Hello. It has been some time. I do not wish to say this is the darkest hour of my life, because I realize that looking back over my entries through the years, it is likely to sound laughable how many times I have professed to be at my worst. I still refuse to believe that the occurrences which have surrounded me in the past months are not some sort of sordid prank.

I should return to the day that I last wrote, some month and a half ago. Since then I have finished my final year at Hogwarts, but my accomplishments went uncelebrated due mostly to the distance I purposefully place between myself and the others, and to the throes of confusion and despair into which I have been lately cast. Originally I had no plans beyond graduating and going back to Spinner's End, perhaps trying to contact my mother, since I do not even know if she is alive or dead, so many years it has been since I have heard from her, and trying to make a better life for us. I would not like to get a Muggle occupation, I doubt there are many things I would be good at. It was suggested to me that I stay on for another year and then teach at Hogwarts, but at the time it seemed like it would be good to simply get away. Merlin, so much has happened, I have half a mind to return to that idea, and maybe angle for the post of defense against the dark arts, after all. I can hardly think.

I suppose I should back up to the day a mere week before commencement exercises at Hogwarts when I went to visit Lily, who was once again, in the hospital wing. It was a worrying development, to be sure, how much she had been ill with unexplainable symptoms, and sent again to be under the care of Madam Pomfrey. I caught sight of her bustling bout, her lips compressed into a thin line.

Lily was lying in a bed on the far left side, and appeared to be sleeping, but the trickle of a tear from the corner of her eye, which I could see even from this distance, proclaimed her to be only in the lethargy of great sadness. My heart went out to her, in spite of what we had been going through with her change, and her perceived changes in me.

I caught Madam Pomfrey's eye and she nodded to show that I was allowed, so I approached Lily and spoke her name softly.

"Lily."

She opened her eyes, and her lips parted; at once she tried to sit up, but I beckoned her back down and pulled up a nearby chair.

"Severus." She sighed and closed her eyes when she said my name. "How are preparations going?"
I shrugged. "Well enough. How are you?"

"I hope that I will be permitted at the commencement," she said, grimacing. "How awful would that be for me not to go after all!" Her gaze, however, remained cloudy, and her thoughts seemed far away.

"What is it that you've got?" I asked after a long pause, but she just shook her head.

"What are you doing after graduating?"
I furrowed my brow. "You didn't answer me."

"Not now." Lily met my eyes, and with a stab somewhere near the left side of my chest, I realized how long it had been since I had looked into them properly. "You're not going back to Spinner's End, are you?" she continued.

I toyed with the sleeve of my robe. "I don't know. What about you? Home?"

She shook her head, her bright hair catching on the pillow and making a thin webbing of tangled red against the white.

"To St. Alban's, Hertfordshire. That's where James's family lived."
"Lived?" Her use of past-tense interested me more than the fact she had called Potter by his first name, again.

"Both his parents have died just this past year, within two months of each other. He's taken it pretty hard." She sighed. "But they have left him an immense fortune, and he means to live there."

"Do you?" It came out rather harshly.

Lily blushed. "I wish you would stop acting as if this is criminal."

"It is!" I burst out, causing a nearby mediwitch to shush me. "It is," I hissed, in a more reasonable tone of voice. "I can hardly believe you. This is why we can no longer –"

"No, listen to me," Lily began firmly. "The reason we aren't as close as we once were is your persistent interest in the dark arts, which James hates!"

"James hates!" I exclaimed. "And we can't bear to make James mad, can we?"

"You know I hate it too," Lily replied evenly. "And you should know that it all began when he said he'd stop hexing you if I went out with him."

I knew nothing of this, and was deeply offended I was only now hearing of it. Clearly, I was no longer her confidante. I told her as much.

"He has changed, Severus," she said quietly. "Much. He is kind. He is having both Sirius and Remus live with him after commencement, since the Blacks are simply awful to Sirius, and it is unlikely that Remus will be able to keep a job for long."

"What a touching show of philanthropy," I sneered. "Starting an open house for defectors and lycanthropes."

"Severus, if you begin with the pure-blood drivel, then I –"

"Lily, we've spoke about this already."

"Not enough, apparently."

"What else?" I scowled. "There's more."

Lily took a deep breath. "I am going to live with them."
I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me, like my father's foot slamming into my ribcage, and she clarified. "We are going to be married."

I heard my voice as if it came from someone else. "Alright, then. It is nothing to me what you do."

"Severus, don't be like –"

"You two can have your affluent lives..."

"You don't understand."

"I understand!" I managed in a shaking voice.

"His generosity–"

"Doesn't extend toward Death Eaters! Only to defectors, lycanthropes, and mudbloods!"

Lily stared at me in stunned silence, and I was nearly as shocked at my own words, hearing the slur reverberate around the ward with all the filth it carries – but which is inevitably brings back to heap upon the head only of the one that utters it.

"What did you say?" Lily whispered at last, her eyes full of tears.

"I didn't mean –" I stammered, but Madam Pomfrey had trundled into my line of vision and inquired sternly:

"What are you doing here, Mr. Snape?"

"Nothing, I –"

"If you are going to sit here and do nothing but utter foul words, I must ask you to leave."

"No, I meant to – Lily –" I pleaded.

She was staring at the ceiling. "Just go," she said simply.

My feet took me from the room in complete and utter numbness.

Lily was released from the hospital wing and sent back to Gryffindor Tower that night, and I waited outside the portrait for her to emerge all the long night. The blackness pressed against my eyes and the only sounds I could hear were the pounding of my own heart, my own seemingly noisy breathing, and the eery, low moaning of the staircases as they sporadically changed positions both above and below me. With each inhalation, I thought Lily. With each breath out, I imagined I'm so sorry. I had not intended the word to slip out. I had not meant it. I would tell her so. And she would turn her head away.

At last the pale of morning streaked the eastern sky across the Black Lake, and I took in a deep breath, shifting my aching legs from beneath me and feeling the tender pull of the ligaments behind my knees. My eyes burned, but I rubbed them fiercely just as the portrait opened, and a young Gryffindor slipped out, nearly tripping over me. I reached out a hand and caught her wrist just before she tumbled headlong from the landing, whose corresponding staircase had decided to move some hours earlier and was due to return anytime, and our eyes connected. She screamed louder than anyone I have ever heard, and after she regained her footing, she bolted back within the portrait hole, vociferating, "Somebody get Evans! There's a Slytherin on our landing!"

I got to my feet, and a few moments later, Lily appeared, her dressing gown thrown hurriedly over her nightie, and hanging loosely from her form which towered over me. I got to my feet, but could hardly look her in the eye.

"You," she whispered, simply shaking her head. "What are you doing here." She did not ask it as if she really wanted an answer, so I just took a deep breath.

"I wanted to ap –"

"For what?" Her lips were pale. "Telling the truth about my bloodline? Don't even bother." A sneer that I hated to see graced her face.

"Lily, I swear, I had no –"

"Just go." She shook her head.

"Don't you want to hear –"

"There is nothing I want to hear from you, Snape," she said, uttering my surname with ferocity. "You have hurt me in more ways than you'll ever know."

"I never meant to." I placed my foot upon the single step that separated us, and Lily drew back, as if she feared my nearness. "I never would hurt you if I could help it."

For a moment she looked as if she wanted to believe me, but her eyes were filling with bright tears in spite of her bold words, and I swallowed back a lump in my throat.

"How are you –" I began, intending to inquire after her health, but she simply turned and began to return inside.

I had too much pride to call out after her. But mercy of mercies, she turned and regarded me one more time.

"We may meet again sometime, Snape," she said. "And I should not be sorry. But we have a long day ahead of us, and beyond that, an even longer life. I suggest we both prepare for that – and prepare in our own ways, separate from each other."

With that she left me. That was months ago. I have not been able to bring myself to even look upon this journal since, but today I encountered Lily again in Diagon Alley, and decided that this book deserved to hear a reason for my neglect of it. I will write of our encounter tomorrow.