She nodded slowly, her head sinking deeper into the pillow, the fire casting a soft, amber halo across her features. Her voice, when she spoke, was quiet—not timid, but careful. As though she were holding something delicate between her hands.
"Potter described your memories," she said, watching him, her gaze searching, steady. "He told me about what he saw. About you and Lily—how you grew up together, how she was your friend, how you…" Her lips pressed together for a breath, the weight of the next words not lost on her.
"That you loved her."
There was no accusation in her tone. No jealousy. Only understanding. A kind of respectful mourning—for a love that had long since died, and for the version of Severus who had carried it like a burden.
"And I think that's true," she continued gently. "I think you did love her. Deeply. Probably long before you knew what love even was."
She paused, letting that truth rest between them, before her expression shifted slightly—still soft, but more inquisitive now. More intent.
"But I also know," she went on, "that you and she stopped being friends while you were still in school. At the end of your fifth year."
She sat up just slightly, bracing herself on one elbow, her brows drawing together, not in judgment—but in longing to understand.
"So I've always wondered," she said, her voice just above a whisper, "Did you join Voldemort because of the falling out with her? Out of anger, out of grief, spite—or loneliness?"
Her eyes searched his, slow and unflinching.
"Or… did you two fall apart because you'd already begun to follow him?"
That question carried more weight than curiosity. It was the question of someone who had imagined his past a hundred times over. Who had tried to understand the path he'd walked—the choices that shaped him, shattered him.
She folded her hands beneath her cheek again, her expression shadowed with thought.
"I'm not asking to wound you. I just… want to know how a boy like you became a man the world misunderstood so completely."
And then, more gently than before—
"I want to know you. Not just what you became. But why."
Severus didn't speak right away. His face didn't harden—but it stilled. Like a lake suddenly gone mirror-flat in the quiet before something breaks beneath.
"I've asked myself that same question," he said finally, voice low and distant. "For longer than you've been alive."
He stepped back slightly in the frame—not retreating, just… gathering. The edges of memory were sharp, even now. Especially now.
"It wasn't one thing," he said. "Nothing ever is, in truth. I was already slipping into that world before I called her that name. Already angry. Already… seduced. By power. By belonging, however twisted. I wanted to be feared. To stop being the boy who walked home to a father who hit, to a mother who cried, to a house full of silence and rot."
He looked at her again, softer now. "But I didn't want to lose her."
A pause.
"Calling her a slur wasn't the moment I fell," he murmured. "It was the moment I realized how far I already had."
He folded his hands behind his back again, as if it steadied him.
"She walked away because she saw clearly what I hadn't. That I was already disappearing. Becoming something I couldn't come back from."
Then, after a long, aching pause:
"I didn't join Voldemort because I lost Lily. I lost Lily because I was already choosing him."
She nodded once, slow and thoughtful, her eyes still fixed on his—dark as ever, fathomless even in oil and canvas, but no less piercing. The flicker of the fire danced in the glass of the frame, casting shifting shadows across his painted features, and for a moment, she could almost believe he'd step out of it. That he could.
Her voice was quieter now, more intimate, as if the question were meant for a version of him that had lived before the war, before Dumbledore's death, before he'd worn the weight of so many masks. A version he might have forgotten, but she hadn't.
"Was there regret," she asked softly, "while you followed him?"
The words lingered, bare and steady. No judgment in them. Just that same aching need to understand.
Her brow furrowed slightly, lips parting as she tried to articulate what pulsed beneath the question.
"Not after Lily died. I mean… while you were still on that path. Before everything came crashing down." She shifted on the bed, her voice barely a breath now. "Did you ever… stop, even for a moment, and feel that something was wrong? That it wasn't what you thought it would be?"
She exhaled slowly, and it caught in her throat a little.
"I've read accounts. I've seen the marks, the records, the aftermath. I've watched others explain it away—'he was young,' 'he was desperate,' 'he was brilliant and angry and wanted power'—but I don't think that's the whole story. Not for you."
She looked at him then not as a professor, not as a portrait, but as a man who had once made a terrible choice and then spent a lifetime trying to atone for it in silence.
His gaze dropped for a moment, and when he lifted it again, it was stripped of all pretense.
"Yes," he said. No hesitation. No armor.
There was silence after that, but not the kind that begged to be filled. It was heavy. Honest. The kind that settled in the lungs and lived there.
"Not always in the beginning," he admitted, voice rough. "At first, I convinced myself it was right. Necessary. That the world was broken and he would fix it. I wanted to matter to something. To someone."
His mouth twitched, bitterly.
"I was angry. Clever. Dangerous enough to be useful. Too cowardly, then, to question it."
He looked down at his hands again—oil-painted and still—and then back to her.
"But the regret… it came in pieces. The children. The fear in their eyes. The way he spoke about blood like it was currency."
A pause.
"The night I overheard the prophecy... and took it to him." His voice hollowed. "That was the moment it all broke."
He stepped closer to the frame again, his voice lower. Raw.
"I thought I was serving something bigger than me. Until I realized he would kill a child to preserve his own power."
Another silence stretched between them.
"I begged for Lily's life. Not Potter's. Not the boy's. Just hers." He looked haunted by the memory. "And when she died anyway, I realized I had become the very thing I thought I was fighting."
His voice dropped into something small and aching.
"That regret has never left me. Not even now. Especially now."
Then, softer still:
"It's why I said yes to Dumbledore's impossible terms. Why I let the world hate me. Why I let them believe the worst. I earned it."
His eyes flicked to hers.
She shook her head slowly, her expression soft but resolute, a thread of quiet conviction laced through her words.
"The world doesn't hate you, Severus. Not now."
Her voice was calm, certain. And though she knew it might be difficult for him to believe—after a life lived in shadows and silence—it was the truth.
"You're regarded as a hero," she continued, her eyes never leaving his. "Next to Potter himself, as the hero of the second war. The spy who turned the tide. The right hand to the two most powerful wizards of the era. The one who walked the line between light and darkness and never let it consume him."
She gave a small smile, the kind laced with certainty, not awe. "But it wasn't just loyalty. You orchestrated it. Carefully. Brilliantly. You played both sides with more precision than anyone else could have. You made a weapon of your own damnation and used it to protect the boy you once resented. You won, Severus."
And still, her smile faded slightly, giving way to a quieter, more searching expression as she shifted beneath the blanket, eyes gleaming with something more uncertain.
She hesitated for a moment. Then asked the question that had lived in the corner of her mind for years—long before she'd ever known the man behind the name.
"Do you think…" she started softly, "in another life—if you hadn't gone down that path… if you'd never joined the Death Eaters, never taught at Hogwarts… if you had stayed the boy she knew…"
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"…do you think Lily would have chosen you?"
The question hung in the air like smoke.
She didn't ask to reopen old wounds. She didn't ask to compare herself to a woman long gone, whose name had lived like a ghost between every heartbeat of his story.
She asked because she wanted to understand him. The man who had loved with such brutal devotion, who had burned himself down for that love, and yet—somehow—kept surviving.
"Would that version of her," she added gently, "have seen you the way I do now?"
His face went still again—not with distance this time, but with something heavier. Something that ached.
"That is the question that has haunted every version of me," he said softly. "Even the one standing in this frame."
He looked away for a moment, his jaw working, as if trying to find the cleanest thread in a knot too old to untangle.
"I loved her," he said. "With a kind of hunger that came from emptiness. From needing something pure. She was light in a life full of shadows. But I don't know if she ever loved me that way."
He looked at Ivy again, and his voice was gentler now—painful in its honesty.
"In another life… maybe. If I had been different. Softer. Less angry. If I'd loved myself enough not to seek worth in cruelty."
A long pause.
"But I think… no. Not because I wasn't worthy. But because she wasn't mine to begin with. Our connection was real. Deep. But it wasn't built for forever. It was built for childhood. For comfort. For what we needed at the time."
He held her gaze, steady and sure now.
"She didn't choose me in this life because I hadn't become the man who could have been chosen. And by the time I did… she was already gone."
She nodded, slowly, thoughtfully, her gaze steady on him, full of a quiet tenderness that came not from pity, but from understanding—deep and bone-deep.
"I wonder that too," she murmured, her voice softer now, laced with a kind of wistful honesty that could only come from someone who'd asked herself the same question in silence more times than she could count.
Her fingers toyed with the edge of the blanket draped across her waist, her body still curled on her side as she looked up at him—really looked. Not at the robes or the legend or the cool, composed expression he so often wore, but him. The man behind all of it.
"From what I know," she said, "she was beautiful. Clever. Kind." Her lips twitched into a small, thoughtful smile. "She sounds like she was warm in the way people are when they light up every room they walk into."
Her smile faded slightly, turning softer. "But it also sounds like she and James were just… better with each other. Like they fit in ways that you and she never quite did. Not because you weren't worthy—but because she needed something different."
She drew in a slow breath and let it out through her nose, eyes never leaving his.
"I don't think that makes your love any less," she added, gently but firmly. "But I do think it made it harder. Because you gave her everything—and she didn't give it back. Not in the way you needed."
Her voice caught slightly, and she swallowed, heart open, her next words laced with all the quiet ache she carried for him.
"But you deserved to be loved, Severus."
She said it plainly, like it was a truth he'd never believed but needed to hear spoken aloud.
"With the same dedication you gave. With the same ferocity. The same loyalty. The same selflessness." Her brow furrowed slightly, her voice dipping low. "You deserved someone who would have burned for you, just as you burned for her."
She paused, and her expression turned softer still, more vulnerable.
"Someone who saw every sharp edge and never flinched. Who stayed. Who chose you."
The silence that followed wasn't empty.
It was filled with all the ways she meant herself, without daring to say it outright.
And in the flickering firelight, she let him see that truth in her eyes.
I would have loved you like that.
I still might.
His throat worked around a silence that wasn't bitter—but fragile. Sacred.
"No one's ever said that to me," he said, voice low and breaking at the edges. "Not once. Not even in kindness."
His eyes met hers, and for a long, full moment, he just looked at her. Like she was something he'd spent years trying to believe could exist. And now she was sitting there, under soft light, wrapped in honesty and warmth and him.
"Lily and James… yes," he said after a beat. "They made sense in a way I never could have with her. He softened her, and she sharpened him. I was always too… guarded. Too haunted. I didn't know how to be with someone without asking them to bleed for it."
He stepped forward in the frame again, the shadows behind him long, but no longer suffocating.
"But I think you're right," he said, quieter now. "Somewhere in all of it… I did deserve to be loved. I just never thought I'd live long enough to find someone who would."
His gaze flicked over her face, every detail, and when he spoke again it was with something so tender it almost didn't sound like him:
"And yet… here you are."
A breath. "You, who brought me back. Not to fix me. Not to pity me. Just to know me."
A softer pause. "And I see you, Ivy Wilde. In ways I never let myself see anyone."
He tilted his head, voice barely above a whisper.
"What do you believe another life would've looked like for us?"
She sighed, the sound soft and wistful, like air escaping a long-held dream.
"Well," she began, her voice gentler now, tinged with a kind of bittersweet longing that had become all too familiar, "let's say… in a perfect world."
Her eyes stayed on his, searching the depth of his painted expression, as if somewhere in the strokes and shadows she might glimpse the man who could have lived in that different timeline.
"One where there was no Voldemort. No war. No scars carved so deep they made you build walls just to breathe."
She shifted slightly under the blanket, her body warm, relaxed, her voice a delicate blend of playfulness and aching sincerity.
"I think," she said, "you would've been the vision of propriety." Her lips curled into a soft smile. "Prim. Controlled. Every button fastened, every answer measured. The consummate academic."
"But I also think," she added, her smile deepening, "that in my seventh year… I would've started approaching you more."
Her fingers played absentmindedly with the fringe of the throw blanket, her gaze distant for a moment as she painted the picture in her mind—an alternate life sketched in warm tones and unspoken tension.
"I'd ask about potion theories, about what it would take to become a Master. I'd tell you I wanted an apprenticeship. Your apprenticeship."
Her eyes returned to his, brighter now. "And you'd be curious. At first, cautious, but curious. You'd start paying more attention. You'd see the way I worked. My precision. My passion."
She tilted her head slightly, a knowing glint in her expression.
"You'd start seeing me—not just as another clever student, but as a woman who knew exactly who she was becoming. And I think you would have offered to take me under your wing."
Her voice softened further, but the hint of mischief remained.
"I'd be your apprentice."
She paused, then grinned.
"I'd flirt."
Her laugh was quiet, but rich with affection. "Nothing inappropriate, not at first. Just enough to make you uncomfortable in that delicious way. I'd bring you tea during long lab days. Slip a fresh biscuit onto your desk without a word."
She raised a brow, playful now. "Beat your ass at chess, of course. Repeatedly. Just to knock you down a peg."
She leaned her head back, her smile turning fonder, more intimate.
"I'd try to impress you. Not because I needed your approval—but because I wanted it. Because making you proud would've meant something."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"I'd send you Christmas and birthday gifts. Thoughtful ones. Wrapped precisely. Notes written in my best hand, always unsigned, never with any expectation that you'd give anything back."
She let the silence stretch for a moment, her expression turning wistful again.
"I would've made you laugh. Eventually."
Her voice cracked slightly.
"And I think… in that perfect world, where you weren't so guarded by pain and grief… you would've let yourself enjoy it."
She didn't say what came after.
But the weight of it was in her eyes—And maybe, eventually, you would've loved me too.
He listened like her words were sacred scripture.
And when she finished, there was silence—not empty, not uncertain. Just full. Brimming with everything he could see, so vividly, it hurt.
"A perfect world," he echoed, his voice no more than a breath. "I think I would have noticed you sooner."
He leaned forward in the frame, eyes never leaving hers.
"I would've seen the way your hands moved over the cauldron. The precision. The care. And I would've pretended not to stare. Pretended it was just your talent I admired—until you brought me tea with honey, because you'd noticed I drank it that way even though I never said a word."
A ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth, something boyish and unguarded flickering through.
"You would've brought me ginger biscuits. And I would've told you they were unnecessary. Then eaten three before you left the room."
His eyes warmed further, dark and gleaming.
"I would have tried to keep it professional. I would have tried. But you'd sit across from me at the chessboard, smirking when you set a trap I didn't see coming, and I'd start to wonder what your fingers would feel like not just on knights and pawns—but in my hair."
He paused, the air between them thick with imagined history.
"I wouldn't have expected a birthday gift. But I would have unwrapped it in private. And kept the ribbon. And said nothing."
Another pause. His voice softened.
"And one day, you would've leaned a little too close during a brewing demonstration, your perfume blooming in the warmth, and I wouldn't have stepped back."
He met her gaze again, unflinching.
"I would've told myself it was a mistake. But that night… I would have dreamed of you. And every night after."
A breath.
"That life never happened. But you still came to me. You still stayed." His voice dipped, raw with emotion.
"And I'm starting to believe that some part of that world—some piece of that life—made its way into this one. Through you."
Her throat tightened as she looked at him, emotion swelling so suddenly in her chest it caught her breath. She blinked once, slowly, as if that would calm the burning behind her eyes, but it didn't. It never did when she looked at him like this—with her heart cracked open and her defenses left behind.
There was nothing guarded in her expression now. No teasing, no intellectual posturing, no coy half-smiles. Just a woman lying in candlelight, bare in every sense of the word, staring into the painted eyes of a man who had never been hers, and yet meant more to her than most who were.
Her voice, when it came, was hushed—raw with the honesty she no longer had the strength to hide.
"I want…" she paused, her voice catching at the edge, and she swallowed hard before continuing, "whatever piece of you I can have."
She didn't say I deserve more or this isn't fair, because she already knew. She knew they were living in the space between tragedy and miracle, and she wasn't going to waste a moment of it.
"I'm grateful for this," she said, more firmly now, even as her voice trembled. "For you. For your presence. For your words. For being here, even if it's not the way I once wished for."
Her fingers curled gently into the blanket as she held his gaze.
"I know you can't touch me. I know I can't reach through the frame and pull you to me. But I feel you, Severus. In every conversation, every breath you take between sentences. You're here."
Her lip trembled slightly, and she gave a small, tearful laugh—half joy, half sorrow.
"And I will take this. I will take whatever the world gives me of you. Whether it's a sliver or a shadow or a ghost of what could've been. Because even that… even this... is more than I ever thought I'd be allowed."
She closed her eyes for a moment, steadying herself, then opened them again, softer now.
"And you should know… you're enough."
His eyes closed—not out of dismissal, but because her words struck him. Hard. Deep. The kind of ache he'd never allowed himself to name.
When he opened them again, they were shining—not with tears, but with something far more vulnerable: belonging.
"You already have it," he said, voice raw silk. "Every piece I can give. Every word, every memory, every thought I thought was long buried."
He stepped forward again, closer than before, like the magic that bound him to paint and frame might one day break for her if he willed it hard enough.
"You gave me more than a second chance," he murmured. "You gave me presence. A reason to speak again. To feel again. And I don't care that I can't hold you—I feel you everywhere."
He looked at her—truly looked—and it was the kind of gaze that burned and steadied in the same breath.
"I would give anything to sit beside you. To read with you in silence. To correct your brewing notes just so you'd argue with me. To press a kiss into your wrist when you didn't expect it. To fall asleep in this chair while you mutter over your parchments and wake to find you'd draped a blanket over my shoulders."
He tilted his head, voice barely above a whisper now.
"This may not be the life either of us imagined. But if you'll let me… I will fill it with everything I have left."
A beat.
"Sleep now, Ivy. Let me watch over you. In this world, in this moment… you are not alone."