Disclaimer: Not JKR, not making any money.

Chapter Warnings: Language

A/N: I just wanted to thank you guys again for commenting. I've got some really amazingly insightful comments, and they always make me squee to see them in my inbox. Thank you!

Lily lay in Sev's bed, the blankets pulled up to her chin, and thought about the kiss.

She replayed it over and over in her head - the feel of his mouth against hers, shy and hesitant, the way his gloved thumb had rubbed at her jawline. Her body flushed at the memory, and she was glad that his kiss had drowned out the other thing that happened, that horrible swell of misery.

Sev knocked at the door and stuck his head in the room. "How do you feel?" he asked. He had a cup of tea, steaming in his hand.

"Better," Lily said. She pushed herself up, drew her knees into her chest. Sev handed her the tea and then stood awkwardly beside the bed, his hands fiddling with the sleeves of his robes.

"You can sit down," she said. "If you want."

Sev nodded, kept standing. Lily scooted aside and patted the mattress beside her. He finally took the hint.

She sipped the tea. It was strong and hot and made her feel safe.

"What happened?" she asked.

Sev blushed.

"No, I meant - I meant before that." Lily took another sip of tea and looked down at the surface of it when she said, "I liked it. Kissing you. I know what happened there -"

She lifted her head. Sev was staring at her, looking, she thought, vaguely astonished.

"I just want to know why I - why I - why everything got so dark." It was the only way to describe it, because if she tried to describe it further she would remember it completely, and that seemed like a terrible idea.

"Well, you were working Dark magic."

"Was that supposed to be a serious answer?"

Sev shrugged.

"Christ, you can be so infuriating," she said. She set her tea on the beside table, next to a stack of old worn textbooks. Her hand shook. "Did you save my life? It felt like you did."

Sev had managed to wash the astonishment out of his features; now his face was blank, emotionless. "I believe so, yes."

A jolt of emotion rippled through Lily's heart. "Thank you."

He looked at her, his eyes black in the shadows of his room. All pupil. "I told you I wouldn't let you die."

Lily leaned against him. He didn't move, so she picked up his arm, drew it around her shoulders. She wanted to feel safe.

"Was it Dark magic again?" she asked. "That you used? It felt so - everything was so confusing." It hadn't felt Dark. She'd gotten used to the feel of the Dark Arts, to the way they seemed to sap the energy out of a room. But this had been - different, and strange, and it had created in her a paroxysm of desire. That's why she kissed him. Well, that, and because she'd wanted to for as long as she could remember.

Sev stared straight ahead, his hair falling into face, hiding him in plain sight.

"Well?" she asked. "Was it?"

"I don't - no, it wasn't." Sev stepped out of the bed. "You should finish your tea."

"Sev!" Lily flung the blankets aside and stood up. Her legs wobbled. "What was it then?"

"Not the Dark Arts."

He stomped out of the room. Lily let out a screech of vexation and followed behind him, though he'd managed to disappear. "What is your problem?" she shouted into the gloom of the house. "You can tell me about your Dark Mark but you won't tell me about this?" She threw open doors, peered around corners, stirred up great clouds of dust.

She finally found him in his study, sitting at his desk, staring down at a book.

"Stop pretending to read," she said.

"I'm not pretending." He didn't look up. "And you should be in bed, not shouting and slamming doors and trying to knock my house down with your Gryffindorian indignation."

Lily crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

"Tell me."

Sev turned the page of his book.

"God! You're insufferable." She reached over, slammed the book shut, and snatched it away from him. Sev glowered up at her.

"Well?"

"You won't want to hear it."

Lily gaped at him for a second or two, and then she laughed. She collapsed into a chair shoved off in the corner of the room and tucked the book in her lap and laughed. Sev just stared.

"I won't want to hear it?" she said. "Like I didn't want to hear that you used Dark magic to heal my arm? Or I didn't want to hear about how I need to learn to kill people if I want to survive a battle?" She wanted a cigarette, but they were tucked away in her purse, off somewhere else in the house. "You haven't exactly been reticent about telling me things I won't want to hear."

"This is different," Sev said quietly.

Lily fixed him with her best glare, a glare she'd learned from him over the years, the one she'd fix on James and Sirius when they were being prats, the one she used on her sister basically every time she saw her. She doubted it would work on Sev, but it was the only weapon she could think of at the moment.

"Could I have my book back, please?"

Lily threw the book on the floor, halfway between herself and the desk. Sev didn't move to pick it up. And for the next few moments, they glared at each other across the room. Lily was not going to be the one to break first.

And then Sev asked, "Did you really like kissing me?"

He kept on his glare while he asked it, but his voice was soft and almost - tremulous. The effect was disconcerting enough that Lily felt all her anger slide away.

"Of course I did," she said.

Sev stood up and walked over to his shelves of potion ingredients. He ran his fingers over the vials and the textbook spines, not looking at her.

"There's a theory," he said. "About a weapon against the Dark Arts. I never went in for it much - it's the sort of thing old wizards like to have endless debates about over elf wine because they've got nothing better to do."

Lily wanted to say something, wanted to snark at him, but she kept her mouth shut and listened.

"The weapon is - well, I imagine your lot puts a lot of stock in it."

"My lot?" Lily narrowed her eyes.

"Dumbledore and the rest of them. Non-Dark wizards." He laughed. "Light wizards? Wizards light? I should start calling them that."

"Sev."

He sighed and picked up a jar of some pale-green liquid and held it up as if to examine it. He still wasn't facing her.

"It's love," he said. "There are some who say the best defense against the Dark Arts is love."

All the air went out of the room.

Sev peered at her over his shoulder, his eyes glittering. "Told you that you wouldn't want to hear it."

Lily forgot how to speak. Back at Hogwarts, especially towards the end, when she was Head Girl and everyone pretended to adore her, and she was so exhausted from not being herself, she used to think, used to hope - but then he'd joined the Death Eaters. And her heart had broken, because Death Eaters were incapable of love.

Lily stood up. She walked toward him and put her hand on his shoulder.

He set the vial down. Stared at the shelves.

"Disgusting, I know," he said. "You can leave if you want. I won't give your name to the Dark Lord, you don't have to worry about that."

"Sev." It came out as a whisper. His body was warm beneath his wizard's robes, warm and too thin.

"I don't want your pity."

Lily pushed her hand forward, threaded it around his chest, and drew him close to her. She put her other hand at his waist. He didn't move except to rest his hands against the shelf. Lily pressed her cheek against his back and breathed in the smell of him, dust and parchment and old clothes, soap and skin. Her hand was on his heart; she could feel it pounding, fast as a hummingbird's.

"Turn around," she said.

He didn't move at first. Then he took slow, shuffling steps, his body twisting, until he faced her.

Lily put one hand on his cheek. His skin was soft, and she could feel the hard bones of his face.

"You love me?" she asked.

He looked at her. His eyes were dark and blank.

"For a very long time." His voice was empty. He's blocking me, Lily thought. His Occlumency.

"But you're a Death Eater -"

"Doesn't change it."

Lily ran her thumb over his lips. She cast her eyes down. "I - I do too."

Silence. She made herself look up. He didn't look blank anymore. He looked bewildered.

"What?" he said.

"I love you too."

"Is this a trick?"

Lily sighed. "Don't ruin it, Sev."

He scowled.

"Look if you want!" She tapped her temple. "Look in my head."

Sev drew his brows together. "You want me to use Legilimency on you?"

"If it's the only way you'll believe me. Jesus."

Sev lifted one of his hands and touched her hair so softly she didn't feel it. "You understand why I don't believe you."

"Not really."

"This could be an Opposition trick," he said. "Dumbledore and his - "

"I bloody told you about that!"

Sev went on like he hadn't heard her. "Why would you love me when you had people like James Potter chasing after you? And he's in the Opposition as well, it would make more sense -"

"Oh, shut it. James Potter has a kid now and he stillacts like a twelve-year-old. " Lily plunged her hand into Sev's robe - he froze, but she was too angry to blush at the warmth of his body. She yanked out his wand.

"Cast it," she said. "This is not how I pictured all this happening, but I really should have known better." The thought did amuse her, though. If you wanted things to be like a story you would have fallen in love with James Potter.

Sev took the wand and gazed at it wearily. "I don't actually need that," he said.

"Then what the fuck are you waiting for?"

Sev looked at her. She stared at him, bracing herself - he'd read her before, back when they were kids, but it had been different then. He'd only skimmed the surface, and besides, her thoughts had been frivolous, silly. The thoughts of a child.

He slipped inside her.

His presence was cold but not unpleasant - she pressed against him, wanting the contact of his body, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, and for a moment she thought how intimate this was, that it was the way she always imagined sex -

Sev turned bright red.

"Sorry," she whispered.

He didn't say anything, and the coldness slipped deeper, into her memories. She saw what he saw, and he felt what she felt. The disappointment when he was sorted into Slytherin - I thought I'd lost you then, the way I thought I lost you when you joined the Death Eaters. His grip tightened against her waist, and she lay one hand against his chest and listened to his heart tell its own stories. He found those memories of the times they snuck off to their secret place in the woods, and her happiness there - the exhaustion she felt when she got older and become popular, well-liked, sparkling, and everyone expected her to be perfect and she knew she had to do it or else she'd disappoint them. And Sev was the only one who didn't expect her to be perfect, and no one knew she was more like him than she was anyone else, and that was when she knew that she loved him. And God, the heartbreak when he told her he joined the Death Eaters - did he have to find that memory? Or all the sadness that followed, the chain-smoking and the quiet music and the little round window in her flat?

Sev pulled out and gasped. "Lily," he said. "I didn't -"

"Do you believe me now?"

He held her close, his nose buried in her hair, her face pressed into the crook of his neck.

"Yes," he mumbled. "I didn't know - I didn't think -"

"Because you're so paranoid." She meant it as a joke, but her voice cracked and she thought she might start crying - because she was happy, and she hadn't been happy like this since Hogwarts.

When he kissed her, she forgot about the war, she forgot about the Order, she forgot about everything except Sev.