"Lily Beth Evans—"
"Potter," Lily corrected sternly.
Severus took a deep breath before starting over. "Lily Beth P-Potter, do you remember first year on the Hogwarts Express, before James and Sirius showed up? That Ravenclaw second year, Maya Bernall, came up and said that your hair was 'icky' and asked if freckles were a disease, and said you were too short to be a first year?"
"And you told her not to talk to me that way, because my hair was the most beautiful color in the whole bloody rainbow?" Lily smiled, but her brow furrowed in confusion. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"I stood up for you then, and I still want to now." Severus took both of Lily's hands in his. "So let me."
"You are a Death Eater, Severus. You march into Hogwarts and try to fight my husband—" Severus flinched at the word, "and you'll get arrested, or your arse kicked, or killed. I know you want to stand up for me right now, but I'm a big girl and I can take up for myself."
"Lily, I'm going to say this straight out. I can't control it anymore. You are far too beautiful, and smart, and you're too bloody kind to be with James Potter!"
Lily remembered not wanting to forgive Severus after he called her Mudblood. She recalled ignoring him in classes, and in hallways. Worst of all, she remembered the night that he stayed outside Gryffindor commons area, waiting for her so he could apologize. There had been several days where she had contemplated whether or not she had made the right choice, but there wasn't a time she had felt that more than she did now. Lily Beth Potter loved her husband. Unfortunately, he hadn't matured as much as she had thought. Calling Lily crazy and being as mean as he had was reminiscent of how he had treated Severus just a few years ago.
"But I am with James, and I love him with my whole heart. You can't change that, Sev."
"That's not fair!" Severus struggled not to whine. "I tried. I tried so hard to get you, to at least be friends. I apologized, and send flowers and chocolates and notes and letters and poems... I tried so hard. You wanted to know why I became a Death Eater? Because, Lily, you pushed me there. You left me nowhere to go and drove me practically to insanity."
Lily took a deep breath. "Sev, look. I want you to come back and talk to James about being our Secret-Keeper, ok? If we both go and talk to him, he might say yes. Lily stood, excited by the plans forming in her head. "If you're Secret-Keeper, you can live with us rather than stay here, and You-Know-Who won't be able to find you!"
As the red-head paced around the room, Severus followed her with his eyes. "We could try, I guess. But you said it yourself: If I go marching into Hogwarts, I'll get arrested!"
Lily rolled her eyes. "Dumbledore wouldn't let that happen. Anyway, last I heard, he wanted you as a teacher. But... you're a Death Eater. So... Anyway, he'd protect you if you ran from You-Know-Who. Please, come back with me. I want to keep you safe."