Author's Note: Unbetaed. Just for fun. And yes, I know that this never happened in canon, and would likely never have happened in canon, but that's why it's labeled AU.

Turning Over a New Leaf

Severus Snape was a seventh year and he was turning over a new leaf. It had begun with a new outlook, new resolve, and it was going to be sealed and delivered with a letter.

Severus liked writing letters. It gave one time to sort through their thoughts, to choose the most effective phrases. It was so much more preferable to actually having to talk to someone, especially when that someone was a girl, and especially when that girl was Lily Evans.

His anxiety over this issue was ridiculous, of course. Lily Evans wasn’t ‘a girl’, she was Lily. Lily, who had known him since he was ten years old, Lily whose room he had snuck into on more than one occasion on hot summer nights when his parents were fighting at home. Lily, whom he had curled up next to in her big bed, with her sweet smelling sheets, and whose heartbeat he had listened to through the pale freckled skin of her back, allowing it to lull him to sleep; Lily who had seen him smile, cry and even be sick; Lily who knew all of his joys and even some of his sorrows.

He shouldn’t be nervous about talking to Lily, but the truth was he was terrified. He didn’t have the right to talk to Lily anymore. She had made that only too clear on more than one occasion, but it was the beginning of seventh year. Things had changed. He had changed, and there was a war brewing, a war that could very well swallow them both up whole.

He had to do what he could now, while there was still a chance. He had to do everything within his power to get her away from Potter. And it wasn’t just about him being an arrogant, spoilt, self-aggrandizing bastard anymore, either. It was about him being rash, and naïve. It was about his devil-may-care attitude. Potter was a menace --to himself, and to anyone associated with him, and Lily was starting to weaken, to soften to the boy, and he couldn’t allow it. Her safety depended on it.

Severus looked back down at the parchment in front of him. It was blank. He dipped his quill in the bottle of ink on the table beside him:

Lily,

Just her name, nothing else. He looked down. His hand was trembling. He scowled at it, and concentrated hard until it stopped. That would never do. He would have to work on that. He brought the quill to the parchment again:

Meet me at our old spot—tonight after curfew.

S.

Stupid. He should have written everything in the letter and charmed it so only she could read it. He didn’t want to see her in person, did he? That was the whole purpose in writing the letter.

“Oi, what’s this?!” The parchment was snatched from under his nose before he could stop it, and the smooth voice behind him made his stomach turn sour. Black.

He turned around slowly in his seat and held out his hand. “You’ll want to give that back, Black,” he said calmly. He could tell that the tone of his response had momentarily thrown the boy. Peter Pettigrew hovered just behind him, looking ecstatic at the possibility of impending violence.

Black stared down at his outstretched hand. “No, I don’t think I will,” he smirked. He held the parchment and read it out loud, much too loudly for the library. Madame Pince appeared from behind a nearby bookcase and shushed him loudly. He smiled winningly at her, and Severus nearly vomited as his saw the older woman color slightly at the cheeks before disappearing into the stacks again.

“Now, if you’re quite finished,” Severus said drolly, “I’d like it back.”

Black’s eyes narrowed, and he took a step toward him. “What are you up to, Snape, hmm…? You’re acting queer.”

Severus let the corner of his mouth twitch up in a slight smirk. “Well, I suppose you would be the expert on acting queer, now wouldn’t you, Black.”

He enjoyed watching the color drain from Black’s face. He nodded toward the parchment again. “My parchment.”

“Not a chance, Snape.” He had regained some of his composure by now.

“Well then make sure she gets it, will you?”

“I’ll make sure she gets it.” Remus Lupin appeared seemingly from out of nowhere, and snatched the letter out of Black’s hands. Severus was momentarily surprised by the demonstrative display. It was wholly unlike Lupin. But then he remembered, it was only two days until the full moon. Lupin always got more aggressive then.

“Sod off, Remus!” Black spat. “This is none of your affair.”

“I think Lily would want to get this letter, and so it is very much my affair,” Lupin responded softly, though through gritted teeth.

Lupin was looking particularly peaky, but there was an almost feral glint in his eye. Black would be a fool to press him, but this was Black, after all… Severus settled back in his chair to watch the little drama unfold.

“And I said, no,” Black retorted, snatching the letter back as though that was the end of it. Merlin, he was getting worse than Potter.

Lupin held out his hand. “Give me the letter, Sirius.” There was almost a growl to his voice now. Peter was standing in the shadows of the stacks beyond, bobbing excitedly up and down on the balls of his feet; his cheeks flush as the tension in the room grew. Pettigrew seemed to get odder the older he got. In the last year or so, he had started to make Severus’ skin crawl. There really was something wrong with the boy.

Sirius stood a little taller and stared down his nose at Lupin, with a look that was a mix of heat and derision. “I’ve already told you, no.”

Lupin moved fast, so fast that Black was already pinned to the table beneath Severus’ nose before he’d even seen the lycanthrope move. Severus smiled wryly down at Black, and calmly removed the parchment from the hand that Lupin had pinned violently above his head. “I think I’ll deliver this myself, if you don’t mind. I’ll, uh—leave you two to sort through your little lover’s spat in privacy, shall I?”

Black lunged for him, and Lupin held him back, though from the look on his face, he wasn’t any more pleased by Severus’ comment than Black was.

Severus had to pass by Peter as he left. The boy had broken into a sweat now, and there was a telltale bulge in his trousers which he was trying to hide. Severus stopped and sneered down his nose at him. “Why don’t you ask to join in, Pettigrew? Who knows, maybe this will be your lucky day…”

The boy let his arms drop, allowing the pile of books he was carrying to cover what Severus had already noticed. “I don’t know what you mean,” he squeaked.

With a final quick glance at the books the boy held in front of him for modesty, and a smirk, he pushed past him and headed for Gryffindor Tower. Truth be told, Severus wasn’t sure whether it was the sight of the two boys, pressed together on the table top or the thought that he might get to see the drawing of blood that had excited Peter more. He suspected the later.

Really, the boy could give Bella Black a run for her money. But then, no. Little coward that Peter was, he was nothing but a voyeur. He didn’t actually want to do the hurting, he just wanted to watch. Hmm… Perhaps he should introduce him to Bella, one of these days. Bella always did like an appreciative audience from what he could tell.

When he got to the portrait hole, Mary McDonald was just coming out. “Is Lily in there?” he asked.

Her eyes widened a little. “None of your business, Snape.”

He chose to ignore her. “I need to speak to her, so if you’d be good enough to go and fetch her for me.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” she spat back, nose in the air imperiously.

He pulled out his wand, and relished in how she curled into herself instinctively. “Don’t make me hex you McDonald. You know I will. All those dark and spurious friends I keep, all those long hours in the restricted section, up to my eyeballs in tomes of Dark Magic...”

It was only a few weeks into the new school year, and already his resolve to live up to everyone’s dark and foreboding opinions of him was paying off. Gone was the shy, cowering little weed of a boy, and instead he had been replaced with a man, a future Death Eater—someone who was going places. Lucius Malfoy had been strutting around exuding a false aura of entitlement for years, despite the fact that his own grandmother was a Halfblood and his parents were new money. It had worked for him. Why shouldn’t it work for Severus as well? Well, it seemed to have worked on Black, on Pettigrew, and now on McDonald. He felt rather pleased with himself.

That was until Lily stepped through the portrait hole. She blinked once at the sight of him. “Snape. What are you doing here? And put down that wand. You’re acting like a prat.”

He lowered it, and Mary breathed a sigh of relief. “He says he just has to see you,” Mary said sarcastically, now that she had Lily there to protect her.

“Is that so,” Lily replied, sounding unimpressed. “Well, what is it, Snape. I haven’t all day.”

“Alone,” he growled. Oh yes, that was good. Even Lily had cocked an eyebrow at his tone. Mary scurried back through the portrait hole, and Lily crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“Well…?”

“Tonight. After curfew, in our usual spot.”

“No, Snape. I’m Head Girl this year. I’m done with all that. If you have something you want to say to me, then you can say it here, and now.”

“I’m afraid not.”

Her auburn brow cocked again. “Well—well then, I suppose you will just have to forgo the pleasure of telling me, whatever it is that…”

“I didn’t say it gave me any pleasure,” he responded coolly. But what I have to talk to you about is necessary. You’re life may depend on it, actually, so if you know what’s good for you. You’ll be there.” And with that he turned and walked away.

“I won’t come!” she called after him.

“Yes you will.”

XxxX

When he got back to his dormitory, he slammed the door behind him and collapsed onto the bed. His heart was hammering hard in his chest, but overall he had to admit that things had gone much better than he had anticipated. She would come. She had to come.

He was discovering something about Lily. She couldn’t keep away from him despite all her resolve. He had no idea why, but there it was, and it could be very, very useful to him, if he played his cards right.

The curtain to his bed swung open, suddenly, and a body flopped down on his bed. He sat up with a start. “Get off, Regulus! How many times do I have to tell you, not to…?”

The boy smiled and slid off onto the floor, kneeling on the cold stone beside his bed, so only his head peeked over the side of the mattress at him. “I’ve got something for you. Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“Not particularly…”

Regulus laughed lightly. “Of course you do. You always say that, and yet you always do. You’re insatiably curious, Sev, and that’s never going to change.”

“Stop talking like you know me,” he grumbled in irritation. “You know I hate that.”

“You hate everything. I’m used to it,” Regulus countered.

“And stop calling me, Sev,” he added in for good measure. Regulus was the only person besides Lily he allowed that indulgence, but it had hurt him earlier when Lily refused to call him by anything but his surname, and hearing his old nickname on Regulus’ lips, now, seemed like a mockery.

“I’m going to get your gift now,” the boy informed him.

Severus said nothing.

When he returned, Regulus was carrying a rather large white box tied up with a green ribbon. He slid it onto the mattress in front of Severus and took a step back.

“Well, what is it?” Gifts made Severus uncomfortable.

“Open it and see,” Regulus said. He sounded well pleased with himself.

“I don’t want your gift,” Severus grumbled, and pushed the box away.

“Well, then consider it a bribe.”

“A bribe?” Now this was interesting. He looked back down at the box. “A bribe for what?”

“You’re going to get me in to see the Dark Lord. Everyone knows you’ve met him, that he was pleased with you. You have some influence, or so it is said…”

“You’ve been listening to lies, Regulus. Do you really think that I could have influence like that with him?”

The boy didn’t seem to hear him. “They’re always telling me that I’m too young, but I’m not too young!”

“You’re fifteen. You are too young.”

“I’m not!” the boy suddenly spat. There was real passion in his voice.

Severus looked him up and down. He still looked like a boy. He was too young, and as curious as he was about what was in the box, he couldn’t possibly. He pushed the box away again. “You are,” he reiterated.

Regulus’ face turned red, and he trembled a little as though getting ready to let loose in a tirade of rage, or disappointment, or frustration, he didn’t know which, but in the end he only took a deep breath and plastered a smile across his face again. “Well take the thing, anyway,” he said, nodding toward the box. “You’re meeting Evans tonight, aren’t you?”

“I’ve not said so,” Severus mumbled, upset that Regulus always seemed to see through him so easily. He was the only one, and he had yet to find a way to put a stop to it.

“You didn’t have to,” the boy replied, sounding amused. “You’ve been half hard all day in anticipation.”

He supposed that he should be mortified, or angry that Regulus had been paying that close attention to that part of his anatomy. It could hardly have been noticeable under his school robes, and a person would have had to have been looking in earnest to notice. But where Sirius Black’s proclivities disgusted him, his little brothers seemed to fascinate. He had no idea why, and it had unsettled him on more than one occasion.

He looked back down at the box in front of him. It couldn’t hurt to take a peek. He untied the ribbon and pulled back the lid, only to be met with a sea of black fabric. He pulled it out. It was a coat, rather somber and modest, but it was collarless, which was very much the ‘in’ thing, and had an almost priestly air about it. He looked at the myriad of buttons down the front. “How on earth am I supposed to unfasten and refasten all these buttons?”

Regulus was lying on his own bed now, a book open in his lap. “Magic, I suppose… So do you, except my bribe, then?” The boy sounded hopeful.

“No. I accept your gift.”

Regulus smiled wider, and went back to reading. “I knew it was for you, when I saw it. You waste that body of yours in school robes Severus, you really do.”

Severus looked down at the garment. It was very expensive, he could tell. There was something about the covered buttons, the silk lining, the lay of the seams. He shouldn’t accept it. It would make him beholden to the boy, but somehow he knew that Regulus would never expect anything in return except the pleasure of seeing him in it, and he could put up with that, if it meant he might be able to impress Lily a little. He decided to take it.

Sliding off the bed, he pulled it out of the box and held it up.

“There are trousers in there too,” Regulus said casually. “I had to guess at your inseam. I hope I got it right.” With all the attention the boy seemed to be paying that area lately, Severus had no doubt that he had, but he kept his opinion to himself.

Stepping to the other side of the bed, he pulled the curtain, blocking himself from Regulus’ view, and hurriedly changed into the clothes. They fit perfectly. Like a glove, actually. He didn’t usually wear fitted clothes. He preferred the bagginess of his robes. He figured it hid his skinniness.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Regulus’ voice said from the other side of the curtain. “But you shouldn’t try to hide how lean you are, Sev. Some girls like that. Evans strikes me as the type who likes that. You’ve seen how ludicrously skinny Potter is, and he has none of your grace. Really, I don’t know what she see in...”

Severus tore back the curtain. “What’s Potter to do with anything?!”

Regulus was looking him up and down, his eyes bright. After a moment, he tore his eyes away from his body, to look at his face. “It fits well.”

“I didn’t ask for your Bloody fashion advice, Black. I asked what Potter’s to do with it?”

“Oh yes.” Regulus sounded a tad bored, as he leaned back and took up his book again. “They’re together, or so the rumors go. I thought you’d heard.”

All the blood rushed from Severus’ head in an instant, and he sat down hard on the bed, before his legs gave out on him. “Together…” He could hear how pathetic he sounded, so much desperation and regret in his voice.

“Well don’t go getting all despondent about it, Sev. You’ve ten times the charms Potter does.”

The boy was delusional—downright delusional…

“Potter’s got money,” he moped.

“What? Money?” Regulus waved this off as thought it were nothing. “Money’s nothing to a girl like Evans. She’s not interested in that.”

“What do you know about what Lily is interested in?” he asked weakly.

“More than you might guess.”

“Well go on,” Severus bit out impatiently. “Out with it then?”

Regulus was observing him appreciatively. “One condition,” he said.

“What?”

“You put in a good word for me with the Dark Lord.” The boy’s tone was almost reverent as he said the name.

Severus knew he should say no, but—Lily with Potter… “Fine. I’ll put in a word. Now what is it that Lily is interested in?”

“Sex.”

“What?!” Severus was on his feet in an instant.

Regulus looked nonplussed. “Don’t get your pants in a knot. I’m not insulting her. I’m telling you something important. Now sit down and listen.”

Severus did as he was told, but he still felt twitchy at the mere suggestion that Lily might be less than the clean, pure, perfect creature he knew her to be.

“Have you ever wondered why every boy in this school is after Lily Evans?”

“That’s easy. She’s gorgeous.”

“There are prettier girls, believe me, but the boys don’t notice them as much, and I’ll tell you why. Lily Evans exudes sexuality.”

Severus was on his feet again. “I warned you…”

“Sit down,” Regulus insisted again. This time, there was a bit of amusement in his voice. “Just listen, you git. Lily Evans is obsessed with sex. It’s all she thinks about all the time, but she’s a good girl, too; a nice girl. She represses that desire. That’s a potent combination. I mean, take Rita, for instance…”

“Skeeter?”

“Yes. She wants sex, and she’s not shy about letting the world know. Everyone knows she’s an easy shag, so there’s no real mystery with her. Sure she gets a shag whenever she wants it, but there aren’t boys laying their hearts down on the chopping block just to have her.

“And then there’s my dear cousin Narcissa. She was the most beautiful girl in the school during her days here, most boys would agree, but she was cold, too. She didn’t care about sex in the least. No interest in it, except as a means to getting what she wanted. She was all ice.

“But, now, Evans on the other hand… Well, she’s all fire and passion, isn’t she? She just can’t stop thinking about sex, wanting sex, and yet she’s trying to deny it, trying to fool even herself, because ‘good girls’ don’t want that, don’t do that. But she wants it all the same, and the boys, they pick up on all that repressed desire, and it’s a potent aphrodisiac.”

Severus had gotten fully hard just thinking about it, a development which, of course, was not lost on Regulus. He nodded toward his lap. “See. You know what I mean. And I’ve been trying to figure out what’s gotten her so worked up. When did it start? It could just be that she’s maturing and coming into her own, but I don’t think that’s what it is, because you know, Sev, I noticed that other than Potter, who is just pathetic, the majority of the boys didn’t start to be really interested in her until fifth year, and then last year, it was mad. Bloody Gryffindors tripping over one another in an attempt to sit beside her at meals.

“You know what I think. I think she’s so obsessed with sex because she wants it—with someone—someone in particular…”

“Potter!” Severus spat bitterly.

“No, you lunatic. Someone who’s beyond her reach, someone she shouldn’t want, someone forbidden…”

Severus shook his head, frustrated at Regulus’ ridiculous prattling. “What are you on about, Black.”

“You, Severus! She wants you!” Regulus practically shouted at him in bemused frustration.

The words slammed into him like a runaway lorry. “Me…?” he said, his voice sounding very small, even to his own ears.

Regulus smiled. “Yes, Severus. You.”

“Here! Have you been experimenting with illicit potions again, because I’m telling you, that stuff’s going to rot your brain?!”

The boy just laughed. “I’m completely sober, and I’m completely in earnest. Why don’t you take what I’ve said at face value and try to use it to your advantage. You’re meeting her tonight, already. What could it possibly hurt?”

Severus hated to admit it, but the boy had a point. “You know, you really shouldn’t know so much about so many things at your age…” he said almost petulantly. It bothered him that Reg had seen things that he had missed. Of course, he could still be wrong, but… Well, it was the principle of the thing.

“How is it that you know so much?” he demanded.

“I’m a Black,” he said, as though that explained it all, and then just smiled and went back to reading his book.

XxxX

The Shrieking Shack was freezing. It was only October, but it got almost bitterly cold this far north so close to Halloween. Severus knew that he should have worn more than the coat and trousers that Regulus had given him, but pulling his ratty old winter coat on top of it all would have just ruined the effect, and he needed all the help he could get if he was going to win Lily back from Potter. He’d even pulled his hair back in a queue, which he never did, because he was fairly certain he recalled Lily pulling his hair away from his face once, while they sat together at the park in the summer, and telling him it looked nice, and that he should wear it that way more often.

He had been waiting a half-hour. He had shown up early, but still, she was almost twenty minutes late. Perhaps she wasn’t coming after all. It would have to be true then, about her and Potter. He felt sick at the thought, and tried to fight the murderous impulses that swiftly rose to the surface any time he even so much as thought of Potter with his hands on her. Potter didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as someone like Lily, and the thought that his lips might be pressed against hers at that very moment, made him blind with jealousy and rage.

A shuffling beneath the floorboards brought him out of his reverie and he stepped back, just as a red head popped up from beneath. “Severus?” She whispered.

“Who else?”

He watched her emerge in the semi-darkness. They couldn’t light a lamp or even meet by wand light. They could be seen. But it was almost the full moon, and though cloudy, there would be intermittent light enough from that.

She was wearing a jumper and a wool skirt, with knee socks. That seemed a bit drafty for such cold weather, and the thought that perhaps she had done it on purpose for easier access, skittered across his brain, following by a string of images all involving him discovering she wasn’t wearing any knickers under that tweed skirt. But then he wasn’t wearing his school robes, he suddenly reminded himself, and that line of thinking would get him into a world of trouble he couldn’t easily hide. He tried to think of the most unpleasant thing he could.

“Well,” she said, dusting off her skirt, before looking up at him. “I’m here, what do you…” But her voice trailed off, as the clouds outside the window, parted, and the room lit up with the dim silver of the moon.

“What are you wearing?” she asked bluntly, and without the slightest indication that the outfit in question had made any impact.

“Clothes.”

“And what have you done to your hair?”

“Pulled it back.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

She didn’t have an answer for that. She just stared. After a moment, her eyes flitted away uncomfortably, and she lifted a finger to toy with a piece of her hair. “You’ve changed,” she said at last.

“Is it true,” he asked, not wanting to make small talk. “Are you with Potter?”

She laughed and it almost sounded bitter. “Well, you don’t waste time, do you Snape?”

“Is it true?” he repeated.

“So what if it is,” she said, lifting her chin to stare at him defiantly.

“End it.”

She let out another bitter bark of a laugh. “Just like that, then? Because you say so?”

“Yes.”

“My God, you’ve gotten arrogant.”

His hands shot out and grabbed her hard by the upper arms before he even realized what he had done. “Take it back!” he spat in a whisper.

She pulled back, but he held on. “Let me go!” she demanded.

“Why? Are you afraid, Lily? Do I frighten you?”

“No,” she bit back, but he could hear the fear in her voice, could almost taste it in the air around her. He wondered what lies Potter and Black had been spreading about him.

“Well you should be afraid—but not of me. Potter’s the real one you should be afraid of.”

“James isn’t the one here digging bruises into my arms!” she cried, her voice breaking.

He let go of her as though he had been burned, a million images of his father flashing before his eyes in an instant. He felt ill. He felt the bite of tears in his eyes. “You want to see me as the Devil, Evans? Go right ahead. But I’m not the one who’s going to put you in your grave. Potter and his rash, careless, stupid arrogance is the one who will do that! You get with Potter, and your signing your own death warrant, do you understand me?!”

“And how would you know that, Snape?” she choked, taking a step back from him.

“You know who my friends are, Evans.”

“Yes, Severus. I do.”

“Well, then…”

“Well, then, I’m just trying to figure out what’s in all this for you.”

“What?”

“What’s in it for you?!” she repeated, her voice catching in a real sob this time, though she mastered it quickly. “You know, Severus, what reward you could possibly get for coaxing a naïve little Mudblood out of the castle at night, bringing her to an abandoned shack where nobody can hear her screams…”

He stared at her with a kind of detached horror. It was worse than he had thought. “Is—is that what you really think of me?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

She didn’t reply. She looked lost, terrified, and horribly lonely, standing a few meters away in a pool of moonlight. She shook her head, and then buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know what I believe anymore, she murmured between the cage of her fingers. I—I don’t even know who I am anymore.” She sniffed loudly, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, before looking away from him, over her shoulder and out the window. She turned and walked toward it, and then stood there staring out.

“Why do you think James is a danger to me?” She sounded tired, but he didn’t sense she was setting him up. It was an honest question.

“He’s rash,” he said quietly. “He does things without thinking. He thinks he’s invincible because he’s never seen that there are consequences for things, or that life can be brutally and blatantly unfair.”

She turned to look at him. “You’ve grown up. I—I hardly know you.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

“Come here,” she whispered, motioning for him to join her by the window. She turned and looked back out the window as he approached. He didn’t know how close to get. He was still feeling the dreadful, sickening twist in the pit of his stomach from the thought that he had very well left bruises on her pale arms in his anger a moment before. He stopped just behind her, and followed her gaze across the dead grass, and into the trees that surrounded the derelict back garden of the shack.

“Do you remember when we were children, and you used to sneak into my room at night, in the summers—when things were bad for you at home?”

“Yes.”

“And you used to curl up behind me, all tight in a little ball…” He could hear a smile in her voice. “Do you still sleep curled tight like that?”

“I dunno…”

“I miss that sometimes. I miss hearing you breathe, hearing you murmur in your sleep. I miss—I miss you, Sev, and I—I don’t know how to stop. James—he helps me stop.”

He couldn’t speak. What was she saying?

“Do you love him?” He had no right to ask her that, but he had to know.

“I—I don’t know, but—if—if what you are asking is—is, do I feel for him what I do for you, then the answer is no. You—you got under my skin somehow, Severus. You’re like a piece of me, and I—I’ve tried to amputate it, but—you’re so tenacious, aren’t you? You’ve always been. I suppose you’ve had to be to survive, but—but this hold you have on me, I—I don’t know how to get you out of my heart.”

“Then stop trying,” he said without thinking.

“Oh, be realistic, Severus…” she said, swinging around, her hair fanning out and leaving the smell of orange blossoms and honey in its wake. He felt heady, and weak.

“I am,” he replied, suddenly realizing that there was nothing else in the world he wanted. It was all right here, in front of him. It had always been there—in her.

She stopped dead when she turned, and she stared at him again as she had when she first entered the room. Her eyes looked soft and sad, and her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, as though she were dying of thirst. “You look—you look really nice, Sev.”

“So do you…” Stupid. He sounded so stupid, but she was smiling, and not as though she thought him a fool, but as though she needed to hear those words from his lips, as though she had been waiting to hear them for a very long time.

She lowered her eyes, almost shyly. “So do you…” And then she giggled nervously. “But I’ve already said that, haven’t I…?” She took a deep, quavering breath. After a moment or two of uncomfortable silence, she spoke. “Can I ask you something?”

He nodded.

“That night, after—after all that mess with Black and Potter down by the lake. When you waited, and waited outside the portrait hole, and I came out, I—you were trying to apologize, and I didn’t let you finish. I asked you why, when you were friends with those who hated everyone of my birth, why should I believe a word you said, and then I—I didn’t let you finish.”

“No.”

She reached out and clung to the fabric of his sleeve, as though she needed to be near him, but still feared to touch him, flesh, to flesh. “What were you going to say?”

He felt gagged by the intensity of his own feeling. He had never thought to be given this opportunity, to finish what he had started, to say the words that had been trapped inside of him since he was ten years old. And truth be told, he wasn’t sure he even had the courage now, but what was there to lose? She was Potter’s already. He had kissed those lips, he had touched that pale, freckled skin. It was possible he had even had her virginity. He felt instantly nauseous at the thought, and tried to push it away.

“I was going to say, that you could trust me, that you could believe me, because I love you, because I have always loved you, from the first time I set eyes on you, and I will love you until the day I die, whether you love me or not.” It had all come out in a jumbled rush, and he was horrified, completely mortified. Things that seemed dear and precious when they were held in the heart, had a way of become cheap and trite when they came out of one’s lips.

He should have just written the damned letter, and been done with it!

Over Lily’s shoulder a small beetle struggled for its life in the spider web by the window. The spider crawled out to meet it, and he looked away, back into her eyes.

“Still?” she whispered so faintly, he barely heard it.

“Still—always…” he whispered back, fiercely.

She lifted a hand to her mouth, and her eyes filled, and spilled over, the trails of her tears glistening on her cheeks like unicorn blood in the moonlight. “But what can we do?” she choked.

He didn’t even know what she was asking. “We could try,” he said, not knowing what else there was.

“Try?” She sounded doubtful, confused and hopeful all at once.

He nodded.

She took a tentative step forward, and then another, and then she was there, pressed against him, her head on his shoulder, her arms wrapped around his waist. It took him a moment to realize what was happening, and then to respond. Lifting his arms, he wrapped them around her, and held his breath.

He would wake up now, certainly. None of this could be real. But after several seconds he exhaled. She was still there. He breathed in and out again, and still she was there. He turned his head a little, until his nose was pressed into her hair, just above her ear. He breathed in deep, breathed in the smell of her—and still she was there.

“I love you,” she murmured against his neck, her grip around his waist tightening.

He pulled her against him, and held on tight.

“I don’t want to go back.”

“What?”

“Let’s just go—tonight…”

He pulled back a little, and looked down into her eyes. “Go? Go where?”

Her eyes were sparkling bright, with the look he remembered from their childhood, the look she used to get when he had told her stories of spells and potions, of Hogwarts, of a world of wonder where all there would be was her, and him and the magic. “Anywhere—anywhere but here. To…” He could see her thinking. “To America!”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight. Let’s just run away. Please, Sev…”

He thought of everything he had worked so hard for, everything he had done with his life up to this point. But what was any of it, if he didn’t have her. He had built a life that forced her out. He had thought to make a better world for her, and instead he had driven her out. Suddenly, none of it meant anything anymore. She was here, in his arms, willing. She wanted him. She loved him.

“Tonight?” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said, with a small laugh.

He smiled. “Sure. Why not…”

They went, and they never looked back.