Chapter 2
"... And this is my daughter, Elysia, on her fiffy-seventh day at preschool! Look at the pictures she's drawing! Aren't they masterpieces? Even the great Leonardo da Vinci would come and worship her works!"
Will this torture ever end? spoke a desperate, pleading voice in Severus Snape's mind. For Merlin's sake, he had only hoped for one or two pictures, then he'd be on his way. Who knew... who knew that (and if) Maes Hughes kept thousands of photos under that army jacket of his?
(Alright, Snape probably couldve been exaggerating about thousands of pictures. He'd come to realise that Hughes was a Muggle, and that he couldn't have done any magic to keep that many photos under his coat, plus the pockets on his clothes. Thousands? The former Potions master narrowed it down to hundreds.)
"... don't forget my wife, Gracia, too!" Hughes grinned like a massive idiot (which Snape assumed he was). "She's so beautiful..." then Hughes stopped to a halt. He handed the piles of photos to Snape, and started panicking. "Oh no! Now that I'm dead, every guy in Central must be asking her out! But NO! She's too pretty, but she can't just cheat on me, even if I'm dead... I need to go back to Amestris as a ghost and see if she's cheating on me... but she's too LOYAL! SHE'S A FAITHFUL WIFE! She'll never cheat on me!"
While the panicking was happening, Snape quietly set down the pile of photos, thinking, I wish I'd never met this man, and began to silently sneak away into the crowd of the newly deceased, but Hughes grabbed him by the sleeve of his arm, and said, "Wait! Not yet! I wanna show you some pictures of my buddy Roy!"
Buddy? Don't you mean victim? Snape thought in exasperation, as Hughes got out the next pile of photos. One showed Hughes and another man laughing and drinking at a bar. This man had dark, messy hair, and he had an army jacket like Hughes', except the stars and stripes on the shoulders were much different. "See? See? That's my buddy Roy! I met him at the academy, y'know, when I took a slice of quiche he said was his... I mean, he hadn't touched it, so..."
But what happened next to the amazing story (that Snape rolled his eyes at), the Potions master never knew, as he quietly snuck away, back into the crowd.
So... what was his goal? To find Lily Potter and say sorry, for all the things he had said and done to her...
"Hey!" A voice called from behind. "Snape!"
No, I'm not going back to look at your photos, Snape thought angrily, then he ran away, as fast as he could, not focusing on anything, not headed for anything...
"Aah!"
Snape heard a ladylike shriek. He looked up, and found that he had fallen on top of someone. She had red hair, and green eyes. The eyes of Harry Potter...
"L... Lily?"
The woman blinked twice, then said suspiciously, "Snape?"
"Oi, Snape!" Snape heard Hughes' voice. "I took a photo of that! Wanna see?"
Wait here, Lily, Snape thought angrily. Wait until I strangle this idiot...