Princess of a flowering empire with her band of Sasanqua blossoms folded into a neat crown, Lily breaks into the familiar alleyway of Spinner's end. It isn't quite night time, but at the peak of sunset with the sky a fired pitch; children still play in the street at the industrial end of the neighborhood with kites casting endless shadows and the jaunty sound of echoed laughter rings down the stone buildings. It feels like a good day to her and she hasn't seen Severus since the beginning of summer break.

She stands on her toes and looks into his window to find him laying in an uncommitted stupor on his bed. The sheets aren't made beneath him and one of them drapes onto the floor and looks wilted and yellow. He stares hard at the ceiling. She makes a mental note to buy him some of those nice stars that she has for her own ceiling, they make listless staring much nicer and Severus certainly does alot of it, Lily reasons. She taps. For a moment she is nervous with two weeks between them but the minute his head snaps in her direction she can tell by his eyes that he is glad she came. He stands with some slow effort and Lily sees his left arm is splint up. As soon as the window is up and he shambles outside the questions come pouring out of her, all of which Severus shrug at.

"I was being clumsy, fell as soon as I got home and mums been worrying me to death about it," he says it a little too quickly, cutting his eyes away for a moment with hair long and slack around his face. To change the subject he appraises her, his eyes lingering on her crown of flowers, and his face takes on a kind of bemused embarrassment for her. She answers by throwing up a hand from behind her back and slapping a crown of matching flowers on Severus. He throws it off instantly, of course, but a healthy amount of small flowers shake off the wreath and tangle into his hair without his immediate knowledge, which makes Lily smile brighter.

"I'm not one of your little girlfriends, you know," he grumbles, worrying his hair behind his ears and fixing her with a serious look. He thinks better of it all, though, and picks the wreath up off the ground where he had thrown it and sits it gingerly on his windowsill before grabbing Lily's arms to tug her back the way she always came, towards the dense woods between their neighborhoods.

"What's with that, anyway?" he asks, little flowers still hanging in his hair that she feels sorry about and begins to pull out as they walk.

"Petunia and I were doing a play but you know how she gets. She started crying because she thought my crown got all the good flowers and ran off, so I thought I'd check on you. Honestly, good flowers, can you imagine? You haven't even sent me an owl this summer and it's unbecoming best friend behavior!"

Severus looks amused enough; he almost always enjoys hearing about Pentunia because it is inevitably a flustering story that makes Lily's cheeks go red, but he continues dragging her by the arm through the thickets, off the main trail they've worn into the meadows by constantly tracking back and forth to one another. She still tries to twist blooms out of his hair even when he finally stops and stoops down.

"I wanted them to be a bit more mature, but this will do to show you," he says, some proudness in his voice. Lily only half hears him, one flower tearing apart and getting stuck so she stands over Severus and tries to fingercomb his hair for the mess she's made.

"I really am sorry about the wreath, I just knew you'd hate it so it seemed funny at the time but you hair is so thick," she drawls, brushing some of the plumage off his shoulders. Severus looks up at her, grinning a little, and she looks past him to the ground to see what he is so excited about.

"Oh!" she drops on her knees, too, and carefully touches a leaf of the curious, furry little plant - there is a small crop of them growing together, five atleast.

"Are these blackboys? How did they grow here?" Lily asks, dazed, thinking of how rarely the plants grow and how useful they were for advanced potion making. Severus is still grinning, fully now, and Lily looks at him with a screwy expression.

"Spill it!"

"Well, you remember last term Professor Sprout was growing some things for the ministry and I got that detention with her.." he cuts off for a moment, as if remembering the moment clearly and with great anger at it's unfounded nature. It clears, though, and he continues. "Well, there was commotion in the hallway and she went to inspect it and I remembered the stuff we'd read about blackboys and I recognized them instantly, you know, so I snagged a few seeds off one of the pods while she was out. Planted them the first afternoon I got home."

Lily listens to the story, worrying her bottom lip as it continues, her pleasant expression fading as Severus tells it with glee. More and more the things he gets excited about worry her in this way, and she knows it's a delicate topic to admonish him about.

"Oh Sev, you shouldn't have done that. You know there are some nasty potions that can be made and you could get into so much trouble-"

The proud look on Severus's face vanishes immediatly and is replaced with something resembling bitterness and he struggles to stand with his one good hand on the ground for leverage.

"I thought you wanted to try out that levitating potion-"

"Well I mean I do - I did - but not really - Sev we could get into so much trouble!" she manages, staring down at the crystalized blooms in their juvenile stage.

"You're worried about the dark art potions though, the banned potions - why does your mind always have to go there with everything I do? I just thought.." He turns away from her, staring off into a grove of teatrees with Lily still kneeling on the ground. She feels bad instantly, and tries to brush some of the dirt off Severus's pants before standing up, herself.

"Oh Sev, I know you meant well, I just don't want you to risk trouble for some stupid potion I wanted to try. You know in our fifth year we can make it in the classroom and I don't mind waiting, really, I was just talking then-"

She is halfway through the thought when Severus grinds his boot down into the plants, little pops as each of their blossoms break open and lavender tar soaks down into the grass.

"It was stupid, nevermind." He says, finally, breaking off her apologetic explanation.

Sunset has dwindled to a few points of light, stars and planets burning far away on the horizon.

He doesn't tell her how hard cultivating the plants had been, or how he had had to sneak out to tend them several times a day and had gotten caught by his father trying to slip back in, one night, and received the broken arm as penance because the stupid muggle had been in a drunk stupor, again.

Lily continues to play with his hair, reminding him of the way a mother comforts an admonished child, and he slaps her hand away from him finally and trecks back toward his house in the dark. At first Lily hesitates to follow but then runs blindly after him, catching his hand with her own so he can lead them out of the grove.

.

When they clear out Severus Snape's quarters in Hogwarts three decades later, a trist of Aurors doing the honors because noone quite believes Potter's stories trying to defend the man's ultimate alliances just yet, they scan through piles of old books to determine what can be recycled into the Hogwarts library and what has to be confiscated. One pile is covered in dust and one of the Aurors boredly tips it over to scan the covers lazily. The second to bottom book simply spills open, revealing a flattened wreath of dried flowers held in the pages of an old potions manual. The Auror simply gives it a queer look and tosses the lot of it into the rubbish bin, deeming it outdated without a second thought.