Chapter 11
A/N: Sorry this took so long! But it's a long one, so I'm sure you understand.
P.S.: I've figured out a good way to end it, when the time comes. I don't want to give anything away, but if you PM me, I'll give you hints! :3
#$%^&*(*
For the next several days, Severus continued to work diligently on his task of brewing Liquid Luck, so much so that Lily complained of not seeing him enough. Feeling guilty (she did stay at Hogwarts just for him), Severus took a break from his work on Christmas Eve and resolved to spend an entire day with Lily.
The result of this decision was that he had to wake up early to finish. But Severus was almost completely sure that he had gotten the potion correct this time, having tested it the night of Slughorn's party—but the potion itself wasn't the only part of the gift.
Selecting the glass vial he wanted, Severus poured the remaining amount of potion into it, then set it upright in a wooden test tube rack. He carefully sealed the bottle with magic and affixed a tiny label to it with a Permanent Sticking Charm.
Now came the hard part.
Fishing around in his pocket, Severus caught hold of and pulled out the several Galleons that he had been saving expressly for this purpose. Stacking them neatly and tapping his wand, he began the long incantation that he had worked out carefully from a hodgepodge of other spells. Slowly, the Galleons melted, moved around, and reformed into a fine golden chain with delicately interlocking loops. Strung on the chain was a larger loop with a long, straight bit, which Severus drove into the cork of the vial.
The result was essentially a Felix Felicis necklace.
Feeling rather proud of himself, Severus concealed the gift in a small, battered box that had once contained an unknown potion ingredient before leaving the room to meet Lily outside the Gryffindor common room.
%^$&*(^^*%$^3
While neither of them was particularly good at Wizarding chess, they both enjoyed the game. Severus, however, found himself hopelessly outclassed—Lily slaughtered him in every single game.
Then Lily insisted they get some studying in—and Severus was beginning to get a bit nervous about his Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L., so he agreed with little resistance. Lily, for her part, was nearly in tears over Arithmancy, which Severus couldn't much help with, seeing as how he wasn't in that class. However, they were both having trouble with the memorization required in Professor Binns's class, and studying managed to eat up several hours.
While practicing Transfiguration, Lily managed to turn Severus's eyes a bizarre, dark gold color, and nearly couldn't turn them back. He paid her back by turning her hair blue, much to her chagrin. After a bit of pleading on her part, however, he quickly set it right.
Sometime after dinner, the sky began to darken and both admitted that it was time to be getting to bed. After a quick kiss outside the portrait hole, Lily gave Severus an oddly searching look before bidding him goodnight, leaving him slightly unsettled.
^&%$^#Q%
That night for the first time in a long while, Severus did not nightmare. He dreamed.
He was lying in bed, the same as in real life, but instead of the darkness of the Slytherin dormitory, golden sunlight filtered through his lashes. He was warm all over, wearing a cotton nightshirt and loosely covered by a soft quilt. He felt the warm weight of a sleeping animal somewhere near his knees.
Somehow, he knew that he was not alone.
He opened his eyes a slit to see a silhouette, crouching on the floor, arms on the bed. He blinked once, and then opened his eyes fully to see a child, a girl, looking at him with an expression of deep-set calm in her dark eyes. His eyes.
He reached out tentatively and stroked her hair. To his intense surprise and (?) joy, she did not recoil, but smiled at him, small pink lips pursed. "Are you awake?"
"Yes," he said in wonder, fingering a strand of hair. It was a shocking shade of dark red, much like….
"Mummy said pancakes are ready," she said, rubbing her freckled nose. Severus stared at her, propped up on one elbow.
"Oh, okay," he murmured tiredly. "Tell her I'll be up in a few." The child scurried out of the room, bare feet padding lightly on the wooden floor. Severus rubbed his eyes with a fist, childlike, trying to get a handle on his thoughts. As he did so, he noticed that on the ring finger of his left hand, there was a ring. A wedding ring?
Let this one last, he thought desperately. Please, let me have this.
But no sooner had he thought it than the room began to dissolve, though the warm, contented feeling remained. Severus's eyes darted around the room, trying frantically to memorize it.
%^$&*(^*%$#%^&*(*%$#$%^&*(*
He awoke in a fashion much like that of the nightmares—suddenly, with a pounding heart and the feeling that he could not get enough air into his lungs. He put his head in his hands, trying to remember the room. To his surprise, he had no trouble doing so.
The walls had been covered yellow silk, a colour he ordinarily didn't like, but it made the room feel cradled somehow, like being inside an egg. The warmth near his legs had been a black cat, curled up asleep. The floors were blond hardwood, the bed a queen—a two-person bed. Mummy, the child had said. His child. Who was the mother?
The answer presented itself to him almost immediately. Lily. The child's hair was exactly her colour, the freckles her freckles. The dream itself was unsurprising—of course he wanted to marry Lily. He had known that since the day they had met. But the fact that he was having these dreams at all unsettled him.
He had never experienced sensation in dreams before—touch. Sunlight in dreams had never made him feel warm when he woke up.
Realizing that it was Christmas morning, Severus shoved the dream to the back of his mind as usual, tossed back the covers, approached his wardrobe, and began to dress. A simple word and the stubble on his cheeks crumbled into dust. Magic was so useful, sometimes.
After clothing himself, Severus immediately headed to the store cupboard where he had secreted the necklace. Lily's gift. Upon retrieving the battered ingredient box and ensuring that no harm had come to the pendant, he stowed it safely in an inside pocket of his robes for later.
Thighs burning from the vast amount of stairs between his common room and Lily's, Severus thought that it was no wonder Muggle children were so unfit these days—there was no way their schools could have this many staircases.
Once at the portrait hole, Severus leaned against the wall and knocked over his shoulder on the painting; the Fat Lady was away visiting a friend, it seemed. After a moment, the unoccupied painting swing open, and Severus turned to face none other than Mary MacDonald, who greeted him with a surprised smile, leaning through the hole.
"Oh… hi, Severus," she said warmly. Ever since he had defended her by the lake, she had become much friendlier towards him. "You may as well come in—it's pretty much just me and Lily."
Severus obeyed, stepping carefully over the edge and into the Gryffindor common room, looking around curiously—he had never been in this room before. It was, predictably, decked out in scarlet and gold, filled with overstuffed armchairs and unlit torches. Lily was on her knees on the carpet, in a long cotton nightdress, tearing eagerly at a brightly wrapped parcel.
She looked up, surprise brightening her features. "Sev!" she called. "Happy Christmas! Mary, come look what Mum's sent me!"
Severus and Mary approached Lily. Mary settled herself in a nearby armchair; Severus plopped on the floor next to Lily, smiling as she held up her mother's present, a deep blue turtleneck sweater. "Ooh, she always knows what colours look best on me!" exclaimed Lily, holding the sweater against her chest and then folding it neatly and setting it down. "Hi, Sev!" she smiled widely, and then flung her arms around his neck for a Christmas kiss.
"Get a room!" called Mary, absorbed in a book she'd received—a Muggle crime novel, from the cover. Lily laughed and stuck her tongue out, then turned eagerly to Severus.
"I couldn't think of what to get you, Sev—"
"You didn't have to get me anything—"
"—but then I remembered! Come with me, it's still up in my room."
Bemused, blushing, and embarrassed, Severus followed Lily up a staircase and into what appeared to be a girls' dormitory. Taking his hand, Lily led him over to her bed, and the pair sat, Severus awkwardly trying to ignore what seemed to him to be an excessive amount of female undergarments strewn about.
Without looking at him, Lily whispered, "Close your eyes." He did so with no hesitation. "Now hold out your hands." Again, he obeyed.
After a small rustling sound, Severus felt a soft, downy object being pressed into his hands. Then, to his utter surprised, the thing moved. His eyes snapped open to see a tiny grey kitten with eyes the color of new spring leaves—green, but lighter than Lily's. The cat appeared just as surprised to see Severus, and it mewled softly, squirming in an attempt to gain footing in his opened hands.
Lily was watching him nervously. "I didn't have time to wrap her," she said softly, stroking the kitten's skull. "But you've never had a pet, I don't think, and we could all use—use some company." Her voice faltered.
Watching the tiny thing wriggling defencelessly in his palms, Severus's face broke into an astonished smile. He had never been responsible for another living thing before. "I—Lily, thank you."
There was, at last, a tiny smile on her face. "Her name's Olive," she informed him, rubbing the cat's shoulders. "I got her at a pet store last Hogsmeade weekend. She's at least part kneazle, so she should live a bit longer than your ordinary housecat." Severus hesitantly rubbed the kitten behind her ears, and got a contented purr in response. "You like her?"
"I love her," replied Severus in wonder. He had had a cat in his dream. Certainly not this cat—part kneazle or not, it wouldn't live quite that long, and it was the wrong colour, anyway. But he did like cats, and he owned one, both in this world and in that one—perhaps the two were not that far apart.
"Would you like to see what I'm giving Professor Slughorn?"
Boosting Olive up to stand on his shoulder, Severus walked carefully around the bed after Lily to see a glass bowl of water on her bedside table, a bright-eyed goldfish swimming happily in circles within it. "A fish?"
"No, watch." Pulling out her wand, Lily transfigured the fish into a lily petal. It floated to the top of the water, then slowly sank. At Lily's word, the petal wriggled, then returned to its original form. "I'm going to Charm it to turn back into a fish as Slughorn walks into the room," she explained. "I think I'll leave it in his office while he's at dinner or something."
"That's brilliant," breathed Severus. "That's extraordinary magic. You're getting the hand of Transfiguration, no doubt." He tapped the bowl lightly with a fingernail. "Would you like your gift now or later?
Lily's eyes widened pleasurably. "Now."
"Close your eyes and hold out your hands." She did so, and Severus stuck two fingers in his pocket and removed the tattered box, placing it in her palms. She opened her eyes and peered at the box's lid, confused.
"Sev, what even does this say?"
"Just open it!"
With her thumb and index finger, Lily removed the lid of the box. Her mouth opened as she lifted the vial to her eyes, reading the label. "Felix… Liquid Luck! Sev, where did you get this?"
"I didn't. I made it."
Lily's eyes were sparkling—she was impressed. "Put it on me."
Severus came to stand behind her, gently letting the kitten—his kitten—down onto the floor. Lily lifted her hair out of the way obediently, and with his stout fingernails, Severus secured the clasp. Lily stared in the mirror, mouth open slightly.
"Sev, it's lovely."
He smiled, arms encircling her waist from behind, and buried his face in her hair. She giggled and skittered away from him like a nervous deer. "That tickles!"
She touched her pendant and smiled gratefully at him. "Go show Mary your new friend, I've got to get dressed." Severus departed down the staircase, careful to support Olive's legs. Once in the common room, he let the kitten free, being sure to keep an eye on her wanderings.
Mary glanced up from her novel to see Olive, worrying the edge of a plush rug with her small, sharp teeth. The girl's face lit up. "Aw, the kitty!" she cooed, abandoning her novel to crawl across the floor. "I was with Lily when she bought her." Captured, the kitten mewled in surprise, peering at Mary's face, taking a swipe at her long hair.
Severus smiled, reclining in a chair. "I've always liked cats."
Mary looked at him, surprise. "Really? How come you never had one?"
Severus considered this, stifling a yawn. "My father doesn't really care for animals."
Mary nodded, holding Olive close to hear her purr. "I can't imagine," she said softly, "growing up without pets. We always had so many animals, it was like living on a farm." She sighed. "I miss them."
They descended into silence until the door to the girls' dormitory opened and Lily descended the staircase, positively glowing, smiling at her friends.
%^&*(&^%$3
After fixing Olive with a bowl of scraps from the kitten and depositing her safely in Severus's dormitory, he and Lily headed down to the Great Hall. Christmas dinner that evening was a quiet one, and with just a few students and teachers, they only bothered with one table. But the food was no less splendid—roast potatoes, sprouts, and a magnificent turkey the size of a small child.
Severus of course was by now used to the strangeness that came with staying in the castle for Christmas, but it was Lily's first time away from home for the holidays. She blushed whenever a professor spoke casually to her, and nearly upset the tureen of gravy when Professor Slughorn asked her to pass it.
All throughout the dinner, Dumbledore gave Severus long, searching looks, and Severus wondered if the headmaster somehow knew of his own part in Severus's strange dreams. His bright blue eyes had the unsettling glint of Legimency in them, and Severus took care to keep his own eyes averted and his thoughts neutral.
Lily was the first to leave, wanting to leave Professor Slughorn's gift in his office. Slowly, the odd group broke apart, and Severus departed sleepily for his dormitory, wanting nothing more than a long sleep with Olive curled up near his head.
%^&%*(^%$#$$$$$$$$4
A/N: Sev's dream in this chapter was inspired by a lovely bit of fanart, found here: lily-fox [dot] deviantart [dot] com/art/In-another-life-wake-up-243813421
If the link doesn't work, it's by the extremely talented Lily-Fox on Deviant art. Hopefully she does not get mad that I ripped off her idea. If she does, I'll willingly take that part out and rewrite it.