Severus closed the distance between himself and Lily slightly, although he took care to leave a small gap so that they weren't actually touching each other.
"But it can be," he said, detecting a small hint of desperation in his own statement. And oh, how desperately he wanted it to be.
Lily didn't look at all convinced. "Don't tell me you don't understand. You've gone beyond meddling with evil, Sev. You're in the middle of it. You think I don't know what you and Mulciber and Avery and god knows who else are doing in the castle at night?" she said, her voice rising in a steady crescendo. "You dare, for a minute, think that I don't know they're all going to join You-Know-Who and become Death Eaters, and that you are perfectly likely to follow behind in their God-damned shadows!"
She paused rather abruptly, plucking a blade of grass from the ground and shredding it between her fingers. Severus hoped that she had stopped because she knew she hit a nerve. He didn't take well to being practically shouted at, especially after he had gone out of his way to apologise to her. Apologies weren't easy to come by with the people he hung around with. It was a sign of weakness, and weakness was under no circumstances, tolerable.
Eventually, Lily continued, this time in a gentler voice than when she had spoke last. "That choice was yours to make. You chose it and with that you denied everything I am. Nothing is going to change that." She said. Severus sensed that she was trying to contain her displeasure, but the spite in her tone could not be concealed. That was almost exactly what she had told him that day itself. That one day Severus Snape had gone and ruined everything by calling his best friend- and the girl that he actually secretly fancied- a Mudblood.
"Please, you need to hear me out," Severus sighed, reaching out and putting both of his hands on either side of Lily's shoulders. He didn't want her to think he was a monster. For crying out loud, he hadn't even been a willing participant in the whole Death Eater stint! All Severus had wanted was to be normal. It wasn't his fault that being a regular member of the Slytherin house entailed sympathising with the pureblood cause.
"Get off," Lily said firmly, pushing at his hand; but Severus was not about to let go. He wanted her to understand, and was prepared to do whatever it took to get her to listen to him.
"I said to get off!" Lily intoned, her voice getting louder as she scrabbled at Severus' hand, prying at it and trying to loosen his grip on her. It was in that flurry of flesh and cloth that Severus' flimsy left sleeve got pushed up, and a hint of the black snake-and-skull tattoo was visible for the world to see. He anxiously pushed the sleeve down, praying that by some miracle, Lily hadn't seen anything.
"Liar," she hissed. "You foul liar."
