Wrong Kind of Hero

Chapter 7: Worst Memories in the Making

you never get to choose, you live on what they sent you, you know they're gonna use the things you love against you…

AN: Credit goes to JKR (of course) for "Snape's Worst Memory", and her lovely dialogue, around which I wove my own. Apologies for not clarifying this sooner- WKoH will stick to canon as long as possible, but will probably end up AU in some fashion (because dead!Lily and angsty!Sev is canon already, and it's rather difficult for them to get together under those circumstances).

"Absolutely not," Remus said, standing up abruptly and dislodging a protesting Sirius from his lap. "I'm shocked you can even consider it! Lily's happy with Snape. You should accept defeat and let her go."

"Never," James said fervently, the mad gleam of the fanatic in his eyes. "Evans is my destiny. We're meant to be together."

"Really," Lupin started in skeptically, but James cut him off.

"This isn't just some schoolboy crush, Moony. This is love. And I'm going to fight for her. She's only with old Snivellus because she doesn't know how heavily he's into the Dark Arts." Remus shook his head sadly.

"I'm disappointed in you," he said. "All three of you."

"Aww, but Moony-"

"Don't even think about it, Sirius. You should know better." With that, he turned his back on them and walked away.

"Now look what you did!" Sirius shot a glare at James. "This girl better be worth all the groveling I'm going to have to do." He took off after Remus, metaphorical tail between his legs. "Moony, come back here, I wasn't going to-"

They'd trapped him, those damn Marauders, right on the heels of a verbal flogging from Avery and Mulciber again. He was getting threats, subtle but there, if he didn't conform to proper Slytherin standards of conduct— in other words, Death Eater conduct. Dark Magic. He hadn't been doing his quota. Then those blasted Marauders and the envious James Potter had set out to humiliate him again.

"Chuffed you could make it, Snivellus!"

"Wotcher, Snivelly, ready for a duffing up?" As if any of that mattered now, since he'd won already. He had Lily. Potter didn't. But then suddenly he was upside down and helpless, and the feeling he hated worst of all was feeling out of control, and they were hurling taunts at him, not just them but everyone.

"What's the matter, Snape? Scared?"

"Need a girl to come to your rescue?"

"Why don't you fight back, Snivellus? Or are you a coward?"

"Snape's a coward!"

Of course Lily had to witness this, and so did all his Slytherin mates who hated her. If he let her rescue him like this, they'd hurt her. They'd take it as a personal insult to the House. Oh, no, Merlin no. He had to get her out of here! Whatever it took, he had to get her out of harm's way. Can't you just leave well enough alone, Lily?

"Go away," he shouted, hoping she'd get the message and leave before Avery and Mulciber spotted her amidst the commotion. Snape strained against his invisible bonds, knowing hopelessly that there was no other way. She'd only leave if he did something so horrible, so awful that she wouldn't deign him worthy of rescue, and he was pinned into a tight enough corner to do it. His heart sank. Forgive me, he thought, and took a breath.

'I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!' Lily blinked, and felt time expand and then stop altogether. So that's what he really thought of her? He'd just been, what, dating her to get into her pants? He'd been faking love to prove that he could get any Mudblood girl to date him? Was this some sick initiation test from his Deatheater friends?

Filthy little Mudblood. That's what she was to him? After everything they'd shared, he could say something like that when he knew how much it hurt her? She must have seriously misjudged him.

"Fine," she said coolly, not allowing any emotion into her voice. "I won't bother in the future." Her lower lip trembled. She balled her hands into fists. "And I'd wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus."

"Apologise to Evans," she heard James roar. That was even more infuriating. He didn't get it. He was just making it worse. Lily laughed bitterly as he tried to defend himself when she said he was just as bad as Snape. Sure, it was true; James had never called her a Mudblood. But he was still awful. She listed off all the things about him that had always pissed her off and concluded,

"I'm surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it. You make me SICK. And you can't even bother to call me by my first name!' It was trivial, but it was the last straw. She couldn't get out of there fast enough. Her heart felt like it was breaking. She couldn't look at Severus or James. It was all she could do not to break down sobbing right there and make a tremendous scene. Remus caught her eye briefly as she turned on her heel and sprinted away. He looked apologetic, almost guilty; another time she would have wondered what was up, but all she wanted now was a hole in the ground where she could curl up and cry.

Well, that hadn't gone as anticipated. At all. Not even remotely. True, he'd managed to humiliate Snivelly again in front of everyone, but Evans had said he was just as bad as Snape. Thought he was a conceited arrogant toerag, in fact, and that she wouldn't go out with him for the world. Even Sirius had agreed with her as much as he'd dared. Damn. Well, all wasn't lost. At least he got Snape to call her a Mudblood. That'll be the end of their little romance, James thought with satisfaction, rolling up his sleeves. And probably the end of their friendship as well.

"Right," he said furiously, getting down to business, "right -" He'd vent his feelings on Snape. He cast another spell, and Snape tilted upside down again to the amusement of all onlookers.

"Shall we end the boxer/brief debate at last? Who wants to see me take off Snivelly's pants?"

Lily stood in the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, summoned by the portrait of the Fat Lady. She was wearing a purple silk pajama set and her eyes had dark circles under them. She didn't appear to have slept.

"I didn't wake you, did I?"

"No," Lily said shortly. She looked like he felt: exhausted and agonized. She blew out a breath. "What do you want?"

"To apologize."

"Save your breath."

"I mean it."

"I don't want to hear it."

"You're going to hear it all the same. I'm sorry. I'm so completely and utterly sorry, Lily. I had no right or reason to say that to you, but if you could only understand…"

"I hear you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"

"But you ARE different! You're not like them. You're not like anyone I've ever met before." He tried a different tactic. "I'll sleep out here every night until you forgive me, you know I will." She closed her eyes, seeming very old and worn just then.

"I just don't know, Severus. I'm sorry. We don't seem to have much in common anymore." She averted her eyes, staring at her bare feet, not wanting to look at him. "And the worst part of all this is, I really did love you."

There was infinite sadness in her eyes as she stepped back through the portal and it closed behind her, and he could hear her sobbing through the door. He'd only meant to call her an insufferable know-it-all or accuse her of cheating on him, anything to get her to go, but instead those horrific words had come out of him and ruined his life. He'd wanted to tell her why, but how could he explain what she'd never believe? Snape slammed his fist against the stone wall behind him. He felt the skin on his knuckles tear. His hand would be a bloody mess, and he could heal it easily enough even without going to the infirmary, but the pain in his hand was drowning out the pain in other inaccessible places, so he left it be. Pain was just his weakness leaving him. Clearly he was very weak. He stared at his mangled hand, wondering when the blood would run yellow for his cowardice.

The next day, Potter and Black ganged up on him, hidden under that despicable, spineless invisibility cloak. Potter punched him in the face and broke his nose with a sickening crunch.

"Do not EVER make Lily cry, understand, Snivellus? I don't know what brutal things you said to her, but she hates you. She never wants to see you again." No, it wasn't true, it couldn't be true. She never wanted to see him again? No. He refused to believe it. His eyes watered but he would not cry. His nose was going to heal crooked. Good. He would have a hooked nose and lanky, unwashed black hair to match his black eyes and a perpetual sneer. Then the ugliness outside would match the ugliness within. How could she have ever loved him in the first place? "Easy," she would have said, "I see what's in your heart." But not now. Now he was lucky to even be breathing the same air with her in class.

She'd have a perfect fairytale life with bleeding popular James Potter, and she'd never look back, not once. Not for him. James Potter rode the white horse Sirius had bought him with his family's money and had the shining armor he'd got Peter to polish and the dragon Remus had been training so he could vanquish it easily. That was how things were, how they always were meant to be. Snape had overstepped his boundaries; he was supposed to get left behind while the lovers rode off into the sickening sunset. He'd turn his horse around and ride into the embracing darkness; in time, bitterness and deliberate cruelty and evil deeds might erase any trace of goodness she'd left on his life.

And yet (he knew because he'd volunteered to stay behind and scrub out the cauldrons), when she made Amorentia for the Slug Club's annual Valentine's Day celebration, the cauldron still smelled like him and Hep and the potions he was constantly brewing. The same way it had smelled last year, and the year before. He knew he wasn't meant to be in her story that way, but he sneered at convention and rules. If just this once the world could forgive him stepping out of his allotted place as the tragic, self-sacrificing pathetic man pining for a long lost love… even if it couldn't. She didn't seem to want a proper hero. What she seemed to want was all-consuming love. What she seemed to want was happiness and joy. She doesn't look happy now, he thought, watching her from a distance as she made her way to the Gryffindor table at dinner.

He was right: she wasn't.