He had not yet told Professor Slughorn whether he would be staying at Hogwarts over Christmas hols or not. Lucius had, as he was a potential inductee, invited him to stay at Malfoy Manor, and he had not yet once gone back home over Christmas, because it was an exercise in futility to try to have any semblance of a celebration. About the only thing that had ever happened at Christmas was that the men at the pub brought out stronger spirits, in the "spirit of the season", and Tobias tended to get quite sick. He was hardly expecting any different, but he hadn't heard how Mother was doing since October, that both good news and bad, because he would have heard if she had died, but silence didn't imply her improvement.
At every turn and corner he seemed to be reminded of something or other distressing. Whether his dying mother, his impending induction into the Death Eaters, or the fact that Lily had been dating his archenemy James Potter since Halloween, there didn't seem to be any good news for Severus Snape. Worse, one day he had stood beside her because of something or other Slughorn wanted to do, and they had exchanged no words, yet the look she gave him was pathos and melancholy, anger and empathy all, and he had kissed her—felt worse than a rapist when she pushed him away and strode off in anger.
It had begun to sleet when he exited the castle.
Lily was bundled into a long, beautiful coat, and a not-Gryffindor scarf around her neck, but carried nothing more than a handbag, and for once since the end of last year, was not surrounded by a gaggle of her housemates. In fact, she approached him, and he still saw that lost look, that he wished he could make better, that he wished he could change, even though he couldn't—couldn't change his own life, let alone hers.
"Sev." She said, and the real big green eyes looked into his, shimmering with threatening tears. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know what's wrong, really. I don't understand it. You, and Tuney, and Da, and Mum—it's like everything's changing, and I don't know where we belong, or why nobody thinks I do—or you. I-I wish it were just the way it was."
He looked steadily into those eyes, but he was paralyzed to act, to comfort her.
"I don't want it to change, Sev. I don't want it to change!"
"Yet it does," he whispered, under his breath, almost unintentionally.
"Promise me you don't hate me, Sev, please. Promise me you won't. I know you act like you do, but please. Don't."
"I promise," he said in a shiver that was most certainly not from the frigid air. "I promised before—I meant it, Lily."
"Lily!" Potter called from elsewhere on the grounds, and the red-haired angel with sorrow all over her face walked away from him.
A/N: Since ffnet doesn't do the same word counts as Word, anyway, I'm going to mention that it is my one-year anniversary of my first story posted on ffnet! Hurrah! And, a couple story notes: This is set in a much closer to canon universe than my standard alternate universe, but it is not trying for as canon as possible. Things will likely turn out differently. And, if you're curious about the time line: this first part of the story is taking place in their sixth year, in alternate months-each pair of stories has a fairly short time between them-on the order of a few days, instead of a month.