Harry Potter 1. November 1975

November 1975

"Oooh, nice skirt, Evans! You should let me take a peek underneath!" James Potter's voice was loud in the corridor and he waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her as he walked by, while Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew laughed appreciatively.

Lily flipped him the bird as he turned the corner but otherwise paid little attention. Potter was stupid and annoying, but harmless. Severus, however, was totally disgusted, offended on her behalf. "I'd never treat you that way," he remarked contemptuously, before he could catch himself.

Lily hardly heard him. "Anyway, I think you should stay here with me over break and not go home."

"I'll stay if you want me to." He told her, and something about the way he said it gave her pause for just a second. "I have to go to the library, want to come?" She asked.

He nodded. "I need the second volume of Winward's 'Spells, Hexes, and the Nature of Hedgewitchery.' for the Binns essay."

"Me too!" Lily exclaimed, and laughed. "We can work together," she told him, and he smiled, too pleased for once to be self-conscious.

Later, in a shadowy corner of the library, in the wavery golden light of a candle or two, they went over the text together, copying different bits and pieces of information for their essays onto long rolls of parchment. Undisturbed, they sat happily together until the library closed and made great progress on their assignments. Severus loved working with Lily; she was smart and quick, and made connections with a speed that he both marveled at and appreciated. She was the only friend he had that he felt was a true intellectual equal.

That night Severus lay in his bed in the Slytherin 5th year boy's dormitory, turning his afternoon with Lily over and over in his mind. She had invited him to study, had touched his arm (twice!) and even pulled his tie, jokingly. Surely that meant.. something, didn't it? He fell asleep with images of her emblazoned on the insides of his eyelids and thoughts of her like sculpted statues ornamenting the corridors of his mind.

Friday Lily and Severus sat together in Potions, and again in History of Magic, whispering together during class about the superiority of their essays and their plans for the holiday. Though Severus said nothing, he noticed with a frisson of satisfaction that James was watching the two of them, his ordinarily handsome face cast in a glowery scowl.

"Potter looks like he's trying to work out where he left his brain," Severus whispered, inclining his head a bit in the other boy's direction. Lily looked out of the corner of her eyes and quickly stifled a laugh.

"Oh, Sev, you know Potter didn't have a brain to begin with." She fired back.

Professor Binns cleared his ghost throat sharply. "When I call your name, please bring your essay to the front and place it on my desk. After you have handed in your essay you are free to go."

Lily and Severus waited, somewhat impatiently, for their turns to be called. Severus was first. Grabbing his bag and pushing his lank dark hair out of his face, he headed up the aisle between the desks, ready to be done with his classes for the day and hopefully to spend a bit more time with Lily. As he neared where James and Sirius sat at the front of the class, James stuck his leg out, tripping Severus. James and Sirius laughed, while Remus, pale and smirking, looked on but said nothing. Severus stumbled but didn't fall, and Lily saw the malicious glitter in James' eyes as he watched Severus falter. Severus stopped and stared at him momentarily, dark eyes shooting daggers in James' direction before he thrust his essay on to Professor Binns' desk and left the classroom.

Severus waited for Lily outside of the door, and she came out a few minutes later, visibly irritated. "Let's go," she said shortly, and pulled him by the sleeve of his ratty robe away from the doorway. Severus wondered what Potter and his lackeys had said to her.

"I'm sorry Potter tried to trip you up." Lily said. It seemed as though there was more she wanted to say, but she didn't add anything else, just looked at him with her green eyes soft and attentive. She had noticed that when she and Severus spent more than a little bit of time together, James' attention towards Severus, and in turn, his attempts to humiliate him, got much worse. She was looking forward to the winter holiday because Potter always went home, and took Sirius Black with him as an added bonus.

Severus looked stricken and embarrassed for a second, but recovered from it well. "I'll make sure he regrets it," He promised.

"What did he say to you, before you came out?" Severus asked.

"Nothing I'd like to repeat." She said, and then looked at him. Her anger seemed to melt away before his eyes. "I don't have any homework I have to do today," she told him, once they got closer to the stairway that led to the Slytherin dorms and common room. "We could go back to the library," He offered, eager to be with her, to talk with her, to be in her presence. "If you want to, that is," He added quickly.

"Maybe we can get the good spot by the window with the nice chairs." She said hopefully.

Distracted by schoolwork and lives led in separate houses, the winter holiday crept up on them with each passing day. Soon it was December and the holiday was upon them. Severus enjoyed the empty hallways, the informal meals, and time away from both Potter and Black and his own Slytherin set of friends. Though Severus shared their interests, he recognized that it was pragmatism rather than friendship that caused him to keep up in their circle. There were perks to their friendship, of course, and Lucius Malfoy was particularly interested in him because of his vast knowledge of hexes, curses, spells and jinxes. Within his set he was well respected for his knowledge of the dark arts, and appreciated as a talented brewer of all sorts of useful things. He had long ago mastered most of the curses and spells that his older year friends were just discovering. Naturally, all his friends came to him for potions, draughts, and tinctures, intended to solve a variety of problems or to produce a variety of affects. Teasing him about the time he spent with Lily, they called her a base mudblood slut and told him that he had low tastes because she was, afterall, from a non-magical family.

"She's cute, but she's tainted. Dirty blood. Have her and be done with it, she's not good for anything but a shag anyway," Lucius told Severus one afternoon in the common room. Severus was offended, but said nothing, thought he wanted to tell Lucius that Lily was not that sort of girl. Instinctively he knew it was pointless to defend her to his friends, who considered blood purity much more important than talent or intelligence, and who might respect him a bit more if they thought he and Lily were more than just friends. After all, most of his friends had dates and trysts and were, in a capacity that outstretched Severus, variously sexually active. He never embellished the truth or lied to his friends about Lily, but he also never dissuaded them from thinking that he and Lily were together in some fashion.

On Christmas, the two of them met in the Great Hall to exchange presents- Severus presented Lily with a rare signed copy of Merle Whitewood's 'Radical Potionmaking' (it had been his mother's book to begin with), remembering that she had been looking for a copy and had intended to order it. Lily gave Severus enchanted ink, two Sugar Quills, and a small vial of Essence of Euphoria, which she had brewed herself.

"Radical Potionmaking!" She exclaimed delightedly, hugging it to herself before hugging Severus as well. Severus blushed and trembled at the feel of her arms around his shoulders, if only for a moment. She laughed and released him. "My gifts seem a bit bad, now, compared to yours."

He shook his head. "They're great," he assured her. "I've wanted to reverse brew your Essence of Euphoria and now I can."

"The secret difference is mint and roses to cut the sweetness." She told him, and then smiled. "I can't believe you remembered," She said, flipping through the book with obvious excitement.

"It was my mother's before she gave it to me," Severus said, looking at his scuffy old shoes rather bashfully.

"Sev! Is this a signed copy?" She asked, looking at the florid signature on the inside front cover. He nodded.

"Thank you." She said quietly, touched, and Severus felt his knees go watery at the sight of her bright smile directed solely at him.

When they break was over, and classes resumed, Lily and Severus partnered in Potions. "I should separate you two," Slughorn chucked amusedly, "You two have the rest of the class at a disadvantage!" Lily and Severus turned to look at one another and smiled- it was true.

For Severus, this was the brightest spot in his school career. He and Lily spent nearly all their free time together. The way Lily glanced at him, touched his hand or arm, the way she shortened his name to 'Sev' affectionately, instead of calling him 'Severus', all these small things began to coalesce in his mind, to pile up on themselves and form a kind of solid certainty that they might really be together someday soon. Never before had he been so sure that Lily was, for all intensive purposes, his girl. There were, however, several downsides to this set of circumstances- Potter and Black had become almost unendurable in their torment of him, and he was terrified to tell Lily how he felt for fear that her attentions and friendship would withdraw. Perhaps her feelings for him were not the same. Severus recognized that he would never know for sure if he didn't make some sort of move, and his inability to do so burned him to the core.

He wasn't short on opportunities to tell her, either. Moments alone whispering in an alcove, her breath sweet and warm on his ear, or sitting side by side, poring over some ancient grimoire, walking the rugged and craggy grounds of the school together. In his mind, at night, he practiced possible ways to confess his feelings.

"I love you," He'd think to himself, and then shake himself out of the deep trembly feeling it gave him to think of telling her those words. You're my best friend. I want to take you to Hogsmeade for a date. Please say you love me, too. I want no one but you.

After several weeks of intensive, wishy-washy thoughts, Severus decided that he would tell her the truth of his feelings. It was Tuesday, and they were walking to the greenhouse through the fresh January snow to get Slughorn a green supply of Glorywort for a potion he wanted to demonstrate brewing to his mid-afternoon class.

"And you know what it said in 'Radical Potionmaking?'" Lily was asking him enthusiastically.

"What did it say?" He asked her mildly, amused by her passion and pleased that his gift was such a success.

"It said that you don't really need to stew the spider eyes if they're not fresh! I've been wasting time all year, can you believe it?"

"Lily, I want to tell you something," he said, and slowed his walk to a halt. She stood beside him, peering up into his long face.

"What is it?" She asked, immediately concerned.

"I think.. I mean to say.. Would you want to-?"

"Look out Snape, ya' wanker!" a voice called, and he turned to be hit in the face with a large snowball. Immediately angry, he wiped the snow away with his scarf and drew his wand.

Potter and Black were trudging through the drudged up snow towards them. Around them whizzed a number of well-formed snowballs that Potter was controlling with loose gestures of his wand. Sirius and James were laughing, and Potter directed one of the snowballs towards them with a tight motion of his wand, but it whizzed past the two of them harmlessly. The next one hit Severus in the side of the head hard, stinging him, and as the snow fell away, a bit of blood was left on his forehead by his hairline. There were rocks in the middle of the snowballs.

"Stop it, Potter!" Lily shouted, her eyes watching the little trickle of blood flow down the side of her best friend's face.

"Oho! Got your girlfriend to protect you, do you?" Black sneered. "Snape, you weakling."

Severus looked at Lily, angry and embarrassed. She wasn't helping.

Severus reached up and touched his fingertips to the warm blood that was there. "You'll be sorry you did that, Potter," He said, trying to maintain some kind of cool, and flicked his wrist with a laziness that hid his malice. He had no doubt that he was the superior magician, as long as Black didn't curse him unawares.

James was jerked upwards by the ankle and was now hanging upside down. The snowballs that had orbited him like small moons fell into the snow with soft thuds. Sirius Black thought this hilarious and laughed sincerely, but James protested angrily and fired a quick curse in Severus' direction. Severus blocked the curse with a fluid movement of his wrist, and sent it rebounding back to James. Immediately, James' face began to swell, his cheeks blossoming and growing enlarged, puffing up over his eyes, which had become piggy slits in his bloated countenance. His lips were red, the skin stretched taught and shiny, their shape grotesquely large like uncooked sausages. He was muttering and yelling, though his swollen lips muffled and distorted his words. Severus' own mouth was pulled into a pointed, satisfied smile.

"Sev, that's enough." Lily said, and laid a hand on his arm. He looked at her and let James drop without bothering to look at him, reversing the spell as silently as he had cast it.

"Let's go," Severus said cooly. His satisfied smile was gone. Besting himself against Potter in front of Lily had given him new confidence, and as he put his wand away in his robes he took Lily's hand and led her towards Greenhouse #3. He hoped with all his might that Potter might see them hand in hand (if he could see), and take it as an added insult to injury. To his delight, Lily did not pull her hand away.

"You shouldn't have done that, Sev," she said, once they were inside the greenhouse and the door was shut. "He deserved it!" Severus said, suddenly defensive. "And you shouldn't have said anything!"

"Oh?" Lily asked, somewhat indignantly.

"I don't need you to defend me," he said hotly. He wanted to tell her that it was humiliating to be stuck up for by a girl, but he sensed that this was not the right thing to say to her. He was thin and pale, lanky and awkward, with overlong hair and an overlarge nose. He was not strong or handsome, neither athletic nor dashing, and when Lily came to his defense, his lack of these particularly masculine traits was, he felt, exacerbated.

"Even so, it makes you just as bad as them when you fight back."

"So I'm supposed to let him get away with it all?!" Severus asked her, exasperated.

"Well, no.. but you're better than that, Sev.." She said, as though this were obvious. In Lily's mind, Severus was different from the other boys in their year. He never made crude jokes or expressed even the slightest interest in getting girls to like him. She pulled a small white kerchief from her pocket and extended a hesitant hand to him, wiping away the little trail of blood that had run down from his forehead and cheek before she pressed it tenderly to his small wound. He flinched and looked at her, tense and wary at her touch.

"You're bleeding," she said quietly.

He kept his eyes locked on her, and stepped a bit closer to her in spite of himself. How he longed to take her little waist in his arms and kiss her on the mouth, to put his hands in her red hair and smell the sweet shampoo smell that her hair gave off up close. He wanted her so badly, it was like a mania suddenly possessed him. She drew her hand away slowly, looking up at him. They were close in the warmth of the greenhouse, and Severus knew that now was the moment. He wanted desperately to kiss her, but instead he reached for her hand and uncurled her fingers, feeling the sticky dampness of his own blood on the cotton of her kerchief.

"Earlier, before Potter, you were going to ask me something." Lily said. She looked at their hands together, Sev's fingers half clutching her own, half clutching the bloodied hankerchief. He seemed to crackle with unexpressed energy. In that moment she felt her heart swell with some inexpressible affection for him.

"Can I take you out to-"

"There you are!" Slughorn cried, throwing open the door. "I thought you two had gotten lost!"

Severus dropped Lily's hand and took a step back, irritation and misery flashing across his face. Some small part of him noted remotely that Lily, too, seemed annoyed at Slughorn's unexpected interruption.

"You took so long that I thought I'd just nip out here to get the Glorywort for myself!" Slughorn pressed past them, pushing them up against the tables, his enormous belly sailing ahead in front of him. He moved to the far end of the table, took up a dainty pair of shears and began to clip the delicate green leaves of the Glorywort from their curling vine.

That night in the Gryffindor 5th year girls dormitory, Lily lay on her canopied bed with the curtains open, dressed in a flannel nightgown, watching Mary Macdonald comb her hair.

"I think Sev tried to ask me out today." Lily said. "But I can't be sure."

"Ugh," Mary said, setting her brush down and looping her long hair through a rubber hair band. "I don't know why you spend your time with him, he's so creepy."

"You just don't know him, he's not creepy." Lily said defensively. "He's very smart."

"Yeah, and he uses those smarts to study up so he can join You-Know-Who." Mary said matter-of-factly.

"That's just a silly old rumor." Lily told Mary dismissively.

"I think you want him to ask you on a date, if you ask me! You spend all your time with him. Is he any good?" Mary asked, curiously.

Lily blushed and looked down at her hands, seeing Sev clutch at her her fingers in her mind's eye. He must have taken the kerchief, because she didn't have it. After she had gotten back up to the castle she had had to go to the lavatory to wash the faintly rusty smudges of his blood from her fingers.

"I wouldn't know, we're only just friends."

Mary rolled her eyes.


	2. July 1981

July, 1981

The evening was still in the garden behind the cottage, the air warm on her bare arms. The moonless sky was darkly sprinkled with stars. She stood in the soft night-time greenness, listening. Her ears were trained for any sound or bump from within the house, muscles tense beneath her simple summer dress. She had no jacket or cloak, and wore no shoes. Vaguely, she enjoyed the feel of the grass beneath her bare feet. She walked through the garden and far out into the field that stretched behind their plot.

From where she stood she could look up through the distant trees of her garden and just see the unlit window of the room where her husband and son slept. She did not think of them but briefly as she cast a furtive glance around her before apparating away with a small 'pop!'

She reappeared in a small stark yard in the shadow of a neglected house, the red brick wall of the yard crumbling and the tendrils of tenacious weeds poking their sunstarved heads up through the cracks. She rapped at the door urgently and it opened just wide enough to admit her. A hand slipped out, blue-white in the gloom, and pulled her inside.

The kitchen was stuffy and dusty and the overhead lamp glowed dim above them, casting the room in a pathetic yellow light.

"I told you not to come," her lover scolded gently, drawing her gratefully into his arms.

"I had to," she breathed against his neck, into his long hair. It was a rather cruel irony that only years later, after she had broken their friendship and made him a bitter man, had she come to want him the way he had always wanted her. Her hunger for him frightened her, because the very nature of her desire was treacherous. "And you were expecting me anyway, weren't you?" She asked with a smile, pulling out of their embrace to look at him. His eyes were dark and liquid like spilled ink and expressive in the dim light, and she touched his cheek fondly with her fingertips.

"I was," he admitted. "And I'm glad to see you, but we can't risk this again. Not now."

She went to the shabby little kitchen table and sat herself down in one of the creaky old chairs there. He sat opposite of her across the table, his eyes taking her in hungrily.

"I wondered if you had any news." She said, and suddenly her even, pretty features were tense and drawn.

"None. I'm still waiting."

"I almost didn't come, but James and the baby fell asleep and I.." She stopped, having seen Severus recoil involuntarily at her husband's name, as though she had struck him. "Sev," she said, reaching for him across the table. She took his hand in hers. He met her eyes for a minute, but his gaze was sharp.

"Don't say his name to me," he breathed, but did not release her hand. It was a huge point of conflict between them, and Lily spent her times with Severus as though she had never married James or had his child. She had tried to talk to Severus about it, but they had fought terribly, and the vitriol and bitter rage that he had expressed towards James had shocked her, though in retrospect she saw why it shouldn't have.

It was no secret that Severus and James had been hateful rivals at school, and Lily knew that her place between the two of them had only worsened what had already been an ugly dislike of one another. She recalled the way James had strutted and shown off, the way he had jealously bullied and abused Severus to punish him for Lily's interest in him, the delight James took in his acts of cruelty. It had only made Severus darker, angrier and more willing to cross the line in order to exact some kind of retribution.

In the wee hours of the morning, when she lay at home awake beside a softly snoring James, guilty with the longing to go to Severus' bed, she would hear Sev's furious voice in her head, her mind replaying what he had said when they had fought so awfully. He had been agonized and angry, and had told her that James had stolen his chance at happiness, that she should be _his_ wife, that it should have been _his_ child that she had carried and nursed, that he would never be a whole person because of what James had taken from him. The naked expression of his misery haunted her, almost as much as the guilt she felt at her betrayal of James.

Lily sat for a long moment, looking at Severus. She loved him, it was true, but he made her uneasy, as well. He walked in dark places, had done bad magic, and now all the pretense he had upheld about not wanting to join up with Voldemort had fallen away for good and yet she wanted him, undeniably. The first time they made love, she had looked at the dark mark on his thin pale arm for a long time, torn between desire, pity, guilt and sadness. She screwed him desperately the first time, with a pain in her heart blooming like a flowery bloodstain. Afterward she knew that her rejection of Sev's friendship those years ago had pushed him on in to darker places just as much as James' torture and humiliation of Severus had. Perhaps she should have been stronger, should have been there for Severus, should have fought the darkness in Sev's heart with the light of her love, but she herself had been a different girl then, and not so uncanny as she was now.

The truth of it was, she needed his touch, she needed the devoted way he kissed her mouth and breasts, needed the tangle of his long fingers in her hair and the twisting of his tongue between her legs. She needed the information he made her privy to, that she could pass it on to the Order. There were parts of herself that she was not proud of, but that Severus knew well and accepted, parts of her that she was and always had been incapable of sharing with good-natured, easy-going James. James was not a fool, though she sometimes found his emotional responses to be somewhat simple and unsophisticated. Severus was both complex and complicated, and by loving him as she did, her guilt and covetousness were making her more complicated, as well.

"Take me to bed," she told him, and he smiled a little, a pointed, pleased-with-himself smile that she liked making appear on his features. She was hungry for his touch, for his body next to hers in bed, for the feel of his narrow hips pressing against her, his dark head laid upon her breast in exhausted aftermath. She stood up and went to stand before him. He put his hands on her hips and slid them up her back, unzipping her dress.


	3. Wednesday January 1st, 1975

Wednesday, January 1st, 1975

"Lily- Severus, stay behind for a moment, won't you? I have a proposition." The rest of the mid-morning potions class was shuffling past his desk, each depositing their own small glass vial of a bright green good luck potion that had been the day's assignment. Lily and Severus stood off to the side of the rest of the students, still holding their vials of the day's potion. They gave one another a curious look.

"Ah, very good." Slughorn said when the rest of the class had gone. He hurried to shut the door and then sank back into his seat, smiling at them. "Have either of you, in your readings, come across a potion called Amorestmorta?"

Severus was so surprised that he raised his eyebrows involuntarily. Lily laughed sincerely. "Of course, Sir, everyone's heard of it. It's the mythical love potion that kills you if your love isn't true."

Severus looked at her.

"Not so mythical, my dear!" Slughorn said good-naturedly. "Let's go into my office, shall we?"

He led them into the expensively decorated office with it's comfortable wingbacked chairs, foot-stools and sparkling decanters of good things to drink. With a flick of his wand he set a merry fire crackling in the little fireplace, and conjured three delicate crystal glasses from the cabinet across the room.

"Sit, Sit!" He said genially, waving a hand at them while he poured a bit of something red for each of them from a glass decanter that sat by the others on the tea service table he had placed by his chair. Lily and Severus sat side by side on the red velvet setee opposite his chair. Severus was sure Slughorn must want something from them. Slughorn casually acknowledged that he and Lily were his most talented pupils, but Severus had only been in his office once before, when Slughorn needed Severus' assistance organizing all the entries for 'Most Innovative Potion,' in Severus' third year.

"Amorestmorta is a real potion." Slughorn said, and paused for dramatic effect as he handed them their glasses. Severus smelled the stuff in his glass suspiciously while Lily took a small sip. "Mm! That's delicious!" She exclaimed.

"Aged cherry wine." Slughorn said to Lily, inclining his glass to her.

Severus drank a bit of his, seemed to contemplate it for a moment, and then drank the rest. "Of course it's real," Severus said. "Amorestmorta was popular with wizarding knights and their ladies in the middle ages, and with," there was only the slightest hesitation in his speech, and his eyes glanced in Lily's direction, who was looking at him interestedly, "..lovers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. There's a famous story about it."

"Very good." Slughorn said appreciatively. "I want you to brew it for me."

"That's impossible." Severus blurted out. "No one has brewed that potion in hundreds of years. The instructions are lost." Lily gave Severus a curious look.

"I have it." Slughorn said, and smiled as though he were about to enjoy explaining how he'd managed to come by something so remarkable, so rare.

"I have an acquaintance who recently inherited a rather large estate. My acquaintance comes from a long line of distinguished potioneers and I have acquired all of the writings and materials left by his ancestor, who was a noted magi-anthropologist and potion brewer. Perhaps you've heard of Desmond Maplethwite?"

They both nodded. Desmond Maplethwite's 'Advanced Potion Theory and Chemical Process,' was standard reading for all fifth year potion students.

"Desmond Maplethwite knew more about Amorestmorta than any other wizard of his day. He spent his final years trying to brew it based on accounts, writing and fragmented records-"

"And died after he brewed it incorrectly and poisoned himself." Severus finished for him sardonically. "Professor, I have no doubt that we would be capable, but- " Slughorn raised a finger and opened his mouth to counter this statement when Lily cut across both of them.

"What do you need it for?" She asked.

"I know a few, ah, interested parties.. fine, quality wizards who would be delighted to obtain some for their personal stores, as a mere historical curiosity, you must understand. And Severus, Desmond did not poison himself, he died of a broken heart." Severus looked at him, unimpressed with this revelation.

"You see, Desmond was in fact successful at brewing Amorestmorta shortly before he died. He drank it to prove his love to his newest wife, and perished when she did not return his truest affections. I knew him myself as a young man, before he passed, may he rest."

"So you're suggesting Desmond Maplethwite obtained real instructions for brewing Amorestmorta and died, not of poisoning, but because his wife didn't love him?" Severus asked.

"Precisely, my boy." Slughorn said, sitting forward in his chair.

"That's terrible!" Lily said, shocked. "Why on earth would anyone want to drink it?"

Slughorn smiled. "In the days of courtly love, ladies and their knights would drink it to prove their undying love to one another." He explained.

Severus looked up from his hands, playing idly with his empty crystal glass, and gave Lily a long look as he spoke. "The knights would rather die than live knowing their paramore didn't love them in return. They would drink it to seal their eternal devotion. Lots of wizards and witches died." Because they were fools, he added silently in his head.

Lily shifted in her place on the setee uncomfortably and looked away from him, back to Slughorn.

"Very true," agreed Slughorn. "It was seen as the ultimate romantic gesture. Amorestmorta is not like other love potions, it does not cause one to feel as though they are in love, it simply takes the love that exists between two people and forms a bond that not even death can break. Of course, if that love is not there, it becomes deadly."

"What happened to Desmond's wife?" Lily asked.

"Why, she died, my dear," Slughorn said sadly.

Lily took another drink of her aged cherry wine somberly and set the little empty glass on a small rounded table beside the setee.

"What do we get in return for brewing it?" Severus asked frankly.

Slughorn laughed. "My dear boy, so pragmatic!" He clasped his hands. "The two of you will be excused from any essay I might assign for the rest of the year, and I will award each of your houses 75 points. I will also provide sparkling letters of recommendation upon your graduations, naturally."

Lily and Severus looked at one another.

"We'll do it," Lily said, thinking of all the free time she would have over the remainder of the year if she didn't have to complete another one of his laborious essays.

"Now, this is a very serious undertaking. You will need to go through all of Desmond Maplethwite's papers and writings, along with his collection of grimoires, to locate the precise instructions for the potion. You will have total access to my stores of ingredients and equipment, but I'll expect you to brew it in your free time, here in the lab after class hours.. Wouldn't want the other students to get wind of what you're working on. And you must be absolutely discreet. Tell no one."

"The four grimoires I'd like you to start your search with are most invaluable, and are currently housed in the restricted section of the library. I'll provide you a note and you can go and begin looking."

He produced a small notepad of paper and an ever-inked-quill from the lower layer of his tea caddy, and wrote them a flowery and formal permission slip addressed to Mrs. Pince, the new librarian.

Before they knew it, they had been ushered out of the office and were on their way to the library. Climbing the stairs out of the Slytherin dungeons, their conversation was animated.

"How do you know so much about Amorestmorta?" Lily asked him, shifting her bag from one shoulder to the other. "I've only come across it two or three times, and all of the references were written as though it were hypothetical, not real."

"My Mum has some old book about it," He told her. "I read it last year. I'll write her and have her send it to me so you can read it, too." He told her, and Lily smiled.

"So you think we can brew it?" She asked.

"Of course." He told her, feigning a confidence he wasn't sure he felt. The irony of the situation had struck him as they were sitting in Slughorn's office: Here he was being asked to brew one of Wizarding history's most infamous love potions with the one girl he dreamed of making an impression on. If only there were some way that they two could drink some of the potion. Irrationally, he assured himself that they would survive- afterall, he knew his love for Lily was true. Would it really be such a stretch to assume that she loved him, too?

"What do you really think he's going to do with it?"

"Probably sell it, like he said. I don't think he'd be fool enough to drink it with someone." Severus said. "He'd invariably die."

"We should have asked for a cut of the money," Lily lamented, as they entered the library, hushed and filled with the last light of day, the sound of whispers and the rustle of turning pages filling the quiet.

Mrs. Pince was tight-lipped as she stamped their permission slip, and admonished them to retrieve ONLY the books that were on the permission slip itself. When Mrs. Pince's back was turned, Lily rolled her eyes in an exaggerated fashion. Severus smiled.

The first of the four grimoires was so heavy that neither of them could lift it. Severus went to check that their corner was unoccupied, while Lily floated the great book off of it's shelf and on to the table opposite her. It landed with a heavy thump that echoed unfortunately, and she winced slightly at the sound. She didn't want to bring Mrs. Pince down on them, who, though having only been there a year, was proving to be quiet formidable in her position as head librarian. Severus came back and confirmed that the group of third years that had been in 'their' corner were leaving. Luckily, the other grimoires were not so heavy, and Severus was able to stuff two of them in his bag, while Lily carried the other. As they made their way to the corner with the good chairs, the obscenely large book floated behind them, bobbing along at the motion of Severus' wand.

They checked the large book first, which took two hours and contained many interesting spells and potions, none of which were Amorestmorta. Severus hurriedly scribbled some of the more promising potion instructions on a piece of crumpled parchment, to look at later.

The three smaller grimoires were easier to go through, and they had searched through one of them and were starting on the other before it was dinner time. Deciding to skip dinner, Lily conjured clandestine bacon and tomato sandwiches from the Great Hall, which they ate as they worked, and charmed to look like a stack of books when anyone seemed like they might pass by their spot. Eating in the library was a serious infraction and would warrant at least a detention, and surely an almost unendurable telling off by Mrs. Pince.

They each read from the last two quietly for awhile, scanning with their eyes for anything that looked like it might be a love potion.

"Lily."

She was sitting in her chair with her feet up on the lowest rung of Severus' chair, a thick tome resting on her knees. With one hand she twirled a bit of her red hair, eyes scanning the slanted writing while her other hand carefully turned the thick vellum pages. In her mouth was one of the sugar quills she have given Severus for Christmas, and she sucked it thoughtfully as she read.

"Yah," she said absently, around the candy.

"I found it."

She dropped her hair and closed the book on her lap, taking the sugar quill from her mouth. Severus hefted the heavy book off of the table and onto his knees, shifting it around so it faced her. "Look, it's there." He pointed with his first finger at the miniscule text.

Leaning closer to look, she read aloud, "This most ancient potion is known as Amor est Mortum, Amorestmorta.. Sev! You found it!"

Lily dug in her bag for a roll of blank parchment and began to copy the text down carefully. "Did you read all this?" She asked, pausing to push a bit of hair out of her face.

Severus nodded. "We're going to have to send away for the rattlesnake venom." He said.

"And the tears of a faithful lover." She said, somewhat dismayed. Lily continued her careful copying of the potion and finished just as Mrs. Pince was making her closing announcement. Severus used a replication charm on Lily's copied instructions and wadded the parchment into his bag.

"Tonight I'll write away for the rattlesnake venom and the tears," Severus told her. "I might be able to get them through credit on Slughorn's name, so I don't have to pay for them myself." He said. The rattlesnake venom would be an expensive order, as it had to come from either North or South America.

"We should ask him if he already has some," Lily said. "It's not likely, but it's worth a shot."

They parted ways at the staircase that led to the Slytherin dungeons, and Severus was keenly aware that Lily hadn't needed to walk with him, it was even a bit out of her way.

"Well, I'll see you tomorrow. Write your Mum and get that book for me, don't forget." Lily said, and smiled. She turned and waved a bit as she made her way back the way she'd come, towards the center of the castle and its shifting staircases.


	4. Friday January 3rd, 1975

Friday January 3rd, 1975

As it had turned out, Slughorn had both a vial of rattlesnake venom and a jar of tears that had been cried by a faithful lover. The only ingredient left that they needed was the hair of a married woman and Professor Slughorn promised he would have it for them by the next day. Slughorn was also terribly impressed with the quickness in which they had come across the instructions, and he beamed as he told them how certain he was that they would do an outstanding job at brewing it.

"I wonder who's tears these are.." Lily had said off-handedly, examining the little jar of clear liquid Slughorn had set before her.

They would begin brewing the potion the following day, but Lily wasn't thinking of Amorestmorta or Slughorn, she was thinking of what Severus might want for his birthday, which was only six days away.

She had considered all the usual things, but none of them seemed fitting for a boy who had all the books he could want to read, disliked candy, and took little joy in the usual types of presents. She thought maybe a bit of magic might be better- maybe another potion.

She had been careful not to mention his birthday to him, for whatever she ended up giving him, she wanted it to be a surprise, and he hadn't said anything about the impending day to her, either. He would be fifteen, and her birthday would follow twenty-two days later on the 30th. The thoughtfulness of his Christmas gift made her determined to match it, to present him with something equally useful, considerate, and clever. 'Radical Potionmaking' had put her Sugar Quills to shame.

Spending time together daily had become something of a routine, and after their last shared class, History of Magic, they drifted to the library when the weather was bad, or out by the lake under a particular tree when it wasn't too cold or raining. While they waited for the book on Amorestmorta to arrive in the post from Severus' mum, Severus told her what he could remember about what the book had said.

"It's only poisonous if just one person drinks it, or if the two people who drink it don't really love each other, which why it was also known as the suicide potion. Even the name derives from the Latin motto-"

"Love is death," Lily said, finishing his sentence for him.

"'Love is suicide,'" He corrected. "People who had been betrayed in love drank it to off themselves," Severus explained.

"I couldn't imagine wanting to kill myself because someone didn't love me." Lily said, somewhat wonderingly.

"Well, of course _you_ couldn't. Everyone loves you. You're the best girl in our year."

Lily laughed. "You're just saying that."

They were sitting under their particular tree by the lake. The sky above was covered in a mass of steely gray clouds, flat and expansive. The cold waters of the lake slipped up and down the pebbled shore with a quiet sloshing sound. They sat on Severus' cloak which he had spread out over the damp, rotting leaves.

"You're right, I am just saying that. You're the worst." He said evenly, teasing, and Lily laughed, louder than the first time.

"Hey!" She said, and whacked him playfully on the arm. He grinned. "I'm only joking."

"What do you think it tastes like?" Lily asked suddenly, stretching her stockinged legs out before her and pulling up her black socks up over her knees.

"What does what taste like?" Severus asked. He drew his robes closer around him and shivered a bit in his jumper- it was cold.

"The potion. Amorestmorta."

"Good, hopefully." Severus said.

"All this death and love mixed up together.. The whole thing seems a bit grim to me, instead of romantic. Whose to say that you'd survive? There's no guarantee." Lily said, and shuddered.

"I think that's the point." Severus said. "The people who drank it were idealistic. They were willing to

risk their lives for true love."

"I suppose it just goes to show how much cultural standards in the wizarding world have shifted since then. Today people would think you were crazy to do something like that. You couldn't get me to drink it, that's for sure. No matter how certain I was that I was in love."

Severus wasn't eager to share with her his own thoughts on the potion, because he knew they contrasted so differently from her own. From a practical standpoint, he could see perfectly how silly it was to gamble your life on the chance that someone truly loved you, but the aspect that they might risk death to prove it appealed to his dark and hungry heart. When it had been popular, drinking Amorestmorta had been an unparalleled gesture, a gallant gesture.

"I'd drink it." He said suddenly, as if he were confessing some truth that didn't want to be spoken aloud. He twirled a decayed leaf in his fingers by its brown, withered stem.

Lily looked shocked. He said nothing and stared at her seriously for a few seconds, keeping his face set long enough to make her consider that he might not be joking, and then he laughed.

"Sev!" She said, and laughed too.

"I would, though." He said with a quick smile, and dropped the brown soggy leaf to the ground.

"I don't believe you!" Lily said, amused.

"Well, why not? If I was sure the person loved me, really, and I loved them, there'd be no chance of death, would there? Not that _that's _likely to happen," Severus added sarcastically before he could help himself.

Lily looked at him and made a small dismissive noise in her throat, but said nothing.

A part of her wanted to tell him that he would find someone, someday; everyone would eventually, but it didn't feel right to her to say those things to him somehow. She wasn't so sure that _she _didn't want to be that person that he found eventually- she'd certainly thought of it before, it was impossible not to when all of her friends teased her about it constantly. Though she liked him well, and knew that she might come to feel more for him than friendship if things were to go that way, there were also things about him that gave her serious pause, even caused her sometimes to think decisively that he was not a good match for her, after all.

He had atrocious friends who despised her even more than her friends despised him, he hardly took care of himself, had poor hygiene and was sometimes extremely moody with unexpressed emotion.

His knowledge of the dark arts was undeniably prolific, almost bordering on reverence (he was the best by far in Defense Against the Dark Arts), and there were, of course, all the stupid rumors that he and his Slytherin friends wanted to join up with You-Know-Who. Lily knew these tales were rubbish, but it still bothered her that so many people seemed to think that Sev was up to no good. Was there something about him that she, being too close to him, couldn't see?

Despite all of that, there were lots of things she liked about him, too, from his slightly crooked smile to the way he gently teased her, to the way his hands moved when brewing a potion and his unique turn of mind. He was a brilliant potioneer, exacting and precise, who saw the artfulness of potion brewing and who was aware of the mystique of a softly simmering cauldron. Lily enjoyed brewing and working with him just as much as he did with her. When they worked together, they became a solid unit, the perfect mix of intuition and skill. He was so unlike the other boys in their year that sometimes they seemed somewhat disappointing to her after talking all afternoon with Severus about history, potions, books, magical theory and philosophy.

Aside from Lily, no girl had ever exhibited even the smallest response to him aside from one of contempt or vague disgust, and she knew that, and was aware that Sev knew it, too. Sometimes, he had made Lily angry over the course of their friendship, but she had always forgiven him, or come round to see his side of things.

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself, Sev." Lily said finally, and reached out to tug gently on his tie.

"You're going to strangle me one day, if you keep doing that," Severus said, but he was smiling broadly. It was easy to feel happy around Lily. She had a way of making Severus feel as though anything might be possible, as though there was a life out there waiting for him that contained things that he had only just dared to imagine for himself.

Severus knew it was pure cowardice that prevented him from telling her how he felt, cowardice and a fear of losing her friendship if she didn't feel the same. Their time spent together was precious to Severus, and he did not want to see it go down like a shipwreck in a sea of awkward silences and un-returned affection. She was his only real friend.

"So tomorrow we're meeting after breakfast," She said, and pulled her copied instructions for brewing Amorestmorta out of her pocket. "I think we should use a standard size two. The instructions call for iron, luckily, and not brass."

Severus took the paper and looked at its tidily written lines, studying her handwriting rather than the words. "Let's use a three, I want to hold some of it back for my own stores."

"You want to brew that much?" She asked in surprise.

"Well, if we use a two, that's fifteen standard vials for Slughorn and only five for me. If we use a three, that's twenty for Slughorn and ten for me."

"You're planning on selling it, just like Slughorn!" Lily said, not disapprovingly.

Severus smiled but said nothing.

Eventually it got dark and cold, and they went inside to hang around idly before dinner. When they entered the great hall together and went to their separate house tables, Severus noted with satisfaction that Potter in particular looked miserable when he saw them.

"I see you've been spending time with your _boyfriend_," Mary Macdonald said when Lily sat beside her at the Gryffindor table.

"Jealous, Mary?" Lily asked, helping herself to chicken and potatoes, carrots, green beans, and a roll.

"Not if it's _Snape_ you're dating. You could do so much better, he's nothing to look at."

"Severus isn't that bad looking." Lily heard herself say. "He's just unkempt. And why should it matter if someone isn't traditionally good looking, if they're already smart and talented?"

Sirius Black looked up interestedly from a few seats down the table at these words, and he and James exchanged a dark look between themselves.

Mary shrugged. "I guess I just have higher standards than some people."

Lily narrowed her eyes. "It's not about that, Mary, don't be superficial. And anyway, we aren't dating."

"Yet." Mary said.

Lily sighed and took a big bite of carrots and potatoes to prevent herself from saying something nasty. Mary Macdonald was infamously surface, terribly catty, and Lily knew she couldn't expect Mary to understand any kind of relationship that was based on mutual interest instead of physical attraction. Mary went through boys like days of the week.

As she ate, she noticed uncomfortably that James Potter was staring at her, his usually even features seemingly twisted with both anger and sadness. Eventually Sirius Black elbowed James not-so-gently in the ribs, and he finally looked away.

Lily finished her dinner as quick as she could, stuffed a roll or two in her pocket, and headed for Gryffindor tower.


	5. Instructions for brewing Amorestmorta

Start with a base of thrice distilled water, four handfuls of red rose petals, and the hair of a married woman. Bring to a low simmer and add three powdered scorpion stingers and two rose thorns, stirring every seven minutes for fifty-six minutes. Remove from heat. Let sit for twelve minutes, then add three drops blood of a virgin, one and a half cup of graulated sugar, and two ounces of Flobberworm mucus to thicken. Let age twenty-one days in a covered iron cauldron, exposing cauldron to sun and moonlight.

Heat at medium temperature until boiling. Stir in one ounce tears of a faithful lover, a half ounce of rattlesnake venom and a widowed lady's ring of silver. Boil for nine minutes, until a pink colour is achieved. Add four ounces dried nettles, the feather of peacock, and three shards of broken mirror. Potion should turn deep red. Remove from heat and let age for two days in total darkness.

Over low heat, sprinkle three pinches of soil from a cemetery where a cuckold is buried and stir thirteen times counter-clockwise. Add the heart of a nightingale that has been held in captivity for six days. Let boil seven minutes. Remove from heat and strain. Potion should be dark red in colour.


	6. Saturday January 4th, 1975

Saturday January 4th, 1975

That morning at breakfast, after most of the post had already been delivered, a large, tawny owl swept in through the great hall carrying a small brown papered package, circling over the Slytherin table twice before it landed in front of Severus. He untied the brown twine carefully from the owl's talon and patted it appreciatively on the head. It bent and nibbled his bacon in an interested fashion before it flew away, up and out the open window behind where the staff sat.

"What's that?" Evan Rosier asked. Evan was sitting between Severus and Adrian, munching a bit of toast, his elbow leaning on the long table. Adrian, in his sixth year, was nursing a hang-over and sipping his pumpkin juice with a perpetual grimace.

"I _think_ it's a book." Severus said, his dextrous fingers working at the knotted twine. When he undid the twine, the brown paper fell away, revealing a small, blue, cloth-bound volume. He opened the cover and there was a folded piece of parchment nestled there, a letter from his Mum. He tucked the letter in his pocket and put the book away in the large pocket of his robe to give to Lily after breakfast.

"You have more books than anyone I know." Evan said, not unkindly.

"You're like a fucking librarian."

Severus smirked. He had two extra trunks that he kept under his bed that were filled with books, most of them titles he would be in quite a bit of trouble for having, if Slughorn were to discover them in Severus' possession. Not that he would.

There were also the three heavy stacks of less-forbidden books by his bed stand, which, at times, stood taller than he did. Over the years, Severus and the other Slytherin boys in his year had sometimes been awakened in the night by a terrible crashing of all of his books to the stone floor.

Most often these nighttime avalanches were caused by Evan's cat, Baphomet, attempting to get on to Severus' nightstand to drink from his glass of water. Most recently, this had happened in October of that year, when everyone had been startled awake at five in the morning by a terrific crash, the yowl of a cat, and the sound of glass breaking sharply on stone.

"Snape, you weirdo!" Evan had hollered accusingly. "Get a fucking bookcase!"

Severus crumpled the brown paper wrapping from the package and set it on his mostly empty plate. Breakfast, it seemed, was ending, and some students were drifting away from their tables, headed back to their common rooms, or to Quidditch practice, or to the library. Severus saw Lily cross the great hall, and watched her head toward the door closest to the staircase that led to the Slytherin dungeons, Evan following his eyes in amusement. Severus drank the rest of his pumpkin juice and stood up.

"Where are you off to?" Evan asked, waggling his eyebrows. Adrian, beside him, his camera on the table, was just managing to get a bit of porridge down, but Severus noticed he looked a tad green around the mouth.

"Homework," Severus said shortly.

Evan looked to his left and saw Lily standing in the doorway, her back to them. She was talking to Professor Slughorn and he was laughing.

"Oho! Homework.. Riight." Evan said knowingly, and winked a rakish wink at Severus.

"Rosier, you are an idiot." Severus said, but he was smiling just a little.

As Severus walked away, Evan helped himself to more toast and turned to Adrian, who was looking marginally better.

"I don't know _how_ he got a girl like that. Too bad she's a mudblood."

"Ah, Severus!" Slughorn said, extending his arms expansively as Severus approached them. In one hand he clutched a piece of parchment, a replication of Lily's hand-copied instructions for brewing Amorestmorta.

"I was just telling Lily here about a little fete I'm having in February. I expect you both to be in attendance, of course!"

Though Severus was not fond of some of the other members of the Slug Club, he always attended Slughorn's parties, subconsciously enjoying the subtle elitist notoriety that being a member entailed.

"I wouldn't miss it!" Lily said.

"I left the smallest potions lab unlocked for you," Slughorn told them, getting down to business. He pulled a ring of jangly keys from his pocket and charmed a replica of the key to his store cupboard, handing it to Lily.

"I have everything you will need for the first part of the potion in my stores. Here," he said, digging in his pocket, "is the hair of a married woman." He handed Severus a small glass jar, stoppered with a cork. Inside was coiled one long, blond hair.

"While it's aging, we can acquire the widow's silver ring, the cemetery dirt and the heart of a nightingale," Slughorn told them. "I have a friend in London, an apothecary by trade, I'll send him a letter."

He put a fond hand on each of their shoulders before heading in towards the great hall. "Right, you two, off you go."

"The book on Amorestmorta came," Severus told her, reaching in his robe and pulling the small book from his pocket.

"I saw!" she said, smiling. He handed it to her and their fingers just touched. Lily took the book away and flipped open its cover.

"Amorestmorta: Love and Courtship in the Wizarding World by Anonymous," she read. "This is going to be fascinating."

"I thought some parts of it were a bit girly, but it was interesting." Severus told her, and she rolled her eyes.

"Not very feminist of you, Sev," She said, and tucked the book away in her bag as they headed down the stairs and towards the third potion lab on the left. "Be sure to thank your Mum for me," Lily told him.

The smallest potion lab was the best, in Severus' opinion, because it had a large window that you could open wide in case things got unbearably smelly or smoky or if you were choking to death on fumes. The larger potion labs had almost no windows- a serious oversight in Salazar Slytherin's building plans.

Severus went to the cupboard and hefted out a large, standard size three iron cauldron while Lily opened the window and lit the fire that would heat the cauldron. Rather than carry it, Severus drew out his wand and floated it gracefully onto the table next to where Lily stood fiddling with the brazier that would hold the coals and fire beneath the cauldron. She added the coals and, in order to save time, zapped them quickly with her wand. A fire suddenly burned in the brazier and she stepped back as Severus enchanted the cauldron to move over the fire, attaching itself by it's broad iron handle to the hook on the cauldron stand.

Lily picked up the key to the teacher's store closet from the table where she had set it, and went to unlock the door to the store cupboard while Severus went to the large armoire in the corner and got the water. The armoire had six enormous glass containers of distilled water, each successively numbered according to how many times the water within it had been distilled. Pouring half a gallon from the great glass container labeled '3' into a large tin pitcher, he carried the water to the warming cauldron and repeated this step five more times, until the standard size three cauldron contained exactly three gallons of thrice distilled water.

Lily rummaged in the cupboard, looking for the box of red rose petals. The boxes of pink petals were where they should be, and the boxes of yellow petals, but the red petals simply didn't seem to be there. Eventually she found three boxes at the very back of the shelf below where the rose petals were kept.

She tucked the boxes under her arm one at a time and took the jar of scorpion stingers down from its place on the top shelf, transferring it to her other hand. With her empty hand she grabbed the bag of rose thorns and a medium sized jar of Flobberworm mucus. All this she recalled from memory, having studied the instructions on and off for the past four days.

Kicking the door to the store cupboard closed, she brought everything to the table. Severus had taken a mortar and pestle from the shelf above them and immediately reached for the jar of scorpion stingers to grind them.

Weak noontime light came from the window, and as Severus fished the three scorpion stingers out of the jar with a pair of tweezers, Lily pointed her wand one at a time at the various candles in the room, to give themselves some extra light. Though they were expected to use spells verbally in front of teachers, they hardly bothered in front of one another- it was a point of pride to both of them that they'd mastered nonverbal spell-casting so early (in their third year).

Lily opened the boxes of rose petals one at a time, the freshness enchantment that had been cast on them causing a temporary whiff of sweet roses to waft at them. Pausing to smell a petal, she carefully measured one medium-sized handful of petals out of one box and dropped them in to the cauldron.

After repeating this three more times, she stood for a minute and watched the rise and fall of Severus' thin shoulders as he worked at grinding the dried scorpion stingers to powder. His skinny wrists were sticking far out of his shirt sleeves, corded with tendons and veins, deft hands like quick white spiders twisting the pestle, turning the mortar to get the consistency of the stingers even.

Though she was only half aware of it, often times when they brewed together, neither of them had much to say. Both of them were too busy paying attention to what they were doing, or watching one another for subconscious cues, working in concert, a true team. Lily found that they were both capable of anticipating what the other might need simply by watching the other work.

Severus looked up at her, away from the mortar and smiled, before leaning over the cauldron to look in to it. The petals floated serenely on the surface of the water, and Lily reached for long glass stirring wand to poke them down in to the depths of the cauldron. Severus dug in his robes and pulled the little corked jar out of his pocket. He handed it to her and went back to what he had been doing.

The heat from the fire was getting warm, and she pushed her sleeves up around her elbows. Her freckled arms seemed pale in the dim light.

She uncorked the vial and pulled out the long blond hair, dropping it into the cauldron where it sat on the surface for a minute, before curiously sinking to the bottom of the water and dissolving. The water itself began to take on an oily, opalescent sheen.

She selected two rose thorns from the bag, and set them carefully on the table, before taking the boxes of petals, bag of thorns, and jar of scorpion stingers back to the store closet. She left the Flobberworm mucus on the table.

Severus gave the scorpion stingers in the mortar a few more good grinds, before pulling out the pestle and tapping it on the side of the mortar to remove any excess powder.

The cauldron was just beginning to simmer when Lily returned to the table. Tipping the contents of the mortar into the barely bubbling cauldron, Lily plopped in the two rose thorns and the potion immediately turned a candy pink color as the red rose petals, too, dissolved. Severus took a small timer from the shelf above them and set it for seven minutes while Lily took a piece of parchment, quill, and bottle of ink from her bag. She un-stoppered the ink, dipped her quill, and made a tally mark on the blank parchment.

Severus knew what she was doing- in their third year the two of them had lost a class competition to win a vial of Essence of Mirth, because Lily had lost count of how many times she'd already stirred, and stirred two extra times, turning their potion into a noxious black mess that ate away the cauldron and burned through the work table.

"What are we going to do about the virgin blood?" Lily asked.

Severus hesitated and his face grew red. "I can prick my finger," he mumbled. "It's only three drops."

Lily nodded and thought nothing more of it, while Severus was suddenly consumed with a desire to know whether she was a virgin, and a vile hatred towards the boy she'd been with if she wasn't.

Lily drew her wand and conjured a cup and a half of sugar from the castle kitchens, setting it off to the side with the jar of Flobberworm mucus.

"We _could_ use your blood, though?" He asked, trying to be nonchalant. "If we needed to?"

His heart was pounding. He tried to look as though he didn't care, but really, he just looked vaguely troubled and expectant as he peered at her.

"For the potion?" Lily asked. "We could if you really don't want to prick your finger, I mean, it's not pleasant but I'll do it if you truly don't want to. Are you afraid of needles?"

Severus felt his racing heart skip a relieved beat and then sink from where it had been lodged in his throat, back down in to his chest where it belonged.

"Yeah, I am," he falsely confessed. Truthfully he wouldn't have minded pricking his finger for the potion, but it was worth letting her think he had a fear of needles in order to learn whether or not she'd ever been with anyone.

There were three minutes left on the timer. Severus pulled the letter from his Mum out of his pocket and read: _Severus, here is the book you asked me to send. Things are fine, I miss you. Love, Mum. _

He folded it and put it back in his pocket.

When the timer went off, Severus took up the glass stirring rod from beside the cauldron and gave it one good stir. The potion turned a shade darker, simmering merrily. "This is getting rather hot," He said to himself, and pointed his wand at the fire, silently casting a heat sustaining charm, so the fire would neither cool nor get warmer, but stay just at it's current temperature. It was supposed to simmer, after all, not boil outright. Lily made a second tally mark on her parchment and set the timer for seven more minutes as Severus set down the stirring wand.

They passed the time talking idly and soon the remainder of the fifty-six minutes had passed. With each stir the potion had gotten darker, and was now a deep, blushing pink. Severus put out the fire beneath the cauldron and opened the jar of Flobberworm mucus, pouring out two ounces of the thick, ropy stuff into a beaker. He set their timer for twelve minutes and sat to wait beside the steaming cauldron.

"We're probably the first people to brew this potion correctly in two hundred years," Severus said, watching the steam waft up from the brim of the cauldron and dissipate high above it near the ceiling.

"With the exception of Desmond Maplethwit." Lily remarked.

"I don't know if I believe Slughorn's story about Maplethwit," Severus said skeptically.

"Why would he lie, though? He knows _everyone_, it's not too far a stretch to think he'd have extra information about his death."

"Maplethwit was a brilliant wizard, why would he do something so foolish as to take a potion that he'd more than likely die from?"

"But _you're_ brilliant, and you said you'd take it if you thought you knew there was no risk involved. Does that mean you're foolish, too?" Lily said, catching him in his own double standard.

Severus hardly cared, though- the way Lily had said it, as though his brilliance was some accepted fact, surprised and thrilled him so much for a moment that he couldn't think of anything to say. She thought he was brilliant! his mind sang. It never occurred to him to thank her for her compliment.

"I thought so," said Lily in a satisfied way when he didn't respond.

"I guess I am," He admitted happily. He looked at the timer; seven minutes left.

Their conversation tapered into a comfortable silence, and eventually Lily rummaged in her bag and took out the blue book. Looking for a way to pass the remaining time while they waited for the potion to cool, she opened the book at random and began to read:

"_For the will of love is stronger than the will of man, and we are subject to its whims as leaves blown about in the gust, swept away in the torrent, and eventually decayed by winter's hand. We have no more control over whom we may come to love than we have over the rising of the moon, the pulling of the tides, or the influence of the planets in their orbit on our humble and fractious lives. "_

Severus looked at her for a minute as she read, but he only half heard her words. He was still basking in the pleasant afterglow of having been thought of as brilliant.

"Rather poetic, isn't it?" Lily mused. She thumbed towards the back of the book, skimming it, and then put it away in her bag on the table. The door to the potions lab creaked open slightly and Lily sat up straighter on her stool, while Severus went to the door. He pulled it open suspiciously but there was no one there. "It was a draft," He told her, and closed the door.

"Two minutes," Severus said, looking at the timer, and reached for the sugar and the Flobberworm mucus. Lily conjured a needle from her small sewing kit in Gryffindor tower and held it between her fingers gingerly. She wasn't looking forward to sticking herself, but unlike Sev, she wasn't especially afraid of needles, and didn't want to subject him to something he had a fear of.

When the timer went off, Severus poured the Flobberworm mucus into the warm cauldron. It hit the water with a thickly wet slopping sound. Lily poured the sugar in, and set the empty measuring cup away to the side of their workspace.

Wincing in anticipation of the painful prick, Lily stuck the needle into the pad of her forefinger, her movement quick but purposeful. Severus watched her do this with a certain measure of excitement and admiration as he saw the fat crimson drop of blood that welled there on her fingertip.

Lily stuck her hand over the cauldron and let the first drop of blood fall into the potion. There was a hiss of rising vapor and the potion turned a midnight blue-black for a second, before turning a deep shade of scarlet red. Squeezing her finger, she managed the next two drops and then stuck her smarting finger in her mouth. The potion seemed to swirl on it's own, thick and red, darker than blood but still gory to look at somehow.

Severus lifted the heavy lid to the cauldron and placed it with a resonant and final clang over the rim.

"Well that's that." Lily said. Lifting her wand, she levitated the cauldron carefully towards the window where it could sit in the weak sunlight.

Severus chewed his lip thoughtfully for a second, thinking, and cast a quick barrier enchantment on the cauldron. Lily reached out her hand to touch it, but found she couldn't. "You enchanted it?" She asked, trying to touch it again and failing. "Barrier charm," Severus said. "So no one bothers it."

Lily nodded approvingly.

"I suppose we'd better tell Slughorn we've finished." She said. It took no time using magic to tidy their workspace and clear away the brazier full of ashes, and soon they were standing at the door to Slughorn's office. They knocked and he called them in, smiling. He was sitting with Adrian drinking something bright blue from a pair of silvery goblets.

"Lily! Severus! I was just thinking of you! Tell me, is everything in order?" He asked, half rising from his seat.

"Yes, sir." Severus told him. Adrian smiled knowingly at Severus and waved at Lily, taking a sip of his blue drink in a relaxed fashion.

"Excellent, excellent! Adrian and I were just talking about my Valentine's Day party, weren't we, Adrian?" Adrian nodded and held up the enchanted camera that had been sitting in his lap.

"Adrian's going to shoot the party for me." Slughorn said.

"The professor is going to send some of the best shots in to the society section of the Prophet," Adrian said, and he seemed very pleased with himself over this.

"That's great," Lily said supportively, in a well-mannered fashion. "I'm sure it'll be a lovely party."

"We just wanted to come and tell you that we're finished for the day," Severus said.

"Thank you, Severus. See me on Monday, you two, and have a pleasant weekend." He said, and dismissed them with a wave of his hand. As the door was closing behind them they heard Adrian make a comment and Slughorn laugh merrily.


	7. James and Sirius, January 4th, 1975

James and Sirius crept down the stairs to the Slytherin dungeons, moving skillfully together beneath James' invisibility cloak. Every now and then, a flash of tennis shoe would appear along the floor, but no one but the keenest of observers would have caught it.

James, having watched Lily and Severus disappear together after breakfast, was certain they were in the dungeons. Sirius had tried to tell him that following them was a waste of time, but James was determined to know what they did when they were alone. The thought of them together scalded him, made him clench up with jealousy. Sirius pulled out their working version of the Marauders Map (it wasn't finished yet) and whispered "I solemnly swear I am up to no good."

He unfolded the large parchment as best he could beneath the cloak and began searching the mapped parts of the Slytherin dungeons. He found Lily and Snape easily and quickly, either standing or sitting together in the third potion lab to the left, just up ahead of where they were currently.

"James, look," Sirius said quietly, pointing to their names on the map. The dots of Severus Snape and Lily Evans were sitting (standing?) next to one another in the lab. The innocuousness of those dots, however small, tortured James. What could they be doing? "Mischief managed," Sirius whispered, folding the map back up and stuffing it beneath his robes in to the back pocket of his jeans. James pointed towards the door of the lab and put a finger to his mouth, encouraging silence.

To their delight, the door to the potions lab wasn't even closed, but open just wide enough for James and Sirius to see a steaming cauldron sitting on a worktable. They were brewing a potion?

"I guess I am," they heard Severus say. He sounded happy.

They waited quietly outside the door, ears trained for any sound of movement, but Lily and Severus were quiet, too quiet, James thought. His mind subjected him to horrible visions of Lily, lovely Lily, kissing disgusting Snivellus Snape. He felt he might not be able to stand the silence one more minute, when he heard Lily's voice.

"For the will of love is stronger than the will of man, and we are subject to its whims as leaves blown about in the gust, swept away in the torrent, and eventually decayed by winter's hand. We have no more control over whom we may come to love than we have over the rising of the moon, the pulling of the tides, or the influence of the planets in their orbit on our humble and fractious lives. "

James listened, his face growing paler by the second. Hearing Lily's even, well-read voice reciting poetry to Severus about having no control over who you loved was making him feel sick.

"Rather poetic, isn't it?" James heard Lily ask Severus.

James could stand it no longer, he had to see what they were doing! Boldly, he pushed the door open just a bit and peered in. Lily was sitting bolt upright on her stool, looking towards the door. James drew back as Severus crossed the potion lab.

Severus opened the door and peered both ways out into the hallway. James and Sirius stood directly in front of him, shielded from view by the cloak of invisibility. James looked at Severus with new hatred, studying his long thin face, framed by black unwashed shoulder-length hair, his severe cheekbones looking all the uglier when James thought of this skinny, sallow, weedy boy as the person who had won Lily's affections.

"It was a draft," they heard Severus say as he closed the door.

When the door to the potions lab was closed, James pulled the invisibility cloak off of them angrily and stuffed it in his bag.

"Sorry, mate," Sirius said, in a way that indicated that he wasn't really sorry at all. "I told you this was a waste of time."

"What's she doing, reading poetry to _Snape_?" James fumed as they made their way back to Gryffindor Tower. "And what were they brewing? I'm pretty sure it wasn't just any old Essence of Euphoria!"

They were steadily climbing the stairs towards the portrait of the fat lady. "I can't believe they're brewing a love potion together," James said disgustedly. Sirius looked at him. "You don't know for sure that's what they were doing," He told James.

"What else could they be doing? What about all that 'will of love' stuff?" James asked miserably. "She was talking about not being able to control who you love."

Sirius shrugged.

"Ugh, this is the _worst_. And you heard what Lily said last night! She said that he wasn't that bad looking! She basically called him talented and smart. _I'm_ talented and smart, Snape's just a greasy git!"

They had reached the portrait of the fat lady. She narrowed her eyes at Sirius- she had never taken a liking to him.

"Polaris," Sirius said, and the portrait swung forward, revealing the rounded hole that led to the Gryffindor common room. James crawled through first, grumbling as he went.

"I've got to break them up, somehow." James was saying, as the portrait of the fat lady swung closed behind them.


	8. Monday January 6th, 1975

Monday January 6th, 1975

Lily took her customary seat next to Severus in Potions class that morning, stuffing her bag under her stool and pulling her seat closer to the table. "I looked for you yesterday after lunch," He whispered.

"I was reading mostly," she whispered back. "Plus, I had to help a friend with her charms homework."

Lily had stayed in bed until noon reading 'Amorestmorta' before going down to lunch. When she returned to the Gryffindor common room, she had helped Mary with her homework (Lily was a dab hand at charms), before snuggling into an armchair to read another few chapters in her book. After dinner, she went to her dormitory and thought about what to give to Severus' for his birthday present.

Severus nodded and leaned forward in his seat, ignoring Slughorn as he droned on about the trio of healing draughts that were commonly administered as treatment during medical procedures and after surgeries (Draught of Vitality, Draught of Wellness, and the Draught of Healing).

Severus was making annotations in his copy of 'Adavanced Potion Making'- The instructions for Draught of Vitality printed in the book were appalling in their deviations from the accepted standard method for brewing it.

He crossed out the 'four' in 'four (4) sprigs mint', quill scratching, and added a '6' above it. He and Lily had brewed this particular potion last year over Christmas break when they had both gone home for the holiday, been bored and missing being able to do magic every day, and Lily got an awful cold.

They had long ago discovered that if they cast no spells over their potions, the act of brewing a potion itself did not violate the restrictions placed on under-aged magic, and since they had been in school they had cooked up all kinds of things over the years: cooling potions for hot summer days, warming potions for cold ones, dreamless sleep potions to get rid of nightmares, potions that caused uncontrollable laughter, potions for memory, potions that let you see in the dark, and potions that changed the color of your hair. Lily had been delighted when Severus' hair had turned blue in their third year. Severus, however, had not been delighted at all, but horrified, and promptly spent the rest of the afternoon brewing a counter-potion. By the time he was finished, his hair had already turned dark again on its own."That was the worst potion we've ever brewed," he had told her seriously. Lily had just laughed and laughed.

"You may begin," Slughorn was concluding. Severus set aside his copy of 'Advanced Potion Making' before lighting the fire beneath his cauldron. Next to him, Lily was fishing her bottles, vials, and jars of ingredients out of her bag. The potions lab was full of the sound of stools scraping the stone, quiet talk, and people rummaging around for their things.

"You were right about that book, by the way," Lily told him as she lit her fire and arranged all her ingredients on the table in the order she would need them in.

"In what way?" He asked, pulling his own ingredients out of his bag.

"It is a bit girly, at some parts." Lily said.

"That's not very feminist of you, Lily," He said, firing her own words from the other day back at her. A bright peal of her laughter rang out through the classroom.

At the sound of this, James, who had been occupied talking to Sirius about the map up to that point, looked over sharply at them.

"I don't get what she sees in him," James later complained, crunching up his dried beetle eyes irritably in a mortar and pestle and dumping them haphazardly into his cauldron.

"Maybe you should just ask her out," Sirius said. He usually took a less complicated approach to dating.

Across the room, Lily and Severus were brewing from the same book, their heads bent close together as Lily's finger traced the instructions on the page. Severus said something quietly, close to her ear, and she laughed again, this time covering her mouth with her hand in an attempt to stifle herself.

"Yeah," James said, suddenly puffing up with confidence. "Yeah, I will."

He watched Severus and Lily together for a few minutes more, dumping his four sprigs of mint into his cauldron in a hurried fashion and giving it a careless stir, before standing up and heading towards the table that Lily and Severus were working at across the room.

Severus was sitting on his stool, making notes in 'Advanced Potion Making' and talking to Lily about the second phase of brewing Amorestmorta. "The potion will be done on the 25th, but it will have to age another two days before we can add the soil and the heart.."

Lily kicked Severus hard in the ankle under the table to shut him up, and Severus looked up from his book to see James Potter standing there, looking at Severus intently. So they were brewing a potion together, after all, James thought, a potion that included dirt and the heart of.. something.

"Potter." Lily said, somewhat coldly. Severus stared at him, dark eyes shooting daggers.

"Listen, Evans, I was thinking maybe sometime I could get you a Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks. What do you say?"

Lily looked at him like he was crazy, and was so surprised that she simply didn't say anything for a minute. Severus returned her kick under the table.

"I don't think so," She said airily, coming back to herself. "I don't date bullies. Now, If you'll excuse us, we're trying to brew our potions."

"Maybe we could talk somewhere in _private_," James suggested pointedly, and looked at Severus as though he were a bit of muck that might be on the bottom of his shoe.

"I don't _want_ to talk to you, Potter, now go away." Lily said firmly. She turned and looked at Severus, pulling his copy of 'Advanced Potion Making' towards her across the table and appearing to take great interest in it. James stared in loathing at Severus for a moment, who was smirking and looking just as pleased as he possibly could.

"You heard her, Potter. Leave us alone." Severus said, shooing him away with a small gesture of his hand. Severus took immense satisfaction in being able to tell Potter to piss off. James was immediately angry that Severus was the one sitting beside her, sharing his book with her, making her laugh. James turned on his heel and headed back to the table he was sharing with Sirius, Lily watching him go.

"That was _brutal,_" Sirius said sympathetically.

"Shut up," James muttered miserably. His cauldron was softly smoking- he had burned his potion.

Later, in History of Magic, Lily and Severus sat at the back of the classroom where they could talk, Severus having covertly cast a charm he had invented over the two of them, something he had come up with only recently, a spell called Muffliato.

"Can you believe Potter?" Severus asked in a mocking tone.

"Ugh, I wanted to throttle him," Lily said. "It's just my luck that he would be interested in me like that. He thinks he's entitled to everything. I wouldn't go with him if he were the last wizard on earth."

Severus wanted to ask if she would go with him, instead, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He found he had been pushing himself closer and closer to the brink of broaching this subject with her, inching ever nearer to an inevitability he both wanted and feared. He had already missed lots of good opportunities to tell her how he felt, and on some days he was certain she must feel the same, other days he could only go as far as to assure himself that if Lily didn't like him at least a little bit, she wouldn't hang around with him all the time. He had to do it soon, he knew that much. Not today, of course, but maybe tomorrow.

"What do you think, Sev?" Lily was saying.

Tomorrow would be the day, he decided. Tomorrow for sure.

Lily tugged his sleeve gently and he turned to look at her. "What do I think about what?" He said.

"About your birthday!" Lily said. "You weren't even listening!" She laughed. "I was saying we should actually do something on Thursday. I know you "don't care about birthdays because they're just an arbitrary holiday," _but _you only turn fifteen once and we should live a little."

"Alright," He agreed. A pleased, surprised smile caught up the corners of his mouth that stayed with him the rest of the day.

That night after dinner, Lily went to her dorm room and set to work on Sev's present.

Originally she had wanted to brew him something, but this idea fell by the wayside as she waffled back and forth between ideas on what to brew and the actual date of his birthday drew nearer. She had felt at a loss and had briefly considered giving him her vial of Draught of Living Death (Sev was fascinated by poisons), but it didn't seem appropriate for a birthday gift, as it was something he was perfectly capable of brewing himself.

Finally, around eleven the previous night, she had had a stroke of genius. She had been looking through a book she had on the charming and enchantment of objects when she came across a small charm for making pairs of communicator objects that could be enchanted to deliver a message that another person had sent. This, Lily had thought, was a great idea, but not very practical, as it wouldn't work very well to have to carry around a charmed object that you had to speak in to, or one that was constantly announcing your private conversations.

It would be better, she reasoned, if they had a pair of two-way books that she could charm to send written messages back and forth to one another. Lily had suddenly been inspired, and had gone to her trunk and began to dig through it purposefully. Each year her Father had given her a weekly calendar on September 1st before she got on the Hogwarts Express, but she had only ever used one of them, and she knew she had kept at least two extra when she had cleaned out her trunk at the end of last year.

She had dug to the very bottom of the trunk and seized on a pair of little books. She pulled them up from the mire of chocolate frog cards, empty potions bottles, dried lavender that had somehow gotten out of the sachet, and various wadded-up papers and dusted them off.

One book was pink with bright daisies marching across its front, another was blue but had hearts.

"Well, that won't do," She had said to herself thoughtfully. She reached for her wand and had executed a wide flourishing swish and flick. The blue book was then black, its smattering of baby blue hearts gone. The the pink book had changed to a deep blue. Nice and innocuous.

Lily went to her bedside stand and took the two books out. She looked at them as she thought about how she might go about enchanting them to send messages between them. She was sure the spellwork was within her capability, but she wasn't sure where to begin.

She picked up the black book and flipped open the cover. **Weekly Planner for the 1971 Calendar Year**, it said. On one side, there was a place to write your name, address, and phone number, and on the other was a chart illustrating the week, where you could write your schedule into the time slots. She turned the page. The next two pages were a calendar of the week of January first through the seventh, laid out in neat little squares.

Setting the black book back down beside the blue, she lifted her wand and began to cast a complex charm over them both, ensuring whatever might be written in the books would not appear in the book that it had been written in, but rather in its companion volume. This many long minutes of unbroken concentration, and when she was finished, she cast another charm that guaranteed that any words written would vanish only after they had been seen by the owner of the book, a tricky feat considering she then had to enchant the books to recognize when they had been picked up by someone other than their owner. As a precautionary measure, she then cast a separate charm on each book book so they would appear as blank, ordinary weekly planners to anyone whose name wasn't Lily Evans or Severus Snape, a clever magical technicality she had learned from Professor Flitwick, the charms instructor, last year.

Around midnight, after several hours of casting 'just in case' jinxes, she got out her ink and quill and prepared to test them. Opening both books to the second page, she dipped her quill and made a wet, blotty mark of ink on the page of the blue book. Lily watched it bleed into the parchment, fade, and then disappear all together. A moment later the same blob of wet ink faded into being and appeared on the second page of the black book. She stared at it for a moment before it, too, disappeared. Elated, she took the black book and repeated this process, sending sloppily written test words back and forth to make sure the books were working as they should. Around one in the morning, she put the books back in her bedside stand, and went to bed.


	9. Thursday August 6th, 1981

Thursday August 6th, 1981

It had been three weeks since Lily had gone to Severus in Spinner's End, and though she longed to slip away and see him in secret, the opportunity simply hadn't presented itself. Harry had a summer cold that kept coming back no matter how much cold and flu potion they gave him and James hadn't been to see Sirius in days. He had been feeling depressed and shut in, hanging around the house, drinking Butterbeers and taking naps.

Lily was in the kitchen washing the last of the dishes from lunch when she thought she heard Sirius' voice. Heading into the front room, she found Sirius standing with James, Harry clutched in Sirius' arms. James was wiping Harry's runny nose with a tissue and Sirius was grinning. James wadded the tissue up and threw it in the little bin by the coffee table.

"Hey, Lily," Sirius said. "I was just trying to convince James to come with me back to my place to listen to the game on the wireless. Moony already said he'd come, as well. I think he should go, don't you?"

"You _should_ go, James, you've been wanting to get out." Lily said encouragingly. Immediately her mind jumped at the thought of some time away from them.

"I know," James said, thoughtfully.

"Maybe I'll bring Harry, too," He said and smiled warmly at his son. "I know _you_ want to get out, don't you, little man?" Harry smiled and blew a snot bubble out of his left nostril. James and Sirius laughed, while James reached for another tissue.

"We can give Mommy some time to herself," James said, taking Harry from Sirius' arms. James carried Harry about with him while he got Harry's bag ready- snacks, tissues, a blanket, diaper cloths. As Lily watched James with Harry, her heart ached with guilt and painful love at the sight of them. James was, after all, a good man, deserving of her love and her loyalty, despite her seeming inability to give it to him.

"Hey," Sirius said, taking a seat on the couch beside where she was standing. "You alright, Lily?"

"I'm fine," she said, looking at him. "It's just been hard."

Sirius nodded understandingly.

James sat Harry down on the couch for a minute to run upstairs to grab Harry a toy, and Lily went to sit beside Harry. She held her son in her arms and smiled at his sweet face. He looked like James most of the time, but looked like her when he was mad or tired, and his green eyes that stared at her were mirrors of her own. When James came back down stairs he bent to kiss Lily where she was sitting and lifted Harry into his arms.

"You know, it's nearly six, why don't you two just stay with Sirius tonight and come back tomorrow morning? Then we can all go to the meeting together," She suggested. Sirius grinned widely, approving of this suggestion, and James smiled. "I'd almost think you were anxious to get me out of the house," he teased, and kissed her again. Lily closed her eyes as their lips met.

"I'll see you tomorrow, we'll be back around ten," James promised, lifting Harry's bag and shifting the strap over his shoulder. "I love you," James told her.

"I love you, too," she said. "Goodbye, Harry! Mummy loves you!" Lily called, and Harry smiled at her and waved goodbye as James carried him out the door.

When the front door was shut and she was sure that they had gone, she went to the coat stand by the door and grabbed her purse. In the smallest pocket of her bag there was a hole in the green silk lining. From this tear in the lining she pulled out a small royal blue book, about the size of her hand. Taking this, she went to the kitchen and selected a biro pen from its place by the cookbooks. She put the water in the kettle on the stove and sat at her kitchen table. Opening the cover of the book and flipping to the second page, she noted three words written there on the paper in a familiar cramped cursive, that hadn't been there the last time she checked.

**_Are you alone?_ **

_Yes, _she wrote. _I'll come in a bit_

Her words seemed to vanish into the parchment, oily biro ink drawn into the make of the paper and then fading to nothing, absorbed.

She waited for a response, listening to the quiet of the cottage. She checked the book once, then twice, before getting up to make herself a cup of tea.

When she got back to the table with her tea, three new words had appeared on the paper:

_**See you soon**_

Lily took a few gulps of her tea and left the rest of it half-drunk on the table. She put the little book carefully back in her purse, put her wand in the pocket of her dress, and slipped on her shoes. She closed the windows and locked up the house, going out the back door in the kitchen, through the garden, and eventually to the field behind the cottage. An occasional cricket chirp punctuated the sound of the tall grass rustling softly in the breeze.

With a pop, she was gone from there, re-appearing in Spinner's End. Lily put a hand out to steady herself against the brick wall of the yard- sometimes apparating made her a little dizzy. The bright sunlight, closeness of the houses and the heat of the bricks were intense. She climbed the few steps that led to the door and knocked. Waiting, she studied the weeds growing up through the bricks and noted a flourishing thistle. It was knee high and seemed to be thriving. When Severus didn't answer, she knocked again.

It took a long time for him to answer, and when he did, a wave of heat blasted out the door. Severus let her in and motioned for her to follow.

"It is _hot_ in here," she said, wiping a bit of sweat from beneath her eyes.

"It's cooler in the back of the house," he told her, and led her through the kitchen, and down the hall to the last door. Inside his old bedroom there was a pleasant chill- probably a cooling charm. The bed was unmade and the window was open to the shade along the far side of the house. On the bedside table his wand was sitting on a stack of two books, one small and black, the other slightly larger and faded to a dusty blue. There was a quill and inkwell, a glass of water and a little vial of murky potion.

"I missed you," she told him, kicking off her shoes and sitting back on the bed. She tucked her legs beneath her and smiled at him as he sat down and conjured a second glass of water. She took it from him and had a deep drink, before setting it on the window ledge.

"I missed you, as well," he told her. "How long do you have?" Severus asked, sitting back against the headboard and stretching his long legs out before him.

"Overnight," Lily said with a smile, "I just have to be back early."

She drew him close and put her arms around his thin shoulders, her hands eventually finding the buttons on the collar of his shirt. These she undid nimbly, and leaned forward to kiss the hollow of his throat. Severus moved to put his arms around her, tangling his fingers in her long red hair. He closed his eyes a moment, relishing the feeling of her little kisses on his neck. Moving a hand through her hair, he lifted her chin and kissed her, thinking to himself that the feel of her arms around him had been worth every torment.

"You're the only one for me," He whispered into her mouth.

Later, their clothes strewn about the bedroom, spread out together between the crumpled sheets with the tension temporarily eased, they talked in earnest about the Order, You-Know-Who, and what Severus knew of the Dark Lord's plans. The fear and paranoia that seemed to seep into every other aspect of their lives was held at bay when they were together, first by their passion and then by the intensity of their conversation.

Severus had Voldemort's trust, and was aware of his plans and intentions, which, in knowing them, were invaluable to Lily in her need to protect her family, and the Order, and herself. Severus willingly divulged what he knew in the hopes of safeguarding her in particular from any threat of attack, though he made her promise vehemently that she would only relay his information to Dumbledore and no one else.

As far as it went, hardly anyone in the Order knew Lily had a source of inside information, and she was loathe to reveal who it was to even the few who did know, so after a time the other members eventually stopped pressing her for information about who it might be. Not even Dumbledore himself knew that her information was coming from Severus, though Lily sometimes thought that he might suspect who her source actually was.

And though Severus refused, Lily encouraged him to go to Dumbledore every time she saw him.

"_You_ know you're not loyal to You-Know-Who, _I_ know you're not loyal to You-Know-Who.. Sev, there's no reason for you _not_ to join the Order. You'd be invaluable. They can offer you protection."

Severus looked at her. "As long as I'm not in the Order, I can offer _you_ protection."

"Just go and see him." Lily urged.

"I plan on it," Severus told her. "When the time is right."

What he didn't tell Lily was that he had already been to see Dumbledore, a year ago that very month, to inform him of Voldemort's interpretation of the prophecy and to trade his personal allegiance for a guarantee that Lily would remain safe. Lily knew Dumbledore was the one who had originally learned of Voldemort's plans to hunt her little family down, and did not find it strange when Dumbledore had been the first to suggest that they go into hiding, but she had no idea that it was Severus himself who had told Dumbledore of Voldemort's thoughts on the matter in the first place.

"I just worry about you," Lily told him, helplessly.

Severus looked at her, touched but troubled by her words. He wanted to say that he was capable of taking care of himself, and her, for that matter; he would do everything in his power to ensure they got through it together, and that he would make a way for them by scheming or intrigue, by thievery or murder, but he was quiet instead, and simply kissed her.


	10. Tuesday January 7th, 1975

Tuesday January 7th, 1975

Severus was nervous that morning in Potions, absorbed in his thoughts. Occasionally Lily would chance a look at him, hunched over his cauldron, chewing his lower lip in a thoughtful, almost worried fashion as he counted out the right amount of shrivelfigs or ground up lace wing flies in his mortar and pestle. He seemed preoccupied to Lily, and though they talked in class, she could tell that his mind was elsewhere.

"Sev," She said, after pouring an ounce of dried nettle into her cauldron, "You're about to add an extra ounce of Nettles."

Severus looked at the jar of nettles in his hand. "You're right," he said, and set them on the table. He leaned over his cauldron and peered into the metallic blue mess that bubbled there.

"You're distracted," Lily said.

"Just thinking," He said dismissively, and looked at her. Her sleeves were rolled up around her elbows and her long red hair was held back in a loose braid. She gestured with her hand towards his cauldron.

"Well, you'd better think of your potion, it's starting to boil."

Severus swore and poked at the fire with his wand, reducing the heat and stirring it with a grimace.

Towards the end of class, Slughorn was going about the potions lab, examining the contents of everyone's cauldrons and making a comment or two to each student about the quality of their work, giving bits of advice where needed, encouragement in some cases, and a helpful suggestion here or there. Students were talking quietly, waiting to be formally dismissed after he made the rounds. When Slughorn got to Lily and Severus' shared table he peeked into their cauldrons and had only words of praise.

Before he wandered away and on to the next table, he turned and looked at them. "Would you mind terribly popping down to Greenhouse three to get me some Glorywort leaves?" He asked.

In no position to refuse, they nodded their agreement. After class, bundled up against the cold, they had left the relative warmth of the castle, trying not to slip down the frozen steps outside the great front doors, or in the icy muck on their way. Several inches of fresh snow crunched beneath their shoes, but in other places the path was a dark slush of mud and ice. It was cold but bright, however, and Severus was in a good mood because walking to the Greenhouse would serve as the perfect opportunity to ask Lily if she wanted to. His heart pounded and his palms were sweaty in his gloves despite the cold.

"'Radical Potionmaking' is so excellent, really breakthrough." Lily told Severus as they gingerly made their way down the long sloping hill towards the greenhouses. 

"It's amazing to me that more people haven't embraced the philosophy." She said, and slipped a bit. Severus grabbed her arm to steady her and she laughed a little at herself, getting her footing.

"I think the reason more people don't go by his methods is because most people don't have the confidence in their ability to brew on the fly." He said. "You and I are different, it comes naturally to us. Not everyone is as good as you or me."

"I guess that's true," She agreed. "I am really enjoying the book, I know I already said thank you, but really, I do appreciate it. I think it's going to improve my brewing."

Severus smiled at her- she was so animated and full of life when she talked about the things that interested her, her love of learning was infectious.

"And you know what it said in 'Radical Potionmaking?'" Lily asked.

"What did it say?" He asked her mildly, amused by her passion and pleased that his gift was such a success.

"It said that you don't really need to stew the spider eyes if they're not fresh! I've been wasting time all year, can you believe it?"

"Lily, I want to tell you something," he said, and slowed his walk to a halt. His heart was like a frightened bird in the cage of his ribs. She stood beside him, peering up into his long face.

So now she would hear what had been bothering him, she thought to herself. Her mind went through a list of things it could possibly be, from his drunken, fist-slamming father to his sinister friends.

"What is it?" She asked, immediately concerned.

"I think.." He started off, and began again. "I mean to say.. Would you want to-?"

"Look out Snape, ya' wanker!"

Later that night, Severus turned over the day's events in his mind until his thoughts seemed polished and hard like stones. He was lying still on his bed on his back above the blankets, Lily's kerchief held loosely in his left hand. He looked at his blood that had stained the delicate cloth, and saw Lily's pale pretty face in his mind's eye, saw her mouth pulling down in disapproval as she had told him than he was better than his impulse to fight James back.

Though his two attempts to ask Lily on a date had been disastrously interrupted, he was heartened by her obvious annoyance at Slughorn's sudden appearance in the greenhouse and thought he would definitely try to ask her again soon, but this time he would do it when he would be certain that no one would interrupt them. Potter and his friends had a nasty way of turning up exactly when Severus least wanted them to, and it triggered Severus' suspicion and inherent dislike of him.

He pictured James Potter's swollen face with satisfaction. It had felt good to see Potter fall under his own curse, humiliated, his smirking grin hideous and bloated. He deserved every second of it, and more, Severus thought to himself vengefully. He didn't know how exactly, but he knew that someday, he would see Potter get what he deserved.


	11. Thursday January 9th, 1975

Thursday January 9th, 1976

Severus stood away from the rest of the class as he waited for Lily to meet him that morning outside the potions lab. When he saw her coming down the corridor his sour features resolved themselves into a bright brief smile, as though a light had been turned on somewhere deep inside him and it was shining out, banishing the troubled darkness that seemed to always be lurking just behind his wry smile and dry comments.

"Happy Birthday, Sev!" Lily said as she approached him, and threw her arms around his neck in a warm hug. His arms went round her waist for a minute in an awkward embrace and then he released her, enjoying the pleasantly flustered feeling that stole over him at being near to her, if only for an instant.

Severus couldn't help but glance to where James Potter was standing with Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black. They were grouped into a tight knot and seemed to be absorbed in their own whispery conversation.

"You're looking rumpled this morning," Lily said good-naturedly, and reached up to straighten Severus' tie for him. He looked like he had slept in his clothes (he had) and his tie was tied with almost deliberate carelessness. He stood there looking down at her hands at his throat- amused and pleased somehow, but also embarrassed. A high pink color was gathering in his cheeks.

"How does it feel to be fifteen?" Lily asked when she was finished, and Severus shrugged. "Exactly like being fourteen," He said.

"Oh, you're no fun!" She admonished him playfully. Severus had never been particularly excited by birthdays- his or anyone else's, though he did always get Lily something for hers.

"I have a present for you." Lily told him, smiling. "And a good one, not stupid sugar quills or enchanted ink."

Severus seemed to perk up at that, like a sun-starved plant that had been set in a windowsill. He peered at her with undisguised interest. "What is it?" He asked, and Lily's smile broke into a grin.

"It's a surprise." She said. "And you can't have it 'til tonight."

"Oh?" Severus inquired. "And what's happening tonight?" He asked.

"We're meeting up for your top-secret birthday celebration," Lily told him, and Severus' mouth twisted into a smile.

"Sorry, I've got something on," he joked with her, and Lily shoved his shoulder playfully.

Slughorn came round the corner then, puffing through his walrus-y mustache, his students parting for him as he approached the door to the potions lab and unlocked it. As everyone filed into the room and claimed their seats, he told Lily and Severus discreetly to see him after class.

That morning they brewed an Alertness Potion that filled the lab with the smell of cinnamon and gave the drinker an afternoon's worth of focus and concentration. It was an easy day in class and everyone seemed to be in good spirits.

After class, Lily and Severus lingered behind to see Slughorn.

"I am waiting to hear back about the cemetery soil, but I've found where we can procure a nightingale," he told them frankly. Lily felt a stab of guilt in her heart as she thought of the little songbird, killed for Slughorn's potion. "I also have a silver ring you can use, my own mother's."

"Professor, I'm not comfortable with killing anything.." Lily began.

"Oh, no!" Slughorn said, waving away her qualms with his podgy hands as though clearing the air of hear fears.

"My dear girl. I assure you, I will find a nightingale that has died of natural causes. We don't want to bring harm to any little creatures," He said pleasantly, and Lily was relieved to hear that it would already be dead before they used it's poor heart. Slughorn shuffled a stack of papers on his desk and smiled at her genially.

Though she had already brewed through the first part of the potion, even used her own blood, and had agreed to participate in brewing it to completion, this was not the first time Lily felt that she wasn't sure she liked the idea of Amorestmorta.

Together, Severus and Lily climbed the stairs that led out of the Slytherin dungeons and began the long trek to charms class. They were almost late because they had to wait for the right staircase to swing back into place before they could get where they were going.

In charms, Lily sat with Mary Macdonald to help her with her with her wrist work (Mary was always too willing to flourish her wand when charms usually called for quick and specifically controlled movements). Severus' good mood was not dissuaded by this, however, and he amused himself in class by teasing Lily from across the room.

The class was nearly half-way through, and Professor Flitwick was concluding his lecture on charming teacups to sing and whistle, an exercise that all the fifth years practiced to blend their skills in charms and in transfiguration.

As Lily began to charm her teacup so it would sing, Severus discreetly flicked his wand, causing Lily's long red hair to stand on end for just a second. Lily smiled and laughed, reaching up to feel her hair as she looked around the classroom for clues about who the caster of the spell might be. Severus was quick to look away and down at his teacup, which was lazily humming the first few bars of Beethoven's fifth over and over again. When Severus was sure she wasn't expecting it, he did it again, trying not to give himself away by watching too closely or laughing out loud. Lily smoothed her hair and laughed again, shrugging her shoulders at Mary, who was looking somewhat annoyed.

After the fourth time, Professor Flitwick, with a tolerant smile, said, "Ms. Evans, your hair is quite excited today."

Severus bit back his impulse to laugh. Lily turned in her seat and sought his gaze. He met her eyes only reluctantly, knowing to look at her was to admit he had done it, but when their eyes met, he couldn't help but smile, giving himself away. Lily pursed her lips and drew her eyebrows together across her forehead, giving him a warning look that was both sharp and amused, followed by a quick grin.

After class, Lily hung around in the corridor while Severus was gently reprimanded by Professor Flitwick for levitating Lily's hair in class, waiting for Severus so they could walk to History of Magic together. When Severus came out, he was smirking.

"What'd Flitwick say?" Lily asked.

"That I was creating a disruption and should know better, but that he was very impressed by the charm work itself and my mastery of nonverbal spells."

"I am going to get you back _so good_ for that," Lily promised with a laugh. "What spell were you using?" She asked. "Is that one of yours?"

Severus nodded. Lily aimed her wand experimentally at Severus' hair as they climbed the stationary staircase up two floors to Professor Binns' classroom, but his hair lay unmoving on his head, greasy dark hanks framing his gaunt face, lying long over his collar and around his shoulders.

"I'll show you later," He told her, breaking their conversation off as they rounded the corner. Ahead of them, a thick group of students was clotting up the corridor. Lily and Severus approached warily, pushing through the throng to get a look at what was going on.

In the middle of the group stood Severus' least favorite person, James Potter. He was levitating a third year's wand high above his head, while Sirius Black, wand out, was taking everything out of the third year's bag, apparently looking for something. The third year, who Lily knew to be Charles Prewitt of Ravenclaw house, was pleading embarrassedly and jumping around, reaching for his wand which was suspended above his head. Remus Lupin, himself a prefect, looked on intently, peering over Sirius' shoulder into the contents of Charles' bag with Peter Pettigrew, who looked worried.

"I know he has it." Sirius was saying, holding the bag up with one hand and rummaging through it. He extracted a thick volume from the bag and opened its cover, seizing upon what looked to Lily to be a blank but elaborately folded piece of parchment. Peter Pettigrew suddenly looked relieved and he and Remus exchanged a meaningful look.

"I told you he had it, Remus! James! Peter!" Sirius said, "This kid is a _thief_."

Sirius possessively pocketed the parchment, letting the rest of Charles Prewitt's belongings fall to the floor from his hands, no longer having any interest in them. Charles Prewitt scrambled to the floor and began to pick up his littered belongings. His little face was flushed red with humiliation and discomfort.

"What is going on here?" Lily demanded.

"Nothing," Sirius spat angrily, and pushed through the crowd, Remus and Peter following.

Lily watched them go, and then fixed her eyes on James, who didn't seem to see her.

James lowered his wand and Charles Prewitt's wand clattered to the stone floor of the corridor.

He looked at Charles Prewitt and scowled. "Stay away from us, Prewitt, and don't you dare think of nicking anything from us again." Angrily, he kicked one of Charles' schoolbooks down the corridor away from him and turned to leave, heading towards the History of Magic classroom.

Lily looked to Charles Prewitt, who had been terrified moments before, but looked defiant now that the threat had passed. He gathered his things, several of the other third years quietly helping him retrieve his books and papers as the group of student spectators broke up.

Lily turned to Severus, her features drawn with a look of annoyance. "I can't believe that Remus Lupin just lets them act that way," She said, and Severus nodded vaguely. He had heard this from Lily before. "He's not a bad person at all," She lamented, "He's actually really nice. I just don't understand it."

"There's something funny about him." Severus said. "He's always ill around the full moon and.."

Lily rolled her eyes. "Yeah, Sev, I know what _you_ think," She said dismissively.

"It makes perfect sense, though!" Severus protested. He followed Lily through the open door and into the classroom, towards the table where they usually sat. They were the last students to enter and the door closed finally behind them as they moved to their customary place in the far right corner of the room. Lily and Severus were both aware of James and Sirius' eyes on them, and Lily, Severus noticed with pleasure, laid her hand on his arm briefly when they sat down.

They wrote notes that afternoon, instead of talking, because Professor Binns was in a foul mood and they didn't want to seem conspicuous while James and Sirius were stealing glances in their direction. Lily thought happily how easy it would be to communicate with one another once she had given Sev his birthday book- they wouldn't even have to push the parchment back and forth between them. It would be an entirely undetectable method of communication.

Severus leaned forward in his seat, scribbling to Lily intently across the parchment they were using. Without even looking at her, he slid the paper with a finger towards her side of the table.

In his slanted, cramped hand, it said _**You know I was just joking earlier, I don't really have anything on tonight. Where are we meeting?**_

Lily dipped her quill into her inkwell and put the nib to the paper and wrote two words:

_Astronomy Tower. Midnight._

She slid the parchment back at him and chanced a look at Professor Binns, who was sitting behind his desk at the front of the class, talking in a monotone and pointing with his wand at the words "SCOTTISH DRAGON HUNTERS 1340-1362". Lily didn't bother to listen to what he saw saying- she knew a bit about the wild Scottish tribes that hunted dragons in the middle of the fourteenth century because she'd read a paper the subject last year.

Severus wrote his quick reply while she stared down at her quill in her hands and thought of what she needed to do to prepare for Sev's secret birthday celebration. She had originally selected the Astronomy Tower because virtually no one went up there in winter unless they had class. High above the rest of the school, the icy wind ripped past you and the snow that piled the top of the tower was knee-deep and ice encrusted. The cold, she had decided, could be warded off with a good dose of warming potion and hot butterbeers conjured from the Hogwarts kitchen.

He pushed the parchment towards her and she read **S**_**ounds cold.**_

Lily smiled and wrote _It won't be, I swear. I've got it all planned out._ She slid the paper in his direction, looking at Severus. He read her words and looked back at her, returning her smile.

James watched this from across the room contemptuously. He was in a foul temper, and not just because of little Charlie Prewitt. He wanted desperately to know what Lily and Snivellus were writing to each other. It was completely obvious that Snape fancied her, and entirely possible that she might actually fancy him in return. This was a constant source of dismay to him. How could Lily, amazing lovely smart talented beautiful Lily, spend so much of her time with creepy greasy meddling interfering Snape.

James passed the rest of the class period alternately glowering at Professor Binns and trying to keep an eye on Lily and Snivellus, all the while concocting ways to somehow read Lily's notes to Snape. Beside him, Sirius was doodling sketchy pictures of motorcycles across his parchment.

When professor Binns dismissed them for the day, James was slow to pack up and go, lingering to watch Lily and Snape depart. The two of them were talking covertly, Lily shouldering her bag as Snape made his way down the row of desks with the rest of the class, heading for the door.

To James' astonishment and disbelief, he watched Lily crumple the parchment they had been writing on and toss it carelessly into the waste paper basket by Binns' desk. Unable to believe his good luck, he watched as they moved past him and out the door.

Sirius was standing beside the table he had shared with James, looking impatient as he waited for James to finish putting his things in his bag. The classroom was empty now of students, except for Sirius and himself. Even Professor Binns had gone.

James dove out of his seat and towards the waste paper basket. Immediately, he began to rummage through it, carefully un-wadding pieces of parchment and methodically pausing to look at each one. Sirius stuffed James' history book into his bag and held it for James as James dug through the rubbish.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sirius finally asked, standing over James, who was on his knees by the bin in a pile of papers.

"Their notes," James said distractedly. "She threw their notes away." 

Sirius rolled his eyes and put his hands on his hips as James fished another ball of crumpled parchment out of the bin and unrolled it.

"You're not _really_ digging through the rubbish bin to see what they wrote, are you?"

James didn't answer- he was peering at the piece of smoothed-out parchment in his hands, his eyes following the words written in two sets of handwriting. They were meeting tonight. It was right there, spelled out in front of him in Lily's careful hand: _Astronomy Tower._ James' chest seized up in a kind of inexpressible anguish as he pictured them kissing. Everybody knew that the only reason anybody went to the Astronomy Tower outside of astronomy class was to make out.

"Well?" Sirius asked, "Did you find it?"

James held the paper out to Sirius, who took it with a sigh and read it to himself.

"Evans has nice handwriting," Sirius said unenthusiastically, and handed the parchment back to James.

"I'm going to follow them," James said determinedly.

"You're going to follow them on your own, then, because I could care less if Snivellus gets some strange." Sirius said.

James looked stricken at the thought and followed Sirius out of the empty classroom.


End file.
