Wrong Kind of Hero

Final Chapter: The War is Over, and We are Beginning

"Wherever you're going sounds perfect." Lily gave him a wan smile. "Home would be nice. But I don't know where that is anymore. So you lead, and I'll follow." She tilted her face up to the rain and let it fall on her, drenching her mourning clothes and making rivulets of water drown out her makeup and her tears. "Provided we can walk there. And step in puddles."

"Alright," Snape said, giving her an odd look as she stepped out of her heels and walked into a puddle in her stocking feet. She hopped up and down, soaking herself further.

"It's that weird energy you get sometimes at funerals," she explained. "Like you're completely inappropriately giddy and you can't stop until it hits you again and then you start sobbing."

"But it's not just your loss in there… it's everyone's," he said softly. "And you just can't look at them right now. I know."

"That's it in a nutshell." She took a deep breath. "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!" She shouted giddily into the wind and the storm. Severus wondered if she'd gone mad. "It's from Lear. Not as satisfying as I thought it would be," she commented idly.

"I'm sorry," he said awkwardly, picking up her shoes.

"What for?" She asked, kicking water at him from her puddle.

"Everything."

"Why?" She tilted her head at him, curious.

"Because. If I hadn't- if you'd never met… if I wasn't so…"

"He's dead," she said abruptly, without really thinking about what it meant. "They're both dead. Who knows what might have been 'if we didn't' or 'I never'? Who cares, for that matter? What good does it do to be sorry? They're dead," she repeated numbly. Her knees wobbled under her, and he rushed over, afraid she was about to collapse. "Oh, God," she whispered in a small voice, "they're dead."

He placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. "But you're alive."

"Am I?" She ran her fingers through his wet hair and watched the water dripping off his broken nose.

"Yes." He said firmly. He took her hand, Side-Apparated her back to his flat, cast a drying charm on them both, and tried not to think about how much this resembled the night of her wedding. At least this time he wasn't offering her his shower… or his shirt…

"How can I tell?" She stared up at him from her place on his couch. "I feel like I could be dead." He put a hand over her heart.

"It beats." He moved his hand up to her mouth. "You're breathing." Lily repeated the motions solemnly, feeling the warm air trickling from his lips, placing her hand on his chest to feel the steady beating there.

"I can't feel it," she said shakily, starting to panic. "I have to be sure. Don't be dead!" She pressed her ear to his chest, closed her eyes and listened for a long moment. "It beats," she confirmed finally, snaking her left hand up to trace his lips. She waited. "You're breathing."

"Therefore," he said, hoping she'd make the connection.

"You're alive," she whispered, swallowing hard. "And the war is over."

"Yes."

"Oh," she said softly, trembling slightly, and then again, "oh."

"Lily? You're hyperventilating. Breathe with me, or I'm going to have to get a paper bag." She gradually matched her shallow, slightly hysterical breaths to his slow steady ones, and after a time, they were breathing in unison until, exhausted, she fell asleep listening to the rhythm of his heart. He attempted to slide out from under her without waking her, but she whimpered in her sleep and reached out for him, and so he stayed with an arm wrapped around her, wishing he could protect her from herself.

Lily's dreams were alternately terrifying and comforting. First she dreamt that Harry had lived, and that James and she and Harry were a happy family as they were meant to be. In her dream, she had not spoken to Severus since he'd called her a Mudblood in sixth year. Despite that, she seemed to be happy with James. Time passed quickly in her dream, and she was bouncing Harry on her knee when she heard the door bashed in and Death Eaters surrounding the house. There was a scuffle and a thud and an agonized scream from James. She hid herself and Harry in the upstairs closet and hoped against all hope they were not looking for her. Just as the closet door was turning and she knew they would surely be discovered, she felt someone put an arm around her and yank her out of the dream, and she was suddenly somewhere else.

She was in a garden with Severus, and they were children again, and her feelings of terror abated with him there. She did not question how they had gotten there or why they were eleven again. Such is the logic of dreams. Sev said he wished they'd be together for ever and ever and she promised him they would, even when they got old.

Then they were older, and they were in someone's bedroom and they were kissing and she was on top of him, pinning him down and he was asking
"but what about Potter?" and she was saying
"I broke up with him" and he was saying
"Oh, that's alright then, marry me," and she laughed and said
"sure, when you ask me for real" and he said
"How do you know this isn't real?" In the strange logic of dreams, Lily knew she was dreaming, and she told him so.
"So what?" He said, eyes sparkling with desire… desire for her. "I've been asking you to marry me every day of our lives if you've been listening."

Suddenly, she was sitting on a wall with Remus and Sirius, and Sirius's arm was in a sling so she knew it was after the war. They were all watching Peter surfing in the ocean, and Victoria was a mermaid and Peter kept falling off because he was waving to them and distracted. Remus was wearing a crown of daisy chains, his head in Sirius's lap, and he was beaming up at him and murmuring,

"Should we tell her?"

"I dunno, Moony, do you think she's ready?"

"Ready to be happy, you mean? Well, I guess that's up to her." Sirius bent down and kissed Remus softly on the lips. Lily's heart ached. Their love had always seemed so simple, so easy and unquestionable. So very right.

"Easy," Remus snorted, reading her thoughts. "You think it's easy to be a gay werewolf in the seventies?"

"Awoo," Sirius pretended to howl.

"Remus?" She said thoughtfully. "Why is Peter wearing a tutu?" Remus shrugged.

"Says it gives him better balance."

"Ah. And why isn't James here?" Sirius gave her a look. He nudged Moony.

"You'd better tell her."

"He's dead," Remus said simply.

"Oh. That's right. Why doesn't that hurt as much as it should?"

"Because you're dreaming," Sirius said, getting bored with the conversation, "and because you love Snape." He made a face. "Did I really just say that?" Remus stuck out his tongue at his lover.

"Just marry him already, would you, Lily? Or the next dream you have about us, I might be wearing the tutu. Or purple chiffon." Sirius gave her his puppy-dog face.

"Pretty please? Moony's smart, he knows these things. Listen to him, okay? So we can get back to our dream where I cover him in whipped cream and-" Remus covered Sirius's mouth with his hand, blushing.

"I have no idea what he's talking about," he said guiltily. Sirius nipped playfully at his fingers.

Lily smiled.

When she woke up, her mind was clear. She felt at peace, stages of grieving be damned. She felt like she'd gone through them all when James had told her he wanted a divorce and she'd already resigned herself to losing him. The life she was leading now was infinitely preferable to being dead, and she felt more lighthearted than she had in years, despite the loss of husband and child. She was free of it, the awful burden of loving and having to hide it or deny it. She was free of guilt and full of curiosity. She was lying atop Severus Snape, who was watching her through sleepy lashes and holding her in the crook of his arm.

"Mm," she said. "Good morning."

"Hello," he returned. "Sleep well?"

"Yes," she affirmed, and kissed his cheek. "You make a lovely pillow." Snape looked away.

"I would have made breakfast, but you seemed to sleep better when I didn't try to move you," he said uncomfortably. Lily made a mental note to owl her friends thanking them for all their help, whether they knew they'd been in her dream or not. Though if they had known… Lily shied to think of the whipped-cream ramifications of that possibility.

"That's okay," Lily told him. "I like you right where you are. In fact, if you could just stay here forever, that might be best."

"Are you feeling alright?" Snape asked, brows furrowed in confusion.

"Strangely enough, yes." She turned to face him. "Look, this is probably an ill time for it, but I feel like I've just dodged a bullet or several, and I want to make the most of whatever time I have left. If the funeral made me realize anything, it was that."

"Lily, are you-" She cut him off.

"Normally it's the man asking this of the woman, and I'm not sure if it's too late, but— I've been a fool, and I've caused you more pain than I ever deserve forgiveness for. That being said, I love you, and I need you in my life. Will you start over with me?" She looked at him anxiously, hoping her dreams hadn't lead her astray and that she'd done the right thing.

"No," he said.

"No?" She looked crestfallen and tried to get up off the couch. He grabbed her and pulled her back down atop him.

"No, I mean that won't do, assuming you're asking me what I think you're asking. Actually, there's a wizarding version of that which is rather lovely-" He moved her over on the couch, climbed off it and got down on one knee. " 'Will you eat at my table, sleep by my side, walk hand in hand with me down the pathways of life, take my heart in your care as I take yours in mine and promise to share love with me all the days we are given?' That's a proper proposal. Not, as your Muggles would have it," and he elongated the question so it sounded ridiculous, "'will you marry me'."

"It's beautiful," Lily said, and really meant it.

"And you seal it with a kiss," he told her solemnly. She was happy to oblige. She obliged, in fact, for several minutes' time, until finally Severus held up a hand and broke away for air to speak.

"I've done research into your strange mating rituals, so give me some credit here. I am ill-prepared, but I know there was something about a ring, and something about a diamond." He frowned, feeling around in the pockets of his robes. "Ah, here it is. Your diamonds." He presented her with a beautiful antique silver brooch, studded with diamonds. "And your ring." He slid his signet ring off his finger and placed it in her hand, looking smug and triumphant at having mastered her culture at last. Lily smiled behind her hand, not wanting to tell him the diamond and the ring were meant to go together. She preferred his way- charmingly eccentric, just like the rest of him.

"That's exactly right," she told him, brimming with joy. "I'm astonished that you carried that brooch around in your dress robes for years. Were you keeping it there just in case circumstances necessitated a spontaneous proposal?"

"If I had," he said, "not that I'm admitting to such, but if I had— would you call me a lovesick fool?"

"No. I'd ask, 'where have you been all my life?'"

"Right beside you. Or hadn't you noticed?" Her face softened into a loving smile.

"I have noticed. And yes, I will eat with you, sleep with you, walk with you, care for your heart and love you as I should have done, for the rest of my life."

He laughed his 'caught-off-guard' laugh and coupled it with a radiant smile.

"I'd never expected I could be this happy," he remarked.

"I know," she said. "Isn't it incredible?"

"Yes," he said thoughtfully, wondering over the strange twists and turns his life had taken to bring him to this point. "I'd say 'incredible' is exactly what it is."

-End.-