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northangel27Falling
“You can do it, you dunderhead, you just don’t know it!”
“Um-mm…” Severus shook his head, eyes screwed tight shut.
A sigh, deep and slightly frustrated, followed. “Trust—let go of your expectations, your inhibitions. You expect to fall and so you do. Forget about flying, and just walk out to me!”
“Can’t…”
“Yes, you can!” Lily had that tone in her voice, and Severus knew that had she not been floating a good twenty feet off the ground, parallel to the branch of the giant oak he was clinging to for dear life, she would have been stomping her foot in impatience.
“Are you a coward then? Is that it?”
His eyes shot open at that, and he could feel his cheeks coloring. “I’m not a coward!”
“Then stop clinging to that branch like a terrified kitten, and walk out to me. I won’t let you fall, I promise…” Her voice had softened a little now, and he could see real empathy in her eyes.
“Stop feeling sorry for me!” he spat.
Her brow furrowed. “I wasn’t. Merlin, Severus; I call you a coward and you get angry with me, and then I show some compassion and you get angrier still. I guess I should just keep my mouth shut!” Her cheeks were flushed now too.
He didn’t want to fight. Not when she was the only thing between him and certain death (well perhaps not death, but certainly several broken limbs). “Okay—sorry!”
“Good,” she stated with a bit of a pout. “Now are you going to at least try? I didn’t skip Divination, come all the way out here to the
He nodded, but stayed where he was. His brain told him that he needed to let go of the branch if he were to do as she asked, but his body didn’t seem willing to cooperate.
“You have to let go of let go of the branch, to stand up, Sev.”
“I know!” he snapped.
Her eyes widened a little. “Well, then?”
He took a deep breath, forced his fingers to lift from the bark one at a time, and sat up very slowly. He was rewarded with a bright smile. She floated a little closer to him and held out her hand. “Here, just take my hand.”
He did as she asked. Her hand felt hot as it wrapped around his, most likely because his own was ice cold with fear, but there was something reassuring about the firmness of her grip, the warm, pleased smile on her face, the way her green eyes sparkled with delight at his small effort, and he somehow found the strength to swing one leg over the side of branch, so that he only need give himself a tiny push and he would slip off into oblivion.
“You’re almost there, Sev!” She sounded truly excited by the prospect of him throwing caution to the wind, and defying all logic. Gryffindor…
“Well—what am I supposed to do now?”
“Just slide off the branch. I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall, I promise.”
“Just slide off the branch…?” He let all the doubt he felt over this prospect seep into his voice.
“You trust me, don’t you…?”
He remembered her asking the same question two months prior in a cave by the sea, remembered the feeling of her breath whispered against his ear, her lips against his, but then that had been in July. This was September, and since they had returned to school all his old fears had returned.
How could he trust her when she was in the same house as the likes of James Potter and Sirius Black, and even leapt to their defense on occasion? How could he trust her when he suspected that she would hate him thoroughly if she knew some of the friends he kept, some of the extra-curricular activities he had started attending without her knowledge?
But she was smiling at him, the corners of her eyes crinkling up as they were wont to do, her copper hair blowing softly about her face in the breeze, and he remembered sitting huddled against a cliff by the sea, his arms wrapped around her, a Shielding and Warming Charm of his own conjuring protecting them both from the storm that raged around them. He knew then, without a doubt, that if they didn’t trust one another, if they didn’t stick together, then they could never weather the storms that were about to descend upon their world. They would be swallowed whole by them, and contrary to what Lily might think with her sunny, optimistic view of the world, Severus knew that two young people as insignificant as they would be viewed as easily disposable. They would be used, abused and then tossed out with the rest of the trash.
In the end he didn’t care what happened to him. He knew that he would crawl out of the bin, dust himself off and begin again, just as he always did, but Lily—people like Lily didn’t survive such things, and he swore in that moment, with his cold, bony hand held tightly in her warm one, that he would do anything to win her trust, anything to keep her close, to keep her safe.
He slipped off the branch, and immediately felt gravity take over. Her grip on his hand tightened, and he dangled there, she the only thing keeping him up.
She laughed. “You’re not trying.”
“Trying?” He scowled up at her, his heart hammering against his ribs as he felt his hand beginning to slip in hers. “Just what is it that I am supposed to be trying to do? You’ve never told me except to spout sentimental drivel about trust, and letting go of inhibitions!” He reached up and clamped his other hand over her wrist, holding on for dear life.
She frowned and he wondered if she was contemplating dropping him. “It’s not drivel!” Her cheeks were growing pinker by the moment. “And I suppose that everything that happened this summer was nothing by drivel too?!”
“Lily, I’m slipping…” The longer he clung to her hand, the sweatier his fingers became, and in any minute she was going to lose her grip and he was going to fall.
“I should let you fall, Snape! I should let you fall flat on your arse!”
“Lily!” he cried, as he could feel the last of her grip on his fingers give way. But he didn’t fall, as he expected. Instead he felt his feet make contact with something firm. He looked down, only to realize that he was standing on the ground. She must have floated them down while they were arguing and he hadn’t even noticed.
Her feet touched down lightly beside his, and when he looked up at her, he felt his heart plummet, and then twist painfully at the sight of the tears in her eyes. “What are you crying for?” he blurted. That had been quite the wrong thing to say, and he knew it even as it passed his lips, but she was making him feel particularly muddled today.
The tears spilled over to run down her cheeks. “I—I just wanted to do something—nice—for you.”
“Nice?! I don’t think that plunging to my death qualifies as nice, Lily.”
She blinked once, and he saw something close up behind her eyes. She wiped her tears angrily away, even as her bottom lip quivered with the effort of holding back more. “You—you—you don’t understand anything!” she finally cried
“Well—well you’re the one who insisted on this stupid flying lesson!”
“It’s not stupid! Maybe you think that I’m stupid then, too!”
“I never said…”
“Well, if my filthy Muggle magic is stupid, then I must be stupid as well, Snape! It only stands to reason!”
“I never…”
“I suppose that’s what Mulciber and Avery think too, or Malfoy, or Lestrange…”
“What’s that to do with…?”
“I hate you!”
The words struck him through the heart like a dagger, and he stopped breathing. He just stared at her flushed face, and wild eyes, and tear damp cheeks, and felt something inside of him gutter and die. He knew the pain must be showing on his face. He couldn’t seem to find the energy to conceal it.
She opened her mouth again like she was going to say more, but instead, she spun on her heel with a small sob and dashed off into the trees. He watched her go, trying desperately to figure out where it had all gone wrong. And when she had completely disappeared into the shadows between the trees, he felt all the air rush back into his lungs all at once, as all the fear and adrenaline caught up with him. He felt dizzy, and then, suddenly, his legs give out beneath him. He sank down to the ground gratefully, and didn’t even bother to fight back tears of his own.
Why was it that everything seemed wrong between them lately? Some days he thought that she must surely feel for him what he was beginning to realize he felt for her, others he thought that he mattered about as much to her as the latest Quidditch stats. And now she hated him, and he didn’t even know why, or what he had done, or how to make it right.
“Sev…?” His heart stopped again at the sound of her voice, and he looked up hopefully, only to be smothered by a mouthful of copper hair, and the tight circle of her arms. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it. I don’t hate you. I—I’m sorry.”
He was buried in the scent of her: hair, skin, breath…
The dizziness returned, and before he knew it they had both toppled backward onto the mossy forest floor. He expected her to push off and away, immediately. She was almost lying on top of him, after all; but she didn’t. She just laid there, all that delicious, soft, yielding weight pressing down on him, her face buried in his neck, her breath coming in small, hot puffs against his collar bone.
“I’m sorry…” she breathed again, this time sounding very small, very sad, and very, very alone.
He didn’t know what to say. Anything he said might ruin this. He lifted a hand and placed it lightly on the back of her head. When she didn’t object, he let his fingers slide beneath the blanket of her hair, and then lay very still—waiting…
“I’m sorry…” she said again. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry…”
“I know, Lily…”
She shifted a little in his arms, and he felt her hand slide up to rest against his chest, just over his heart. “Sev…?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s going to happen to us…?”
“Wh—what do you mean?”
She was quiet for a time, her breath whispering against his neck, her fingers toying with a wayward thread around one of the button holes on the front of his shirt. “Everything’s changing. I—I don’t know you sometimes. Sometimes I don’t know myself, and I—I’m scared.”
“You’re not scared of anything,” he replied wryly.
“Yes I am…”
“Like what?” he challenged, all the while wondering what exactly it was he had done to turn things for the better in such short order. Any boy in the school would gladly pledge himself to seven years of chastity if it meant he could lie on the forest floor, tangled up in the pale limbs of Lily Evans, with her full lips pressed against his neck, and her fingers slipping beneath the placket of his shirt to graze softly over small bits of skin. He couldn’t help but feel a little surge of smug satisfaction at the thought of how much James Potter would envy him this.
“Like—the end of this. Like—like losing you—us. I don’t want to lose you as my friend, Sev.”
His heart surged with joy and sorrow, simultaneously. She thought that they were an ‘us’, her and him! But for some reason he didn’t understand she thought she was losing that. “Why would you?”
“Well—you know, Sev. We’re just—we’re just different than we used to be. I don’t understand you most of the time these days, and you don’t like my friends, or even my housemates…”
“Well, you don’t like mine, either!” he snapped defensively, instantly regretting his tone as she lifted her head from his shoulder. But then she propped herself up on one elbow and stared down at him. Strands of her hair fell down over her shoulders to graze his cheek. They smelled like cookies and sweet orange, and he was instantly hungry for her.
“No I don’t. You’re right.”
“Well—well, what am I supposed to do about that?” he asked, both defensive and curious.
She studied him, as though searching for an answer in the depths of his eyes. After a moment, she rolled away from him, and lay on her back to stare up through the leaves with a sigh. “Can’t you just find different friends, Severus?”
“Can’t you?”
She glared at him askance. “What’s wrong with my friends?”
“James Potter, Lily?!”
She sat up. “James Potter is not my friend! Who—who’s saying that?! Is it Scarlet Spencer…?” She didn’t even give him time to form a reply. “If it was Mary, I’ll... Just because he’s asked me to go with him every day since start of term, that’s hardly…”
His blood ran cold and he sat up with a start as though someone had just shot a million volts up his spine. “What?!”
She blinked, looking confused. “What?”
“Potter asked you, to…”
He saw the light of understanding dawn in her eyes then, and he felt sick as he saw it followed by a soft flush, as she dropped her eyes to the ground, and picked up a dead leaf which she began to very carefully and precisely tear to shreds. “Well, it’s not like I said yes, Severus. He—he seems to have developed some sort of infatuation over the summer.
“It’s so irritating. He won’t leave me alone. Every time I find a moment alone, he’s popping out of the woodwork, asking me to come watch him practice Quidditch or some such rot!” She rolled her eyes. “He’s so—he’s so…” He watched with horror as the corner of her mouth twitched in something he was almost certain was the start of a smile. “Well, he’s impossible!” she finished, crushing the leaf to dust, and brushing it from her hands.
He watched the breeze carry the detritus away, and felt as though she had just tossed all his hopes and dreams away with it.
“But I don’t want to talk about James, Severus…”
“Good!” he bit back, angry that the idiot was now obviously ‘James’ to her, rather than ‘Potter’. “Neither do I!”
“Why are you being like that?”
“Like what?” He reached down and scooped up a pile of leaves himself, and began shredding them violently. After a moment her hand slid into view and came to sit on top of his. He stopped.
“Like that,” she asked again, more quietly than before.
He wanted to get to his feet, dust himself off, and tell her that if she didn’t know the answer to that question then she was clearly not worth his time, but he couldn’t. The image of James Potter: tan, well muscled, disgustingly cocky grin, swam before his eyes, and he had to do everything within his power to refrain from punching something. “Potter, Lily?!” It came out before he could stop himself, and worst of all, his voice cracked making it sound almost like a sob. He looked away from her quickly, but not before he saw a very odd look on her face. One he was fairly certain he had never seen there before. He had no idea what it might mean.
“Well—well, what do you care anyway, Sev. I mean, sure, Potter’s a prat, but it’s not like…” She grew silent again. He wanted to ask her what is wasn’t like, but he had too much pride, and he was still too angry about Potter’s presumptuous pursuing of her.
“Well, it’s not like we’re…” She seemed to be having a great deal of difficulty getting things out. “We’re not something, are we, Sev. So I don’t know why you would care who I chose to date.”
“POTTER?!” he bellowed this time.
Was she stupid? Was she really that stupid and cruel, or was she just trying to force him to say the words he knew he had no right to. Boys like him, didn’t end up with girls like Lily. That was the way of the world. It wasn’t fair in the least, but he had at least hoped that she might refrain from male company, or at least date the likes of Frank Longbottom while he went about becoming someone more deserving of her, and instead here she was lusting after James Potter.
“What in Merlin’s name is wrong with you?!” she demanded, her cheeks growing flush with anger once again. “I’ve told you that I’m not interested in him, so who cares?!”
“I care,” he ground out through gritted teeth, his fists clenched so tightly he was sure that his finger nails must be drawing blood on his palms.
“WHY?!” she shouted back at him.
“BECAUSE I…” He caught himself just in time. He took a deep breath and forced his heart to slow before responding. “Because—because he’s an arrogant, nasty git, Lily, and I thought—Well, I thought that you and I were friends.”
She looked away, back at the dead leaves beneath them, and he thought he saw tears in her eyes again. “We are friends…” she whispered.
“You fancy him. I can see it!” he demanded.
She just shook her head, wearily. “No, Severus.”
“Fine.” He felt sick and he was starting to get a headache from the adrenaline rush earlier. “I—I don’t feel well. I’m going back to the castle. Are you coming?”
She shook her head without looking up. “No. I don’t think so…”
“You really shouldn’t stay out here alone, Lily. It’s not safe.”
“What do you care…” she muttered. She’d picked up a stick and was poking around under the leaves, stirring up little bits of dirt and the occasional beetle.
“I do care…”
She looked up, and she must have seen something of the sincerity in his eyes, because after a moment more she stood up, brushed off her skirt, and came over to join him.
They walked back to the castle in silence.
