Chapter Three
She goes looking for the kiss in Severus' future.
By now Lily understands that this prospect exists on Harry's channel, too. When she first stumbled upon them naked, she hadn't yet found the number thirteen. So that – the erotic obeisance – was already somewhere in Harry's life, a dark possibility. But she never looks for it there, fearing that to do so gives credence to something that might take away Harry's wife, his children. She can only spy on what Severus would have had, if things had been different.
The walls of St. Mungo's are cool and sterile, and Lily remembers how soothing it was to enter the birthing room and relax in a warm tub. The telly fails to convey the tranquillity charms that suffuse the wards, folding the sick and scared in a subliminal blanket of reassurance, a spell-induced conviction that all's right with the world. The staff glides by with a subdued sense of bustle and urgency, and Lily fidgets while the camera navigates the corridors.
It zeroes in on one particular door, which swings open, and there's Harry hunched over a bedside. Lily realizes that she's been ushered into the room just ahead of Harry's friends, and the camera lingers on them for a moment: a hail-fellow-well-met sort of gingery chap, all loose limbs and cowlick, and a somewhat overweight girl whose brown hair is a bit like a fuzz bomb gone off.
The boy's robes have been mended. Ron Weasley, Lily thinks. Hermione Granger. She recites their names under her breath because someday she'll get the chance to meet them, to thank them both for their extraordinary devotion to Harry.
Still, it strikes her as curious that Harry's best mates are so ordinary and unspecial compared to – well, James and Sirius and even herself. Her generation cut a much more dashing figure. But of course that can't be held against any of Harry's lot. They're the victors, after all.
"Any change?" says Ginger Chappie, and Harry shakes his head. "Right, then, let's grab us some lunch. He'll stay nice on ice, I shouldn't wonder, till you get back. On the off-chance he does wake up, it's not like he's got the stones to bust out of here after being chomped by a giant snake."
Harry swivels an irate look at his friend, but the girl is just as keen. "Not to nag, Harry, but aren't you at all interested in how Neville and Luna are getting on?"
"What's that supposed to mean? Of course I am," Harry snaps, obviously stung. He stays seated, though.
"Ginny's been asking after you," Ginger Chappie throws out there in a totally transparent attempt to be casual. He winces and changes tack when Harry's face blazes up in a betrayed scowl. "Look, mate, no pressure, but having you stay over at the Burrow for a day or two would cheer Mum up something fierce, you know?" He shifts guiltily, which makes Harry shift guiltily, and the girl starts to speak but instead sidles over and squeezes the taller boy's arm.
"Not that it's your business or anything to make sure everyone's dealing all right with their grief. It's just," Ginger Chappie manages an awkward hand-flap, as if wondering why words are even necessary. Only then does Lily perceive, not a jolly sidekick, but a heartsick young man. His chin glints with bristle, and the grey pinch of concern bruises the childhood out of his face. "I wouldn't mind hanging out a bit myself, Harry. It just feels lately like we have to take a number and stand in line for you to notice us."
"We miss you." Lily makes up her mind that she likes this girl's straightforward, bossy ways. "We do understand that you want to be here when he wakes up – fine," she amends when Ginger Chappie snorts, "I understand, but your friends need you, too. Spare us five minutes?"
Harry looks stricken, and says, "It's not what you think. I'm not avoiding you, you know? It's just that I've been – "
" – holding Snape's hand for three days straight," says Ron Weasley. "That's utterly mental, and it's time someone asked you what in Merlin's name you think you're doing. I'm willing to take your word for it that he wasn't the totally evil wanker we always thought he was. But he's still a bastard, Harry, and he's not the only one who made sacrifices here."
The camera rises and tilts, and Lily's finally permitted to see the figure on the bed. She'd known, the moment the door opened, that it had to be him, but the viewpoint has intercut among the three weary young survivors bargaining without quite knowing what it is they're haggling about. Lily sees a great flopping mess of black hair, like a dead crow dropped on the pillow, and a thick bandage spotted with blood. Snape's head is canted toward the wall, but she identifies the bony cartilage of his nose and the stern precipice of an alarmingly sharp cheekbone that seems to have lost all padding. She recognizes his eyelashes, densely black against his bruised underlids. He sports a five o'clock shadow, something he would never have tolerated if awake. His skin looks sheathed in wax.
The camera pans. Ron's right. Harry's not merely holding on; he's insinuated his blunt, capable fingers through Snape's lifeless ones and is cradling the long, white hand in his lap.
After a pause during which Snape's harsh, arrhythmic breathing scrapes like waves on a pebbled shingle, Harry pulls his fingers loose and sets Snape's arm down on the bed. He stands up, brazening out the embarrassment, while Ron claps him on the shoulder. Hermione starts filling him in on the latest news, the estimates on Hogwarts' renovation and reopening, the Daily Prophet's front page story calling Neville a veritable 'second Potter', the upcoming dates of the first Death Eater trials – at Harry's scowl, she abruptly veers into a reminder that the survivors of Dumbledore's Army are throwing a party next week – anything and everything to propel Harry out the door on a tide of friendship and optimism, three sets of shoes clopping together down the hall's polished tiles. Lily finally hears Harry laugh, just before their voices dwindle to silence.
She doesn't change the channel after they've gone. Snape twitches in his sleep, and Lily wonders if Harry's far-off laughter echoes in his dreams. His head doesn't move, but his hands start to spasm every few seconds. Maybe he's about to wake up. One arm jumps. First his left hand, then his right, wanders a few inches, seeking solace, exploring the texture of the hospital-issue beige blankets. Finally, his head jerks in Lily's direction, and both hands flop onto his breast, long fingers quivering. Must be a bad dream. One hand covers the other, then they clasp, and Lily sees some of the lines on Severus' face – not disappear, exactly, but cease clenching, as if the fear or anguish has retreated to bearable levels. Mouth open, he submerges again into utter, waxy stillness.
Lily's thoughts are warm and full of Harry. Is there anyone, anywhere, with a better heart? Not only surpassingly brave, but decent. Look how kind he is to Snape. No one deserves a home, a family, more than Harry. All the love in the world can't make up for what he's gone through, but that would be a start.
She smiles at the screen. The reality of what she's watching sinks in, and her smile twists into what her dad used to call a lemon-peel. Bittersweet, he meant. She never cared for it. The flavour, the aftertaste. The feeling.
Severus. Sweet Merlin. She turns off the telly and gnaws on her knuckles. Her teeth jar painfully, and she looks down to see that she's bitten her wedding ring.
There are things she shouldn't know. For her own peace of mind. Things she'll never admit to knowing. Not just the expression on Harry's face when he's rutting against Snape. Not just the way Snape sprawls out and lets Harry suck and bite and pinch and delve into his arsehole and fuck his face until he's arched like a bridge beneath the younger man, wired with lust. Merlin. She's broken the bounds of decency time and again. She's partaken of Harry's hunger for an ugly bastard, a reject from her own youth, and learned not to bat an eyelash when her son strips naked.
She admits that she knows things she shouldn't and that some of them are things she will never give up.
But there are other kinds of knowledge, and they break her heart. Moments of privacy she wishes she could return untouched. And this, for some reason, is one of them: the way Sev holds his own hand when Harry's not there.
~~#~~
Within the week, Snape wakes up enough to recognize his surroundings. He doesn't ask who won the war. He doesn't ask after Harry's welfare. Of course, he doesn't need to. Within a day, Harry shows up, chagrined that he missed the great awakening.
Snape leaves instructions for the nursing staff to forbid him entry.
Harry gets around this by reassuring them that Snape is occasionally subject to delusions of persecution but not to worry, he's basically harmless.
Snape calls him an interfering and presumptuous jackal with a martyr complex.
Harry tells Snape he's clearly hallucinating and that he, Harry, is not an Animagus, and that he, Snape, had better see to the rusty nails and wooden cross he's got stashed in his own dungeon before he starts pointing skinny fingers at other people. And that he needs to eat because he looks like shite.
Snape informs Harry that Gryffindors aren't nearly as funny as they think they are and that Harry has, by his own example, made the world safe for mind-numbing mediocrity and that he, Harry, should do Britain a favour and abstain from engaging in reproductive acts.
The Ministry has Snape's wand in – they call it 'safekeeping' – so when he's in the mood to hex something he resorts to pillow-throwing. Which makes Lily fall about laughing.
By her count, Snape kicks Harry out the room four times in a row. They're incapable of speaking to each other without snarling and snapping, competing to see who can be the rudest, the touchiest, the most unreasonably defensive. Who, in point of fact, is the bigger arse. But then Snape levers himself up on one arm to make a particularly devastating point, and it sets off a coughing fit. Blood spurts from his mouth and a dark patch spreads suddenly on the bandage at his neck. His eyes flare with impatience – God, only Snape would treat choking on blood as an annoying interruption. Then he takes in Harry's horrified face and abruptly starts gesturing at him in a fury: Out of here! Get out!
Harry, thank heavens, runs into the hallway shouting for help, while Severus subsides back onto the pillow, eyes lifted ceilingward, and brings his considerable willpower to bear on drawing the next breath.
The three times after that, Lily is tuned in to the All Snape All the Time station, so she's already watching the room before Harry arrives. Snape's lying on his back looking depressed, emaciated, and bored out of his mind, but at least his bandage is spotless. So, she notices, is his hair, which no doubt plunged the nursing staff into a pitched battle earlier that morning. His restless hands roam the coverlet, plucking and pilling the soft weave, and every few seconds his black eyelashes flick, slicing off another ribbon of time.
After a stretch during which nothing happens, Harry's distant voice filters through the speakers. "No, listen, I promise, I won't be a minute. I'll just drop off his lunch and say hello. You really don't need to – "
And Snape's face changes.
It's subtle, and he's clearly aware of it, fighting it, forcing himself to remain blank. But it fills him like a milk glass from the bottom up. A light, almost invisible, but there.
As has become her habit when something unexpected knocks her emotions arse-over-teacup, Lily snaps off the telly and sits frozen, trying not to think. When that doesn't help, she goes to collect Tom and steps outside, barefoot, the grass tickling her toes as she tramps toward the back of the house. Tom burbles and coos like any other baby. A fugitive breeze flutters against her cheek, and she raises her face to the sun. It's always sunny here. Down by the lake, she gets a glimpse of Albus walking arm in arm with his Teutonic bloke and gesturing expansively at the sky. His hair blazes auburn, and his robes – ugh, what is that, chartreuse? Even this far off, she senses the ironic glitter of Grindelwald's charm.
Not wanting company, Lily ducks back inside, fetches a cig, and plunks down, cuddling the almost-skinless baby on her lap. She feels fortified by her head-clearing stroll, ready for another look. When the picture flickers on, there's Sev, trapped in his narrow hospital bed and staring upward, his worn features sunk in on themselves, alight with a kind of – almost a kind of –
Oh, Merlin, déjà vu. A memory tingles through her, awakened by the stumblings of her own bad grammar. Didn't she actually say that to him once? "Almost a kind of – " 'Beauty,' she finds herself thinking. Lily Evans, undisputed queen of the backhanded compliment.
But what could have driven her to use a word like 'beautiful' when he's so clearly not?
Reckless, she waves her fag at the screen. "See there, Tommy?" Puffs of smoky words drift in a soiled halo around the baby's hairless head. "Did anyone ever look at you that way? What's it mean, d'you think?"
Bugger that, she bloody well knows what it means. What's troubling is that it used to be for her, only for her.
She used to think it was the utter transparency of a mad pash. The covetousness of a damaged boy finding something to aspire to in a 'normal' girl. Well, maybe. But that's not all it was.
It's hope. Harry gives him hope. Once upon a time, when she was young and self-absorbed and special, so did she.
The door opens. Harry strolls in, bearing a tray neatly piled with roast chicken and sautéed greens, protein and fibre. At his approach, Snape pushes himself up into a sitting position, stuffing the pillow into a lump at his back. Once arranged with a semblance of dignity, he eyes Harry sideways. The muscles of his face are stiff, unable to settle on a natural expression. For a wonder, Harry's got him fussed, and Snape's failing to hide how anxious he is.
Then the girl – Harry's future wife – follows him into the room and stands with her arms folded, broadcasting impatience at this entire encounter.
Seeing her, Snape's eyes ignite, that exploding cauldron of accusation Lily remembers from school, betrayal flying from his gaze, winging Ginny Weasley but not stopping until it hits Harry full-on. Once it finds its target, the terrible emotion fizzles and goes out. Snape returns to contemplating his lap, while the cutting edges and implacable surface of his lifelong contempt lock around him like a mask, the kind that drives nails into the wearer's face. With a twitch of his shoulders, he swings a drape of hair between himself and the prying eyes of the world.
Oh, dear. Lily rearranges her limbs to get more comfortable and unfolds the blanket so that the weave doesn't chafe Tom's skin. She wishes there were some way to get a message through to Harry. Sev retreating behind his hair is never a good sign.
"Ah, house elf Potter," are his opening words. He doesn't look up. "Put my lunch on the bedside table and get out."
The girl exhales scornfully. "See? I told you. Do what he wants, Harry, and let's go. Ron said they'd wait lunch for us."
Harry stands motionless, tray in hand, peering at Snape through his glasses. He takes a look at his girlfriend, squares his shoulders, and says, "Run on ahead, won't you? Tell the others I won't be a minute. I'd just like a word alone with," he stumbles, "with him, if you don't mind."
"You're being totally unreasonable about this," the Weasley girl says. With the wounded, arrogant head-toss of thwarted youth, she turns and storms out, practically stomping, as if she intends to go Cruciate the rubbish cans.
"And if I mind, Potter? Does my opinion count?" Snape's voice drips rancour. Merlin, he belongs onstage. Vocally, he's a genius at taking the piss.
Harry ignores the words, and gestures with the tray. "Would you like me to – ?"
"On the table. Leave it, I said. I'll eat when I'm hungry." Snape's expression, scribbled over with twisted black lines of hair, is as malicious and secretive as Lily's ever seen it. "Conversation with you ruins my appetite, or hadn't you noticed?"
Harry sits carefully on the edge of the bed. "Sod that. I've seen you. You're never hungry."
"I beg to differ," Snape snarls, then trails off in an exhausted hiss of disgust and resettles his shoulders so that he can lean against the wall. Skull-socket eyelids purple with strain, he mutters, "You've grabbed the wrong end of the stick, as usual. Suffice it to say, I am always hungry."
"I, yeah," Harry says in a staccato burst. "Me, too."
Snape blinks, but his only answer is the controlled rise and fall of his chest. His almost fleshless hands continue to worry at the coverlet, restless, unappeased, the beautiful fingers unable to be still. Harry watches them, and suddenly his elbow jerks. Lily wills him to complete the impulse – but then Snape clasps his hands together in his lap, as if afraid Harry will do something totally idiotic and inappropriate, like actually take one and smoothe it between his palms. Lily would, if it were up to her.
"Uh," Harry says. They both sit for a minute looking anywhere but at each other. "Right, then. Next question. How are you doing?"
"I have it on the good authority of my own senses that I'm alive," Snape drawls, his tone consigning the question to the fifth circle of stupidity. He gives the food at his side an impersonal glare. "And as much as it may want to, the medical community cannot deny it. Punishment enough, wouldn't you say?"
"Stop talking like a condemned man," Harry snaps back. "No one's going to hurt you, I promise."
Snape struggles to sit straighter. "Once I'm in Azkaban, remind me of this little exchange so that I may enjoy a laugh at your expense. In the meantime, spare me. If you're doing this to salve your conscience, stop. I should have thought it enough to save the Wizarding World. Why you had to save me is – beyond imagining." He slumps again and his voice is dispirited. "Although if you're still looking for vengeance, by all means, come and poke the traitor with a stick."
Fidgeting, Harry gets to his feet. "Don't call yourself that."
By now, Snape could hardly look worse than if he'd been used for stampede practice by a herd of centaurs. "What I call myself is irrelevant, for fuck's sake. The point is," he blinks with enormous lassitude, though his gaze, fixed on Harry, is as black as ever, "I have no wish to see you, Potter. In fact, I can't think of anyone I wish to see less. So I'd appreciate it if you'd stop playing the ministering angel."
"You know," Harry huffs, "it's impossible to talk to you."
"I daresay that owes something to the fact that you're impossible to listen to."
"Right, well, you're not listening. I'm trying to tell you, all I want – "
"And I'm trying to tell you, Potter, I don't care what you want. All I want, which should not be so bloody hard to understand, is a Potter-free period of recuperation before I'm dragged before the Wizengamot and flayed for my sins."
"Don't," Harry says suddenly. "Please don't do this. Please, there's something I – "
"Do. Not. Beg," Snape stops him, his voice deathly quiet. "Do not ingratiate yourself. You are the saviour of the Wizarding World. Don't you ever dare think you need to beg for anything." He almost spits his disgust. "Conduct yourself with dignity, for Merlin's sake. But in the interests of sanity," he stabs a finger at the exit, "do it out there."
Harry hunches his shoulders, sticks his hands in his pockets, and glares at the door. Then he looks at the finger pointing to the door. Then he reaches out and grabs Snape's hand.
Snape practically has a seizure. "Stop infringing on my privacy and remove your arse from this room at once!" Magically incontinent, he up-ends the food tray without realizing what he's doing. It spins through the air and clangs into a wall, spraying a speckled trail of steamed spinach and rubbery chicken parts everywhere.
Wrestling for possession of his hand, he snarls, "Potter. I do not accept your willingness to burn in the fires of my own special hell, do you understand? If you wish to experience damnation, invent your own. I'm sure Miss Weasley will be eager to oblige." He clutches at his throat, choking with rage but no sign of blood, although Lily wonders if his sanity is cracking. "Go where you're – where you're wanted, you fool. Meaning anywhere but here."
The jealousy and self-loathing in the room are so thick you could use them to paint the walls. "You sodding git, fight for yourself," Lily argues at the screen, and then thinks, shite, no. She doesn't want Snape to win; Ginny's obviously the better match. She just hates to see him take a blunt knife to his own feelings, and incidentally to Harry's.
The door slams. Harry doesn't even stick around for a parting shot.
Severus collapses so abruptly that his head bounces off the wall behind him. He keeps one hand around his throat, kneading the bandage. His breathing doesn't subside as it ought to, now that his tantrum has succeeded in driving his tormentor off. He gazes desperately around the room and pants as if waves are crashing in his chest and he's trying to stay afloat. The light Lily saw earlier in his face has drained away, leaving nothing but bone structure, the waxy pallor of his indomitable nose, and eyes as empty as holes drilled in rock.
It troubles her that nobody comes to clean up the spilled food. Snape just sits there, propped up like a doll in a cupboard, and eventually falls into an exhausted doze. The hand at his throat uncurls and ends up twitching on his chest.
Unsettled, Lily speeds through the hours, searching for Harry.
Who bounces back, in typical Gryffindor fashion. The next time, he's on his best behaviour. Snape's sick, after all. Sick enough that one can trample his wishes underfoot and lose no points, serve no detentions, suffer no consequences. Harry's love interest stands fuming in the doorway, a testament to the power of long red hair.
Snape doesn't contest Ginny's claim to Harry. In fact, Snape doesn't even bother sitting up. He just rolls onto his side, bony shoulder and black hair and mute, blanketed back fending off Harry's every attempt to hit upon a topic that might interest him. After several excruciating minutes during which Harry does nothing but babble, Ginny grabs his arm and hauls him out the door.
The final time, Snape's up, dressed in loose black cotton pyjamas that Lily would bet were some other colour when he first put them on, but which have since seen the error of their ways. He radiates the spindly, defensive quality of people who have shrunk in stature, but his face is still intimidating, so cadaverous that the light and shadow are constantly changing on it, filling hollows, fingering bone. It's so sculptural that even Lily finds it weird when a purely human expression crosses Snape's face.
He's hunched over at the foot of the bed, paging through a book that obviously annoys him, when Harry knocks and enters without permission. Snape stands up at once. His sleeves bag loose, emphasizing the overwrought bones of his wrists. Blood loss has left his skin so pale that each individual black hair on his arms is extremely distinct. "Ah, my prodigal house elf returns," he mutters, and pushes the straggly black tangles behind his ears. Lily remembers that gesture. Even after all this time, it still means that Sev's nervous as fuck. "Really, Potter, must I have you banished from my room?"
"Just give me a moment," Harry says quickly. "Please. Let me – there's something we need to talk about."
Snape walks right up to him, and at first Harry falls back, surprised, letting himself be herded toward the outer hall. He realizes in the nick of time that in another few steps the door will slam in his face.
He stops, forcing Snape to collide with him. Lily expects Snape to throw a fit at that. But no, he waits, his gaze darkly pissed-off. Nothing pure, nothing radiant, glimmers from him.
They're standing very close, and perhaps it's that almost-touch, Harry a mere breath away, so young and earnest and incapable of taking no for an answer, that goads Snape to say, "You've made your choice, Potter. I don't understand why you keep returning so that I may have the pleasure of throwing you out again. If it's to solicit my blessing for your upcoming – then I don't – I'm not selfless, and I can't – "
He turns away and Accios a water goblet. After several steadying gulps, he manages a complete sentence into the rim of the goblet. "I cannot bring myself to congratulate you."
Lily has no idea what Snape's on about. Congratulate Harry for what, winning the war? Jesus, that deserves a medal for lowest form of ingratitude ever.
Harry stalks up behind him. "Stop pushing me away," he hisses, sounding at his wit's end. Snape keeps his back turned, masking himself with the water goblet. Harry flaps his arms uselessly before blurting out, "You want to know something? You don't understand the first fucking thing about what I want." Snape gives a soft, disparaging grunt, but Harry says, "No, you don't. And neither does Ginny. No one in the fucking world knows, because I don't. Yeah, I've always said I wanted to be normal, but," he laughs the way people do when they can't believe themselves, and Snape shivers as Harry's breath stirs his hair. "That's not going to happen. And there's so much – so much pressure on me to decide."
Harry's closeness, the intimacy of his whispered confession, clearly tests Snape's nerve. Lily judges he's within seconds of breaking and bolting across the room.
"I have to decide," Harry rants in a whisper. "Who I am. Who I'm going to be. It has to be now. They won't leave me the fuck alone. I have to decide now. Me or the Boy Who Lived." Like a child desperate for attention, Harry gathers the tails of Snape's pyjama top and tugs. "But you could – I must be crazy, but if anyone can help me figure things out, it's you."
Then Harry does a strange, brave thing. He cups his hands around Snape's sides – Lily sees the lightweight cotton give, sees Harry's fingers line up in the hollows between ribs – and draws Snape gently backward until their bodies are touching. With immense care, as if Snape is fragile or flammable (and of course he's both), he wraps first one arm and then the other around Snape's wasted body and presses his face to the greasy, badly-brushed layer of black hair hanging down the thin pyjama top.
Snape's still holding the goblet in both hands, as if it's a chalice, and he neither protests nor submits. After a while, though, long past the moment Lily would have expected him to turn and rip Harry to shreds, he bends his neck back until his head touches Harry's, one crown of black hair atop another. Snape rests there, against Harry, his gaze wide and dark upon the clean white ceiling. Then he shuts his eyes, and the skin between them pinches.
"I think I'm gay," Harry murmurs into Snape's collar. "And I'm really messed up, and I need to talk to you."
Snape sends the goblet back to the end table with an absent gesture. By touch, he finds Harry's hands with his own and covers them. They stand like that, arms crossed and fingers interlaced, but only for a moment; then Snape lifts his head and pries Harry off him.
"Let me go."
Harry does, reluctant and dazed. Snape pulls away and sinks onto the bed. Lily thinks he's trembling a little, possibly with weariness. Possibly with something else. "Merlin, Potter. Nothing's ever simple with you, is it?" He cocks his head, wry. Harry's hair stands out in tufts like a licked kitten, and shards of reflection shine on his lenses, hiding his eyes. Much to Lily's annoyance, it reminds her of Dumbledore. He starts to speak, but Snape waves him silent. "Shut it. I'm tired. Enough for now. Come back tomorrow, when I'm able to think, and we'll discuss this further."
Lily frowns at the screen. Something's off about this. Harry apparently doesn't sense it, because he smiles and stutters his thanks, and backs out the door. It clicks shut, and Lily squints suspiciously, praying that Snape's features will relax now and fill with that quiet, private glow.
They don't. He sits on the bed after Harry's gone, idly tracing the knob of his kneecap through the black cotton. Then his face contorts. He picks up the book he'd been reading earlier and hurls it at the door. Face set, he starts fingering other parts of his body, places where he's boniest. He stretches his arms up, rotates his head, squeezes his sides. His splayed fingers hesitate on the furrows between each rib and his eyes grow distant, but only for a moment. They blaze back to the present, and he digs his fists into the mattress, cutting short the physical inventory.
Lily wonders if he's trying to gauge what Harry sees in him. She absolutely doesn't expect him to reach back and peel off the bandage.
"What the devil?" she says aloud as the thick gauze falls indifferently to the floor. Rising with some effort, Snape stalks into the tiny closet-like loo off the corner, tilting his chin so that he can examine his throat in the mirror. The wound is red and tender but sealed shut with sore-looking scar tissue. He touches it, traces the ragged outline, prods the forming scar with almost clinical interest, then catches his own eye in the mirror and snorts, turning away.
From the loo he walks directly to the door and yanks it open. Immediately, a young, musclebound Auror steps in front of him, blocking the exit.
With a smirk borrowed for the occasion, since his mind is clearly elsewhere, Snape folds his arms. "Don't panic, Mr. Dalrymple. The big bad Death Eater isn't attempting to escape. I would appreciate, however, if you'd pass a message to Auror Shacklebolt. Let him know that I'm well enough to sign out."
"You are?" the guard says dubiously, looking Snape up and down.
"You were expecting a more dramatic arrest?" Snape dismisses the absurdity with a gesture. His left sleeve pulls up, as if by accident; from under his cuff, the faded insignia of the Dark Mark boils out. Lily grimaces. Unaware he's being played, the Auror makes a snide remark about Death-Eaters who rate special treatment and how he hopes Snape chokes on his own viscera someday.
Extending his arm to bring more of the Mark into view, Snape snaps the fingers of his right hand. He catches the fellow's wand as it flies upward. "Amateur," he remarks, then idly points the wand when its owner lunges for him. Without a word, he hexes the careless idiot over backward – oh, Sev, you insufferable show-off – while people scream bloody murder up and down the aisle – and Snape tosses the wand down with a brittle clatter alongside the sprawled guard.
He's supporting himself on the doorframe now, and almost pulls off making it look casual. "Tell Shacklebolt that if I'm stuck with you as escort, he has only himself to blame if I escape. Have him send a replacement with faster reflexes and functioning brain cells. Preferably someone who passed their exams by other means than sucking off their instructor." He shuts the door but immediately re-opens it, one hand bunched in his nightshirt. "Also inform him in no uncertain terms that I require a new set of robes. Unless there's a post-war fashion for copious blood stains, my old ones are too disgusting to wear, and I have no intention of entering the Ministry dressed in my bedclothes."
Slam.
Melodramatic bastard. Lily lets out a disbelieving breath. Lucky for him the Auror on duty doesn't consider it his right to break down the door and give Severus a taste of his own medicine.
She tracks the dial slowly through the hours.
The escort arrives the next morning. A patient, imposing man, coffee-brown and bald as a doorknob, he waits until Snape opens at his knock, hands over a voluminous black garment that Snape dons with a show of compromised dignity, waits further while he struggles to make the robes hang less haggardly on his bony frame, then spells Snape's wrists behind his back, takes his arm, and Disapparates them out of St. Mungo's.
When Harry shows up, the sheets on the bed will already be changed.
Click. The screen drains to black, emptier even than Snape's room. Lily gets to her feet and carries Tom outside. She concentrates until she can intuit Dumbledore's whereabouts, then Apparates nearby and calls until he appears out of a cave. With a quizzical smile, he extends his arms for the baby. He never asks what Lily watched that day or whether she has questions. He merely says, "Thank you, my dear," as he always does, and then disappears back inside the cave, ducking the overhang.
Lily shifts, missing Tom's warmth and presence and smell. Then she concentrates again and goes to where James and Sirius are splashing about in the lake. Seeing her, James shouts, then comes pounding up the bank to fling his wet arms around her, his bare, sun-freckled chest heaving. She kisses him, ignoring the fact that Sirius is floating about in the water, ogling them wickedly. Within seconds, her clothes are soaked, and she relaxes.
James pulls back and tweaks her nose. "Lil, my love, please don't take this wrong, but you taste like an ashtray."
"Sorry!" She covers her mouth, and he gives her the crinkly, tolerant smile, his wet fringe plastered down over his brow, so boyish. But it's followed by a beat of silence, and the moment when she should have explained why she's smoking pulses and slides by. Instead, she gives the water-shimmery skin of his chest a great lipsmack and pulls him toward the lake.
She's never cheated on him. She's not cheating now. She doesn't feel dirty, it's just that a dip in the lake sounds – refreshing. She's almost relieved when she steps into the water and Sirius, with a whoop, levitates a glistening sheet over her head and smacks her with it. Drenched to the skin, Lily throws her head back and laughs into the sun, trusting to the fact that she's always looked innocent. And desirable, which perhaps counts for more.