Severus dimmed the candles, closed the curtains, poured himself a glass of whiskey, and settled into an easy armchair by the fireplace. By the evening, the weather had completely deteriorated, snow began to fall, it became sharply colder. He loved bad weather, loved to feel the unity with the elements, loved the gloomy silence of the ancient castle, enclosed in the arms of cold. For a while, Severus was quite happy in his own solitude.
The bad weather brought him an annoying migraine, exacerbating his already bad mood. Snape suppressed the urge to jump to his feet and rush out of the dungeons to find Hermione and tell her everything he knew about their shared future-in-the-past. He can't. He had already sufficiently intervened in the course of the history of their mutual past. Soon. At the end of November, the Ministry would pass this damn Marriage Act that would change their lives forever.
However, the more time he spent with her, the more he wanted to stop playing games by the rules. Hermione's friendship with the werewolf did not improve Severus's mood.
He and Remus shared a strange relationship. They were both like soldiers of enemy regiments who smoked one cigarette for two when the commanders were absent and bandaged each other's wounds out of solidarity.
Remus embodied everything Severus had always lacked. Lupin had the support of friends, the respect of colleagues, the love of his students. His charisma and soft, slightly muffled timbre allowed Remus to capture the attention of the audience where Snape would not fail to resort to threats and intimidation. Snape was respected out of fear; Remus was respected because of his mild attitude.
In fact, both of them grew up in similar conditions: Severus was an outcast because he was not lucky enough to be born into his own family, Remus became an outcast due to a tragic coincidence. The werewolf got to Gryffindor and, thanks to his intellect and silent observation, made loyal friends. Severus ended up on Slytherin and had a slew of arrogant enemies who used his mind for their own purposes.
The werewolf had friends who were ready for any recklessness for him. Severus... Severus only had his drawings, a bad temper, and a desire to be better.
Snape wondered many times why he continued to help Remus, why he brewed the Wolfsbane, why sometimes he invited the werewolf to his chambers for a glass of whiskey. Lupin was his last connection to adolescence, a vivid memory of their shared bloody past, the last reminder of Lily. In fact, Remus was never Snape's enemy, he did not attack him openly, preferring to remain on the sidelines. He remained on the sidelines all his own life, continuing to hide in the shadow of his brighter friends. Black's star, for example, overshadowed everything around him, Sirius bathed in glory, making friends and enemies alternately. He burned too brightly and burned out in an instant.
Lily... Severus didn't have the feelings for her that the sentimental public wanted to believe he had. Lily was once a naive red-haired girl who seemed to attract glances, sunlight, and trouble. Problems had always been Lily's eternal companions. In her childhood, when she was still quite a toddler, and the neighbors' boys happened to take away sweets from her, as a rule, not even ten minutes after those very boys stumbled and bruised their knees. Lily then stopped crying, took her older sister by the hand, as befits a good girl with bows, and walked home decorously. Time passed, Lily grew up, went to school, but the problems did not go away. The sunny girl quickly made a bunch of friends, as if Queen Mab led her retinue, and continued to work her magic, beckoning naive moths to the hot flame of her restless heart and explosive nature.
Flowers bloomed in her hands, birds obeyed her, she herself was a bird - an irresistible force that cannot be locked in a cage, but he - a lanky boy in tattered pants - called Lily a spark and preferred to peep from afar, like a forest animal that will never approach to the fire.
Lily made no attempts to become a part of the Wizarding world, she was too used to wearing the image of Queen Mab, so she needed an entourage who could love and praise her. At one point, a faithful footman named Severus was not enough, and Lily turned her attention to the arrogant James Potter and his noisy but stupid friend Sirius Black. And she continued to judge people by her own prejudices, not wanting to see the truth.
Queen Mab needed a retinue. Retinue and troubles.
Severus recalled with bitterness how he hesitated on her doorstep, wanting to warn her of the Prophecy, trying to save and atone for his own guilt. Lily laughed in his face.
"Severus, I can keep my son and my family safe!"
"Lily, I'm sure, you can, but listen, Voldemort will stop at nothing! How can you not understand this?"
Lily understood. She understood too well, and therefore exactly one month later she stood on the threshold of Severus's house, open to all the winds, and pounded on his door.
"Severus, you ought to help me! Listen, you simply have to, I can't do it alone, I found one ritual in old books..."
Lily chattered and chattered as Snape walked her into a semblance of a living room, sat on the sofa, and sipped her tea. And when she finished her confused story, he could hardly resist yelling.
"You're insane! Do you even understand what blood magic is?"
"Severus, I don't care. There is a ritual. There is a chance to save my son. It is only necessary to build a blood defense over Harry on the night of Samhain, and then all the ancestors of my family will stand up for him, and no evil can get to him. I will keep the mother's magic, and the magic will keep my child."
"Lily, blood magic will come at a price, most likely the price will be too high. You are Muggle-born, there is no family behind you that would be able to help you, therefore magic will draw forces from Potter, from Black, and from everyone with whom you are somehow connected by blood. The night of Samhain is too dark to be ignored. You are practically making a deal with death."
"Which's why I came to you for help! You must help me if you want to atone for your sins!"
"You never knew how to ask, Lily, you always only demanded, and was offended if something did not go your way!" Snape protested. " Go and ask James Potter for help!"
"He doesn't understand anything about the Dark Rituals!"
"Oh, and I surely do! You have always argued that Dark magic is not for people like you, and heavenly punishment awaits us all, and now you are on my doorstep. Why do you need me, tell me?"
"To save my son," Lily blurted out and covered her face with her hands. "I'm not hiding anything from you, Severus, I am telling you that I just want to save Harry. He is the most precious thing I have. I need your help. You are my friend. Let's make a deal."
"I needed your friendship when your Gryffindor friends took my pants off in front of the whole School, when I was bullied and humiliated, and you blurted out the spells I had invented. Don't think I'm such an idiot, Lily, and I'll be forever in love with your memory," Snape snapped.
In the next instant, Lily crossed the room and knelt before Severus.
"I have nothing more to offer you, but if it helps me save Harry..."
Her willing body. Soft skin. A wave of fiery hair. Desirable woman. She had not been his love anymore, but she was still desired. The most logical thing would be to tell Lily to leave the country and leave him alone, but at the moment when she so willingly surrendered herself to Severus's passion, he was hardly able to think logically. As well as to think in general.
Her kisses burned and beckoned to be imprinted in his memory, to burn with a spark in his soul for many years. She called him for her, like the fairy queen she always had been, and he followed blinded by her light, already knowing that bargaining with the wily fairies had never done anyone any good.
Lily's flames engulfed him, and he was ready to burn.
And then they did the ritual.
Lily drew the runes of life and sprinkled them with her blood, summoned all the power of light to enclose a piece of her magic in a potion of the Life-giving blood, and then give it to Harry to drink. Severus belayed, he shared his power with her, he made sure the ritual didn't get out of hand. He was a half-blood, his magic allowed him to make this deal with the darkness to help his beloved woman. And he loved her in those strange moments when life itself was at stake. He was very afraid of losing.
Her magic remained in Harry. Her memory embodied itself in the Patronus of Doe. Everything light and everything dark that was in Severus' life, one way or another, intertwined with Lily, their short-lived friendship, their fleeting passion, and vows that he recklessly made to her.
Later, when he was taken to Azkaban, and Minerva and Poppy blackmailed Dumbledore day and night, persuading him to help Severus, Snape managed to reconsider his whole life and did not like the conclusions.
He was again full of debts and vows like a forgotten apple tree was full of rotting apples. He owed Dumbledore his salvation, he had to repay Lily and James with his very life and had to nurse their offspring because Lily's magic was embodied in his Patronus and because his own magic helped to carry out the ritual.
His own life reminded Severus of a tangle of torn threads, in which everything was so confused that it was impossible to find the end from which it all once began.
Occlumency helped him survive several months in Azkaban, but something in him then broke, as if the damned Dementors, after all, managed to suck from him the last faith in the light.
Poppy Pomfrey pulled him out of jail and came to meet him in person when he was allowed to leave.
"Mom… Mom, I'm so confused," Severus muttered in confusion, clutching the confident palm of the Mediwitch in his trembling fingers.
She led him away from this place, Just like when he was a child and she used to find him at the Astronomical Tower and took him by the hand to the Hospital Wing to feed, comfort, and put him to bed.
"Give yourself time, son, everything will be fine. I'm with you."
Finally, Severus released the Patronus to inform Minerva and the Malfoys that he was fine, and the doe turned into a raven, which immediately soared into the sky.
Lily's death took all the light out of Snape's life.
Now, sitting by the fireplace, sipping his whiskey and battling a migraine attack, Severus desperately wanted to bring back into his life the light that his wife had briefly ignited.
"Give yourself time." Severus realized with annoyance that he had no time.