Sometimes We Die
Chapter Twenty-six: For the First Time
Author: H. Ashleigh
Disclaimer: I am obviously not J.K. Rowling, nor would I ever pretend to be.
Saturday, April 24, 1976
Evening
248 days
Severus poured the brunt orange liquid from the silver bowl through a copper mesh strainer and into another silver bowl. The individual molecules that made up the potion flowed through the copper and grabbed atomic size particles of the element, and the silver base completed the reaction, tying the bonds with little bow ties.
The reaction was instantaneous. Pewter gray, cold steam blew up in his face. Severus wondered how steam could be cold, but he checked the directions and that was what was supposed to happen. He set the ticker for 30 minutes and left the Room of Requirement to wander around the seventh floor a little bit.
The days were getting longer. He paused at an open window and relished the peach colored sky. He automatically thought of Lily's skin, and how it had felt the last time they had been together. He couldn't think about her these days without thinking about the ultimatum she had given him. It made him just the teeniest bit angry, that she had spoken so blatantly about it to him. There had even been desperation in her voice, and while under different circumstances that may have thrilled him, it had only irritated him more.
He loved her. He could repeat it every day until the day he died, and he would only love her more. There was no sense telling himself otherwise. He just wondered if his was the type of love that could give up everything. It was true, he might have loved her from the very first day he ever show her, back when they were just kids on swings. But he had dreams, dreams that could include her if she would just accept everything! He didn't want to be the next evil overlord or anything, he just wanted some sort of power, and knowledge was power. He had learned that from his mother ages ago. Lily, more than anyone else he knew, should understand that.
He moved past the window and walked a little bit further south until he came upon a door he had never really noticed before. There was a small window cut into the top of it and he peered through.
Revealed was the balcony that just a few months before Josie and Emily and Lily had been together, talking about Josie's life in her life. Now there was no life.
Severus turned the doorknob slowly and fresh, perfumed spring air met his enlarged nostrils. He let himself onto the balcony and quietly shut the door.
He stood there for a while, right in front of the door, just staring out into the fading dusk. The world was his medium; he just wanted to manipulate it. Magic enabled him to do this, and the more magic he commandeered the better. He moved away from the door and walked the few steps to the railing. The drop was dizzying.
He heard the door behind him open and he turned around, startled. It was Emily Leach, alone. Severus remembered then that she liked to come out to this balcony for a fag.
"Snape," she said. She walked to the other side of the balcony and lit her cigarette. The cherry tip glowed bright orange in the purple air and Severus thought immediately of his potion setting. Her hair was orangeish-red too, and she tapped the first set of ashes over the edge; they sifted down and out of sight.
She said nothing for a few moments, just dragged and blew. Severus didn't mind the scent (his father smoked cheap cigars), and he for the most part ignored her presence. Then she started talking.
"She's never going to love you, and if she does, it's all wrong, you realize that right?"
He turned around to look at her back.
"She doesn't see the truth the way I do," she said. She turned around, flicked her cigarette over the railing, and immediately lit another one. "I know what you are, Snape."
"What am I?"
"Something terrible," she replied nonchalantly, matter-of-factly. She wasn't telling him about his life, she was stating facts Binns taught them regarding Goblin rebellions.
"You don't know anything, Leach."
"Oh yes I do," she continued. "I know the ones like you. You feed off people. That's what you're doing to Lily."
"Shut it."
"She just doesn't realize it, because she thinks she loves you. She thinks. But she doesn't."
"What do you know about it? You aren't even talking to her!"
Emily looked sad for a moment. "I know Lily. She is not difficult to figure out. She should not be with you. She is a good person, and if she stays with you much longer, she will become infected. So infected there is no turning back."
Severus began feeling angry. How dare she say things like this to him!
"If you cared at all about her, you would stop talking to her, stop associating with her. It's for the best, really."
She finished her cigarette, threw it over the balcony and was gone before he could reply.
***
Severus tried his hardest over the next few days not to think about what Emily had said to him, but how could he not?
Sometimes he saw Emily in the corridors between classes and she was always flitting around, holding hands with Morgan Kent and laughing. She liked her hair tied back from her temples, and tassels of it hung down in curls to sway between her shoulder blades.
Her hair was lighter, more golden than Lily's, who grew brownish-red colored hair, the color of dried blood, or rust, a color that might crumble in your fingers if you rubbed strands together. Her hair was a dark cherry, rust, dried blood, swishing, seeping, crusting over her head.
What if on her head was a gaping wound and her rusty hair was years and years of accumulated dried blood?
Severus shuddered at the thought and broke himself out of his reverie.
"Severus, Severus, Severus," Lily was saying monotonously, in a deadpan tone. "Severus, Severus, Severus."
"What?" he asked a little harshly. "You sound like a broken record."
"Well of course," she replied. "I've only been trying to get your attention for the past five minutes."
Her eyes were wide, hiding behind her brown glasses, and green, just green,. Nothing special like emerald or pea or sea foam. Just green. "Yes, Lily?" he asked more gently.
"Do you remember what Slughorn said about the third transmutation phase of the burn ointment?" She consulted a roll of notes in front of her. Even her eyelashes were rust colored. Like little tiny, pliable needles submerged in blood and set out to dry. They fluttered against the thin skin underneath her eyes, that skin the color of a dark pearl. "Severus, our final project is due in less than a month. Slughorn did say he wanted it before exams started."
"Yes, I know Lils," he replied. She wrinkled her nose in distaste at the pet name. "If you can call me Sev, I can call you Lils."
"Severus, my question? And since when have you called me Lils?"
"He said you must add the cat's claw before the strained juice of the yucca. I have never called you that before."
"And are you sure he said that? It says both here and here" (she consulted 2 different potions books) "that you must first strain the yucca dry, and after it has set in the potion for 5 minutes, you add the cat's claw one by one, stirring in between adds. I don't really like 'Lils'."
"I already practiced it both ways. It works best the way Slughorn recommended. I don't really care what you like."
"Hmm," she murmured dubiously.
"He's the resident potions master, I think he knows better than some book."
"Some book?" Lily demanded. "These are not some books."
Severus diligently consulted his number-keeping book for another ten minutes, and then closed everything with good snaps.
"Are you done?" Lily demanded, looking up at him from behind her tower of books she had found in the library. She hadn't had to wander far, for they were sitting in the potions section.
"Yes," he replied. "It is late." He cast his tempus spell and out flashed in front of their eyes a neon green 11:45 p.m. "Madam Pince is going to kick us out soon."
"I suppose you're right. I hate this curfew nonsense. How do they expect us to prepare for examinations? Especially N.E.W.T. level ones?"
"The way all the other years before us have prepared."
She ignored him and set to organizing all her books in two piles, the ones she wished to keep and the ones she wished to leave. Severus waited patiently, slowly levitating away the books she handed to him. Their table was clean of debris within eight minutes, but before Lily could juggle all of her books, Madam Pince came stalking over. Her hair was crazed looking and she stared down at them both from out of square spectacles.
"I hope you didn't plan on taking those," she said to Lily. "The library is closing."
"Yes, we were just packing up to leave. I was bringing these to the front now."
Madam Pince sniffed dramatically through her long, thin, nostriled nose. Her glasses slipped down a little bit. "Check out time is over. I announced fifteen minutes ago that all library occupants need bring the books they wished to check out to the front desk. No one came, so I closed down the checkout worms. They are now sleeping, and there is no way you can check out those books."
"But, Madam Pince, I need these books to do more research in my common room."
"Some of those books can't even be checked out," Madam Pince replied. "Reference material is to be made available to all students who come into the library and wish to use it. You cannot keep it in your room."
"But-"
"But, nothing. You will have to put those books away and come back for them in the morning."
"How am I supposed to do my potions research?"
"Do charms research instead," she said in clipped tones. "I hope you are walking towards the exit in two minutes time. I want to go to bed sometime tonight." And she stalked away.
Lily grumbled as she levitated the books away to their respective holes in the shelves and then they headed towards the library doors.
"Why does she have to be such bitch?" Lily demanded loudly. "I hope she heard that."
Severus had never heard her speak so gruffly regarding the professors before. "Lily, I think you maybe need to relax?"
"What do you mean, I need to relax Severus?" She was getting feral. The way she usually did when exams were looming overhead. But they really weren't looming. There was over a month left until examination period started.
"I think you need to relax, honestly. Exams don't start until June."
"I guess maybe you're right," she acquiesced, slumping her shoulders over. "I do take it a little too seriously, you think?"
They were standing outside the library now. Madam Pince made a great show of locking the doors tightly and then she flounced away to the fourth floor.
"Just a little bit." She chuckled, and he laughed, something he rarely did.
"Severus, you don't laugh enough." Sound observation.
"I laugh plenty enough."
"What are you doing now? Going to bed?"
Severus thought about what Emily had said. Bloody Emily. Well, he didn't care what she had said.
"Let's go for a walk."
"It's sort of late, isn't it."
"I don't have an early morning class tomorrow. Do you?"
"No…" she hesitated. She bit her lip and then flicked her tongue out to massage the impression her teeth had made.
"Then let's go for a walk."
"Okay."
He led her upwards, a strange feeling coming over him. He had never thought of doing what he was about to do before, and he didn't know why. His pulse quickened.
"Sev, where are we going?"
"I want to show you something."
They crested the seventh floor and he led her down the hall, towards the Room of Requirement. She walked, blindly led by him. He stopped in front of the door and thought for a few minutes of what he wanted. A French door melted into the wall.
"Severus, what?"
He opened the door and pushed her in, locking the door behind him.
The room had done well. It had generated some sort of in-door cabana. Sheer curtains fluttered in amber colored breeze, and it smelled like vanilla and pineapple. There wasn't a bed, but there were several piles of soft looking cushions and blankets. He plucked her books out of her arms and set them on a table by the door. Her eyelashes stared up at him and he stroked the line of her neck delectably before brushing a lock of hair behind her shoulder and leaning his face down towards her.
She kissed him back slowly at first. He nibbled on her lip and dipped his tongue into the hollowness beneath her chin. He squeezed her hips, the plush tenderness like pillows beneath his fingers, soft, velvety he was sure underneath her jeans.
He pulled her closer to him. Her breasts pressed into his chest and he ran his fingers up her sides. She shivered in response and locked her arms around his neck. He pushed her back a little, towards a pile of cushions. She kissed him fervently; her mouth tasted like the ice mice she had snuck into the library earlier and he lapped it up, dying from thirst.
She laid down softly on the pillows and he collapsed on top of her; she emitted a soft "oophf" as his body draped pressure over her, but soon they were snogging again, desperately. She moaned tightly against his mouth, causing his lips to vibrate. A spark of vivid lust stronger than ever ignited his groin, desire and urgency and pressure all flooding downwards to linger achingly.
"Severus, look." She pushed him away a little and was staring up at the ceiling. Stars were reflected in her big, glassy eyes.
He turned his head around and saw that the ceiling had given them a lovely, perfect view of the night sky. Hundreds of stars glittered over top of them, brightened all the more by the absence of the moon. There were as many stars as fragments of glitter that might be swept across someone's soft, soft skin.
"That's fantastic," she murmured.
"You're fantastic," he said, turning back down to look at her.
"You don't mean that," she said sheepishly, and he could see doubt clouding over, obscuring the plain green color of her eyes, darkening them to that of olive. She glanced down shyly and he heaved himself off of her, frustrated at the limbo they held themselves in.
***
Her hips curved away from him in a plane not unlike that of a peach, swathed in black and fuzzy peel. He longed to reach out and run his thumb down the line of her body, feeling the soft, fluffy, impressionable cushion that was hidden by her dress.
Down from her hips flowed her long, delectable, thin legs. Muscled and strong, yet delicate and feminine, they stroked the ground with padded footsteps engulfed in black ballet slippers, leaving long trails of smudgy black impressions in their wake.
Up from her hips squeezed a petite waist. It was the most perfect, the most exquisite hourglass he had ever seen in his life. As if the master of all masters of hourglass makers had magiked the creation of a lifetime, out of blown glass and the lightest, most siftable sand charmed black.
Then happened her breasts: pert little mounds of whipped cream, standing in stiff peaks against the cool dungeon air, underneath the not-so-sheer black cloth enveloping her body. If only he could touch them, mold them to stand up and remain as those peaks, white peaks contrasting sharply against the rough stonewalls and the dark bed covers.
Her breasts flooded into a purebloods neck, long and angled and perfectly elegant. She turned her head around and for a minute she held herself there, her inky, shiny hair swishing as one long, infinite plane. She was floating in air, ballet slippers hovering inches off the ground, a dancers poise and grace surrounding her like the most perfectly composed classical music.
"Severus, what in Merlin's name are you staring at?"
He shook himself mentally and dragged his eyes upwards into her icy, white-blue eyes. Her face was elegant and chiseled, her cold ivory hands coyly twisting strands of that black magic between the digits.
"I think he's staring at you," he heard. He snapped his eyes away from Saloma's face and onto Gera's. She was equally stunning. Her eyes were huge, platter-size mounds of dark coffee, melting into you that searing gaze. Her olive colored skin was tickled by those devil's chocolate curls, the heaps of shiny ribbon growing out of her scalp and loping around her head. His gaze shifted down to her chin and beneath it, that little hollowed out pocket of sugar he could lap at all day.
Saloma slunk towards him slowly, a small smile tightening her face. Gera slunk behind her.
"What are you thinking about, Severus?" Her cold mauve lips were all he could focus on.
"What are you thinking about, Severus?" This time the words came out slowly, lower, muffled, as if she spoke to him from under the water.
"I think he might finally be noticing other females," Gera said, off to the left.
"Have you finally given up on Evans?" Saloma teased him. She was now bent over, hovering in front of his face. He was reclining in an armchair and her breath washed over him in cold waves.
He couldn't really speak, just was feeling that familiar and aching pressured pleasure.
She touched her neck with one of her hands and slowly dragged a fingernail down the center of her chest. In its wake trailed an angry red irritation, becoming all the more inflamed as she teased more tender areas. Her finger now rested in the apex of the empty cone of air between her two breasts. She questioned him with her eyes, and he nudged his head to the right. She trailed her fingernail across the swell of the left bosom escaping her dress, and as she got closer and closer to the fabric, he got more and more nervous. She forced the tight, thin fabric out of the way and dragged her finger across her now entirely exposed left breast.
He sucked in a huge pocket of air, and she giggled. This caused her breasts to quiver and her finger to brush and scrap up against the nipple. It immediately hardened and he couldn't take his eyes off the light and intimate teasing she was enacting upon herself.
She licked and bit her bottom lip and he glanced back up at her face.
She cocked an eyebrow and he tentatively reached his right hand up to fondle her breast. It fit perfectly in his hand and felt warm and supple; the dark, sharp nipple rubbed gently against the middle of his palm.
"Shall we?"
A/N: Sorry for the bit of a delay. Thanks for the few reviews last time, and thanks to my readers, as always. Even if there aren't as many reviews as I might like, I'm still grateful that many are reading.
Comments, as always, very welcome and appreciated.
P.S. If anyone really digs this fic and would like to beta it for me, please email me. I really do need a beta.