Round Robin: The Post-Grad Prince: Part 1 ***COMPLETE***
Lily wrapped an arm around herself in a half hug cupping her other hand over her eyes and let out a long sigh.
Something kept pestering Severus. There was something about her reaction or lack thereof that kept bothering him.
“Did you know?”
Lily carded her hands through her hair and tilted her head up at the ceiling as if praying to some deity. “Know what?”
“You don’t seem surprised about Lupin being a werewolf. Did you know back then as well?” Severus hoped he outwardly looked like he was composed. Beneath his skin he felt his anger simmered, his gut felt like it was being kneaded and folded over.
Why did he even ask? It’s not like he didn’t already know. The signs were there, he just ignored it.
Lily embraced herself, bowing her head as if she wanted to make herself appear very small and unnoticeable. “I supposed there’s a lot more that I should apologize for. I’m sorry, Sev.” She sniffed. “I’m surprised you found me worth sticking around for. I had no idea.”
Lily placed her hand over her eyes, her shoulders trembling.
Severus felt the confusion warring within him. Validation mixed with his unique concoction. It made his stomach roll and a wave of nausea overcame him at the feeling. He was at his limit. He had been saying it to himself from the very beginning but like a buffoon with no self-control he still continued to drink.
He let a long regulating exhale. “I think we have both said enough for the night.”
“I’m sorry, Sev.” Her voice quivered. “I’m so sorry.”
His head was beginning to hurt from the whiplash of emotions. The concern he had for her urgently pressed for him to do something, anything. He couldn’t smooth things over, there was so much he hadn’t processed yet. “Are you okay?”
“I have a lot on my plate right now. I keep thinking about the past and what I could have changed, what I could have done better.” She sounded congested. “I was hoping to fix this and gain some semblance of normalcy.”
She paused seemingly to wrangle together more thoughts.
“My dad died last summer and my mum,” Lily choked back a sob. “She gone, Sev, and the last thing I told her was to back off. She was in mourning. I was so angry. I’m the worst.”
"I know." The words left Severus' mouth before he could even consider them.
"You know?" Lily asked him after another sob escaped her throat and tears were streaming down her cheeks. He wanted nothing more than to hug her and tell her that everything would be all right, that it would just take some time, but he couldn't.
"Yes." Suddenly he shot up from the bed and walked towards the door, his hands clasped behind his back as he tried to calm himself, not to let his shields slip completely.
"How?" Another sob followed the words and Severus felt the walls that had kept his emotions inside crumble.
"I was at your father's funeral." Without a sound, he turned on his heels and looked at her again. "Your mother had invited me personally after running into me at the grocery store. She wanted to know why I wasn't coming over anymore and asked if I was okay... But I knew something was wrong."
"You always knew when something was bothering Mum or Dad -" But Severus didn't let her finish.
"Your mum and dad used to go shopping with the car, but there was no car in the parking lot. So I carried her bags for her and she invited me in. She told me what had happened over a cup of tea." With a few long strides, Severus crossed the room and stopped in front of her.
"You know your father was more of a father to me than my own, she told me he would have wanted me there and so I was there." Severus couldn't hold back a tear as one of his hands pulled out a finely made pocket watch and presented it to her. "She told me that your father wanted me to have his watch."
The watch had been an heirloom in the Evans family for generations, and Lily's father had told them more than once that he intended to give it to a man he thought worthy of it, a man that would hopefully marry one of his daughters so that it would remain in the family.
"I visited your mother regularly after the funeral and even attended her funeral. She told me that the two of you had a fight. Your mother forgave you, all she wanted was someone to talk with… I understood that you abandoned me after what happened, but her?"
Lily was silent, tears still streaming down her face, as she looked down at the watch in Severus's hand. She took a few steps forward before stopping. Finally, she said, "I... Sev, what's wrong with me?"
Severus was stunned, almost into silence. "What are you talking about?"
"I drove Tuney away," Lily continued, her voice breaking. "I walked away from Mum...."
Severus set the pocket watch down on the desk and slowly approached her. "It's...." Severus didn't know what to say to her in this moment; he had never been very good at comforting others. Even when he was visiting Mrs. Evans, all he'd really done for her was sit and listen, which he supposed was what she needed at the time. Unable to find the words, he cautiously reached out and rested a hand on her arm, hoping she didn't pull away.
Lily looked down at his hand, moving neither forward nor back. To his surprise, she reached up and rested her hand on his.
"You...." Severus was still struggling to find words of comfort. "You couldn't have known what would happen."
Lily was shuddering as she continued to cry, and Severus was further surprised when she leaned in and rested her forehead on his shoulder. He awkwardly rested his free hand on her back, patting it a few times as a way of showing comfort.
"Please," Lily said weakly, her breathing unsteady, "please don't join them."
"Lily--"
"Please." Lily breathed out as she leaned closer.
Severus gently guided her back to the chair and sat her down, and he kneeled beside her to stay close. As he looked at her in such a state, he felt something tug at him. "Listen--"
"My family's gone...." Lily sobbed, "James has been lying to me since.... Sev, I just want to live. Why can't I just live and be left alone?"
Severus felt a few more tears run down his face as he saw Lily in such a state. No amount of power or sense of belonging was worth breaking her even more than now.
"Lily," Severus said, "I have a year to find a way out."
Lily's eyes widened as she met Severus's. "... you're...?"
Severus nodded reluctantly. "If I can," he said, drying his eyes. "And if not, then...."
“Then?” Encouraged Lily, green eyes brimming with hope.
What could he do? Severus wasn’t sure. He didn’t even have a plan in place leaving Hogwarts. He knew he wanted to be higher in the totem pole joining the Death Eaters but all the steps he needed to get there had to wait until he graduated Hogwarts.
He didn’t know how long he was standing there staring unseeingly at nothing until Lily laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Maybe I could help.”
Severus tried not to show his skepticism but something must have shown in his face.
“No really, I have good ideas.” She wiped the tears from her face and sniffed. “We can fake your death and you can travel across the pond.”
“That requires a lot of time and money for preparation that I don’t have. I won’t entirely rule it out though.”
“What about siding with someone who is more powerful than You-Know-Who,” she asked excitedly.
“Who?”
“Dumbledore!”
Severus snorted. “Forgive my lack of confidence in him but he has a track record of not holding my best interest at heart.”
“Oh!” She appeared crestfallen at the reminder, her shoulders sank as she sighed. “This is a lot harder than I thought.”
It’s moments like these that reminded Severus of their childhood. Lily would feel sad and defeated and Severus would always find a way to cheer her back up. His heart ached at their loss. Hogwarts did more damage than good in their friendship.
Severus pinched a lock of her auburn hair in his thumb and forefinger and lifted it up to examine her ear.
“What are you doing?” She shied away from him with a blush.
“I’m looking for your missing creativity. I’m surprised you stopped at two ideas.”
Lily giggled. “Oh, stop.”
Severus let her hair fall back to frame her face.
He smiled at her. “It must be behind all that flobberworm mucus you have in there.”
Lily playfully smacked his shoulder.
“Gross!” She laughed.
Severus’ eyes softened. “Don’t worry too much about it. I’m sure I will figure it all out. If not, I can fall back on your plans to use my afterlife to find someone more powerful than ‘You-Know-Who’.”
She gave a half-smile. “I’ll keep working on it.”
The effect that Lily had on him was something that would never cease to amaze Severus. Where just a few minutes ago his emotions had felt like a thunderstorm raging inside him, he now felt calm and at ease, the headache that had been coming vanishing as he looked at Lily, who gave him a half-smile.
"This may sound a little crazy..." Lily said suddenly, pulling him out of his thoughts. The blush was still visible on her cheeks as her green eyes looked into his black ones. "But I mean... Sirius and James both said that you knew more dark curses as a first year than all the seventh years put together."
"Lil–" But she didn't even let him finish her name as she put her index finger to his lips to stop him.
"I know... But you have to admit that hardly anyone dared to challenge you at Hogwarts... When they did, they always had you outnumbered, which sometimes wasn't even enough, as you said yourself earlier." Severus noticed how the half-smile that had been on her lips turned into a smirk.
And he knew that smirk all too well from their childhood, it rarely meant anything good then and he was pretty sure that hadn't changed over the last two years. He raised an eyebrow and it seemed that was what Lily had been waiting for as she continued.
"That you can't trust Dumbledore makes sense now, but you can trust yourself, and do you remember that old Muggle saying that my Dad loved to use?" At last Lily took her finger from his lips and allowed him to answer.
"When two quarrel, a third rejoices." Severus repeated the words Lily's father had said so many times. It took him a moment to realise exactly what Lily was implying. "Lily! No, you can't mean that. Tell me you're joking." He said with wide eyes.
"No." Lily said shaking her head. "You were always talented, creating your own spells and improving potions. So powerful that other students didn't dare challenge you one-on-one. You knew more dark curses than the teachers at Hogwarts. A student that unnerved Dumbledore so much that he chose to abandon him, keeping as much distance between himself and him as possible... We just have to say the right things at the right places."
While Lily still smirked, Severus thought about what she had said.
"... did you just compliment me for my dark magic?" he asked.
"That's... not really what I wanted to focus on," Lily said, her smirk wavering slightly. "What I meant was how much of a threat you could be... without the Death Eaters."
Severus eyed the firewhiskey once more but decided to abstain. "You thought I should either flee or join Dumbledore, right?"
Lily nodded. "James and I were thinking of joining a group to fight You-Know-Who, and Dumbledore's in charge of it--"
"You're fighting?!" Severus felt his blood chill as a new pressure built within his head.
"Of course, I am," Lily said, as though the answer was obvious. "Someone's trying to kill me. Why wouldn't I fight back?"
"That's-- do you even know what you're going up against?!"
"Dark witches and wizards. We have the Ministry on our side as well, so we should be fine."
Severus was dumbstruck by how naive Lily was. "No, listen," Severus said. "If you draw their attention, they'll target you."
"They'll target me anyway, but I'm good enough with a wand."
"It's--" Severus was growing frustrated. "Do you honestly think they'll be playing by Gryffindor rules?"
"I don't follow," Lily said.
"Think about the traits of Slytherin and tell me they'll fight fair." Severus adjusted his kneeled position. "They won't. Anything and everything is fair game. Ambushes, poisonings, home invasions. Turning their enemies against one another by spreading rumors and lies, financially ruining them by forging legal documents. They don't fight on the battlefield, Lily. They leave that for the monsters."
Lily was silent as Severus explained, and even after he had finished, she didn't give an immediate response. Her eyes drifted to the bottle once more, then to her hands, before finally resting on him. "... I hadn't thought of that." Her eyes suddenly lit up with some sort of realization. "Wait, if you know how they think, you could help us!"
"I know how they think, but I'm not a seer," Severus countered. "Even if I helped you in some way, I can't outsmart someone like the Dark Lord. He probably has his attention on me since I've been given a year to...." Severus's mind slowed to a halt before he could finish the sentence.
"What's wrong?"
"You only gave me two options... what if there's a third?"
"... what do you mean?"
Severus locked eyes with her. "... pretending to join him."
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them as it seemed as if Lily's green eyes flashed and a fire came into them.
"Don't you dare, Sev." The words were whispered but still seemed to fill the room. "You will not become a spy. I won't let you become a spy. No."
"But Lil -" Once again she stopped him before he could even say her name.
"No. I'm not going to let you risk your life for people who treated you like the dirt under their boots, and a Headmaster who threatened you with expulsion just to keep you quiet about almost getting killed by them."
As much as Severus wanted to look away from Lily, he just couldn't. It was as if something was holding his head and eyes in the position they were in, forcing him to look into her green eyes that seemed to be on fire.
"I've already given you a third option, Sev. Become your own side, give people a third option to choose from. Be the grey that comes from mixing black and white."
Once more Severus tried to answer, but Lily placed her hand on his cheek, her thumb caressing his skin, and he just couldn't bring himself to open his mouth.
"You may not believe it now, Sev, but I know you're capable of leading people, of doing the right thing. We're young, but..." Lily looked down, and it seemed as if the blush on her cheeks had deepened when she looked back up at him. "If we want to have a future, we should be ready to take a risk, don't you think?"
All Severus could do was blink and open his mouth, only to close it a moment later again. Had he just imagined it, or did Lily pronounce that 'we' with a different tone? As if it might mean more than it should? It must have been his imagination, or?
"I think it's time to get some sleep, Sev. Think about what I said, take your time before you make a decision." Before he could say anything he felt Lily's lips brush against his cheek and then she was already at the door, opening it to slip out of his room. "Contact me when you have made a decision." She said with a glance over her shoulder.
As Lily shut the door behind her, Severus remained where he was, still kneeling beside the chair. He slowly rose to his feet and looked blankly at the door as he thought about her idea. He couldn't imagine a world where he could even be the leader of a third party, of being on the same level as the likes of Albus Dumbledore and the Dark Lord. He wasn't known for being charismatic or popular at school, so he had no real understanding of what leadership even felt like. Always the follower....
Lily seemed to believe in his success, but their own history was against her. For the most part, he'd been too afraid of upsetting her, and reaching the point where he no longer cared was what had ruined their friendship. But if she believed in him, even after what he'd said or been unable to say, then he had at least some reason to hear her out in the morning, assuming she was still here and hadn't left with Potter....
Reminding himself of Potter caused Severus to fill up his shot glass and drain it dry. He'd forgotten about that tosspot, not to mention the engagement. He cursed himself for not even noticing Lily's hand to see if she'd been wearing a ring; he'd been too preoccupied with simply having a conversation with her after two years of nothing. He was starting to dread seeing her again, knowing that she would still be with that bastard. He wanted to believe she'd taken Severus's words to heart about Potter's misdeeds, but it was possible that she'd think more on the subject and consider the idea that he had lied to her.
But that wouldn't explain the kiss.
Severus set the shot glass down and took a long swig straight from the bottle, letting his mind go numb before crawling into bed and dimming the light in the room. Tomorrow's problems would be for tomorrow's Severus Snape.
The next morning, Severus awoke with a nauseating sensation and a dull pounding throughout his head. Any light in the room hurt and made the pain even worse.
The fact that there was also a tapping sound coming from his window didn't help his headache. Who would be tapping on his window at that time? Only an owl would be a reasonable explanation, and that surprised him. Slowly, he turned to the window and there really was an owl.
An owl which seemed to be rather annoyed about him needing so long to let it inside.
"Sorry, it's been a long night." He mumbled to the owl and it seemed to calm the bird down a bit as it landed on the small desk in his room and stretched its leg towards him.
"A letter?" Severus asked in surprise, not expecting a letter, especially this early in the morning. "OK, let me have a look." With that, he moved closer and gently untied the letter from the leg of the owl.
Before he could do anything else, the owl was already up in the air again and out of his room, apparently not expecting him to write a direct reply to the message it had delivered.
With a raised eyebrow, Severus took the letter from his desk and, after closing the window, went back to his bed. There was no sign of who had sent the letter, the handwriting on it was unfamiliar to him, and so he checked it to make sure no one was trying to curse him.
When he was satisfied with the results, he finally opened the letter and read the message.
"Dear Severus,
It has been brought to my attention that you will not be carrying out the plans you have made for your future.
In light of this new development, I would like to invite you to Prince Manor so that we can discuss your options for the future.
Personally, I think you can do a lot better than what you originally planned for your future.
Whenever you feel ready to see me, just call for Birby and he will take you to Prince Manor.
With new hope in my heart,
Your Grandfather,
Aurelius Prince
P.S.: I know you have a very special reason and motivation for reconsidering your future. From what I have heard about her, I can understand why. I will be forever grateful that she made you reconsider your path. Please know that I will be happy to support you and welcome her into our family with you.”
Severus reread the contents of the letter again.
“My grandfather?” Severus sneered. “Is this a joke?”
He flipped the paper around to see if there was anything written in the back before turning it to the front. He read it once more, analyzing it word for word.
“What did he mean by ‘not carrying out plans for the future’?” Severus wracked his brain before he briefly remembered his conversation with Lily.
Did he mean Severus’ most recent plans to not join the Death Eaters?
How on earth did he know?
A chill went down his spine. His heart raced at the thought of someone being in the same room as him undetected without him knowing.
Was there an invisible house elf in the room right now? Should he confront it?
He scanned the area, stopping briefly at the chair Lily sat on the night prior before he sighed.
If a house elf was involved then this letter isn’t something he could ignore.
“Reveal yourself,” Severus projected his voice.
He waited several seconds before a house elf materialized in the corner of the room. The eyes were grotesquely large, its ears looked too big for its body and it appeared to be wearing a toga made from a white towel. Having seen proof now of the house elf’s existence Severus flushed as a mental image crossed his mind. He absolutely abhorred the thought that this creature could have stayed to watch him rub his knob. Rage spiked within him.
“What did you see?” He stood, taking a step forward before restraining himself.
The house elf’s eyes widened impossibly large, its lower lip quivered, the tips of its ear turned downward in uncertainty as it pressed itself further into the corner.
“Birby didn’t see anything, sir. Birby be following orders.”
Severus froze.
It wasn’t the house elf’s fault, was it? It was the only one here to take the fault though. Severus curled his hand into a fist and turned away.
There was no use lashing out on the house elf.
