Not much I can offer for an author's note here, because frankly I've been drinking :p Work was a teeny bit stressful and now I need some happy juice.

*the author does not condone the act of fanfictioning under the influence (FFUI)

If Someone Cared Enough

Chapter Ninety-Four: As the Clouds Drift by

Severus stared at the sky, watching the clouds lazily float high above him in wispy shapes and masses through the air. A light summer breeze made the long blades of grass around him tremble ever so slightly like a shiver, tickling the sides of his face. The scent of fresh cut grass and recently placed mulch wafted over him in a deep, earthy fragrance.

Severus sighed contentedly, stretching out his legs and rotating his ankles to work out the kinks. It felt good to get outside after spending so much time trapped indoors by the most recent summer thunderstorm. The ground beneath him was still cold from the previous rain, the top layer of now dry soil chilled by the damp dirt deeper down, making for a lovely contrast under the hot summer sun.

Sprawled out in the field, Severus felt truly at peace.

He felt Lily stirred against him, the redhead nuzzling his shoulder as she rose from her nap, "What time is it?"

Severus followed the position of the sun in the sky. It was hot, but no longer the blazing beam of sunburns it was an hour ago.

"Probably a little after three," Severus estimated, carded his fingers through Lily's hair, "You have a nice nap?"

"Simply wonderful," Lily groaned out happily, stretching like an overgrown cat, "Did you get any sleep?"

Severus laughed, a deep rumble in his chest that Lily always loved feeling when she pressed against him.

"No," Severus answered, "I wasn't exactly as exhausted as you. You'll find some of us don't stay up all night reading horror novels when they should be sleeping."

Lily flushed; she had hoped Severus wouldn't suspect a thing when he drifted off last night. She thought she'd been pretty clever waiting until he fell asleep to finish reading.

"I had to know how it ended!" Lily insisted, "Not my fault the writer made it so enthralling."

"Nor do I suppose it is your fault it turned out so scary you couldn't fall asleep until early morning?" Severus drawled.

Lily smacked his chest, "Oh hush. How do you know anyway? You were asleep."

"You were wrapped around me like a limpet when I awoke," Severus pointed out, "Practically choked me in a vice grip. And you were so exhausted we barely got you out of my bed and into your own before your parents woke up."

Lily snickered, "That's the last thing you need. Them finding you in bed with their precious daughter."

Severus rolled his eyes, "Sounds far more lewd when you neglect to mention we were only sleeping."

"We did more than that before bed," Lily counters smugly.

Severus sighed, "Fine. Snogging and sleeping. Still fairly mild."

Lily snorts, "Fairly mild, he says."

"What?" Severus questions, "It's just kissing."

"Ah, but a snog is not the same as a kiss," Lily said with conviction.

She leaned up on her elbow to hang over Severus.

"A kiss is sweet," she stated, "Quick, innocent. Chaste."

"Now a snog," Lily continued, rolling over to straddle the now startled boy beneath her, "A snog is hot, burning," she leaned in real close, her chest pressed against his as she covered the length of his body, "Passionate. There's nothing innocent about a snog, Sev."

"Still the dumbest word for a French kiss," Severus managed to murmur, struck dumb by the intensity of Lily's stare.

Lily folded her arms atop Severus's chest and rested her chin on them, peering at Severus, "Still, it's a better word than kiss. You kiss your mum on the check. You kiss your grandmum goodbye."

She tapped Severus on the nose, "You snog your deliciously handsome boyfriend."

"Deliciously handsome, hm?" Severus said, finding some of his wits as the conversation turned playful, "Am I a boyfriend or a particularly fine slice of cake."

"Well you're certainly sweet enough for one," Lily said before closing the gap to press her lips to his.

Their tongues flicked and coiled around each other combatively as Lily pressed closer, her thighs tightening their grip over Severus's hips. Severus hands came up to tangle in Lily's hair, before one slid down to rest against her hip.

Lily broke away with a snort, giggling.

"Okay, the line was cheesy, even for me," she said with a giggle.

Severus thumped his head back with a laugh, "I'll say. 'Sweeter than cake'? You'd be better off writing advertisement slogan's for Madam Puddifoots."

Lily scoffed smacking Severus in the shoulder before reaching out to flick him in the forehead, "Don't even suggest such a thing; that place is ghastly."

Severus cocked a brow, "Oh, so you've been inside."

Lily cringed, thinking back to a particular memory, "In fourth year Jess talked me into a double date for Valentine's day. Normally, I spent that day with you working on potions as the perfect excuse to get out of the whole mushy, gooey hype about that holiday. I mean, people act like such idiots over a few boxes of chocolate and heart shaped gift boxes."

"I do recall our annual anti-valentine tradition," Severus admitted. The day had always had alterior motives for Severus, however. While Lily gloated at having escaped a day of dodging enchated love notes and singing telegrams from Potter and her other admires by hiding in the dungeon, Severus always relished in the chance to spend Valentine's day with Lily. In his own mind, it was their secret date…even if Lily had no clue that it was.

"Yeah, well you got detention that day for hexing James's hair green and silver," Lily pointed out.

Severus smiled at the memory. Potter had been boasting for weeks about how he intended to woo Lily with an offer to see Unicorns with Hagrid out in one of the nearest clearings of the Forbidden Forest. While Severus was confident that Lily reviled Potter, he knew her love and fascination of magical creatures would have made that too tempting an offer to turn down. And what if the wooing worked? Severus didn't have anything to offer that would trump seeing a herd of Unicorns and their foals.

So Severus had hexed James hair a very striking shade of emerald green with silver streaks that stood straight up like pins. Slytherin colors; some of his finer work. Sure he'd gotten detention and missed out on the opportunity to spend time with Lily, but the hex couldn't be lifted and wouldn't fade for well over a day, ensuring Potter would be too mortified to be seen in public, making him quite unable to ask Lily out. Severus would call that a success.

"So Jess asked me to come with her," Lily went on, drawing Severus from his merry reminiscing, "As a double date. Really though, the guy she paired me up with was a nightmare. A real brawny jock type; not a real conversationalist, didn't get jokes and needed them explained to him. Honestly, I think Jess's date just asked her to find some unsuspecting girl to hook his friend up with. It wasn't like we had anything in common; Jess just wanted to pair us up so that the guy she asked out would agree to go with her."

"You poor girl," Severus teased, earning another forehead flick from Lily, "And Madam Puddifoots was where Jess chose to go?"

Lily groaned, thumping her head on Severus's chest, "Sev, it was awful. The whole place smelled strongly of vanilla. Like, too strongly. It was like living inside the Pilsbury Doughboy."

Severus snorted.

"And the decorations," Lily went on in horror, "The decorations, Sev. They were terrible. Gawdy, tacky doily's and pink ruffles everywhere. On the tables, on the walls. Heart shaped fairy lights strung from the ceiling, heart shaped plates and coasters, and heart shaped baked goods. It looked like a St. Valentine exploded in his grandmother's house."

"And there were cherubs, Sev, oh the stupid cherubs!" Lily thumped her head on Severus's chest again, then once more for good measure, "They were these tacky little golden statues the owner had enchanted to fly around. Think fat babies, but with creepy little grins on their faces, the most unnatural smiles you'd see on an infant's face. They kept doing this weird little giggle too; creeped me out. And they threw confetti everywhere. My hot chocolate was full of it by the end of the date. Took me two days to get it all out of my hair, too. I even think I found some in my underwear."

Severus chuckled; the picture Lily painted did sound like a little shop of horrors. And unlike Lily, he'd never had to be subjected to it, "I take it Jess didn't see the place quite as abhorrent as you did?"

"No, Sev, she loved it!" Lily groaned, the look on her face saying exactly how unbelievable she found it, "She said it was 'romantic', kept going on and on about how cozy and intimate it was. Intimate! Sev, the place was so cramped and crowded, we were practically sitting in the laps of people at other tables!"

"Sounds absolutely ghastly," Severus said, feigning sympathy, "I prefer the Three Broomsticks; the lighting is less glaring so you can actually have some privacy. And the music and chatter keeps you from having to listen to the sickening sound of students slobbering all over each other."

Lily snickered, "I know, right? There had been this table behind me and all I could hear was these wet lip smacking sounds. Kissing's fun to do, but terrible to listen to. And that's literally all you heard in that place."

Severus grimaced, "Glad I never had the pleasure of going."

"Lucky," came Lily's muffled grumble as she buried her face in her boyfriend's shirt, "How come no girl ever dragged you into that place? Didn't any of your housemates ever try to use you as a date for someone just so they could date the girl's friend?"

"Mulciber tried," Severus admitted, running a hand down Lily's back to sooth her when the name made her flinch, "He was trying to get with Bulstrode's sister for a short time, wanted me to take her friend on a date since—in his words—she was too homely to get a date of her own. And according to him, I was too ugly to have standards," Severus pursed his lips, "Ah yes, 'Beggars can't be choosers,' is how I believe he worded it."

"Ass," Lily muttered angrily under her breath. She reached out to trace Severus's jawline with her finger, "Like he's got any room to talk. He looks like a bloated toad."

"Ah, but he had money," Severus pointed out, "Being heir to a good fortune tends to ensure there will always been money hungry girls willing to tell you that you're good looking. Whereas, I was a penniless wretch."

Lily pouted, "You're very attractive; people just won't admit it because James was always putting you down and people always do what the popular kid says."

Severus gave Lily a wry smile, "I believe you're letting your bias seep through. Of course you think I'm attractive; you're dating me."

"But you've always been good looking," Lily admitted coyly, "I thought so even before I knew I liked you. But it was…awkward, you know, to think of your best friend like that. I mean, how do you go from thinking, 'oh there's my friend Sev' to 'have his eyes always been that dark and mysterious?'"

Lily blushed, realizing she said too much.

Severus's eyebrows rose, a smirk stretching across his face, "So you like my eyes, do you? What else?"

Lily didn't answer, refusing to meet his gaze.

"If you tell me, I'll tell you something that first attracted me to you," Severus bribed.

Lily fiddled with one of the buttons on Severus's button down, twiddling it around in her fingers.

"Your voice," Lily answered, looking off to the side with a flush to her cheeks.

"My voice?"

"When your voice first dropped, I couldn't believe how deep it was," Lily confessed, "It was just so…rich," Lily groaned, hiding her face, "It's hard to describe. You suddenly sounded a lot more confident. It was around that time you start speaking to precisely, none of that accent the millworkers around Cokeworth use. You sounded so sophisticated."

"So you have a thing for baritones?" Severus asked cheekily.

Lily slapped her palm to Severus's forehead, tipping the chuckling boy's head back, "Don't get cocky. Now what did you first start liking about me?"

Severus tucked one arm behind his head, looking up at the clouds, "Not to take one of your answers but, it was your eyes."

"Yeah, yeah, my eyes are so green and the shapes so unique," Lily recited, rolling her eyes as she recounted the number of compliments she'd received about them over the years.

"No, because they're so open," Severus corrected.

Lily blinked, "Open?"

"Clear, honest," Severus clarified, "Happy, genuinely happy. Lily, up until I met you, the only eyes I'd ever gazed into were filled with pain. Or anger. People on Spinner's End let their dreams die long ago; rarely do they have much reason to smile."

Severus gazed at the sky, "Mum's eyes were always clouded, far away. I doubt she truly ever lived fully in the present once Tobias started hitting her. And his eyes were nothing but anger and hate. He was just a bitter old man to me, a stranger that had a face a little like mine. Everyone always had something hidden in their eyes, something lingering in there that was just so…lost and broken. I saw the same gaze looking back at me in the mirror every morning."

"And then I met you," Severus said, turning to look at Lily, "I'd never seen happier eyes in my life. Even your sister held a hidden gaze back then, something envious. But you, you were just happy, you saw nothing awful in this world back then."

Severus chuckled, "When I first saw you, I would have given anything to stare into those eyes all day if it meant I could know that kind of happiness."

Lily stared at Severus with such intensity, the boy had to look away.

"That's how you felt about me?" Lily whispered.

Severus nodded, "It's how I still feel. Lily, you were more to me than just the first witch my age that I ever met. You were my first glimpse of what true happiness was like. I wanted to know you as much as I wanted to be you. And then when you came back to the park that day…without your sister…you were still so convinced I'd insulted you by calling you a witch and yet you wanted to give me a second chance for us to know each other."

He smiled down at Lily, "I knew in that moment that you were the rare sort of heart I'd be a fool to give up. I wanted to be by your side always."

Severus was dismayed when instead of smiling back, Lily pulled out of his arms, moving to his side as she wrapped her arms around herself.

"You're putting me on too high a pedestal, Sev," Lily said with a frown, "I'm far from perfect, or as kind as you keep making me out to be."

"I don't think so," Severus argued, sitting up to rub her back, "You always care about others, you hate bullying. Hell, for all the years Petunia was a right prat to you, you still kept reaching out to her. You've always been like that."

"I've also been harsh and quick to anger too," Lily shot back, glaring down at her hands in her lap, "I'm uncompromising, judgmental. Sev, how many times have I gone off on you about your choices and who you spend time with while paying no mind to my own mistakes? I defended James and his friends because everyone placed them above criticism and you at the bottom of the pecking order and it was easier for me to go with the crowd than fight a battle for fairness on my own."

Lily hugged herself tighter, "I never even bothered to think about just why you felt so bitter as to consider joining them. I knew things were bad at home, but I just ignored the fact that a muggle hating you for magic might impact your view of them, that the supposed 'good guys' at school bullying you would hardly make you inclined to join our side. It was just easier to assume you were being a typical slytherin—as everyone painted you all out to be—than to consider that everyone else was practically shoving you into that role."

"And I got mad at you," Lily added, turning to face Severus, "Again and again without even asking for your side of the story. I shut you out and put you down when you didn't see my way of things, yet I was refusing to hear you out at all. What does that make me? A hypocrite."

Lily brought her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them, "Everyone kept prodding me to drop you and I got so sick of hearing them that I wanted a way out just to get everyone off my back. When you called me a mudblood; it hurt, but I also felt so…relieved, Sev. I wanted a way to ditch you without looking like the jerk I knew I would be for it. You gave me a way out and I took it because I wanted to please everyone else and make things easier for myself."

"Lily…" Severus began, only to be cut off.

"I'm selfish, Sev," Lily admitted hollowly, "I was so upset over something silly like people questioning my judgment, so offended they'd judge my choices or common sense, and yet you were going through far worse every day with the bullying, the harassment, the attacks. 'Oh poor Lily Evans, people question her taste in friends and their harping is upsetting her!' Meanwhile the world was ganging up on you and I couldn't be bothered to put myself in your shoes."

"But you weren't doing it to be malicious," Severus countered, "It wasn't like you were setting out to hurt anyone. You didn't sit around thinking, 'how can I do this so it really stings?' or anything like that. You were upset and hurt; of course you'd have difficulty thinking about my feelings while dealing with your own."

Lily intercepted Sev's hand before it reached her shoulder, bringing it own to hold within her own.

"You don't get it, Sev," she stated with a sad smile, "You said it yourself; you fell for me because I represented happiness, that I only ever experienced what was good in the world. But maybe that's where my flaws lie. Sev, I lived some happy little dream before I came to Hogwarts. And then when I found out things weren't all happy and sunshine…I was quick to try and do away with anything that inconvenienced my happiness. That's not exactly a good thing."

Severus laced his and Lily's finger's together, "No…but then again, when was it fair to expect someone eleven through fifteen to make nothing but mature, well thought out decisions? We were kids, Lily; we're still kids technically. Kids aren't exactly the definition of rational."

"I mean," Severus went on, "I nearly joined a murderous hate group akin to that Nazi group muggles dealt with years ago. You can't say that was based on any informed opinion. I was selfish and hurt, and I wanted others to know what it was like…or to at least make it so they feared ever making me feel like that again."

Lily rested her head on Severus's shoulder, "Sev…do you ever wonder if both sides target kids because they're kids? Like…we're the perfect age to tell what to do and make us think we decided it on our own. Kids want to make a difference without actually knowing enough about the issues to actually choose what side is the most wrong; then adults come in and tell us what's supposedly the worst side and we follow them because they said so."

"It wouldn't be the first time people aimed propaganda at the youth," Severus mused, stroking his thumb across the back of Lily's hand.

"They nearly divided us so easily," Lily said after a moment, "And they didn't even have to do it directly; I had more than half of Gryffindor telling me what to think and how to feel because that's what everyone told them when they first came here. Both sides just plant the seed at some point in time and let each new generation be taught by the previous one."

Severus hummed, "Peer pressure is a marvelous influencer. What teenager would listen to the adults when the opinions of their classmates is so much more interesting?"

"I know this is our fight," Lily admitted, "I know it's our war, we'll have to be a part of it eventually, but it feels like the adults were trying to hand the reigns to us from the moment we stepped the castle. Everyone seems so eager to pass the buck to us and make it our problem just because they've yet to find a way to end the war themselves. It's like so many have already given up and want to ask us to step up and take a crack at it for them."

"Probably why Dumbledore plays such obvious favorites," Severus theorized, "He's planning for the long term in case this war goes on for years. Get enough students in his pocket, and he's got soldiers for the foreseeable future at his beck and call."

"Meanwhile, You-Know-Who talks others into practically selling their souls to him and then uses fear to ensure they'll never stray," Lily said with a glower, "The more I think about it, it doesn't matter if one uses kindness and the other uses cruelty to control you; in the end they're both manipulating people into fighting this for them."

Severus nodded, "Now you see why I don't trust Dumbledore."

"Yeah," Lily agreed, "I have no doubt he does want to stop You-Know-Who before he succeeds in subjugating the majority of us, but it's hard to trust someone who keeps so many secrets and weighs everything like a move in a game, even when lives are at risk."

She looked at Severus, "You noticed it, right?"

"Noticed what?" Severus asked.

"When we were telling him about the horcruxes," Lily elaborated, "He seemed concerned but…not surprised."

"So it wasn't just me," Severus said, "I thought I was the only one thinking that."

Lily nodded, "I thought maybe it was all in my head, but he just didn't seem like we dropped the bombshell on him that we thought it was. Sure he's hard to rattle, but I was expecting a least a little hint of shock or maybe horror. Hell, Professor Slughorn is usually the most unshakably jovial man you'll ever meet and just remembering the horcrux conversation with Riddle had him nearly wetting himself. And it was something he'd already been suspecting for years given what he said to us. He all but knew Riddle intended to make some but hearing it still scared him."

"And with good reason," Severus pointed out, "It's the darkest magic there is. The unforgivables—especially the killing curse—are said to damage your very soul, they're so foul. But there is still some hope of redemption for the user; otherwise they wouldn't be authorized for aurors."

Severus looked at the horizon, his gaze dark, "But splitting your soul, the very act of using someone else's life to give yours an extension, it's the very definition of selfishness. There is no justification for it other than greed."

"Messing with death is some of the most corrupt magic you'll ever find, Lily," Severus said gravely, "But…cheating death…it's on an entirely different level."

"How do you mean?" Lily asked.

"Look, there's clearly some governing factor to life and death," Severus explained, "Otherwise there wouldn't be various levels of living and dead. We have ghosts, ghouls, poltergeist, those that carry on even in death. Then we have the living—us—then those who are neither alive nor dead, like vampires. But how they come into being is all based on various factors. You must be bitten to be a vampire, essentially dying to be reborn as one. You need to die with a strong tie to the moral plane to be a ghost. These factors come into play at the time of death, maybe like…like a judgment of some kind."

"But making a Horcrux is something done at any time in preparation for death, a decision to take death into your own hands. You are spitting in the face of death itself. Death must come for us all, Lily. Even those with so-called immortality are given weakness that can kill them, like vampires, all to keep balance. All life is either designed to grow old and die naturally, or are susceptible to things that can kill them."

"A natural death," Severus carried on, "Or an untimely death. Those are the options, but regardless death is capable of catching us all. But to make a horcrux, a person is ensuring they can avoid any and all possibilities of death. They grow old; they just revive themselves. They die of an injury or attack; again they can be revived. It crosses a line that must never be crossed. The only master of death is death itself."

"And yet hearing Riddle had done something so foul hardly alarmed Dumbledore," Lily muttered, "I wonder how long he's known about them."

"If anything, he definitely considered them as a possible route You-Know-Who would take," Severus said thoughtfully, "And given his abilities and his cleverness, I doubt we're the only ones aware that Slughorn told Riddle what a horcrux was and how to make them."

Lily gripped Severus hand tighter, "Sev…Dumbledore didn't even seem surprised that there were two horcruxes from Riddle. What if he already expected You-Know-Who to make several of them."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Severus said with a frown, "Which would mean if he did know there are others out there, he deliberately kept it from us. He sends us home like we've saved the day and the worst is over…meanwhile there's a couple more of those bloody things lying around out there."

"What does this mean for us, Sev?" Lily asked worriedly, tucking herself closer to Severus.

"It means," Severus said slowly, holding Lily tight, "That we can work with the light all we want, but we can't trust them with what we know when they won't trust us in turn. We can't be anyone's pawns, even for a good cause."

Severus rested his chin on Lily's head, "We're in this alone, Lily. Just you, me, and our friends. Those we can trust; no one else."

The pair stared out across the field in somber silence as clouds rolled in the distance and thunder rumbled from miles away.

I have never EVER liked the sound of kissing. I hate it in movies, tv shows, in person. The wet smacking sound is obnoxious and annoying. Considering that it is possible to kiss WITHOUT making noise, I'm going to assume anyone who does make sound is doing so intentionally and should be beaten soundly. And no, I'm not just bitter because I have Misophonia *shifty eyes*

So I want to get this out while I'm still sorta sober. I have begun to wonder if Dumbledore DID know about the horcruxes much earlier in life in canon, but was just...waiting for the right pieces to manipulate in his life sized metaphorical game of chess. Like, maybe he couldn't get the information he wanted from Helena about the diadem, perhaps he always knew he'd need someone who could appeal to slughorn's guilty conscience. Maybe he hadn't planned from the beginning to use Harry, but it's still possible he'd been waiting for the right person or persons to come along to carry out his will for him so he wouldn't have to get his hands dirty.

I think the only reason he went after the ring alone (whereas he brought Harry for the locket) was because he already suspected it contained the resurrection stone and didn't want anyone else getting in is way of obtaining it.

I know some of you were wondering if now that the cat is out of the bag Severus will agree to team up with Dumbledore. But frankly, he's been used enough by that old coot in canon. I'd like to give Sev a story where he's his own free agent in this battle.

Review please!