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The Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library smelled of old leather, dust, and the faint metallic tang of ink that had soaked into wood over centuries. Candles floated in mid-air along the high shelves, their flames guttering in the draught that always seemed to haunt this part of the castle. Severus Snape sat alone in the farthest carrel, the one half-hidden behind a pillar of dark oak and a tapestry that had not been cleaned since the reign of Elizabeth I. His Slytherin robes robes were buttoned to the throat despite the late hour; the October chill had already begun to seep through the stone walls.
He was sixteen, two months into his sixth year, and the NEWT timetable had already begun to feel like a noose. Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Transfiguration and more — the professors expected essays that could have been books, practical work that demanded precision under pressure, and theoretical understanding that went far beyond the O.W.L. level. Severus thrived on it. The work gave shape to the chaos inside his head. When his quill moved, he did not have to think about the way Lily Evans’s laugh used to sound when she sat beside him in the library before, or the way her green eyes had looked when she realised he was never going to be the boy she thought he was.
Four months. That was how long it had been since the word had torn out of him like something rotten finally bursting. Mudblood. He could still taste it on his tongue some nights when he lay awake in the Slytherin dormitory, listening to the lake water slap against the windows. He had not meant to say it. He had been dangling upside down, robes over his head, humiliated in front of half the school by James Potter’s latest “joke.” Lily had come running, wand raised, trying to help him the way she always had. And he — pathetic, proud, furious — had turned on the only person who had ever defended him.
The memory played in perfect, merciless detail whenever he allowed himself to sleep. The lake glittering in late June sunlight. Potter’s voice, loud and laughing. Sirius Black lounging against a tree like he owned the grounds. Remus Lupin standing a little apart, looking uncomfortable but doing nothing. Peter Pettigrew giggling. Lily’s face when the word left his mouth — the shock, the hurt, the instant withdrawal of every ounce of warmth she had ever given him.
He had tried to apologise that same afternoon. Potter had threatened him. Lily had looked at him as though he were something she had stepped in. The next day on the Hogwarts Express she had walked straight past his compartment without a glance. During the summer he had tried three times. Once he had seen her on the high street in Cokeworth and called her name; she had kept walking, shoulders stiff. Twice he had gone to the Evans house. Petunia had answered both times, her thin mouth curling. “The Evans girls don’t need filthy freaks from Spinner’s End bothering them,” she had said the second time, and slammed the door so hard the glass rattled.
After that he had stopped. What was the point in begging when the answer was already written across every silence?
At Hogwarts he had perfected the art of erasure. He took different staircases. He arrived early to classes they shared and sat at the very back. He ate quickly in the Great Hall and left before she could look up from her plate. When their eyes did meet — in corridors, across the Great Hall, once in the hospital wing when he had taken a Bludger to the ribs during an unsanctioned Slytherin practice — he looked away first. It hurt less that way. Or so he told himself.
The truth was uglier. Every glimpse of her red hair felt like a fresh cut. Every time he heard her voice in the distance he wanted to Apparate straight out of his own skin. He hated James Potter for existing. He hated Sirius Black for existing louder. He hated himself most of all for having given them the perfect weapon.
Tonight he was researching an experimental variation on the Draught of Living Death for a private project Slughorn had quietly encouraged. The book open in front of him was bound in something that might once have been dragonhide; the pages smelled faintly of formaldehyde. His notes were meticulous, cross-referenced, annotated in the margins with questions only he would understand. The work was the only thing that still felt clean.
A shadow fell across the parchment.
Severus looked up, wand already half-raised by instinct. Then he froze.
Lily Evans stood on the other side of the carrel table. She wore her school robes open over a dark jumper, the Gryffindor tie slightly loosened. Her auburn hair was pulled back with a simple ribbon, a few strands escaping to frame her face. In the candlelight her green eyes looked almost luminous. She was real. She was here.
For thirty full seconds he could only stare. His brain refused to supply any explanation that did not involve hallucination or a particularly cruel dream. He had not looked at her properly in two months. Now she was less than three feet away, and the sight of her hit him like a Stunning Spell to the chest.
She sat down without asking permission. The chair scraped. She folded her hands on the table and looked at him with an expression he could not read — determination, perhaps, or nerves.
“Potter and his friends are dunderheads,” she said quietly. “Complete and utter dunderheads. And I hate that we’ve been ignoring each other like this. I’ve been stubborn about not accepting your apology. James kept saying I shouldn’t, that you’d only hurt me again, and I listened to him. That was wrong of me.”
Severus’s mouth had gone completely dry. He swallowed once, twice, three times. The words did not fit inside his head. After four months of silence, after the slammed doors and the turned backs, she was sitting here apologising to him?
She leaned forward slightly. “Severus? I asked if you’d forgive me for being so stubborn.”
His voice, when it finally emerged, was thicker than he wanted it to be, rough with everything he had swallowed down for months. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
A faint, uncertain smile touched the corner of her mouth. It was the first smile she had given him since the lake. It made something painful and hopeful twist behind his ribs. “Good,” she said. “Now stop working. Come for a walk with me. It’s nearly curfew, but if we’re quick we can get up to the Astronomy Tower before anyone notices. It’s clear tonight. The stars should be incredible.”
He should have said no. He should have asked how she had found him, why now, whether this was some elaborate trap. Instead the word left his mouth before thought could catch it.
“All right.”
They moved through the castle like ghosts. Lily knew the patrol patterns better than he did — or perhaps she simply moved with the easy confidence of someone who had never been caught. They took the back stairs behind the statue of the humpbacked witch, slipped through a tapestry on the third floor, and climbed. Twice they heard Filch’s muttering somewhere below and pressed themselves into shallow alcoves, shoulders touching, breath held. Once Mrs. Norris’s yellow eyes gleamed at the end of a corridor; Lily pulled him sideways into an empty classroom and they waited, her hand still on his sleeve, until the cat padded away.
Severus’s heart was a drum. Every brush of her fingers, every shared glance in the dark, felt like something he was not allowed to have. He kept waiting for the moment she would laugh and say it had all been a joke. It never came.
The Astronomy Tower door opened with a low groan. The night air was sharp and clean, smelling of woodsmoke from the greenhouses and the distant pine of the Forbidden Forest. Above them the sky was a black velvet dome scattered with stars so bright they seemed close enough to touch. The parapet was cold under his palms when he leaned against it. Below, the grounds stretched out in silver and shadow: the Quidditch pitch, the dark line of the lake, the Whomping Willow standing sentinel.
Lily came to stand beside him. For a moment they simply looked. Then she leaned her shoulder against his arm. The contact was small, deliberate. He felt the warmth of her through the layers of wool and cotton.
“It’s funny,” she said after a while, voice soft against the wind. “How you only realise what someone means to you when you lose them. I missed you, Severus. More than I let myself admit.”
He turned his head. She was watching him, not the stars. In the moonlight her face was all shadows and highlights — the curve of her cheek, the line of her lashes, the small freckle just below her left eye that he had memorised years ago.
She reached down and took his hand.
His entire body went still. The world narrowed to the point where her fingers curled around his. Her skin was warm. He could feel the slight callus on her wand hand. Slowly, as though the movement might shatter everything, he laced his fingers between hers. The fit was imperfect — his hands were larger, ink-stained — but it felt like coming home to a place he had been exiled from.
“Lily?” The name left him as a question, barely more than a breath.
She smiled. It was the same smile she had given him when they were eleven and she had shown him her first bit of accidental magic in the park. Then she rose on her toes and kissed him.
For one frozen second Severus did not move. Then every wall he had built since the lake collapsed. His free hand came up to cup her jaw, the other still holding hers. He kissed her back with four months of silence and four years of wanting. Her lips were soft, slightly chapped from the cold, and they tasted faintly of the peppermint she sometimes chewed after dinner. He angled his head, deepening the kiss, and she made a small sound that went straight through him.
He pressed closer without thinking. His body pinned hers gently against the parapet. The stone was cold at her back; he was warm and solid in front of her. The kiss turned hungry. His hand slid into her hair, the ribbon coming loose. She tasted like forgiveness and every dream he had tried to kill. A low, helpless moan escaped him when her tongue brushed his. He was hard almost instantly, the sudden, urgent pressure of it unmistakable between them. He should have been embarrassed. Instead he felt only relief and a fierce, desperate joy.
Then laughter split the night.
Severus spun, wand already in his hand, body instinctively shielding the girl behind him. Three figures were climbing out from beneath an Invisibility Cloak that pooled on the stone like liquid night. James Potter, grinning like Christmas had come early. Remus Lupin, looking away. Peter Pettigrew, snickering.
“Where the fuck is Black?” Severus snarled. His eyes scanned the shadows, wand tip glowing. He expected the attack to come from the missing fourth.
The laugh that answered came from directly behind him.
“That was some fucking kiss, Snivellus. And talk about hard and horny.”
Severus turned.
Sirius Black stood where Lily had been. The Polyjuice was already wearing off — the red hair shortening and darkening, the face lengthening, the body broadening and gaining height. The school robes shifted and settled into Sirius’s usual careless elegance. The green eyes faded to grey. The last traces of Lily Evans melted away like mist in sunlight, leaving only the arrogant, handsome features of the boy who had spent five years making Severus’s life a living hell.
The betrayal landed like a physical blow. The kiss, the words, the hand in his — all of it had been Sirius wearing Lily’s face. Every soft thing Severus had let himself feel for thirty perfect minutes had been a performance for an audience.
Humiliation flooded him, hot and choking. He had believed it. He had let himself hope. He had pressed his body against what he thought was Lily and moaned like some desperate animal. And they had watched. They had laughed.
Fury followed, black and vicious. He opened his mouth to curse them — to use every dark word he knew, to make them hurt the way they had just made him hurt — but the hex took him in the back before he could speak. The world went white, then black.
When awareness returned, the stone floor of the Astronomy Tower was cold against his cheek. A lantern swung above him, casting long shadows. Argus Filch crouched nearby, the squib’s face twisted in something between triumph and disgust.
“Well then,” Filch said, voice oily with satisfaction. “What have we here? A student out of bed. In a restricted area. After curfew. You’ll be coming with me, Snape. I expect Professor Slughorn will have something to say about this. And the Headmaster. Detention for a month, I shouldn’t wonder. Points off Slytherin, too.”
Severus pushed himself upright. His head throbbed. The taste of the kiss — Sirius’s kiss — still lingered like poison. He could feel the ghost of an erection that had betrayed him in front of his worst enemies. He could hear their laughter echoing in his skull.
He looked at Filch and felt nothing but a vast, exhausted hatred.
He hated Potter. He hated Black. He hated Lupin for standing there and doing nothing. He hated Pettigrew for giggling. He hated the castle and the stars and the cold October wind that had carried their laughter to him.
He currently hated the entire fucking universe.
Most of all, he hated himself for ever having believed, even for a second, that Lily Evans could want him back.
Filch’s hand closed around his upper arm, hauling him to his feet. Severus did not resist. He let himself be marched down the spiral stairs, through corridors that now felt colder than they had an hour ago. Behind his eyes the image of Lily’s face — the real Lily — kept superimposing itself over Sirius’s mocking one. The green eyes. The small smile. The way she had said his name.
He would never forgive them for this.
He would never forgive himself.
And somewhere in the darkness of the castle, four boys were probably still laughing.