"I think you'd look better in our house's colors, the red looks wrong with your hair and the gold doesn't really do anything for your skin colour," he grumbles, twirling a piece of torn parchment paper between his fingers.
Lily looks at his reflection in the mirror for a long beat, her expression softening slightly at the ragged edges of his coat and the little stain on the edge of his collar. When he finally looks up and sees her watching him his cheeks go red and he tries to give a kind of indifferent, ugly look, but she just smiles.
"I actually tried on your house colors the other day and I didn't like how they looked.." Severus looks at her again, confused, and Lily's smile only grows as she spins around and drops to her knees and slides a box out from under her bed.
She pushes it across the carpet to him.
Severus goes rigid and his lips go tight in that way Lily recognizes, and she knows he won't open the box himself so she opens it for him and pushes away the tissue paper.
"It was mums idea to buy it for you. While she was paying I tried it on in the store mirror and James Potter and his lott walked by and tried making a smart comment but I told them to go away because they don't know anything, anyway." Her words are a little rushed - she knows Severus is only ever a word or thought away from refusing a kindness. To emphasize it she pulls the sleek green cloak out of the box and pushes it to pool in Severus's lap. "And you can't say no because mum would be so hurt," she adds as he examines it.
He doesn't touch it, just stares down at the silvery lining with his face going hot with embarrassment. Noone else's parents had ever bought him something, especially something so nice, and instead of seeing the kindness in the act he thinks how lowly Lily's mother must think of he and his family. He starts to say it, he starts to speak out as only Severus can, to push warmth away because it was so alien to him, but Lily is already picking the cloak up and wrapping it around his bony shoulders. Her hair brushes his face as she tugs it around him and her smile never wavers. He can smell her on it, like faded lavender. She is standing, grabbing his hands and pulling him up and over to the mirror with her and she smiles to their twin reflection side by side as he sulks.
"The colors didn't do a thing for me but they really do suit you, Sev" she remarks, trying to smooth down the edges of the cloak and scrutinizing the length. "Maybe an inch too long, I was trying to show the seamstress how tall you were but it's hard to be exact in those situations," she continues factually, doing the talking for both of them as he stares dumbly.
"Well don't you like it?" She asks finally, exasperation edging her tone. Severus just shrugs his shoulders hard enough that the cloak falls down on the ground.
"It's fine but I don't need it, mum bought me a winter cloak and really, I think house colors on a cloak are too flashy - that's definitely more of a Gryffindor thing." Her face threatens to stay tough, she has known Severus long enough to know he acts off about niceness, infact, the nicer a person is to him the meaner he gets about it. But Severus continues, trying to add unneeded swagger and spite to his tone.
"But you're a Gryffindor so the whole affair suits you. You really can't understand what it feels like to be Slytherin or how we like to present ourselves, but it's okay, I don't fault you for that, Lily. I accept you the way you are but really, you needn't push your.. fashion sense on me. I don't need it."
Lily looks stuck between hurt and anger and her fists shake a little at her sides.
"Fine," she says with cool indifference, bending to grab the garment and fold it neatly, concentrating on lining the hems to keep from letting hot tears spill down her cheeks as Severus turns away to return to his spot on the floor, the matter closed. She doesn't say that she saved two months of allowance to pay for it herself, or that she had thought about how nice the two of them would look breezing down the halls in matching cloaks (colors aside). His initials are monogrammed on the inside but she folds the cloth doubled over, hiding them, and sticks it back in it's box.
After several more failed attempts to give the cape to Severus Lily means to throw it out but never does, it stays tucked away in it's box in the Evan's attic. It gets handed down to Pentunia when the Evans die (with a considerable amount of other things) and gets pushed into the Dursley's attic. It doesn't get found again until long after the war, when some old grudges have died (with Petunia) and Duddley contacts Harry to give him what he's discovered of his mother's belongings. Most of it has soft sentimental value but the Slytherin house cloak puzzles Harry and he can only think to put it to the side for Albus Severus (who had been sorted into Slytherin only that year, himself). Harry turns the cape over in his hands and finds the monogrammed initials. He smiles at them sadly after a few moments of thought and decides, to himself, to have his sons monogrammed under them.