Disclaimer: I do not own anything you don't recognize from the Harry Potter books.

I don't think it ever really mattered that you never loved me back. You had Potter, and from the beginning, no matter how much you tried to deny it, you loved him. And he loved you. I stood no chance. A greasy haired Slytherin, who was so deeply immersed in the Dark Arts it was impossible to see the person he had once been. All we had in common was Potions. Ah, Potions. Slughorn always put us together and I treasured those lessons and precious study hours where we would correct our textbooks until we probably write our own book. You were the one I shared my life with – my father's cruelty, my mother's helplessness, my own anguish – even minor things, like the Potions lab I worked in when I was six and how the chemicals there changed my hair forever. Because no matter how much I told you, no matter what a disgusting person I thought I was, you didn't care. You were the first person that accepted me for what I was, Lily, and that's why I will always love you.

Every night in my dreams
I see you, I feel you,
That is how I know you go on

You haunted my mind for years after your death. I would hear a knock at the door and would run to it, convinced you had returned to me at last. I would walk through the Great Hall and automatically scan Gryffindor table, looking for your bright mop of hair.

But taking that job at Hogwarts was probably the best thing I ever did. Because even though every corner, every corridor brought up memories of you, burying myself under layers of sarcasm and cruelty and hate made me forget what I'd done and who I was. And it worked, too. Because now I only see you in my dreams.

Far across the distance
And spaces between us
You have come to show you go on

Every night ghosts of you dance like shadowed specters across my imagination. I get into bed, my mind full of images of Longbottom blowing up his cauldron or the first years having a dung throwing competition. But the second I close my eyes I'm with you. We are talking. Just talking. About everyday things – how my day went, and who and what I taught. Almost as if you are my wife and we are just a normal couple. I think my mind only does this to prove to me that no matter how far apart we are, you will always live in my memory – you will always go on.

Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
And you're here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on

If you lived today, I think I would have died long ago. Oh, they all think 'Severus Snape, he led Voldemort to the Potters and murdered Dumbledore, what a total bastard.' But maybe I wouldn't be who I am now if you had loved me. Maybe I would be a good old married man with a wife he adored and children he loved. I don't know. But if you had lived, and loved Potter and had more baby Potters, I would have killed myself. Or died anyway. You can't live for long without a heart.

People say I'm heartless. But I'm not. Seeing you with Potter would have gnawed at my heart until I had nothing left. Then I would be heartless. But now? It is simply cracked in two. At least with you dead I don't have to be broken daily. Because though your body died that day, your heart soared on silver wings and landed in my body. So as long as I go on, so do you.

You were the first person that ever opened the door of friendship to me. And daily you still do. Because as long as my shriveled, withered old heart lives, so does your fresh, sweet, kindly heart will.

Love can touch us one time
and last for a lifetime
and never let go till we're one

I guess love really only touched one of us. But love is like glue – even though only one person has it, the other still gets stuck to it. That's not a really eloquent way to put it, Sev, you would have said. Love is so much more than glue. And I would have sneered and made a sarcastic comment that she was right, love wasn't glue, love was a Permanent Sticking Charm.

Anyway, that blasted song was wrong. This love will last for so much longer than a lifetime, and since you're dead, we will never be one.

Love was when I loved you
one true time I hold to
in my life we'll always go on

The day you went to Hogsmeade with me was at once the worst and best day of my life. It was the first Hogsmeade trip of our seventh year and when you agreed it felt like my heart was about to burst out of my chest. I was planning to tell you how I felt. You met me in the Entrance with that emerald sweater that matched your eyes and your knee length black skirt. Potter was lurking behind you, he had seen you all dressed up for a date. When he saw you walking towards me I actually saw him take off his glasses and polish them. He couldn't believe that you had turned down the Head Boy and Quidditch Captain for me. It was actually quite funny.

We strolled around Hogsmeade laughing and talking. All day I waited for my opportunity. But when the time came, I couldn't do it. I wasn't strong enough. And when we walked up to the school together again, I knew that you would never be mine.

A few weeks later you started dating Potter. I never knew what happened between you two – what made you change her mind so suddenly. But even after you died, I could still remember that sweet, sweet day – the only true time in my life to hold on to.

Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
and you're here in my heart
and my heart will go on and on

There is some love that will not go away

Damn right there's some love that won't go away. Because if I could write 'I love you' on every grain of sand in the ocean, it wouldn't show fit representation of one tenth of my love, my beautiful Lily.

You're here, there's nothing I fear,
and I know that my heart will go on
we'll stay forever this way
you are safe in my heart
and my heart will go on and on

I'm not afraid of death, because I know that when I die you'll be waiting. And we'll dance on high with winged feet while both our hearts go on, and we'll roam Hogsmeade again young and free. Because as long as I have you, my heart will go on.

Author's note: Not even I am sure when this was set but I think it is sometime after the events of HBP. This version of Snape is how I see it.