Chapter Five
It's only a matter of time before Lily succumbs to the urge to trace Snape back through her own history. Dying may be horrible – Snape's death certainly will be – but being dead is quite simple. Still, she's having a hard time reconciling the fact that Severus must be got out of the picture before Harry can properly settle down. How incredibly sad, that the price of Harry's marriage is Severus's life.
The tube spits and whines – Tom, to her amusement, imitates the sound – and a picture expands to fit the screen. She fiddles with the dial. There: the canal, the bridge in the distance, the rusty iron rails. She spins through the days, the seasons, sees a flash of what she's searching for, and follows the images back to the beginning.
The sky's a high enamel blue, although an occasional white plume cools the sun's rays for a strange, dim moment until the burning eye slides open again and the whole world glows. Lily's already flopped down, panting and red-faced, grinning in triumph. She's never outrun Sev before. They're of a height, but his legs are longer and he's a sprinty little bugger, plus he doesn't have to contend with new and rather awkward physical developments, like breasts. Around her, lime-green marsh roots spindle upward into a forest of spear-tipped reeds, fading in colour to a late-summer crackly yellow that filters the sun. The rushes scrape and hiss like dry cornstalks, amplifying her exuberant pants for breath.
A rustly spatter of footfalls ticks rapidly through the marsh, and then Severus bursts through, looking out-of-sorts and splotchy with exertion and annoyance. Watching, Lily feels a surge of something hot, something downright weird, and she remembers. Oh God, maybe she shouldn't watch this. As Severus throws himself down onto the crushed reeds at her side, her younger self crows, "Forfeit! It's my forfeit. I won! You've got to do what I say!"
Breathing hard, Severus shakes the clingy hair off his damp neck, doing his best to look haughty and careless instead of gawky and high-strung. "You won because that stupid, interfering old Muggle thought I was chasing you," he scoffs. "Grabbed my arm and slowed me down, the meddling bastard."
"Language," Lily snipes, just to be awful, and Severus sprawls irritably onto his back, eyes closing as he catches his breath. "You were chasing me," she twits him, mischievous and prim. You ridiculous tease, thinks older Lily as she watches Sev's eyes crack open a millimetre to consider her sideways. She's forgotten how thick his lashes are. It's almost like he's wearing eyeliner, and it partly accounts for why he looks so insistently broody and evil. Of course, it's also because he was broody and evil. Pity he never outgrew it.
Huddled before the console, she feels her heart speed up in embarrassment and expectation, knowing what comes next.
Severus lifts up on his elbows, sneering in disgust. "He thought I was going to hurt you."
This is it. The moment. She remembers that strange twist in her belly as she smirked at him, and she feels it again, the same but not the same, gazing at the thin boy onscreen, his black hair tangled around his indignant face, the sweat shining on his throat and drawing attention to the delicate points of his collarbone. He's wearing – poor Sev – a short-sleeved, blue-and-white checked number that must have been an old workshirt of his da's, and it makes him look more of a scarecrow than ever. The frayed threads have been laundered to cobweb consistency, and Lily wouldn't be surprised if magic's all that's holding them together.
The thing is – oh, the shaky eroticism of youth – it was this that made Lily aware that he hadn't got a vest on underneath. Plus the sun's hot and Sev's been running pell-mell, so his pale skin's streaked with perspiration and his chest's rising and falling just dramatically enough to telegraph the patches of shirt sticking to him. Where it's wet, the fabric nearly melts.
And he's got nipples. Well, of course he has, it's just that Lily's never thought about them before or cared to or – seen them. Or maybe she has, but not like this. Not consciously. Not consumingly. Or the slow-trickling sheen along his neck, all fluttering hair-shadow and wet skin, and the wary blackness of his eyes, and the fact that he's a strange, fierce boy who would do just about anything for her.
Below the short sleeves, his arms betray only the shyest swell of muscle, because he's primarily a creature of straight lines and awkward angles. The bony protrusions at his wrists and elbows are like anatomical drawings. For some reason, though, it's his arms that give Lily her boldness, because they so rarely see the light of day. They make it seem like she could actually overpower him.
Her forfeit, if all had gone according to plan, would have been typically petty. Something easy for her but embarrassing for him, like gathering flowers or apologizing to Petunia. She was a good girl, after all. A nice girl. Besides, some part of her shrank from allowing Sev to glimpse anything cruel, anything forbidden about her. He'd have felt her ambivalence and turned at once with that hawkish, hopeful glare. There was this one smile he had, like super-dry kindling catching fire: smoky, flickering, creeping along the edges of his lips, a bit dazzling in its potential violence.
Especially once she'd started at Hogwarts, this sense of him floated always at the periphery of her mind: Sev as a skinny, baggy-shirted pied piper of darkness.
Lily sighs. Onscreen, she says, a bit too casually, "Got a smoke? Unless you've managed to crush the pack with your skinny arse."
Oo, daring.
She's treated to an early version of Sev's eyebrow dexterity. "Language, Evans," he drawls, and they share a smug look, as if they're actually being witty. Merlin, when teenagers aren't wrapped up in the intense, invisible drama of their lives, they're insufferably pleased with themselves.
Clearly chuffed that she's asked for something he can give, Severus sits lankily forward and digs the fags from his shirt pocket, the breeze doodling strands of hair across his downturned face. He lights a cig for her and one for himself, then hangs an arm around one drawn-up knee, flicking ash with small, economical movements. He looks content. Young Lily blows a fountain of smoke at the circle of sky. She waits sphinx-like until Severus settles onto his back again, craning his head sideways and extending a milky-smooth, unintentionally elegant arm upward to drop hot ash into a mudslick. The burnt tobacco sizzles when it hits.
Lily wonders now why she didn't just lean over and run admiring fingers up his pale bicep or kiss the exposed side of his throat. Well, of course she knows why. She didn't want to make a fool of herself. Also, thinking about Severus that way made her nervous. He wasn't really her cuppa. So she didn't do that, and yet in the next second she says:
"Ready for your forfeit?"
She waits until he adjusts to face her, head propped on the bent-back forearm that tapers to his lazily curled hand still framing the smouldering cig in two fingers. He looks relaxed, skeptical, amused, and his other hand rests unconcernedly on his stomach. He also looks surprisingly sensual, which – did she even recognize it? It was an accident, of course, Sev not knowing the first thing about flaunting himself, but she also remembers being too stuck on her own recklessness to pay proper attention.
So, no, she hadn't noticed. Silly chit.
On the blanket beside her, Tom wiggles and kicks, then starts to wail.
"Not now," she admonishes, scooping him up. She neglects to grab the blanket first and has a moment's inward cringe when his bare, peeled skin presses against her. "Getting to the best part," she whispers. "Watch, you'll see." Self-conscious but determined, she cuddles him, telling herself she has no right to be repelled, and he rewards her by blowing tiny spit-bubbles.
Onscreen, she delivers the immortal words, "Unbutton your shirt."
Lily claps a hand over her mouth, overcome with glee. Tom, startled perhaps by her clutching him so tightly, squeals in imitation. Delighted by the incongruity of it all, she laughs at his high-pitched squeaks, at her own audacity, and then again at the shocked expression on Severus's face. Dear Merlin, she can't believe she ever said that. In a funny way, she's proud of herself.
"You're joking." Sev's voice is whispery, almost ominous. The grace brought on by repose has vanished. It leaves him jagged, brittle, not someone you'd really want to touch.
"My forfeit," she tells him, doing her best to sound normal. "You lost, remember?"
He stares at her for another moment, a familiar crease appearing between his brows. Then an unfamiliar surge of pink washes in a tideline from under his shirt, up the curvature of bone, the hollow of his throat, his jaw, along his ears, to flood his face with the most comprehensive blush she's ever seen. It doesn't look charming. On the contrary, it's painful, like a rash.
"Lily." Amazing that he can make himself heard when he's barely using his voice. Especially since he has yet to acquire the nerve-tingling quality that will develop later, a resonance that still surprises her every time the adult Snape opens his mouth. "Don't make fun of me. Please."
They are still children; in another year, she'll have expelled him from her circle of friends, convinced that he's a lost cause, a rotter, a bigot. But she remembers that here, in their secret place by the sloshing, murmuring canal, she almost panicked. She wasn't ready to lose him yet. Remembers, too, how she swallowed down her shame. She would make him bend. It wasn't the forfeit. What she wanted, she realizes in hindsight, was tribute.
She wants him to prove he belongs to her by taking off his shirt.
"Go on, Sev. It's not a joke."
Still staring – has he blinked at all? – Severus stubs out his cigarette in the mud and starts to sit up.
"No." Lily bars his way with her arm. Her voice betrays her, harsh, like yellow smoke. "Don't make a big production out of it. Just stay there. Lie down."
Severus lets his head fall back and rests his elbows on the ground. He shifts slightly, and the carpet of shredded, pulpy reeds crackles under him. Wrists bent – the pose reminds her of a praying mantis – he trails both hands passively along his chest until he reaches his open collar. His fingers interlace, collaborating in the act of slipping the top button through its shapeless, unstitched hole. He watches Lily the entire time, squinting slightly against the sun, but she knows better than to meet his eyes. She keeps her gaze fixed on what he's doing.
Overhead, the brilliant sky is tight and hot, shimmering blue, and the marsh spears around them throw faint green reflections on Severus's skin. Her own hair glows. They're breathing in tandem, and from her position safely on death's side of the screen, she smiles at these two serious children. Merlin, how innocent they are together. Even Severus. No, especially Severus. Because in memory he's always the monster, the snake who viciously turned and bit her, the boy who lost all claim to forgiveness. His hovering fingers are absurdly long, as his nose is absurdly prominent, the kind of bone structure that Lily associates with Renaissance paintings. By the time he grows into them, he'll be a stranger. She won't have seen him in years. For that matter, when she spurns him Severus is still very much as he appears now, a weedy adolescent. They have the same accent. They are the same height.
She sees him around school, of course, long after the Mudblood incident. But she dies before they meet again as equals. It's an odd thought. No wonder she still thinks of him as a boy.
There: Sev blinks. His fingers wander to the next button and pluck aimlessly before working it open. His intense blush has sunk into his skin like a rising tide absorbed into the sand, leaving only a high watermark of humiliation. He's on the third button now, and is starting to breathe out of sync, a pale sliver of chest quickening between the parted edges of fabric.
Teenaged Lily watches, mesmerised. Adult Lily worries the inside of her lip with her teeth.
A breeze ripples the shirt, fans a few locks of hair around young Lily's shoulders, throws some limp black strands into Severus's face. He pushes them off, then slowly seeks out the next button and toys with it, reluctant rather than flirtatious. The dried husks of the reeds scrape around them, filling their ears with papery whispers. The open hem on the buttonhole side flips up suddenly, its weightless fold caught in the teeth of the breeze. Both Lilys get a flash of dark nipple on a bony chest, a hard young nipple, and yes, he's still smooth, hairless –
Shite. What is she doing?
Lily scrambles to her feet, clutching Tom, her groin warm, her head spinning with panic. Startled from sleep, the baby whimpers in confusion, then burps and breaks into a series of squeezed-out sobs. It's more peevishness than full-out squalling. Lily hustles him to the bassinet and snugs him down, her hands a bit frantic, the thud of her pulse sending uncontrollable shivers to her fingertips. She pats and jollies him, and Tom grumbles drowsily, content to fade right back into sleep.
Calming her flutters, Lily returns to sitting on the floor. She picks up the dial, thinking, Right, that's enough of that. Turning you off now.
Onscreen, her evil teenaged self bursts out, "Honestly, Sev, you're whinging over nothing. You act as if I'm going to owl pictures of you straight to the Daily Prophet."
"You said 'unbutton,'" Severus retorts. He's finished his task, and both hands lie crosswise on his chest, weighing down his shirt against the insinuating breeze. He's being ridiculously modest. But then, in matters physical, he always was a bit of a prig. "You didn't say nothing about me pulling my clothes off so you can get a laugh off me looking like a glow-in-the-dark scrag."
Lily's eyes sting, and she frowns at the screen. Funny, isn't it, the things she remembers and the things she doesn't. Like the grumpy way Severus refers to himself, as if his unsightliness is a foregone conclusion. His grammatical slip's especially telling, because at the time he was deep in the throes of shedding his flat-cap accent.
She also spares a moment to wonder whether Sev's stomach problems contributed to his being underweight. Perhaps, as a child, he suffered from an incipient ulcer.
Her younger self says blithely, "I promise not to laugh, you paranoid git. Besides, that's the whole point of a forfeit. You just do what you're told without arguing." She pokes him in the side. "So stop arguing. It's not like I asked you to unzip."
And that's when Lily remembers what she's been suppressing: she'd had a conversation with Potter – with James – about this, after class or Quidditch practice or something. About Snivellus (his coinage) being a nasty-arsed, ninety-pound weakling with bad hygiene and horse teeth, whose only magical prowess lay in spells as freakin' ugly as he was.
Lily had been aware on some level that Potter's jabs at Snape were his way of signalling interest, of muscling in on the competition and running down a rival's masculinity. It meant he liked her. Well, it also meant he hated Severus, but then so did a lot of other people. When the hormones hit, the boys tended to behave like dogs, growling and stalking around stiff-legged, sniffing each other's arses. Potter evidently felt that, in a contest of sex appeal, he could wipe the floor with Severus. It was just one of the many reasons that Sev returned James's hatred with interest. That deadly, viperish edge was his sole advantage, if one could call it that.
James had also implied that she was slumming by hanging around with Snape. Disgracing her middle-class background or some such bollocks. The unflattering truth was, Lily had experienced an occasional twinge along these lines herself.
She'd shrugged Potter off at the time as a rude little snot, never mind he was attractive in a swell-headed fashion. He'd planted a seed, though.
That seed's flowering in front of her now. Sev's rag of a shirt is pulled open, the extra material tucked underneath him. The ends of his hair flirt up in the intermittent breeze, while Lily's streams forward in shiny red waterfalls, blowing around her sleeveless top. "Right," he says, scowling up at the gleaming blue that lies in small, pale windows across his open eyes. "Look your fill, then. Can I sit up, at least?" His lips and eyebrows share the same flat line.
She doesn't speak, just shakes her head.
"I'd really like to know what this is about, Evans." There's a moment's fragile silence, then he exhales through his nose. "For fuck's sake. At least fetch me a smoke while I lie here feeling like some carnival sideshow." He holds out an imperious hand.
"Half a sec." She doesn't chafe him for swearing, just pats the reeds until she finds the packet. She fumbles with the matches and gets her own fag drawing, puffs out a cloud of nicotine, then lights another off her tip and fits it between his first and second fingers. She always did like Sev's hands, never mind that he had a devilish time keeping his nails clean.
They smoke in silence for a moment. Sev half-closes his eyes and fakes nonchalance as Lily tilts her head over him, being obnoxiously obvious about looking. She hadn't known how else to defuse the tension. She'd promised not to treat it as a joke, but having to be serious had made her want to kiss him. She knows this, because it's what she wants now.
Finally, to break the silence, she pretends she's inhaled down the wrong pipe and produces a phony cough. "I don't know what you're so worried about. You're," and this had been the bloody hardest thing to say, harder even than naming the forfeit, "you're almost kind of beautiful, you know."
On its way to his lips, his hand pauses. After a moment, Sev lowers the cigarette, inhales around the butt, then, letting the smoke curl out of his mouth, mutters, "Don't do me any favours, Evans."
It's impossible to make clear to him what she means. Staring at the telly, Lily feels a pleasurable, guilty ache in her crotch. Cripes, she could eat him up with a spoon. Her physical interest in Severus had been piqued that day, although she'd wondered about him before. He's thin, no question, gangly and round-shouldered. But there's a purity of line, a forgiving glow of youth about his body that's fascinating, the hard, arched latticework of his ribs sloping down to where his sunken belly slides under his belt – though there's just not enough proper flesh on that to call it a belly. It's stretched milky-pale and smooth, and Lily scorns herself for not having found the courage to spread her palm right there. His whole body would have jumped at her touch, she's sure of it. The delicate, sliding ovals in his arms are echoed in the nascent curve of chest muscle, that double medallion of untouched skin. Shadows – the spoonfuls pooling like rainwater in his collarbone, the fingertip streaks along his sides – give hints of definition.
She's seen his body with Harry. She knows that it won't develop much beyond these hints; he'll never really deviate from this early blueprint of tension and neglect. The milky tenderness that shines here will fade over time. He's already set on course to become that lean shank of a man, Severus Snape, a whitened shinbone with a dark and bitter marrow. A Death Eater.
She experiences a distressing but not unexpected flash of boyish, nailbitten hand on narrow-boned torso, sudden intake of breath rounding Snape's chest upward to meet Harry's descending mouth
God, stop it, she hisses at herself. That's disgusting. That's Snape. It's one thing to regret lost opportunities when it's mere nostalgia for a boy who used to be hers; it's another to feel that deep, throbbing cello-note of lust drag harshly across her insides, until she shudders with resentment each time Harry kisses him and Severus fucking lets him –
Lily watches this thought flit through her mind – through her midriff, actually, like a stabbing heat – and smashes it out of existence. Sod off.
It's pretty much impossible, after that, to ignore Sev's nipples. She's aware of them stamped dark and disturbingly present on his pale chest, small wicks in pools of wax, as if the breeze has pinched them erect. The dips and bumps of his clavicle, his bony shoulders, form a silent calligraphy that, to older Lily's eyes, spells surrender.
Banished to the wrong side of the screen, she's a witness to the offering of Severus's body. If she'd decided to stub her cigarette out on his protruding ribcage, she has a sneaking suspicion he wouldn't have stopped her.
Between her legs, now, a small, damp furnace burns. Hating herself a little, Lily presses one hand there, trying to bank the fire.
The cords in Sev's neck distend as he curves his head sideways to take a nervous puff. He hides tight-lipped behind a pantomime of smoking. And waits.
A horrible memory flares that has nothing to do with sex: wet pulse of death, darkness, the fact that she could see the bloody membrane where his throat gaped open. Her hands fly up to press the sides of her nose, which suddenly prickles with tears.
On the telly, her younger self say shrilly, "Now lie still and don't panic, all right? And don't laugh. I'm just – I'm going to listen to your heartbeat."
Marsh spears crunch as Sev's head snaps around. He starts to sit up, then hesitates and flops back without Lily needing to say a word. His eyes dart about, until they fixate on the tall, plush shaft of a bulrush overhead. Lily snorts. Talk about your ruddy phallic symbols. He thrusts his right arm all the way to the side, smoke floating up from the stub he cups in his fingers. Pretending it's no big deal, young Lily flops down sideways onto the reeds, making no attempt to be graceful – yes, she's nervous, too – then carefully extends one arm and hooks it across his waist, likewise holding her cigarette out of range. Neither one of them wants to give up their only prop, the only thing keeping their hands occupied. Awkwardly, she tucks her cheek against his bare chest and then proceeds to simply lie there.
This time Lily gets to watch the full onslaught of the blush that rises from Sev's waistband and rolls inexorably upward, like the opposite of an eclipse line darkening a field. A fire line, more like. His chest glows as it passes. He shuts his eyes in obvious mortification.
And still they lie there.
Lily remembers the briny, rotting stench of algae and marsh roots simmering around them, the sun scorching her head, the strands of her hair stirring in the breeze, no doubt tickling Sev unbearably as they danced over his skin. Flies buzz onscreen. She remembers – or makes it up, it hardly matters now – how soft the skin was, stretched over his skeletal frame, how a patch of sweat glued her cheek down, how he barely dared to breathe in case it disturbed her. She could smell his sweat, the oily heat rising from his black hair, and was surprised that she didn't mind. Under her jawbone, his chest cavity echoed with the frenzied bump of his heart bouncing off every available surface.
They lie there, waiting. Lily can detect the instant a disgruntled expression creeps over her face. A lump rises in her throat, because she remembers the real significance of this moment. Or rather, realizes it for the first time.
A second later, Sev's left arm twitches up. Elbow bent like a jointed doll, he lets his hand hang down, far less sure of itself than when covered in flobberworms or frog entrails. His fingertips play gently with the topmost wisps of her hair, then, in slow motion, giving her every possible chance to shake him off, he places the full weight of his palm on her head.
They breathe in perfect harmony for a moment. When she doesn't object, Severus starts to stroke her hair, clumsily at first but with a sense of such intense cherishing that – Lily swivels her face away from the screen, because she has to deal with that blasted lump. It's trying to force unwanted emotions upon her. Swallowing, turning back, she sees herself still lying there, still waiting for Sev to – but that's all he does, just runs his long, deft fingers through her red-gold tangles, over and over, gathering up garlands of hair, teasing out the knots with a delicacy that argues a sensual temperament.
The camera rises to scan over her shoulder – she catches the puckered lips and the glum sigh that give voice to her petty disappointment – and then the focus tightens. At the time, there was no way Lily could have seen this, since she'd made sure to pillow her head in the opposite direction. She was too abashed to look him in the face. The watery reflections off the bulrushes quiver over her.
Look at him now. The dreadful second blush seems to have activated some dormant tinge of colour in his face, and his eyes are wide but no longer panicked. His lashes sweep up and down like fans, dreamily, his expression alert and at the same time entirely elsewhere. As she watches, he crooks one knee upward, and his outstretched hand brings the almost-extinguished cigarette to his lips. The lit end crackles and turns ember-bright, and Sev opens his mouth slightly, letting the smoke swim in the cup of his mouth like strands of memory. His shirt flutters at the neck. Shreds of splintered reed, pale as straw, glint in his black hair.
His other hand never leaves off petting her, sensuous and careful, asking nothing more than just this. The strain that pinches his face, so indelible that Lily has always believed him marked from birth, is gone, simply vanished.
He's – what, fourteen? His parents have been going at it hammer and tongs all summer. She thinks this may have been the year Sev started the hols with a split lip.
But here with her, he looks transfigured. He looks –
She stumbles to her feet and clicks the telly off, not even watching as the two of them collapse into a single white spot, wiped to humdrum blackness. It doesn't help. His face still glows in her mind's eye, haunting her.
Happy. That's what it was. Happiness. Lily tugs at her shirt, brushes both hands distractedly down her hips, tousles and smoothes her hair, using rapid physical movement as a delaying tactic to stave off the slow heave of sobbing that builds in her chest. She walks jerkily over to Tom's cot and bends to check on him through blurry eyes. He's asleep – well, he is until two tears splash him in the face, and then he mewls awake and fusses and gets hit on the nose by another wet drop as Lily loses the battle not to cry. The baby gasps a little and kicks and bulges his eyes at her. Then, for the first time ever, he reaches up, asking to be held. Lily scoops him from the bassinet without a second thought and cradles him in her arms, pacing back and forth and whispering, "It's all right now, sweetie, it's going to be all right," as the tears trickle down her face.
Because the thing is, that's when Sev really lost her. Not like later, when he pushed her over the edge with that despicable slur. This was the real shift in allegiance, more subtle but just as final. Because he didn't do anything. After that day it had become inevitable that she'd turn to someone else – to James Potter, as it happens – because she'd given Sev his chance and he hadn't taken it. He was so not the sort of boy her family would approve of, and she'd been so daring, and it sounds so pathetic now, but then it mattered, it mattered that he hadn't done anything.
lean body bending forward, pale and dark, narrow hands trapping Harry's head, thin lips closing over Harry's
She hadn't known, she couldn't, Merlin, who would have guessed? – that the sharp-edged, magically violent boy who followed her around and who so clearly doted on her was gay. At that age, boys who liked boys were more mythical than dragons or unicorns to her, rumoured to exist but not something she expected to encounter in daily life. Remus and Sirius – well, it had been easy to indulge them. They were cute. They were good for each other. But Severus –
A thing as simple as stroking her hair had put that look on his face. And she'd lain there, grading him, failing him, annoyed that he hadn't even tried to get a leg over – a leg she would have rejected, but still. All she'd registered was that Sev had disappointed, even insulted her somehow, and she'd missed the one and only time she'd ever seen him happy.
~~#~~
Instead, she watches him die.
She tells herself she owes him that much. Even so, she cradles Tom in her lap, unable to sit through it alone.
Right, here we go. The psychotic monster, the huge snake in its sparkling cage. Severus screaming. The darkness, the loneliness, and then the miracle of Harry creeping into view. Oh God, the look in Sev's eyes when he sees him. His blood on her son's robes, red hands holding fast. The sprung leaks through which the dying man, desperate to impart his message, exudes the incriminating, absolving memories. The secretions of his soul. Numb and slow, Harry siphons Snape's terrible gift into a flask handed him by Hermione. And Snape begs. It's anybody's guess who he sees in Harry's eyes.
Harry vanishes out the door without a backward glance, leaving Snape for dead.
It's horrible and sad, and it's what happens. In war. In life. People die pointlessly, often in pain. Her own death had been horrible and sad. So had Jamie's. Having followed Harry's future – his Snapeless future – beyond this point, she knows that what Snape's given him contains his own death sentence, spoken by Dumbledore, along with the memories that have driven Severus to this end. Drained, Lily rocks Tom in her arms and kisses the top of his head. There are things she will never understand. But as she sits on the floor with her feet in Tuney's sandals, an obscure sense of pride worms its way through the welter of pain.
Pride in the way Sev kept faith, the way Harry will shoulder his fate without breaking.
The shack is filthy, empty, dark. The black-robed body lies in its blood. She sits vigil for a long time, but nobody comes for him, not even Harry. Her insides ache. Don't they remember? Does no one grieve? As gratifying as it is on some level to see Snape suffer as he made others suffer, Lily's need for vengeance stops here. She doesn't regret now the times she's cried for him. Searching, she turns the black ring, willing the world to behave with decency.
The screen goes blank.
That's it? Troubled, Lily spins the dial further, then goes back to the body and realizes, with a strange desolation, yes, this is it. Absolutely all there is.
Tom squirms, tired of lying in one place, so she lifts him up and lets him practice standing in her lap, making sure that he faces away from the telly. He bobbles his head, and she whispers, "It's your fault, you know." He blinks at her and reaches out to pat her lips. She gives his hand a soft kiss. "All," kiss, "your," kiss, "fault."
The screen goes dark again, and Lily thinks, with a jolt, wait a minute. A rush of dread dizzies her. She sits Tom down, and he starts to grizzle. Fumbling, she spins back to the sight of Severus inert and outlined in blood. Oh God, oh my God. He's alive. He must be. The fact that she can see him is the proof. Until the picture winks out, and then he's dead. But only then. Sweet fucking Merlin. Blind-eyed, silent, perhaps paralysed by snake venom, he lives on for – oh, this is unbearable, it must be hours – after Harry leaves the shack.
And no one comes for him. No one saves him. The screen shuts down to an empty black hole, and that's it, that's all there is, he dies. The world's forgotten him. From this point forward, there's nothing else.
Tom wiggles and tries to crawl over her knees, but Lily pulls him back, craving warmth, shushing him softly when he complains.
Knowing how useless it is, she wishes that she could simply pass between worlds and hold Sev like this – the way she cradles Tom – hold him in her arms so that he's not alone when the blackness comes.
~~#~~
She spends more time with James now, ever since they quarrelled about Tom. Something happened when he pointed his wand at her. It doesn't entirely make sense to Lily, because they're edgy now, a bit on their mettle and ready to take offense with each other. When they fuck (Lily thinks 'fuck,' when she's pretty sure she used to think only 'make love' or 'have sex'), they're rougher with each other, more selfish. This is what finally clues her in: James is interested in her again because she's demonstrated that he doesn't, in fact, know everything about her. She's become a bit unpredictable, and it's put him in the habit of watching her, of vying with her over small, irrelevant things just to strike sparks.
It makes her feel slightly guilty. But, in fact, she prefers things this way.