Disclaimer: I want Severus Snape. But I can't have him, can I? His world is not mine :(

[Written for Quidditch League Season 8 Round 3]

Beater 1 prompt:

• Write about someone asking for forgiveness

• (lyric quote) Hamilton — It's Quiet Uptown ("If I could spare his life / If I could trade his life for mine")

Additional prompts:

(quote) "Because I knew you, I have been changed for good." - Wicked

(emotion) regret

(location) park

Alba Alstroemeria

The night was silent but for the chirping of crickets and the gentle patter of rain on grass; the air felt heavy with something strange afoot. The children who had collected their Halloween plunder about the neighbourhood earlier that evening had long since traipsed home to be tucked into their beds.

The still night of Cokeworth Park was disturbed by a sudden crack that cut sharply through the air and silenced the crickets. One Severus Snape abruptly appeared with shoulder-length ebony hair that hung limply around his sallow face, swathed in heavy robes so black they melted into the night. His body crumpled to its knees, wracked with a relentless trembling; the night air now filled with the deep and gasping sobs of a man devastated beyond all reason.

He remained in that position for an indeterminable length of time.

His hands had fallen to the damp grass, clutching wildly at them as a drowning man at straws, fingers raking through them as though it would help ground him. Words that tore harshly from his throat barely made a whisper of a sound across his cold and chapped lips.

'M'sorry...I'm sorry...nonono...Lilylily oh Circe...Lily. How could this have...' He gurgled and choked on the emotions fighting so desperately to rip their way out of him.

The glacial cold that pierced through to the marrow of his bones was from his aching heart, of that Severus was certain. There was no way the rain could ever make him feel as numb as he did in this moment.

Unbidden, images of Lily sprawled harshly across the floor materialised in his mind. Her brilliantly vibrant red hair now dull and lifeless like a broken halo around her sweet, gentle face. Jade green eyes occluded by the shadow of death, and limbs askew in unnatural positions. Severus knew, of course, these were but horrific images his imagination had thought up to punish him. For he had not been there to protect her when she had needed it most.

'My...fault. All my fault! I killed her. I killed her...I killed you. Forgive me...forgive me,' he cried into the withering grass. 'Lily...why did it have to be you?'

Shifting shadows seemed to form around him, taking on the faces of his father, the Muggle children that tormented him in his childhood, the damned Marauders—James Potter. They circled around him like predators, taunting him, cursing him, screaming at him for all his inadequacies.

'Weak!'

'Foolish boy!'

'Scum!'

'Good for nothing!'

'Imbecile!'

'You never did amount to anything after all!'

'Look what you did!'

'LOOK WHAT YOU DID!'

And the silhouette of James Potter standing there before him, the grief and anger in his eyes pronouncing judgement on Severus. With two words that fell silent from Potter's lips, yet resonated as loudly as though they had been shouted, the apparitions disappeared.

'Why her?'

Severus wrenched up from the ground, his robes thoroughly soaked through and his hair straggly tendrils plastered to his face. The rain was beating down hard on him now; the world chastising him for its loss of a pure and beautiful soul.

Blinking blearily through the rain and his tears, Severus peered at his surroundings and realised he was not far from the playground in Cokeworth Park where he first met Lily. He had not been here since his fall out with her in fifth year. He spun around slowly, drinking in the sight of the familiar place; a sandbox with barely any sand left, worn-out climbing bars, and rickety old swings that creaked too much when you went past a certain height. Those were the very same swings he had first witnessed Lily displaying her magic. The way she had swung off the swing so gracefully had already impressed him, not to mention the flower she had then bloomed in her palm for her sister. The sunny way in which she had so blithely interacted with her sister—so very different from what he knew in his relationships—drew him in like a Flitterby moth to bluebell flames. He had wanted that kind of easy friendship all his life; approaching Lily then was likely the best decision he ever made in his life. Perhaps the only good decision he ever made.

He conjured a handful of bluebell flames silently now, as memories came flooding into his mind.

'Sev, look at this! I tried one of the spells in the book you lent me, since it looked the easiest. Look!' Lily had called out to him as she ran the length of the small park toward him. In her hands was cradled a tiny ball of blue flames.

'Lils!' Severus had called out, panicked as he quickly scanned their surroundings. 'You can't just use magic so openly! There are many Muggles about, and if you were seen there's something called the Statute of Secrecy we have to keep or the Ministry would—'

'Oh hush, Sev. I simply just can't wait for Hogwarts to begin next month!' Lily had giggled as she danced around him, still cupping the flames in her palms. She had stopped before him abruptly, with a sudden serious and uncertain look upon her young face. 'We will still be friends, won't we, Sev? In Hogwarts, I mean. There's so many other people that are going to be there, but you'll still be my best friend, won't you?'

'Of course. I'll be your best friend, and you mine. Always!' He had nodded fervently and promised her with all the conviction his little heart could muster.

—

In their fourth year, Petunia had been seeing someone from her school, so Lily and Severus had spent most of their summer in Cokeworth Park without any interruptions.

As Lily laid on her back, fingers twisting around the stems of the daisy chain she had made, Severus sat curled up with his arms around his knees beside her, his eyes on her watching the clouds pass above them in a dreamy daze. She had been voicing her arbitrary thoughts every so often, and Severus had patiently entertained the discussions of each one.

'Do you suppose we were born with a purpose in life, Sev?' Had been one of them.

He had pondered it for a while before answering. 'Not everyone, I suppose. Some are born with a clear purpose they have to fulfil in life, and others are just...' He struggled to find an appropriate word.

'Lost?' Lily supplied.

'No...just searching. Searching for meaning, for a purpose to live and keep living,' he affirmed.

'Do you have a purpose, then?' she hedged.

'No,' he said, his answer short, a quick beat of his surety.

'Well, you'll find it someday, I'm sure. Sometimes I get the sense that my purpose in life is to meet many, many people and to help them. One of them being you, Sev. I'm so glad I met you.'

'As am I. Knowing you has changed me for good. I no longer fear...being alone.' His eyes glimmered with faint happiness at his first and closest friend.

'Yet, you still hang out with them. Avery and Mulciber and the rest. They aren't good for you, Sev. Some of the things they do, the things they say...it's repulsive,' Lily voiced, upset.

'They are my Housemates. I have to be on good terms with them. But you know I won't be like them,' he insisted.

'You don't see me cuddling up to Potter and his merry little band of friends.' She rolled her eyes.

'That's because they're repulsive to everyone in general,' he quipped. Lily snorted, mollified.

That had been the last week of summer before fifth year had begun, and the last time they spent together amicably before the fight that would break their friendship and Severus' world apart. In this park with so many memories of their time together, the remembrance and emotions suffocated him, and his bluebell flames were extinguished.

'You have five minutes.' Lily had finally come out from the Gryffindor common room after a week of his pleading. She stared him down, her eyes boring into him with an intensity she usually reserved for his Housemates when they were being particularly uncouth.

'Lils, please. You know I didn't mean any of that. It was just a slip of the tongue and you know I don't mean any of that!'

'It certainly didn't seem that way when you just stayed silent all the times they talked me down. You just stood there and let them!' Her tone grew heated, her voice reverberated loudly in the stone corridor. 'And now you dare tell me that calling me that...that...horrid slur was a slip of the tongue? Do you take me for a fool? James and the others were right. Your ideals have clearly changed...Snivellus. Don't approach me anymore. I want nothing to do with you.'

He shrunk from the glare she pinned on him as she turned to clamber through the portrait hole. His heart ached with the knowledge that even though he was in the wrong first by referring to Lily as a Mudblood, she had conceded to use the hateful name Potter assigned him.

The months following their fall out was harrowing in so many ways for Severus. Nearly the whole school turned against him, taking his insult of kind, sweet Lily as a personal affront to themselves. They yelled names after him and sent jinxes his way in corridors. Half the faculty of professors seemed to eye him with no uncertain disdain. His Housemates stayed ever closer by his side, hissing snide comments about everyone, and crooning words of assurance and camaraderie into his ears. In this way, he was tormented until graduation.

Then, he was hauled off by Avery and Mulciber to greet their new "Dark Lord". The Dark Lord was a charismatic man, to be sure. He carried himself with such a regal air one might mistake him for royalty, and Severus was certain this man's handsome, aristocratic looks endeared him to many. But most of all, Severus could do nothing but listen with rapt attention as the Dark Lord's smooth tenor wove possibilities that lay before Severus if he would be glad to join in their cause.

'I want to be rid of the need to fear others,' Severus had said wearily.

'Then you shall have it.' A promise easily given; heavily fulfilled.

The prospect had thrilled him at first. Finally, to be the one in the advantageous position, not having to lower his head in shame as he passed people who glowered at his inadequacies and flaws. Then their assemblies had taken a different, darker direction. One that frightened him, worried him of the implications. Yet he was in, and to show any sign of disloyalty would mean pain worse than death.

The chance to rise in the Dark Lord's ranks had presented itself in the form of an overheard conversation; the excitement of having something over the others pushed him to seek an audience with the Dark Lord immediately. He had not paused, had not stopped to consider the meaning of his words, the consequences it would bring. His pleading for Lily's life had garnered him no sympathy; not even a glance thrown his way, as the Dark Lord paced before the fireplace and plotted.

In a single night he both lost and gained.

While the world was rejoicing with news of the demise of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, he had quietly Apparated to Godric's Hollow. Even from some distance away, the sight of the crumbling house, its obliterated second floor, and the strong stench of death lingering had him gagging. He had fled.

His tears now mingled with the rain, running in countless rivulets down his face. 'If I could spare your life...If I could trade your life for mine...! I didn't mean for harm to have come to anyone, Lily, least of all you! I would have done anything, anything to save you. Only you. Always you.'

He had allowed himself to be led by the nose, turned to things he never wanted. An oily feeling of self-revulsion overcame him—all the acts he had been made to do, the terrible things he had had to witness. He was stained, dirty, unworthy. His thoughts turned toward back to the Dark Lord, and the previously growing unease swelled to incomprehensible proportions of bitterness and enmity. He had thought that he found comrades, but now knew it was better to lay with lions than be suffocated in that swarming bed of snakes.

He dragged up the left sleeve of his robe to see a faint outline of the Dark Mark left. It had been fading since the last hour, with a pain as that of a dagger being dragged through his skin over and over again. His decision was made. Conjuring a lily flower, its pure white petals reflected in the depths of his coal black eyes.

'Because I knew you, I have been changed for good,' Severus murmured as he laid it on the seat of the swing. 'And because you knew me, you were lost to the world.'

In searching for meaning he had once been lost, but he had finally found his purpose to keep on living. It was for all that he could not accomplish. For mourning their lost innocence. For the memory of Lily Evans.

'Forgive me.'

Words: 2,245

A/N: My heart is broken for this man. Join me-

All my love goes to Farbautidottir, my George, for helping me beta this to within an inch of its life. It wouldn't have been the same (trust me) haha