Chapter 7 - Wavering

Lily was silent as she walked with her parents towards the car park. It was fortunate that her father was taking care of her trunk and her mother was carrying her owl, because she probably would have forgotten both at King's Cross in her current state of distraction. And though part of her wished for nothing more than an excuse to run back to Severus, she knew she had to keep walking forward, away from him.

Just go, Lily. Leave me alone.

It was so hard, though. And it felt wrong. She had the strong feeling that Severus needed her, regardless of what he had said, and that he didn't really want to be left alone. The anguish in his eyes just before he had hidden his face behind his fingers...

Even before, when he had called her a Mudblood again and insulted her family, he hadn't seemed really angry nor truly scornful. It had seemed more like a very obvious, rather weak attempt to make her go away. And the way he had looked at her when she hadn't moved... his eyes had burned just the way they had before. As if he still wanted her.

Was it possible to hate and want someone at the same time? Or could Remus be right about Severus not really hating her? That wouldn't mean that he still loved her —if he had ever truly loved her—, but Lily would give anything to at least not be included in the long list of people he hated. Even if that didn't change anything.

"All right, that's it!" exclaimed her father as he slammed shut the boot of the car, startling Lily out of her anguished contemplation. "What has that boy done this time?"

Lily panicked. She had considered to talk to her mum about Severus, even maybe to Petunia —although she knew it was wishful thinking to expect her sister to care—, but never to her father. He would go berserk if he knew Severus had kissed her, after insulting her Muggle parentage no less.

Despite her dread, however, Lily couldn't help to bristle at her dad's tone and to jump in Severus' defence as usual.

"That boy has a name," she snapped. "And he didn't do anything, Dad, we were just talking. Can we go home now?"

"You seemed at the verge of tears after 'just talking'," he accused as he pointed an angry finger in the direction of King's Cross, "and it wouldn't be the first time that boy makes you cry, Lily. Don't tell me that he did nothing when pain is written all over your face!"

"I don't want to talk about Severus!" she wailed, her eyes filling with tears despite herself. "I just want to go home!"

She got into the car and slammed the door shut before her father could say anything else, wincing at the thought of the reprimand she would no doubt receive for mistreating the car, and feeling even more guilty at the agitated state of her owl. Lily whispered an apology to the poor bird as tears began to fall. She was relieved that Severus hadn't accepted her offer for a ride, because she now doubted her father would have allowed him in the car, and she didn't want to imagine what Severus could have said or done to her Muggle father if they had gotten into an argument.

The long trip home was silent and tense. Her father didn't say a single word the entire ride, and her mother gave up trying to extract answers from Lily about her exams and such before they even accessed the motorway. Lily cried quietly for a while, thinking about all the times she had cried because of Severus since they were children and painfully wishing this time could be like all the others. Severus had always come to apologize afterwards, and Lily had forgiven him even though she knew most of the times he was only sorry about hurting her, not about what he had done to hurt her. This time was different, though. Lily had forgiven Severus for calling her a Mudblood, but she couldn't just let slide what he was doing. And to complicate matters, she knew this time she had hurt him too, and Severus had never been a forgiving person. He would not change his course, and he would not forgive her for not supporting him.

By the time the car pulled into their driveway Lily was feeling numb again, and all she wanted was to run to her room and hide under the blankets the entire holidays. His father's voice stopped her before she could reach the stairs, however.

"The Snape boy is not welcomed in this house anymore," he said sternly, putting down the car keys on the counter with unnecessary force, "nor are you allowed to put a foot on his side of the river, nor to go with him anywhere else, you hear me? You will not spend another summer wandering the streets with that boy."

A horrible pressure was building up in her chest, and she could feel the blessed numbness lifting as her throat constricted painfully. If only her father knew why his words hurt so much... But he didn't know, he didn't know that it wasn't necessary for him to say anything because Severus would not be part of her summer anyway.

"Harry," intervened her mother, "you can't forbid Lily to see her friends. Her best friend. She said the boy didn't do anything, you're overreacting-"

"That boy is trouble!" exclaimed her father. "Everyone in Cokeworth knows it, and you can tell just by looking at him!"

"Don't start again on his hair, Dad, that's just stupid," said Lily, grateful for the anger that had come in her aid.

"Do not talk to me that way, young lady!"

"Then don't judge people just by their appearance! Besides I've told you that a lot of wizards have long hair, it's traditional!"

"I have no issue with the hair," lied her father, "although he could at least wash it, keep himself presentable. As it is, it only shows his ill-breeding and disdain for personal hygiene. And I won't have my daughter traipsing around town with an unclean, good-for-nothing, disturbed rascal from Spinner's End!"

"Harry!" admonished her mother. "Do you hear yourself?"

"I'm simply stating things as they are," said her father.

"You have no idea how things are!" yelled Lily. "You know nothing about Severus, and you have no right to judge him! Severus is not unclean," he always smells good, she thought wistfully, "and he's not a good-for-nothing! You have only ever thought of him as a lower-class boy from a bad neighbourhood and assumed he was worthless, but you couldn't be more wrong. Severus is a brilliant wizard, by far the smartest and most powerful student in our class-"

"That only makes him more dangerous," cut her off her father. "I shudder to think what a disturbed young man might do with magic at his disposal. You told us about the war, Lily. I don't need to be part of your world to be able to tell that that boy is heading for the dark side!"

Lily didn't like the turn the conversation was taking. Her father was too close to the mark, even if his speculation was based mostly on prejudice and unfair assumptions.

"Severus would never hurt me," she said firmly. "And he's not disturbed, he just-"

"You know very well that he has hurt your sister," said his father seriously. "He's cruel and violent. And his intentions towards you are not innocent, Lily. I have seen the way that boy looks at you, and believe me when I tell you he's not interested in being your friend. It was one thing to allow you to play together when you were children —although I have wondered for a while if perhaps I shouldn't have allowed it—, now that you're a young woman you must be more careful, and I more vigilant. It is my duty to protect you and your sister, and I will do it to the best of my ability even if you hate me for it." He pinned her with a stern look, "You're not allowed to go out with that Snape boy anymore, is that clear? I don't trust him to be alone with you."

Lily didn't answer. She was feeling rebellious, and she wished nothing more than to yell back at her father that she would 'traipse around town' with Severus as much as she wanted, maybe even tell him that she was perfectly fine with his non-innocent intentions. To her frustration, however, this entire argument circled around a relationship that no longer existed, and she simply would have no chance to make good of any threats. It felt like a cruel joke, to be arguing with her father about a boy when the boy in question was already out of her life.

She wondered how much worse this argument would have been if she had emerged from Platform Nine and Three Quarters hand in hand with Severus and re-introduced him to her parents as her boyfriend. Hell of a lot worse, no doubt, and yet Lily would have been happy to fight her father over it and to defy his tyrannical decree. She could picture herself sneaking out to meet Severus at the park, maybe even Severus climbing up to her window as he had done a few times in the past when he didn't want to knock at the door. It would have been an exciting summer, beyond a doubt, one to remember forever.

Instead it would be the first summer that they would spend entirely apart since they were nine years old. The first time that she would fear to run into him on the street, in case he pretended she didn't exist or looked at her with hate.

And it would be the same when they were back at school, and next summer, and so on. People said that broken hearts healed with time, but Lily felt sure that even if she managed to survive this there would always be a painful hole inside her where Severus ought to be. She would always miss him, and her life would never feel completely right without him.

She didn't hear whatever her father said next, busy as she was escaping the kitchen and dodging Petunia, who clearly had been eavesdropping on the other side of the door. The smug smirk her sister sent her way as she passed was the last drop, and Lily broke into sobs. Once, when they were little, Tuney would have comforted her when she cried, now she found pleasure in her misery. Would Severus come to hate her that much too? Would it come a day when he would smirk vindictively at the sight of her pain?

Lily locked herself in her room and gave free reign to her grief. She ignored her mother's calls through the door, and she refused to go down for dinner.

She cried and cried until eventually she calmed down and slowly drifted off to sleep, her last conscious thought a silent hope that Severus had gotten home safely.

The next month was horrible.

For the first time in her life, Lily wasn't her father's sweet little girl, and the distance between them was affecting her almost as much as her distance from Severus. She loved her dad, and she knew that he was just trying to protect her, but she just couldn't forgive him for the things he had said about Severus the night of her return home. It also annoyed her that he believed her to be complying with his mandate when she actually would have felt inclined to defy him if going to find Severus would have been an option. Since she couldn't express her rebelliousness that way, she was doing so in any other way available, even though she was aware it was childish and pointless. As a consequence his father was having trouble keeping his temper on check with her, and the resulting yelling matches were making her mother lose patience with them both. Meanwhile Petunia complained about the noise but visibly enjoyed the tension between Lily and their dad, never wasting an opportunity to rub more salt into the wounds by throwing off-handed remarks about the Snape boy and all his evilnesses.

Her biggest source of distress, however, was Severus. Or more precisely, the lack of Severus. And the difficulty of maintaining her increasingly wavering resolution of staying away from him. She had thought that breaking up would be the hardest part, but she was finding that staying broken up was much harder. Like slow, debilitating torture. If only Severus' last look had been as hateful as the one the night he had declared that she didn't truly love him, maybe it would have been easier, but that last interaction at King's Cross had filled her with doubts and stupid hopes. She wondered every day if maybe it wasn't too late to fix things somehow, to undo what she had done before the damage was permanent, to say something that would make possible for them to be together. In her weakest moments, her heart hurt so much that she felt certain she had made a grievous mistake, since there couldn't possibly exist any valid reason to inflict oneself so terrible pain. When she added to that her delusional idea that Severus must be suffering just as much as her, her will crumbled to pieces and for an exhilarating moment she all but decided to set off immediately for Spinner's End.

There was always something that stopped her from following through, though. Usually the gut-wrenching fear that Severus would just sneer at her and slam the door on her face. Just imagining the pain that that would cause her was enough to give her pause and remind her one by one of all the reasons why she shouldn't go there. Nothing had changed. Severus would not see reason. She could not, should not, accept his reason. What he wanted was wrong. There was a very real, very dangerous war going on and Severus becoming a Death Eater wasn't something she could just let slide.

It went against her every instinct to give up, to just accept that someone couldn't be saved or guided in the right direction, but she knew Severus well enough to know that when he was set in a course not even he could stop him from following it until he either reached his goal or crashed against a wall. He was the personification of stubbornness.

Sometimes she caught herself smiling fondly when thinking about Severus' annoying traits, remembering his amusing glares when he realized he was wrong and didn't want to admit it, how his eyes gleamed when he came up with a new ambitious project. But then she remembered that this wasn't like the other times, that they weren't kids anymore and life was getting serious, and she dissolved into tears again, the pain worsened by her nostalgic lapse.

She considered writing to him, went so far as to redact countless drafts and several final versions of a letter, but she couldn't decide herself to send any. Her official reason was that she shouldn't, since it would only cause them both more pain to go over it all again, but really she was terribly afraid of receiving a scathing answer or of spending the rest of the summer waiting for an answer that would never come.

Lily was a mess. As days went by she found herself staring at a wall more often than crying, turning the situation inside her head over and over again as she desperately tried to find a solution, but all she managed was to deepen her despair and increase the pressure of her anguish until she felt at risk of exploding. She was going mad keeping everything inside herself, but she didn't feel as if she could talk to anyone about it. Not to her dad, certainly, nor to her spiteful sister, and just in case not to her mother either. Her mum had tried to talk to her, had asked her what was going on with Severus, but much as Lily wanted to spill everything she didn't trust her mum not to share at least part of it with her dad. And she would be damned if she gave him the pleasure of knowing that he no longer had to worry about Severus! At least for a while she would rather her father to be always on edge, waiting for the Snape boy to come by the house at any moment to steal away his daughter.

She considered to tell her friends in some of her letters, but she wasn't sure she could trust Alice and Mary to keep the secret, and it also made her hesitate to know that their honest opinions would probably be on the same line than her father's. Perhaps their words would help her to move on, but Lily wasn't ready to move on yet. She actually kept daydreaming about Severus showing up at her house at any moment to steal her from her father.

Remus probably would understand, having seen her at her worst, and Lily knew he would keep the secret, but after the way she had broken down in his arms that night she was too embarrassed to bring up the subject again, and besides it would be presumptuous to write to him over the summer as if they were friends.

So Lily kept her grief to herself. And as the weeks passed, she began to feel as if the secret was settling inside her, hard walls consolidating around it to keep it encapsulated for the rest of her life.

Maybe she would be able to eventually move on, if she stopped dwelling on it all the time. She had been almost ready to let go, after all, before Severus had kissed her. If she could just take herself back to that day, and make herself feel so angry and betrayed as she had felt when he had called her a Mudblood, surely it would be easier to deal with this.

Lily cursed Severus for not leaving it at that. If he had never apologized, nor said that he loved her, nor woken this hungry creature inside her, she was sure that it wouldn't have been quite so hard to accept that it was over.

But what had happened had brought them closer than they had been in a long time, and it had sort of clicked something into place between them. It had felt like the next natural step in their relationship, what they had been growing up to be all along.

It had opened a future of exciting possibilities, and it was really hard to accept that none of them would come to happen.

Lily kept an eye out for Severus every time she was out of the house, but oddly she didn't catch a single glimpse of him until the last day of July. Considering that during the holidays he always spent as much time as possible walking around town, she assumed that he had been doing his best to avoid her, a thought that made her feel equal parts wretched and relieved.

When her eyes fell on his dark, lanky figure that afternoon, however, her heart gave a violent jump and she felt her stomach fill with butterflies. Not just because the sight of him did that to her, but because it was obvious that he wasn't trying to avoid her, on the contrary.

Severus was lounging in the playground were they had met, sitting in the very swing Lily had launched herself from that day seven years ago. She remembered how offended she had been when he had called her a witch, and how awful she had felt later when they had met again and she had understood that he had actually meant it as a compliment. It had been so exciting to find out that magic was real and that she wasn't the only one who could do those things... Lily felt her throat constrict as gratefulness overwhelmed her. Having met other Muggle-borns, she could now appreciate much better how great a difference it had made to meet another wizard who could explain things to her a few years before she got her Hogwarts letter.

"Lily!"

Lily jumped, suddenly realizing that she had began walking towards the playground without consciously deciding it. Petunia was standing just outside the store's door, holding a shopping bag and looking from Lily to Severus through narrowed eyes.

"Dad said you aren't allowed near that freak," she reminded her with an expression of extreme distaste. "We're going back home, now."

Lily bit her lower lip, glancing again in Severus' direction. It couldn't be a coincidence that he had chosen to sit precisely there, she knew that he remembered that day even better than she did, he had even carved Lily's name on the wood with a knife and declared it 'Lily's swing' until the end of times. His sitting there now at the very least meant that he was thinking of her, and almost certainly it was a message for her. A signal.

"It'll just be a minute, Tuney," she pleaded. "You go ahead, I'll be right behind you."

"Absolutely not!"

"Please, I need to talk to him, Tuney..." Lily saw the unyielding expression on her sister's face and sighed. "You can't stop me-"

"I will tell Dad," threatened Petunia, "and he will ground you!"

"Fine," spat Lily, "tell him if you want. I'll see you at home."

She turned around and rushed across the street, ignoring her sister's further threats and warnings. She had no doubt that Petunia would tell their father, but he wasn't at home at the moment so Lily would have some time before he came looking for her. Looking over her shoulder she saw that her sister hadn't moved yet, visibly torn between going after Lily or going back home. To her credit, the concern in her eyes seemed genuine, and for a moment Lily was reminded of how protective Petunia had been of her when they were little. But just as Lily had predicted her sister was unwilling —or perhaps afraid— to go anywhere near Severus, and after some hesitation she stalked in the opposite direction.

Lily turned back to the playground and stopped to watch Severus from a distance. He was using the swing as a simple bench, not moving at all, and it was obvious that his presence there wasn't exactly welcomed by anyone around. Most children were wisely keeping their distance, but as there weren't enough swings in the playground for everyone some kids seemed to be daring each other to claim the empty swing next to Severus. So far no one had gathered courage enough, and Lily hoped no one would, since Severus no doubt would scare them off with a threatening glare before they could touch the swing. The parents present in the playground kept sending disapproving looks in his direction, but they also didn't seem to dare approaching him to demand him to clear the swings for the children.

She had to admit that her father had a point when he said Severus didn't present a very trustworthy appearance. On this side of town his mismatched, shabby clothes stood out more than across the river, and his long, unkempt hair was immediately associated with drug addicts, gypsies, or criminals. Lily was certain that it wasn't his appearance what put people on edge around him, though, but his attitude, and proof of that was that he made people uneasy at Hogwarts too, where neither his clothes nor his hair stood out particularly.

Lily stood there, unsure of what to do. Her first impulse when seeing him had been to go to him, but now she was remembering that she shouldn't even though it looked as if Severus might be waiting for her. Or was it wishful thinking? Perhaps he had chosen to sit there because he was angry with Lily and was looking for inspiration to feed that anger. He had a tendency to do that, she knew, to actively search for more reasons to hate someone or to hold a grudge. And what better way to bolster his resentment towards Lily than to dwell on his memories of her and distort everything inside his head so he could convince himself that she had never truly cared about him?

She sighed. What did it matter? She should stay away either way. Even if he wanted to see her, it didn't mean that anything had changed. Most likely they would end up arguing and hurting each other again, and then Lily would have to start all over again the process of recovery.

What if this was their chance to save their relationship, though? Maybe he had missed her just as much as she had missed him and wanted to fix things too. Maybe he had come to his senses and realized how wrong it was to want to be a Death Eater. Maybe...

Lily took a deep breath. She would only know if she found out. Most likely she would get hurt again, but she knew that she would wonder forever what could have happened if she turned around and went home now. If she didn't give them another chance.

She began walking again, but stopped once more only ten feet ahead and ducked behind a tree, her heart pounding wildly as her chest heaved in near panic. What was wrong with her? Since when was she afraid of facing Severus? Where was her Gryffindor courage?

Lily closed her eyes and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. She knew that Severus would never hurt her. Physically, that is. And it wasn't as if she had never had to deal with his foul temper and sharp tongue.

Memories of his tongue forcefully claiming her mouth, rendering her incoherent, came unbidden to her mind and made her heart flutter for a very different reason. She swallowed convulsively and tried to ignore the burning sensation in the lower part of her body, almost breaking into tears at the thought of Severus never touching her again.

She took another deep breath, and then another. She couldn't approach Severus being a hormonal mess, that would make impossible for her to resist if he tried to kiss her again. Not that she thought herself capable of resisting much in the best of circumstances, of course, but she needed to keep her head about her. And she also needed to manage her expectations, to prepare herself for the likely possibility that Severus would be more inclined to insult her than kiss her.

Sobering up a little at that thought, Lily stole a peak from behind her tree, feeling like a ten year old and idly wondering if Severus had felt half as nervous when he had secretly watched her as a child. He seemed as oblivious now to the stalking as she had been back then, perhaps because he was busy scowling at the kids playing and laughing all around.

His Muggle clothes were as unflattering as ever, and he seemed to have outgrown them several inches, noticed Lily sadly. She knew how much he hated the clothes his mother got him, and she could only imagine how embarrassing and uncomfortable it would be to walk around with too-short trousers or shirts until new ones could be afforded. Lily winced when she remembered that birthday when, having noticed he didn't own any warm clothes with long enough sleeves, she had bought him a nice green sweater as a gift. Severus had been so angry... He had yelled at her that he didn't need her charity before throwing the gift back to her face and stalking away. Confused and hurt, she had cried a lot after that, but eventually she had understood why he had reacted that way and she had promised never to give him useful nor expensive presents again. From then on all her gifts had been small and deliberately silly, not intended to be of any use to him but to make him snort or grimace in distaste. His look of horrified disbelief when he had unwrapped the Gryffindor scarf she had given him in first year had been priceless, only surpassed by his reaction to the pink quill and glittering ink that he had received for his thirteenth birthday. After that he hadn't been surprized by the butterfly hair bands, and he hadn't protested too much last year when she had forced him to try on the T-shirt of The Beatles, although she was certain that he hadn't worn it ever again.

She felt herself smile at the memories, but the smile died in her lips when she noticed that Severus didn't look well. He was too thin, his skin had an unhealthy hue, and there were dark circles under his eyes as if he had not slept in several days. Lily was immediately worried. She knew that he didn't eat all that well during the summer, and that the stress of being home wasn't good for him, but she had never seen him like this. Had things gotten worse with his father? Or was this her fault? Lily hadn't been eating nor sleeping well since they had broken up, maybe it had been the same for him.

Her concern for him was what finally pushed her from behind her tree, her heart beating erratically under the pressure of too many overwhelming emotions as she hesitantly made her way across the playground. Severus was still looking the other way, his intense gaze fixed on a little boy that was currently being comforted by his mother after he had fallen to the ground.

She was very close when finally he was alerted to her proximity by the sound of her steps and his head suddenly jerked in her direction, his dark eyes locking with hers. Lily froze, uncertain and afraid, feeling as if she were standing in front of a hippogriff waiting to see whether it would attack her or allow her to approach. Severus certainly was as proud and unpredictable as those creatures, and he could also tear her to shreds if he was in an irritable mood.

As she stood there, rooted in place by the imperative force of those unfathomable black eyes, Lily wondered if she could have found a more difficult person to love.