Please—please don't cry. I can't stand it when you cry:
May 1975
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"How could you, Severus?" Lily asks. They're standing outside the Great Hall, where he cornered her after the end of term feast. "You called me a-a Mudblood. I can't just pretend it didn't happen!"
"I didn't mean it, Lily! But everyone was watching, and you always defend me, and it just slipped out."
"So you'd thought it before?" She sets her jaw, determined not to just tell him it's alright. Not without making him suffer first, because he has no idea how much she's suffered, these last nights.
"What? No!" He looks aghast, and shakes his head from side to side violently. "Lily, please!" Now he reaches out to touch her, but she jerks away. When they were friends, any sort of physical contact was rare, and now that they're not, she won't change that.
Not friends. Not friends with Sev. That's almost unthinkable. Hot tears begin to prickle behind her eyelids, and she moves to brush past him.
"Wait! Don't just leave, Lily. I'm not done yet. Don't you understand?"
She turns to face him, eyes just beginning to spill over.
"Aw, Lily, please—please don't cry. I can't stand it when you cry." Severus stretches out a hand to her, then drops it back to his side.
"You really—" he pauses, and for an instant she's certain he's going to start wailing. "You really don't want to work this out?"
She brushes her hair back from her face. "No, Sev." That's the last time she'll let herself call him that. "I really don't. Not let. Just let me alone, please?"
"I—"
"Severus."
He turns and runs away from her, away from the Great Hall, and towards the dark shadows of his common rooms. He doesn't let himself look back.
