White, Lily/Severus
TITLE: White
Pairing: Severus/Lily
Rating: G
Summary: Severus Snape distinctly remembers the colour white in different instances in his life.
Author's Notes: I thought it was high time I exercised my writing again. Given, I don't think I was too inspired while writing this, but I quite like it. It's been a dormant idea in my head since... uhm, May? Hahaha. Lily/Severus, of course. :D
Eight and half a year.
It is the colour of her dress: sweet against the vibrant red of her hair, plain against the brightness of her grass-green eyes, perfect against her freckled skin.
‘Severus, wasn’t it?’
A pretty smile graces her pink lips as he nods shyly - for how could a dirty boy like him stand so near perfection as her? She is all rainbows and summer afternoons; he is of shadows and rainy days.
But for once, someone doesn’t mind he’s like that. She doesn’t mind, and a tiny flutter begins at the pit of his heart.
‘My name is Lily.’
The little girl in white extends her hand to the little boy hiding in the bush, and terrified as he is, he reaches for it.
The moment their fingers touch, he almost smiles. The world had just turned brighter in that little instant and for once, he is happy.
Eleven and two months.
It is the colour of her face when her sister turns away-staring hard into the back of Tuney’s blonde head, willing her to look back and properly say goodbye. She never does, though-not when they walk away, not when they board the train, not when they’re looking through the window and her parents are waving goodbye.
When Platform Nine and Three Quarters disappears from sight, she begins to cry. Pretty green eyes glisten with tears, and it wrenches his heart to see her like this.
Petunia is stupid, stupid, stupid, a bloody Muggle who isn’t worth our company, he wants to say, but can’t, because she loves her sister, no matter how much they fight. And he doesn’t understand it at all.
Three minutes.
Two.
Then he reaches for her hand: tiny fist, knuckles white and wet from tears. She is the only one he is ever sure of, and he holds it firmly.
‘But we’ll be going to Hogwarts!’
‘Together.’ Together.
He will never be like her wretched sister. She knows that, and despite her tears, she smiles.
Thirteen and forty days.
It is the colour of the walls when he opens his eyes. Slowly, his vision comes back and he remembers why he’s here, bandaged arm and cuts all over. Potter and his idiotic friends are on the other beds, and when he spots the egoistic prat’s black eye, he almost grins.
Three Gryffindor girls are around Potter’s bed, and when he sees him looking, the git looks smug.
‘Jealous, Snivellus? It’s only too bad you’ve got no visitors, eh?’
He is about to retort, when the doors fly open and she runs in-pretty red hair and all, school robes billowing almost gracefully behind her. He almost thinks she is here for Potter-his heart sinks at the thought-but ten seconds pass and her arms are around his neck. He inhales her scent of cinnamon, and for once, he doesn’t mind-not at all-that everyone can see them, together. He can almost feel Potter’s rage, and he smirks in triumph.
‘What in Merlin’s name happened to you, Sev?’
Green eyes gaze at him, wide and bloody worried, and then-everyone and everything just blows away and it’s only the two of them. Black eyes gaze back, taking in everything that’s her.
And then something clicks.
Five seconds.
Three.
‘Nothing, Lily. Nothing.’
A heartbeat. Two-
He loves her.
Fifteen and ten weeks.
It is the colour of the sky when he’s cursed upside down and he’s called her the most horrible thing he’s vowed never to say. The blood rushes to his head, and he realizes what he’s done the moment the word rolls off his tongue and lashes her ears.
His eyes widen, but when he tries to shout to her, his voice is caught in his throat and he almost whimpers desperately-because she is leaving and it is all his fault.
COME BACK. PLEASE.
She doesn’t look back.
Please.
Please.
The glare of the afternoon sun hits his eyes and when he blinks, she is already gone. Gone.
Four years. And he is no better than Petunia.
Sixteen and five hundred hours.
It is the colour of Amortentia in the light.
Three counter-clockwise stirs, one steam spiral rising hauntingly in the air.
Fifteen minutes.
Seventeen.
A heart tug. Three-
…And he faintly recognizes the smell of cut grass and cinnamon.
Eighteen and a thousand minutes.
It is the colour of her dress when she walks down the aisle, to him, to him. In the end, he has still won and he is left once more in the shadows. She is happy today, he feels it, but it breaks him almost completely because she was his, once upon his childhood, once in a life that almost seems like a different one altogether.
One vow, two.
I love you. I love you.
Two rings.
Come back.
A smile. A tear.
Please.
A kiss.
Please.
She is sunlight and bright things, and he is all sins and melancholy. He should have known better not to crash and burn.
Twenty and sixty-eight thousand seconds.
It is the colour of the lilies he brings.
Two fallen petals, three-
And he knows his world has died with her.
Thirty eight and one breath.
It is the colour of death.
‘Look at me.’
Green eyes-her eyes-slowly fade away into the light, and then…
One breath. Two.
Lily.
Lily.
I love-
And the world is quiet.