"Hi, Sev!" Lily called out. She was beaming, running towards him from across the shoddy neighborhood playground… their shoddy playground. It had been theirs since they were little kids, no matter how many other children played there.
"You look cheerful," he said with a small grin when she got near. "What's going on?"
Her face fell. "Oh." At his questioning look, she… blushed? "My, er, words showed," Lily mumbled, her eyes on the mulch at their feet.
"Oh," he said dumbly. He'd always tried to put it out of his mind, but it was about that time. "Oh! Er - what are they?" Whatever they were, he was very sure right now that they weren't You look cheerful.
Lily shrugged and lifted her head to face him. She still wasn't making eye contact, instead seeming to look beyond him. "It doesn't really matter. I -" She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "They're 'Not again!' I - I'm sorry, Sev, I -" She was weakly pointing over her shoulder, gesturing the direction from which she came.
"You can go," he said mechanically. "If you have something to do." He wouldn't describe his heart as breaking; he simply felt nothing. He was no stranger to the feeling of emptiness, but this complete numbness was like overdosing on calming potion. He didn't care for it.
"Yeah, I've got... got something," she said in a low voice. "I'll just - I'll just go."
She sprinted out of the playground even faster than she'd run in, leaving Severus under a bright sun and blue sky, trying to piece together what he'd be feeling if he only could.
It had been bloody Potter, of course. He'd been looking for a compartment with Lily (their friendship having mostly recovered from the awkward events of midsummer), when that idiot had run into her with his trunk and knocked her down. "Not again!" he'd cried, and then Lily's expression went from angry to confused to… something Severus had never seen. "Sorry, Evans!"
"Why you?" she asked. And then Potter's expression had shifted, and the way they were looking at each other like no one else was on the train almost made Severus want to vomit.
"Ten Galleons," was the last thing he heard, Lupin cashing in on a bet no doubt, as he stormed away to find an empty compartment further down the train.
It was late October, and Severus had been fifteen for almost a year, and his words still hadn't shown up. It felt like everyone around him had beautiful inky words somewhere: their forearm, their thigh, their chest (he'd overheard the village idiots mocking Pettigrew for not being able to read his backwards in a mirror). He'd taken to inspecting his reflection as he dried off after showers, in case they showed up somewhere like his back, but he remained, unfortunately, free of ink.
"Your words come when you're ready," his mother had whispered soothingly, almost a year before. "They'll come." She'd caught him crying into a pillow in his bedroom and quickly gotten to the bottom of his sorrow. Someone in his year had gotten their words on the train home from third year, which had greatly shifted the mood of those nearby who hadn't yet gotten theirs.
(Severus would later discover that Bradson had only drawn the words on with a calligraphy pen.)
"What are your words?" he remembered asking her. His mother's lips had flattened into a line, and she hadn't answered, only said a few more words of comfort and then disappeared into the house. She wasn't subtle in avoiding it, but he'd never pushed it.
If his soulmate wasn't Lily, then he wasn't sure who it could be. He'd always just… assumed they would be soulmates and live happily ever after. There was no other girl he'd ever had an eye on.
Not that he'd ever really had his eye on Lily like, say, Potter did. He loved Lily for being her, not because he thought she was pretty.
She was pretty, of course, in an objective, scientific way. It just didn't - didn't cause the same absurd reaction for him that it did for so many others. For most of the others, really.
No girl or woman had ever caused such a sort of reaction. Not even Madam Rosmerta, who seemed universally accepted since his year's first Hosmeade visit as the most beautiful (and wildly endowed) woman their class had ever seen.
If he was very, truly honest with himself… there had been… boys. Their Defense professor third year had been utterly dashing, and Severus remembered being surprised that his classmates were obsessed with Madam Rosmerta when Professor Pennyhayes was right in front of them every day. At least Lily had agreed!
And while Pennyhayes might have been the point where he started piecing things together (even if he'd ignored the picture they made), he wasn't the first Severus had ever had a certain type of feeling for.
There was Ben Jackson, to start with. He'd watched all nine Doctor Who episodes featuring Ben more times than he could count. Fair-haired and salt of the earth, every boy Severus had eyed since could be considered through the lens of Ben Jackson.
There'd been his short-lived crush on Bertram Aubrey. Timothy Boot. Remus Lupin, for a while, embarrassingly.
It was with these thoughts that Severus drifted into sleep that night. Perhaps if his words came from another boy, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Hopefully.
When Severus awoke on the third of December, a spiral of words made its way around his thin bicep. Regardless of her horrible soulmate, Lily was still his best friend, and he had to tell her!
He threw robes over his pajamas, slid his feet most of the way into his shoes, and sprinted across the castle as quickly towards Gryffindor Tower.
He was almost there - so close - when he ran fully into someone, knocking them both to the ground and entangling their limbs as he struggled to stand.
"Where are you off to you in such a rush?" huffed Remus Lupin, and Severus was suddenly very sure this was going to be the end of the world.
"Lupin!" It was an exclamation of surprise, of anger, of fear, and of a strange sort of joy for at least knowing who his soulmate was, seeing where he was supposed to go, even if it made less sense than anything he'd ever heard in his entire life.
"No way," Lupin whispered. "No way. No -"
"Shut up, Lupin." It would be a lie to say Severus wasn't thinking the same thing - no way, no way, there is no way - but it didn't mean he had to say it.
"I - Snape."
"Lupin."
"Snape."
This would be the end of the world.
"I always thought you were sort of cute," said Lupin, "in a darkish way. The, er, brilliant and antisocial arsehole with a heart of gold, and all that." It was like he was trying to make the best of it.
Their legs were still entangled, and they were very close to one another.
"You look like Ben Jackson." The words came spilling out before Severus knew what was happening.
Lupin laughed, loudly. Their legs were still entangled. "Not as heartfelt as mine, but I'll take it."
"You know who Ben Jackson is?"
He knew he must look ridiculous, blushing with furrowed brows and pretending that his alleged soulmate wasn't right there.
Lupin shrugged. "My mum's a Muggle."
"My dad's a Muggle," Severus said dumbly.
"I know." Why did he have to be so close?
"I don't know much about you," he admitted. Severus felt stupid, sitting on the floor of his pajamas and telling his apparent soulmate that he knew essentially nothing about him. "I should probably know things about you." Would've helped to know Lupin was gay, for a starter.
Lupin scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "We can, er, get to know each other." He blushed too, then. "Get to know things about each other. There's, er, lots to get through."
Sod it all, but Severus suddenly found Lupin's fumbling-for-words… cute. Who knew you were such a romantic? said a voice in his head that sounded remarkably like Lily.
What was Lily going to say?
What was her idiot soulmate going to say? The rest of his gang? Severus's sort-of-gang of Slytherins? His mum didn't even know he was gay!
Yes, the world was definitely ending. His eyes connected with Lupin's, which were a gold-ish sort of brown that he'd never noticed before. At least he'd have someone to face it with, no matter how surprising a companion it might be.