Author’s Notes: This little one-shot bit me one morning before I had fully woken up and during the time when I reflect on fan-fiction and my own original works of prose. I had to write it! “In Your Dreams” is coming … Slowly, but surely. The upcoming chapter is quite interesting, though! (In my opinion.) PLEASE REVIEW:D

Disclaimer: Dialogue starting at “I’m sorry” and ending at “Why should I be any different” is taken from pages 675-676 of the US Hardcover copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, written by JK Rowling. Written actions during and everything before and past that point were written by me. Characters all belong to JK Rowling.

X

Fifth Year.

17 May.

X

“Lily.”

She ignored the familiar voice. Maybe if she didn’t move, she would be assumed asleep and the voice would go away. She hadn’t the slightest desire to speak with anyone at the moment. So, feigning sleep, the red-haired teenager silently dismissed the voice. It seemed to have worked for a while. She heard footsteps, a door open and close, and silence surrounded her once more. She sighed heavily, curling up in her four-poster bed, knees up to her chest.

“Lily!”

There was a hand on her shoulder and she knew she had no option but to address Mary Macdonald. She grumbled a response, sitting up. Her eyes were red with lines of exhaustion and puffy from the angry tears she would not admit to have shed. “What’s so important?”

“It’s –,” Mary started, but she broke off, heaving a sigh and furrowing her dark eyebrows close together. “It’s Snape. He –,”

“I don’t want to hear it!” she all but shouted, flopping back down onto her side and bringing the blanket to her chin.

“I told him you wouldn’t, Lily! I did, really. I tried to tell him to go off, but he wouldn’t hear it. He threatened to –”

Lily sat up again. “Threatened you? Did he threaten you, Mary?” she asked urgently, her jaw clenched.

“No, no! Nothing like that. He said he’d stay out there all night if that’s what it took to see you.” A frown crossed Mary’s fine features. The frown was soon replaced with a look of shock as Lily got out of bed, slid on her slippers and grabbed her wand. She hurried down the stairs leading to the Gryffindor Common Room. Her arms were crossed tautly, steps swift and strong as she made her way to the portrait hole.

“Oi! Evans! It’s nearly after hours, you know?”

The voice belonged to James Potter. She stopped mid-stride, turned around sharply, and raised her wand. He looked alarmed.

“You’re bloody lucky I’ve got dignity, Potter, because otherwise you’d be hexed into oblivion right now.” She was seething, her knuckles white and fingernails digging into the palm of her wand hand, which remained raised and pointed squarely at the dark-haired boy before her. She stood that way for a moment, eyes locked with his. If looks could throw someone into their death, hers would have. Finally, she turned around, wand lowered, and continued out through the portrait hole.

She hadn’t a chance to get in a word before the tall, hook-nosed, long-haired boy was uttering apologies.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not interested,” she said levelly, looking up at his face, jaw clenched.

“I’m sorry!”

“Save your breath.” She folded her arms over her chest, fingers wrapped around her wand. She wasn’t entirely sure why she brought it out with her. She supposed it was due to the fact that her trust in him had come crashing down to zero with his shout of one simple word spoken earlier that day.

“I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here,” she added. No use getting his hopes up. There were some things in life that she deemed unforgivable. For Severus Snape, her prior best friend, to call her that word – that filthy, awful word – was like being hit with the Cruciatus Curse.

“I was,” he said quietly. “I would have done.” He paused, eyebrows furrowed together as he looked at her. “I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just –”

“Slipped out?” She rolled her eyes, shaking her head disbelievingly. “It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends – you see, you don’t even deny it You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?”

She had stopped talking, and he supposed that she was expecting an answer. Severus opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t form the words and his lips closed once more.

“I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.” She started to turn back towards the portrait hole.

“No – listen,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean –”

“— to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?” The words were spoke coldly and she showed no intention of accepting his apology. With one last sharp, contemptuous look, Lily went through the portrait hole.

X

The following morning, Severus was sitting across from Avery at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall. He nodded occasionally to what Avery was relating, finding it hard to concentrate. As he buttered a piece of toast and mumbled some monosyllabic sound of understanding, all he could think of was Lily. He didn’t expect last night to go over as it did. Snape thought for sure that she would have at least given his apology a consideration. It appeared to be the last thing she wanted, however. He sighed inwardly. Maybe she just needed some time to think things over, to cool down. Yes, he thought, that’s it. While nodding to Mulciber, who just came in and sat beside Avery, Snape considered trying to talk to her. Maybe during Potions, or perhaps –

“’ey,” said Avery with a sneer, nodding his head towards the entrance. “It’s tha’ Mudblood. The Evans girl. Maybe now she’ll realize you don’ wan’ her to be hangin’ ‘round us lot.” He snickered. “Dunno what she could’ve been thinkin’. Us, comin’ from respectable families!” Mulciber laughed.

Snape merely looked around his shoulder to the Gryffindor table, where she was now sitting beside the girl he told to get Lily for him last night. He scanned the table; just four people down and on the other side of the table was Potter and his lot. He became infuriated at the mere sight of him, and such fury was heightened by his closeness to Lily.

“I’ve got to, er, go back to the Common Room. Left my … parchment in there.”

Without giving them time to rebut, he got up from the table and started towards the entrance. Standing, now, outside the Great Hall, he looked around, wondering how to get Lily to come out here. He frowned slightly.

“Hey,” he said to a small girl wearing a Gryffindor crest on her robes. She stopped and, noticing his own crest of Slytherin, wore a look of fright. “You know Lily Evans? She’s a Prefect, fifth year,” he asked her. She nodded feebly. “Go tell her that there’s something happening outside the Hall.” When she simply looked at him, wide-eyed and still rather frightened, he said, “Go!”

A few minutes later, Lily came out looking anxious and slightly flustered. Upon seeing him, however, she heaved a heavy sigh, rolled her eyes, and started to turn back.

“Lily, wait!” he said, reaching forward and grabbing her by the elbow.

She turned her head to look at him, eyes wide and brows furrowed, lips parted in an angry sort of frown. “Let go of me,” Lily said sharply.

He hesitantly released her arm. “Don’t go. Please.”

“I thought I made it clear,” she said, looking up at him through narrowed eyes, “that I’m done.”

“So, all these years of friendship? You’re just going to let that go because of one mistake?” His voice was level and quiet; he avoided her angered stare, looking down at his hands instead.

She recoiled slightly, throwing her hands in the air and scoffing audibly. “You just don’t understand, do you?” Lily leaned against the wall, cupping her face with her hands. “It’s not that bloody simple! It was just a matter of time is all. The more you hung out with – with those friends of yours and the more you learned about Dark Arts and Death Eaters and – and all the bad things going on out there … The more you did all that, the more we grew apart. You aren’t the same Sev I knew back then.” Her voice was growing higher, sounding almost hysterical. “You’re not the same person.”

She pushed herself from the wall and looked at him sadly. He was looking back at her when he spoke.

“I’ll change.”

“You can’t.”

“You don’t know that!” He reached out a hand to grab hers, but she quickly pulled back.

“You aren’t the same person. You haven’t been, and you can’t honestly deny that.” She looked up at him again before starting away. “Goodbye,” she said in what was almost a whisper.

He watched her as she retreated back into the Great Hall. He didn’t move for some time other than to lean against the wall where she had been just moments earlier. His head was raised to the Heavens, eyes shut in mental pain that he was almost beginning to feel physically.

Severus wondered if he should have told her; he wondered if it would have made a difference? Could three words do that? He was beginning to wish that he had given them a shot. The outcome could have ended up differently. He could have told her what he felt for nearly their entire friendship and instead of leaning against a wall feeling awful, he would have been embracing her warmly.

If it was just that easy.

I love her, he thought, pushing away from the wall and kicking it in frustration.

X

Year Seven.

12 January.

X

Severus sat at the Slytherin table, watching as two Gryffindors exchanged affectionate actions with one another. The red-headed girl was laughing, now, at something the dark-haired and bespectacled boy had said. He grinned in response, pulling her closer as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Her green eyes were sparkling with a happiness that he had not seen from her in years. As the boy planted a kiss on the top of her head, Severus turned away.

He stared at his plate of food, thankful that neither Avery nor Mulciber had made it to dinner yet. He was alone, his hair hanging over his face as he propped his chin upon fisted hands.

His fingernails dug into his palms and his jaw was clenched; the actions were done subconsciously, a response to his anger, frustration, and sorrow.

He was angry that Potter, his biggest rival at Hogwarts, had managed, somehow, to get the only girl who ever saw Severus as a person, as a human being. The only girl who he ever had eyes for. His first real friend.

He was frustrated that this all could have been prevented. If only that day two years ago, after their OWL examinations, he hadn’t lost his control to Potter. If he had only managed to remain un-phased by his words, his taunts. He resented his fifteen-year-old self almost as much as he resented Potter.

And lastly, he was full of sorrow that he would never have a chance with Lily; that he couldn’t hold her the way Potter was doing; that he would never know the smell of her hair, the touch of her lips, or the words “I love you, Sev” come from her mouth.

Standing up from the table, he threw one last glance over at the pair of Gryffindors. She was smiling up at him, entangling her fingers in Potter’s mess of hair, who was laughing in response. Various emotions flooded his mind, and Severus departed from the Great Hall, staring at the floor as he walked.

His eyes stinging with unshed tears, he thought, I will always love you, Lily.

Always.