41 – Gone

He knew that it had to look ridiculous to Lily. Why would he randomly stuff three wafers down his throat as if he hadn't eaten in days? Snape quickly grabbed for his wand and pointed it at the Henrietta Harrison book. "Kaboom!"

Nothing happened.

"Kaboomimus!" He waved the wand through the air feeling like a complete moron. "I thought this would work differently."

"What exactly are you expecting to happen, Severus?" Lily looked at him doubtfully. "And what was that stuff you ate?"

"I don't want to give anything away. I'm clearly doing something wrong."

"Kaboom? I've never heard—"

"It's something I read. Well…"

"Well…" Lily waited for him to say something. When he stared at the ground, and the silence began to feel like a ticking clock, she slowly made her way to the door. "Sev?"

He kept his eyes on the floor. "Yes?"

"Whatever it is you're doing tonight, make sure you…" Lily waited for him to look up, but he kept his gaze down. She stepped back to him and took his hand in hers, and gave it a light squeeze. He let her hold on, for as long as he could stand the thought of her being a friend, and only a friend, before pulling back.

"You need to get ready for the ball," he said.

"Yes."

As he watched that last strand of red hair disappear behind the door, he walked to his bed and collapsed, engulfed in a kaleidoscope of emotions ranging from relief, jealously, regret, sadness… everything packed into a Henrietta Harrison book and then some. He'd been close, really close, to casting the Dark Tourist on Lily. The thought of it made him sick to his stomach. Losing her did the same, but forcing a love with a spell wasn't a love at all. Could he really have done that?

As Harry watched Snape struggle with these thoughts, he guessed what he was thinking about, and he knew this question would likely keep Snape up many nights the rest of his life. He imagined him pacing his room, wondering how he could have come so close to such a heinous act, robbing someone of their own free will. Harry imagined Dumbledore telling him, "Losing a love can make people desperate, Harry."

Snape stared at his ceiling, trying to figure out his next move. He needed to send word to Voldemort that he'd come up empty-handed yet again, except this time, he had something to fall back on—Voldemort had been outsmarted. Slughorn's classroom had been prepared for the Dark Tourist starting with the potion in the silver chalice. Then, there was the request for him to keep his ornament in the classroom the entire holiday. Miss Rouge Arrow might have left the wafers in his Slytherin room, but Voldemort didn't need to know that. Snape tried to play the conversation with Voldemort in his head, except he couldn't tear his thoughts away from Lily. He had nearly tried to force Lily to love him.

This time, the thought got the better of Snape; he promptly got off his bed and walked out of his Slytherin room. "Never again," he said. "Never again."


Soon, Harry found himself moving quickly through the Forbidden Forest, save a few stops where Snape gathered handfuls of bright, red flowers he'd never seen before. Snape charged into Boggarts Cave, this time barely noticing the paintings of the druids on the cave walls.

They finally came across a boggart, except this time it wasn't the theatrical drama involving the two Lily's —the scene had all changed. It only showed Snape as an old man lying in a hospital bed, a room that reminded Harry of one at St. Mungo's. His only human interaction was a nurse bringing him a bowl of something that was gray and smelled awful. Snape briefly paused in Boggarts Cave to take it in, but this time he didn't have any trouble pointing his wand and saying, "Riddikulus," making the boggart disintegrate to ash.

Harry watched Snape over the next few hours in awe. Snape was dodging the blue unicorns in Willow Gorge with graceful, athletic ease—the potions master seemed possessed as he continued to drop one petal from the red flowers at the base of the glass doppelganger trees. Harry lost count after one hundred trees, but when Snape finally sat to rest outside the Boggarts Cave entrance, Harry guessed that he'd covered five to six hundred trees with a red petal.

"What are you going to do?" he asked Snape.

"If anyone ever sees this," said Snape, "this is how Willow Gorge vanished."

Harry jumped back a little. Had he just answered his question? Maybe it was then that Snape planned to put this memory into the pensieve for someone to see.

Snape pointed his wand to the closest doppelganger tree and shouted, "Incendio!" A bright flash shot from his wand and split the tree like a blot of lighting. It burned with a slow, orange glow until a spark touched one of the red petals, igniting a sonic boom that practically knocked Harry and Snape from their feet. In that moment, flames shot into the air forming a fiery, mushroom cloud, more sparks falling into Willow Grove like a glowing, red rain. As the other red petals ignited, sonic booms began erupting everywhere, deafening all sound, quickly engulfing the land into a red inferno. Snape watched for a few minutes more. Though Harry couldn't hear him, he knew Snape said, "Never again," before turning to head back into Boggarts Cave.

"That's one way to stop the Dark Tourist," said Harry. "Destroy all of the doppelganger root."


On the way back through the Forbidden Forest, a light snow began to fall, and a bitter, cold wind whipped through the trees that would've chilled anyone to the bone, except Snape didn't seem to mind, not even when icicles began to form in his hair. For the first time in the pensieve adventure, Harry thought that he almost looked at peace.

Snape returned to Hogwarts, but instead of heading to Slytherin, he made his way into a courtyard and stood behind a stone fountain, just out of sight from the ballroom windows where the Yule Ball was still going on. Harry watched the potions master's eyes scan the entire floor, stopping momentarily on any girl that had the slightest hint of red hair, yet Lily was nowhere to be seen.

"Thank you, James."

Both Harry and Snape turned to the side—James and Lily were in the courtyard. James had just wrapped a heavy blanket around her and pulled her close to him. Snape quickly made his way further into the shadows. When he saw them kiss, he flinched a little, but wore no expression. No sadness or pain. No anger or hurt. His face was entirely blank, and Harry perhaps now understood why Severus Snape had left these thoughts for him to see, why it had been so important to share them with him (or anyone)—Snape had lost the love of his life, and nothing would ever change that. He could send Lily a million roses, write her the most beautiful love poem, treat her better than he'd treat anyone in the world, but his chance with her had passed. What else could he do now but share his sad tale?

For Severus Snape, on the night of the Yule Ball that he was supposed to attend, he had instead rained down a firestorm on Willow Grove. And it was on this night, for him, that Lily Evans was gone.