Chapter 11
A/N: If you are reading this story and do not plan to review it, why not? Question your conscience. It'll take you two minutes to give me a review and it would mean the world to me. Look deep into your heart. I think you'll know what's right. ;)
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Two months after Voldemort had been killed, the school year ended, and everyone went home. On special request of her family and, Lily suspected, Snape, she was to stay at Hogwarts for the first few weeks of the summer holidays until her family could come and collect her. Lily was actually fairly happy about this: she would probably be bored at home anyway, and the notion of a few weeks on her own with Snape was somehow appealing.
Somewhere in the blur that was the celebratory holiday, Lily had discovered that Snape had been the Hogwarts chess champion when he was younger. She immediately begged him to teach her. Snape had agreed with surprisingly little resistance and only the hint of an amused smile on his lips. Lily was looking forward eagerly to the time when she would be able to beat Hannah, having gone from not even being able to play the game. Just picturing the look on Hannah's face was motive enough to undergo more teaching.
On the first day of the holidays, just as she had done in her first Christmas holidays, Lily made her way down to the dungeons. Snape was waiting for her. He had arranged a desk and two chairs in the centre of the room, and moved everything else out of the way. A chessboard, already set up, stood imposing on the desk.
Like everything else that Snape owned, his chess set was unbelievably beautiful. The white pieces were sculpted out of pure crystal, and they twinkled in the torchlight, sending rainbows across the dungeon.
But it was the black pieces that caught Lily's eye. They were made of a stone so hard and black that utter darkness seemed to reign unquestioned in their depths. They emanated a peculiar shimmering power, and Lily shuddered at the thought of what those pieces could do. Despite this fear, though, Lily found herself seated before the white pieces. She would be white. Snape was black. It was the way things were; the way things had always been; the way things always would be.
Strangely, Snape's chess pieces did not seem to be spelled to be alive, the way most wizarding chess sets were. The Potions Master actually picked up the pieces to move them as he explained the rules to Lily. As she stared at the board and listened to his murmuring, curiously hypnotic voice, Lily felt an odd thrill course through her veins. She understood this game. Here was something she could do, something she could see and feel. The pieces seemed almost to create lines on the board, and she found herself able to understand advanced tactics as if they were nothing but basic moves.
The hours slipped away as the two of them sat in the dim light, staring as much at each other's faces as at the board, hoping to catch some indication of what their opponent was going to do.
Then, with slow deliberation, Snape moved his knight into place. 'Check … mate.' Lily blinked a few times, and then sat back in defeat. Snape's planning had been so subtle, so disguised with baits that she had immediately taken that she had no idea how close he was to winning. Until he had won.
Snape regarded her amusedly for a moment, and then also sat back in his chair. 'Good game, though,' he added brightly.
'You can afford to be cheerful, sir,' she pointed out wryly. 'You won.'
A smile flickered across Snape's features, but then he leaned forward with a serious expression. 'I won the match, Miss Potter, but you also won. You've already learnt much more about chess in a day than most people learn in their whole lives. You are already good enough to challenge most of your classmates. That sounds like a fair win to me.'
Lily considered what he had said, and nodded. He was right, of course. She had learned an awful lot very quickly. Had she honestly expected to beat him? Or had she hoped that he would let her win? She did not know; she wasn't sure that she wanted to. Why would he let you win? the voice in her head asked her. Why would he risk his pride for a red-haired schoolgirl? Of course, Lily could not put her answer into words.
Snape watched her struggle with her thoughts for a while, and then glanced at his watch. 'Are you sure you want to spend the whole day here? Aren't there more … enjoyable things you could be doing?'
A part of Lily's mind warned her that he could be hinting for her to go, but she ignored it. 'Quite sure,' she told him.
A faint smile appeared on Snape's face. Lily could have sworn it was genuine, not sarcastic. 'Well, I'm sure you don't want another game of chess,' he said. 'So you can do something useful instead. Every year I check all my ingredients to verify that they are what it says on the label. I discovered about twenty years ago that students have a notorious habit of mixing things up.'
His casual dismissal of two decades reminded Lily just how old Snape was: he had to be around sixty. She had always ignored that fact until now, but if she was going to admit to herself that she might be in love with him, then age was going to come into it eventually. But then, she reasoned, he's a wizard. He can look young for hundreds of years if he chooses.
Her father had told her that wizards looked how they wanted to look. If a wizard wanted to look perpetually forty, as Snape did, then he would just stop aging when he reached forty. Dumbledore had set that age a bit later, but he was a headmaster, and he needed to look old and wise.
Apart from his greasy hair and sallow skin, Lily had to admit that Snape was not bad-looking. His face was not handsome, but somehow it was attractive. His body was strong and muscular, despite the amount of time he spent at his desk, and he was not fat. He had a sort of lived-in quality that Lily had not felt in anyone else before. The sense of his touch, the feel of his warm arms around her made strange little shivers run down her spine, and she welcomed that feeling.
As Lily moved towards the stores to begin checking the ingredients, she could almost hear her inner voice mocking her. Well, what do you know? it said. You really are horribly in love with him.
Shut up, she told it, and set to work. She was still holding the shield around her thoughts, but every so often the image weakened, and she was forced to let it go and start again. She suspected that Snape took this opportunity to check up on her thoughts, but she made to comment on it. As her Master Aurora, he had a right to the truth and to her opinion of him, and Lily could not deny him that right, much as it embarrassed her.
She had tried once or twice to smash through Snape's barrier, but he had held it for so long that it was almost a natural feature of him now, and she could no more break his line than she could tear off his nose.
It turned out that many of Snape's ingredients were horribly mixed up. Most of the mistakes were fairly harmless and would not have affected most potions, but Lily was aghast when she realised that someone had actually managed to substitute unicorn saliva and basilisk venom. Even Snape had shuddered slightly when she had informed him of the error.
That was another thing. Lily's friends had tirelessly drummed into her that Snape did not show his emotions, that his face was always utterly impassive. But Lily privately disagreed with this statement. Having spent so much time with Snape, she could fully appreciate his many, almost unnoticeable mannerisms. A raised eyebrow or a tightening of the mouth showed for him what shouts and laughs and tears showed for others. He was just as capable of showing emotion as anyone when he chose, but usually kept them to himself.
Lily personally preferred this silent pronouncement of feelings. It was somehow more trusting, and she felt privileged as the only one in her year able to read Snape's body language. What she could not understand was the way he acted around her. For an utterly incomprehensible reason, her receptors of his feelings shut down when he was near her, when he talked to her. She hoped – and yet did not hope – that it was the sign of the awkwardness one develops when one has a crush.
By now, Lily had fully accepted that her father was dead. As much as she tried to squirm away from it, the fact still held her fast and faced her down with a cold certainty.
Despite Snape's agreement to her obstinate statement a couple of months ago that her father was alive, Lily was fairly sure that he also assumed the worst now.
In a way, Lily pitied Snape even more than she pitied herself. Lily had lost a single member of the family, and though his absence left an aching emptiness inside her, her family strength and union still existed. Snape had no family, no other friends. Lily knew that her father had been his best friend, quite probably his only friend. He almost certainly felt the loss even more keenly than Lily.
Somehow the knowledge that he wholeheartedly shared Lily's grief was comforting, and it gave her the confidence to ask Snape a question that had been on her mind for a while.
'Professor Snape?'
He turned to her, questioning, eyes filled with unease but also a desire to be needed as they always were when she asked him something. The unease presumably stemmed from the time when she had forced him to tell her so much about his past. But this time Lily's question was trivial; it could not hurt him.
'When's your birthday?'
Much to Lily's alarm and guilt, Snape's face immediately closed up. He stared at her accusingly for a moment. When she looked back, pleading, telling him silently that she was sorry, he steeled himself and nodded. 'Halloween,' he said shortly.
Lily wondered why this was so painful for him. Suddenly a thought came firmly into her mind; she was grateful to Snape for it. This was the night your grandparents were murdered. Lily projected the question back to Snape, who nodded again.
'It was supposed to be a birthday present,' he said in a sick voice. 'Lucius Malfoy's father showed us what was happening to Lily and James as Voldemort killed them.' Even now, Snape said the word "Lily" with angry bitterness and self-hatred. 'Then all the Death Eaters cheered and laughed, and the brought in my cake. I remember my father saying: "That's the end of that arrogant bastard and the mudblood slut … Happy Birthday, Severus!"' Snape broke off, his face contorted into a look of utter revulsion. Then he looked down, closing his eyes and pressing his lips together to prevent a cry of anger from escaping. Then he smiled bitterly. 'As you can imagine, I don't celebrate my birthday any more.'
Lily watched him carefully. She felt utterly disgusted and violated by that single act thirty years ago. How could anyone have been so cruel and insensitive? She shuddered inwardly at how Snape must have been feeling that night. 'So … when was it you left the Death Eaters?' she asked.
'The next day. I walked out of the house and went straight to Hogwarts. Dumbledore gave me a job, partly because I'm an Aurora and partly because I was so angry. But I couldn't teach for months. I was just angry all the time!' His voice rose sharply. 'I was furious with everyone – with my students, my father, the Death Eaters, Voldemort – but most of all I was so angry at James! It was James that Voldemort wanted, not Lily! If the fool hadn't married her, she would not be dead.'
This final declaration was irrational, and Lily was sure Snape knew it. But she could understand how he felt, although she did not know how she understood. By marrying her grandmother, James Potter had placed her in terrible danger. Lily Evans had known the danger, there was no avoiding that fact. But still a great wave of anger swept over Lily at her grandfather, for erasing the person she had been so ardently compared to from her life. She would never know the first Lily, and somehow she could not forgive James for that. Her eyes burned, and she began to breath quickly with the need for revenge.
Snape placed a strong hand on Lily's shoulder. 'Your anger is somewhat belated, Miss Potter. There's nothing you can do. She is gone from our world forever.'
Reluctantly Lily got herself back under control. Once she was thinking rationally again, there was another question she wanted to ask him. 'What was she like?'
Snape sighed regretfully. Then he spread his hands. 'She was perfect. Utterly perfect. Just blinded by love.'
'Is that the only reason you hated my grandfather? Because you were jealous?'
'I suppose so. I wasn't just jealous of him because of his girlfriend, though. He had everything I'd ever wanted – friends, talent, love. It didn't take a lot of research to work out that he was the Heir of Gryffindor either. That didn't help.
'Don't get me wrong, I like Slytherin. It's my house and I'm proud of it. But I wish people would stop this ridiculous prejudice against it. We're not all evil. Just because a few people have gone Dark. It's just too bad that people can't look deeper than the snake.'
Lily felt a little burst of remorse for all the times she had talked with Hannah about how terrible Slytherin was. She put her hand on Snape's, which was still resting on her shoulder. 'My father's dead, isn't he?' Somehow it felt right to ask it.
Snape moved in front of her and bent down so his face was level with hers. 'I believe so, Lily. I believe so.'
Lily began to cry quietly. It was a peaceful sort of sorrow she felt now, not a wrenching anguish. Nevertheless Snape once again drew her into a hug, and even in the midst of her grief Lily could feel his tears mingling with hers.
After a time, they both stopped weeping, but still they remained in each other's arms. Something had changed, though. Before, there had been an overwhelming need for comfort and consolation. This had poured out with their tears, and had been replaced with a need for each other. Lily looked up into Snape's face. His eyes burned into her, making her heart flutter. She was sure he could feel the tension between them, the underlying passion, just as she could.
They were standing much as they had been last time she had cried his arms, but somehow Snape's smell penetrated into her more fully, his embrace seemed more intimate. Lily was almost sure that he wanted her.
Almost as soon as she'd had the thought, however, Snape broke away from her. His black eyes still gleamed with need, and a peculiar kind of fatherly tenderness that stretched just that little bit further. But his face, and his movements told her otherwise.
The fact that Snape could not bring himself to admit that he felt any kind of love any more stabbed into Lily, twisting until she was in agony just being in the dungeon. At that moment she resented him for not giving vent to what she was sure he felt so much. Without another word she left the dungeon.
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A/N: Ok, you may have noticed that my chapters often end with people leaving or falling asleep etc. This is simply because these situations create natural breaks in the storyline that I find convenient to use as chapter breaks. It may be repetitious but it makes my life a lot easier: I find it hard to do massive cliff-hangers! So please forgive me if it annoys you and if you want huge cliff-hangers tell me so I can attempt to weave them into the story.