Chapter Thirteen: Is Anything Impossible?
The darkness and the twisted walls seems to coil around her for miles, the heavy black ceiling closing over her like the lid of a coffin.
There seem to be several instances of rule-breaking and tardiness here. Your academics, on the other hand, appear quite exemplary. Top of your class?
Yes sir.
Your Potions marks are impressive.
Yes, um, it's my favorite subject, actually.
I see. Well perhaps you will be a more pleasant surprise than I'd anticipated, Ms. erm, Elizabeth Lee, is it?
Actually, sir, I go by Lili.
Lili?
"Lili?"
Her eyes continued to trace the sallow shadows of Snape's face, but it was no longer his voice that sounded off the dark walls.
"Lili? Can you hear me?"
The words pierced through the twisted shade of memory, and her eyes burst open, heart lurching as an oblivion of light wrapped about her cold skin like warm sun. Her brain stung, and she felt, for a shuddering moment, disembodied—mere spirit.
She couldn't remember where—he'd been asking her about Zhong Mo Xue—and then…
When she blinked again, she felt her own body extending around her, muscles and contours returning, tingling, to her control.
"Minerva! I think she's waking up!"
The voice hovered close now, a brown silhouette haloed in stabs of melting light. Testing to be certain of herself, she rolled her dry, swollen tongue along the roof of her mouth, scratching out a confused attempt at speech.
"Shh, my dear," the brown silhouette scolded, placing several cool, measuring fingers on her forehead. "Save your strength. Your body still has a good deal of healing to do."
The white light continued to drip away like melting snow, revealing beneath a familiar face.
"M—Madame Pomfrey."
The older witch pursed her lips, clearly disapproving such blatant disregard for her advice. She leaned forward and adjusted the pillow behind Lil's head, pushing a few strands of stray red hair in place. "Now, Miss Lee…"
Blinking, Lili looked about, trying to adjust her eyes. The gray floor about her was covered with the damp of dew, and it was no wonder as she quickly discovered several gaping fissures in the stone ceiling that arched high overhead. One of the paintings hanging near her bed was badly slashed, half the canvas hanging limp over the frame. The rest of the nearby paintings were empty of their subjects save one cheery, red-cheeked old woman who, perched on a neatly painted stump, gave Lili an encouraging thumbs-up on her recovery.
"The hospital wing?" she groaned, trying to prop herself up but meeting quite suddenly with a bone-deep pain. "Oww! Bloody hell!"
The jolly old woman lowered her enthustiastic thumbs and frowned deeply at such language.
Madame Pompfrey clucked her tongue as well, laying a gentle hand on Lili's shoulder and urging her back down to the bed. She held forward a tall glass of green liquid, glaring at Lili sternly. "Now lie down, please, and drink this. I was able to repair all the damage to your arm, but it's going to smart for a few days. That potion should help with the pain."
Lili sniffed the liquid tentatively, wondering, should the potion taste as rancid as it smelled, if she wouldn't rather endure the pain.
But Madame Pomfrey's arched eyebrow brooked no objections, and she swallowed the liquid in one gulp, coughing and spluttering in disgust.
"There now. Get some rest."
Lili, however, was completely awakened by the pain draught, and, wiping at her tongue in an attempt to remove the last remnants of unpleasant taste, attempted to sit up once more, this time cautiously using her right arm.
"Miss Lee!" the older witch objected again, knocking the empty glass down on the bedside table and shaking her head so vehemently Lili expected it to roll off her shoulders at any moment. "Lie back. You've lost a lot of blood and—"
But Lili was no longer listening, her eyes having drifted to the bed beside hers—or rather to the dark, thin figure lying in the bed beside hers.
The green liquid turned to solid stone in her stomach.
"Severus," she whispered, ignoring the pain and fatigue that soaked her body and stumbling up from her cot. His face was stitched, his arm bandaged, but he lie utterly still, skin almost the same ashen white as the sheet pulled up to his chest.
Madame Pomfrey inserted her considerable person between Lili and the inert Snape. "Miss Lee. Please lie back down. You are not—"
"But, Severus—" She attempted to sidestep the older witch unsuccessfully.
"He'll be fine, Miss Lee," the woman insisted, wrapping her hand firmly around Lili's arm and leading her back to the bed. Lili followed reluctantly, watching Snape close to confirm that he was, in fact, breathing. His chest rose and fell slowly, and relief pounded with the adrenaline in her heart.
She collapsed back onto the bed, her knees suddenly quite weak beneath her.
It all rushed back like ice water flooding her brain. The shadows sliding through white mist. Dumbledore, dead blue eyes shimmering with tears of dew. Draco and Voldemort and the huge explosion that shook the very earth.
She ripped up her robe sleeve, yanking down the bandage that wrapped her elbow.
It wasn't a dream. It was real.
The Dark Mark was gone, replaced by a shining, jagged scar that seemed to stretch, thin and glistening, all the way up her arm.
Yes. Snape had cradled his arm, watching the black skull fade into blood…
And then clutching darkness. Dementors. She'd heard her own screams as she relived the moment the Mark had met her skin…
She laid back, feeling heavy, and met Madame Pomfrey's worried gaze.
"I'm afraid you and Professor Snape will have some rather nasty scars."
Lili swallowed, replacing the bandage carefully. More scars than you know.
But it was over now. The battle hadn't been a dream: only the pain, and she had awoken from it into a warm bath of light.
"Is everything—okay?" She wasn't sure what answer she expected Madame Pomfrey to give to this, but no question seemed able to ask all the things she wanted, in that very moment, to know.
Madame Pomfrey turned away, busying herself with straightening the cluttered bedside table. "Well, I suppose that depends on your definition of 'okay.' Half the castle's in ruins. Both the Gryffindor Tower and the Astronomy Tower --as well as the entire eastern wing—are mere piles of stone. There were several student deaths: I think twenty-something in all. And—well, I'm afraid we lost Remus Lupin."
Madame Pomfrey listed several more casualties, but Lili found herself lost in thought, imagining how Lupin might have died, at whose hand.
No, Lili. It was all real. The good and the bad.
She bit her bottom lip hard. "And Draco Malfoy?"
Madame Pomfrey paused, the clinking of the bottles falling quiet enough for Lili to hear the older witch's deepened breaths. "He was long dead when we found him."
Her mind whirred quickly, groping for another question to distract her from this thought. "And—Harry? He fainted after—"
"Mister Potter is fine."
It was not Madame Pomfrey who answered this time but the strident yet soft voice of Minerva McGonagall. She had appeared at the end of Lili's bed without either of them taking notice and now stood, looking down at Lili through eyes wreathed in bruises. "He regained consciousness several hours ago, fully recovered. He's just finished speaking with the Ministry officials and myself and, I believe, is off to see his wife to assure her he's in the best of health."
She rejected a rise of indignation at the wizard's quick and effortless recovery, stoppering the rising bile with more questions. "What about you, professor? You don't seem to have emerged unscathed yourself." She indicated McGonagall's battered face and bandaged knee.
The old witch pursed her lips in a small grin, her dark eyes twinkling in a way that reminded Lili, with a stab of sorrow, of her former headmaster. She noted only vaguely that McGonagall now wore the trappings of that position.
"I assure you, Miss Lee, I'm quite well. Just found myself on the wrong end of a rather nasty curse." Her eyes ceased their twinkling, shrink-wrapped in the dullness of memory. "Unfortunately, Remus caught rather the brunt of it."
Lili leaned back further in her bed, light that dripped from the ceiling sliding down her body as she settled. She wanted to sink back into the cool white mattress, low and soft, and have someone tell her good news: that everything was alright.
Because it was, wasn't it? Lives had been lost, people had suffered, but in the end--
You're alive, Lili. You made it through, even from the edge of disaster…
A jumble of joy and guilt overwhelmed her, and she couldn't tell whether such a thought brought her inutterable gratitude or unaccountable shame. She wondered how Harry Potter lived with it—being the one who lived.
Professor McGonagall bent with some difficulty and whispered something in Madame Pomfrey's ear. The witch nodded and scampered out of the ward, leaving Lili and the new headmistress to speak privately.
McGonagall stepped forward and sat with a groan on the edge of Lili's bed. She propped her wounded knee in a more comfortable position before letting her eyes rest, twinkling by solemn, on Lili.
"Miss Lee, Mister Potter has already told us a good deal of what he witnessed." She paused, pressing her lips gently, a habit Lili had noticed generally proceeded a discomforting question. "What—can you tell me?"
Lili's hands busied themselves with the frayed ends of her sheets. Was McGonagall, like Harry, suspicious of she and Snape? Surely, after what had happened…
But, she remembered dully, this was not the end. The Ministry had told her at her trial that, in the event that Voldemort was defeated, her crimes would once again be brought against her in court. If she worked hard in the Ministry's service, she could hope that, when the trial came, her services would outweigh her crimes.
And now, even free from the Mark—even alive after two years of uncertainty and torture—her fate was being weighed. Hers and Snape's.
Professor McGonagall seemed to sense her sudden alarm and attempted another slight, twinkling smile, the deep lines of her face bunching in mounds and grooves of white flesh. "I assure you, Miss Lee: you and Professor Snape have the full confidence of myself and the Ministry. Mister Potter himself has seen fit to recommend the both of you for the Order of Merlin."
It was Lili's turn to be suspicious, watching the older witch's dark eyes carefully. It can't be so easy. After years of walking a tight wire, afraid as much of the Ministry's distrust as the Dark Lord's, she couldn't believe that all their doubts in herself and Snape could melt away as easily as that rotten, black bit of flesh.
But if it is true…
She knew what the Order would mean to him. She glanced over at his still, dark form, wishing to shake him awake and tell him everything: wishing, above all else, to see him smile.
"The Ministry has asked for you to report as soon as you have regained consciousness." McGonagall's old eyes sparkled wildly. "But I thought it might be best if you stayed here—both of you—to recover." The sparkling flitted only briefly to Professor Snape. "So, if you could tell me what you remember, I will pass it along in your stead."
Lili smiled. And save me having to leave Severus here to go through the utter hell of reporting. Though she was obviously in no state to deal with unyielding interrogation, McGonagall knew as well as she did that haggard appearance and healing wounds wouldn't make the Ministry hold their punches.
Meeting the older witch's gaze, Lili was amazed as the gentleness she saw there and wondered just how long Dumbledore had been grooming her for this.
"Well, I can tell you all I remember," Lili attempted, taking a deep breath and doing her best to clear her head so as to prod back into a mess of jumbled memories. "I—let's see—I ran into Draco, or actually, he ran into me. We argued for a while before Sev—" She stopped, wondering if Snape would think it appropriate for her to speak so casually of him with his colleagues. "Before Professor Snape showed up. He'd given me a Bleeding Heart, so we would know if either of us was in danger. Uh, he found me, and we talked with Draco some more." She paused, knowing how weak this next bit would likely seem to the one-time Gryffindor head.
"And then Draco tried to let Snape and I go. Out of—friendship."
Though Lili had paused, expecting questions here, Professor McGonagall merely nodded, urging her to continue. "There's nothing you can tell me about that young man that will surprise me anymore. Please, go on."
Lili took a deep, cool breath, trying to process this statement and push through the rest of the story as quickly and painlessly as possible. "That's when Harry came in. He was going to take Draco in, but Voldemort had followed him to us. He'd been there long enough to discover that Draco was willing to let us go, and so counted all three of us as traitors." She took another breath. "Voldemort petrified Professor Snape and myself and did the same to Harry, readying to kill him. But—" The breath shivered in her mouth. "Draco tried to stop him. –Then—Voldemort killed Draco, and tried to kill Harry. And he—the Dark Lord—he exploded…"
McGonagall was nodding still, and Lili stopped her remembering, hoping the older witch would offer some explanation for the Dark Lord's peculiar end.
She didn't oblige. "Yes, we all felt the tremor. I knew the battle must be over, one way or another."
Lili tensed, trying to sit up some and press the matter. "But—how? I mean Voldemort himself told us he'd protected himself against the ancient magic of sacrifice. That's why Dumbledore's—" She fell off, seeing the twinkle in McGongall's eyes waver.
"Yes," she sighed, shifting her injured knee slightly in seeming discomfort. "I'm afraid it was a gamble Albus lost. Voldemort had protected himself against the same kind of magic that Lily Potter defeated him with so many years ago." She swallowed, lifting her head as if attempting to lift her spirits. "But he had not, it seems, protected himself against another sort of ancient magic."
Lili furled her brow, urging the older witch forward with the flickering of her green eyes.
"You see, Miss Lee, there is a crucial difference between the sacrifice made by Lily Potter and the sacrifice of Draco Malfoy." She touched the paleness of Lili's face gently with her eyes. "Harry's mother saved Harry the way any mother would save her son: out of a love deep but inevitable. Mister Malfoy, on the other hand, gave his life to save his enemy. That sort of magic is as ancient and yet runs far deeper. Mister Malfoy's sacrifice was one that no one—not even the Dark Lord—could have prepared for. It was a sacrifice so powerful in fact, that it managed to do what Lily Potter didn't—to raze through the Dark Lord's very life."
The sunlight spread lightly over McGonagall's face, shadowing every line, brightening the pink of her lips.
Lili felt as though the same thin, warm light that filtered through the cracked ceiling above was filling her heart. Of course, she whispered to herself, thinking back to Draco, black blood dribbling from his lips, steely eyes crackling with dew, breath wheezing.
I'm tired—of—I—hate—I—won't let you—
Swallowed in green light.
Of course. The sacrifice of a man for his enemy was perhaps the deepest, most powerful sacrifice imaginable. And Draco had done it. Probably not out of love—perhaps merely out of anger, disappointment, and hatred for the monsters he'd served and suffered. But it didn't matter: he'd saved them all.
"Mister Malfoy's body is lying in wait for official Ministry services. He's already been awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class. Posthumously, of course."
Stinging tears framed her eyes in a haze. He might not be the boy who lived, in the end, he'd proven he was more. He wasn't just the boy who died, either. He was the boy who died to save every single person who'd called him evil or wicked or hopeless.
Her lips curled, trembling, into a damp smile. She brushed her eyes and cheeks, and looked up at McGonagall only to see the twinkling in the older witch's eyes had grown teary as well. "That boy. Never in a thousand ages would I have thought—that boy—"
Lili blinked long, banishing the last of the tears. Her mind rolled his face across the her inner eyes, and she saw him the way she had seen him in the Slytherin common room three years earlier.
I never thought so either.
But I should have …
And now everyone would know. It was everything he'd wanted.
She met McGonagall's eyes again, trying to urge the other woman away from tears. Her heart already fluttered weakly from the wringing of emotion, and she wanted very much to steady it once again. "What about the Dementors? After the Dark Lord was gone, these Dementors just came swarming in around us. We couldn't cast a Patronus fast enough." She glanced over at Snape again, reassuring herself that things had, indeed, turned out okay. "What happened to the Dementors?"
The tears seemed, almost instantly, to evaporate from McGonagall's eyes, a smile again twisting across her cheeks.
"I believe you have me to thank for that."
Lili recognized the voice as soon as it rapped against her ears. She pushed her head up higher, trying to find the body that matched.
Madame Pomfrey had reappeared, apparently with her visitor in tow. Professor McGonagall stood, grinning, and limped away from the bed so Olivia could take her place.
"Olivia?" Lili could barely manage, trying to sit up higher despite the smarting down her left side. "What are you doing here?"
"Saving your ass," she said, reaching out and adjusting the pillow behind Lili.
"What are you talking about?"
"It seems," Professor McGonagall interjected, "that Miss Birch here, though having some serious difficulties with the study of Auroring, can be quite impressive in the application of her knowledge when it comes down to it."
Lili's eyes darted back to Olivia, questioning. Olivia shrugged. "Who knew? But the department couldn't keep me away once I heard about you—and Snape."
Lili's lips shook in a grin.
"So I came with all the real Aurors," her roommate continued, brushing a strand of blonde behind her ear and shifting so as to extricate herself from the falling light. "They were pretty desperate for any one they could get. And I was doing just fine—well, okay, I wasn't doing much of anything really—until I ran across Lucius Malfoy."
Lili's eyes narrowed. She remembered in a flash how attentive the elder Malfoy had been to Olivia at the wedding ceremony a week earlier, and knew with a shudder how happy he must have been to run into the weakling would-be Auror on the battlefield.
"Apparently he thought it would be great fun to curse me and, as he put it, keep me as a 'toy' for later." She wiggled in disgust. "But, he learned the hard way. It's not nice to touch a girl without permission."
Lili and McGonagall exchanged smirks.
"I petrified him and was getting ready to bind him when the Dementors came," she continued, her own slender hands fiddling with the sheets as Lili had. Lili could tell the idea of the black ghosts still bothered her, causing her blue eyes to dart between the bed and her audience for a moment. "There must have been three or four of them. I managed—and for the first time in my life, I might add—to cast a pretty decent Patronus, but they wouldn't be deterred from food of some kind." She gave a small, furtive smile. "I'm afraid Mister Malfoy got rather a different kiss than he was hoping for."
Well, there was one small bit of justice, she thought to herself, not bothering to hide her happiness at the news.
"I really thought they would come for me next, but there was this tremendous shaking and they all just—stopped." She froze her hands in midair to illustrate. "Then they turned around and started off in another direction. So I followed them. They weren't interested in me anymore, but I could tell something had happened. They were letting out this kind of infernal screeching noise, like the sort of scream you'd imagine a dying bird would make. And then they entered this hollow, and they weren't the only ones. I think all the Dementors were making their way to that spot." Her blue eyes trembled across Lili. "That's when I saw you, you and Professor Snape, Harry Potter, and Draco Malfoy—just lying there. I figured you were all dead, but I wasn't about to let the Dementors get your bodies."
Professor McGonagall laid a spotted, thin hand on Olivia's shoulder. "Yes, indeed. It was some Patronus: one of the most impressive I've ever seen. The Dementors scattered. Several of the other Aurors were able to round up most of them before they did any real damage. Very impressive."
Lili could only nod, mutely, still somewhat shocked that Olivia, the infamously dunderheaded Auror, had saved her life.
"I'll say it was impressive," Olivia agreed, grinning wide. "The Ministry has deigned to graduate me from Auror training immediately based on my 'excellent performance in the practical arena.' And they've awarded me the Order of Merlin, Second Class."
Lili shook her head, then chuckled, then reached out and squeezed her roommate's hand in altering waves of shock and amusement. "Well, Olivia—I don't know what to say. I mean, thank you, of course. Thank you. And I'm sorry I ever underestimated you or your abilities."
"Well I'm a Gryffindor to the core, what can I say," she replied, rolling her eyes and squeezing Lili's hand in return. "Besides, it will all be worth it to see Snape's face when they tell him I saved his life." Olivia's cheeks twisted with a wicked sneer, and Lili couldn't suppress a sudden laugh.
"He would probably have preferred to have the Dementors suck his soul out through his mouth."
Lili's heart lurched at the words. She pushed herself up fully, ignoring the insistent clucking of Madame Pomfrey.
Snape was sitting up now, surveying Olivia through beetle-black eyes. His face sunk heavy in a scowl, and he adjusted himself under the sheets with a foul-tempered grumble. "I suppose, Miss Birch, you expect some elaborate apology from me for all the years of torment I put you through and all the times I called you an incurable nitwit."
Olivia didn't answer, looking a little caught off-guard by Snape's gruffness.
"Well you can forget it," he growled, straightening himself and pushing his limp, greasy hair from his smirking face. "The fact that you've proven yourself an incurable and yet somehow quite lucky dunderhead changes nothing."
Olivia bit her lip. Madame Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall were gaping at him in disbelief.
Snape's eyes flitted over to Lili's. For a moment he pinned her with them quite savagely, sparking at her with every bit as much irritation as he reserved for his first-year Gryffindors.
Then his lips cracked into a smile, eyes lightening until they seemed to shine like polished obsidian.
"I will however thank you, Miss Birch, for saving your roommate. For that, I am in your debt."
Lili was out of her bed in second, feet and legs kicking free of their covers and arms flying out around Snape's thin, veiled neck. She didn't even notice the tears beginning to burn behind her eyes.
His body remained rigid beneath her embrace, his arms and legs stiffening as she pressed towards him. Realizing his discomfiture with such an open display, and trying to stifle her impatience and disappointment at this reaction, she pulled away, taking in a deep breath to feel his smell tickle again through her nose–spices now mixed with fermented dew.
But he grabbed her, keeping her near. She felt his chuckle shake against her ear as he pressed her closer, deepening the embrace.
"Lili…" He barely whispered.
When he finally allowed her to pull away, she couldn't believe the face staring back at hers. It was sallow, but free from lines. He looked, suddenly, like a young man, twenty years of sorrow and worry lifted like a mask, as if all the shadow had drained away as easily as the Mark on his arm. The only dark lingering on his face was the tiny black of stitches, and, when that faded, he would be whole again—himself. His eyes sparkled from some deep place within. She smiled and cried, not knowing what else to do.
He leaned forward and brushed her lips with his.
The warmth of his skin, the piercing shade of his eyes, the softness of his breath tickling her mouth. She shuddered and melted, closing her eyes as if she thought she must be dreaming.
And I don't want to wake up…
His lips withdrew from hers, warm and soft, and she looked up in embarrassment, suddenly quite aware that not only was her face undoubtedly flushed and her breaths ragged, but that they were being closely and unabashedly watched by three witches whose expressions betrayed their own amazement.
Snape's face hardened into that of the cruel Potion Master's once more, his chin raising slightly as he met the three pairs of eyes that watched then pretended not to have watched their kiss. He arched his eyebrow and, with a familiar frown, cleared his throat harshly.
The three witches jumped to their feet and scurried away, Madame Pomfrey stopping mid-step, then turning back to place the curtains around his bed before she left.
She gave Lili a little wink and hurried out the door.
Lili allowed herself a quick wink back, stolen away from Snape's gaze.
And now that the peanut gallery's gone…
She turned and leaned in towards him, eager for more of the soft warmth of his lips.
He stopped her, thin, lean fingers across her ready mouth. "Wait, Mis—Lili. There are a few things that must be said."
She sat back, barely keeping from groaning in frustration by gnawing on her already smarting tongue. What did he need to say? Hadn't he just said it all?
But he hadn't told her anything. Only that, if they survived…
"Lili, I have to tell you." The smiles and bright eyes of not two seconds previous were gone, sunk back into his dark, guarded gaze. Though the lines and shadows had not returned to his face, he looked suddenly very frail, and Lili couldn't help but reach out for his hand.
He pulled it away. "Lili, the things—the things Voldemort told you—about my past—about the other women—" He fell off, swallowing with a dry sigh.
"Severus—"
"No, please. They're true, Lili. All that was true. I did horrible things, and there's no denying that just because Voldemort is gone and I'll be absolved of my crimes." He met her eyes, heavy, and she watched him caress her face—her cheeks, her lips, her chin—all without lifting a finger. "If, knowing those things, you'd rather not—be involved with me whatsoever—I wouldn't blame you. There are plenty of reasons you shouldn't want this—this. I'm old enough to be your father, for Merlin's sake. And I was ready to commit suicide and leave you. And—"
"And willing to sacrifice yourself to save me?" she interrupted, reaching out and taking his hand though he attempted, once again, to pull away. "Willing from the time you knew what had happened two years ago to do everything in your power to help save me? To teach me? To be my one companion?" She cradled his corded hand in hers, tracing the lines of his palm lightly. "Please, Severus. What we were before—both of us—let those people rest along with the other casualties of war." She shrugged. "And maybe you are too old for me. Maybe it won't work. Hell, maybe you'd like to explore all your options now that you're a swinging bachelor."
He snorted but allowed her a small smirk.
"But, I want--to try." She leaned forward and kissed his gaunt cheek lightly, pressing the hard bone with her tender lips.
Though she could not see his face, she felt his smile on her cheek. She laughed. "After all. Mountains are tall, rivers are long—"
Her voice choked in her throat as he grasped her by the shoulders and pulled her to him, pressing his own lips to her cheek, letting his kisses tickle up towards her ear. His breath was surprisingly cool as it twisted down her neck. "Is anything impossible?"
She sighed and brushed at his long hair with her fingers, feeling his skin close to hers. They embraced and kissed for a long while, both of them drizzled with gold light from above.
And, peering over the bed curtains, the painted old woman renewed her enthusiastic thumbs up.
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A/N: Ahh! Last chapter? Is this the end?
Well, here's the answer: I don't know, actually. I have an epilogue written, one which I originally intended to include. However, upon re-reading (re-reading about a zillion times), I'm not sure if it shouldn't end here. However, this is my decision. I knew I'd agonize over this for a very long time and not get these chapters out before Feb like I promised, so, I'm giving these to you now. I'll make a decision about the epilogue soon, and if you want an email when I do so, let me know. I'll give it to anyone who wants to read it, but I just may not put it up as an "official" part of the story.
That being said, thanks to all of you who've read along through the adventures of Lili and Snape. I hope it was an entertaining experience: I've certainly had a good time writing these two stories, and, I like to flatter myself that I've improved my writing skills somewhat. I would love to enthusiastically thank EVERYONE who ever reviewed, or, hell, even those of you who didn't review but read along faithfully (I'm as guilty as anybody of reading and not reviewing, so…) I'm especially grateful to those of you who've offered me constructive crit, it's really been helpful, and I hope I've improved because of your suggestions. Here comes the beautiful list of those many people I have to thank:
1,000 karma points and big hugs to: Chisa, Fidelis Haven, Rosmerta, Snape's Slave, Fae, Iris C, faerie, candledot, Hecate, Elspeth, Cathy, Gurl, Qe Too, potionsmaster, Ensis, faerie, Julischka, Norbert for President, Mariner, Aishiteru Duo, AntipodeanOpaleye, Arun, Arilla Riddle, Pyramidal-Apollo, Lilwhite, Theresa, Zebee, celithravien, and all those people who I might have accidentally left out! Also, thanks to those of you who reviewed anonomously on sites other than ff.net! I heartily recommend non-ff.net sites, especially those that allow NC-17. Support these places, people!
As far as Lili/Snape, this is, I'm afraid, the end as far as fics go. There will be no sequel. I am, however, and have been, writing on new fics, because I absolutely have to be writing at all times, and, since I don't happen to have any well-developed original story ideas atm, fanfic will keep my skills developing. I only write Hp fics, and, more specifically, I only write Slyth fics, so you can be guaranteed the next story will be along those lines. I'm toying with a couple of ideas right now, and, if you want, I'll let you know when they get posted. :o) I hope you'll all come along with me into new adventures…
This has been great fun, guys, thanks again. As always, please leave reviews, and let me know what you thought!
Cheers!
Not British, but loving that expression,
Kite
