“Severus… Severus? Are you all right?” he heard the sweetness of her voice, still ringing in his ears as if for the first time below the wicked tree they met. “You are a good friend,” she remarked. No one had ever told him that. No one had called him a friend before.
“I don’t want your help. You filthy little mudblood!” he had screamed at her one day. The day he regretted the most. The day he lost his one true friend, the woman he loved so greatly, the only one who cared.
“I’m sorry, Lily,” he repeated a thousand times to the cold Hogwarts air and a thousand times in the shadows of James Potter.
“He doesn’t deserve you,” he wanted to shout out, but repressed the act for the simple fact that Lily didn’t wish so. “He is an arrogant prick, a bully, and a worthless swine that does not deserve you in any way!” he wanted to roar around the damp walls of Hogwarts. But what right did he have to speak those words? After what he called her… After everything, she did for him… After…
When the only light in his life began to fade, Severus walked down a path so grim that Lily would be embarrassed by him. Often, he looked back at the candle where she once resided. Only to find its empty fumes rising to the ceiling. He stole, buried, killed, and tortured in the dark lord’s name. Blaming it all on the evil man’s head, Severus thought his actions were justified. The world wasn’t kind to him, why should he be kind to it? The world was full of James Potters and Sirius Blacks who preyed on the weak. The world was full of the death eaters and purebloods who rejected the weak. Severus had no choice… And he paid for its price in full.
As he stood there in front of Godric’s Hollow, he thought of the one thing he had forgotten the most. “The world was full of Lily Evans’s,” he mumbled as his throat felt a sharp pain running down it. Once again he had failed her. Once again he had let her down. Once again he had pushed her away. He knew, that inside those broken doors lay the woman he killed. Yes, it was an act of murder, treason… By the man who loved her more than anyone. It was his selfish obsession that led the dark lord to Godric’s Hollow. It was all him. No one but him.
As Severus tread past the broken gate of the daunting structure, he ran through every memory he had. Every memory that made him smile. Every memory that reminded why he was alive. Every single one of them, about Lily. His feet felt heavy as he strode past the half-broken doorway, only to be led into a room devastated by the art of wizardry. There was a voice in the house, a loud shrieking cry, that of a wounded baby. For the last time in his life, Severus wanted to quit, to turn back. But he reminded himself, I let this happen.
Severus made his steps one by one. Each heavier than the previous. Each shrieked the floorboards as if they were crying for him as a whole. As he turned around the staircase, he saw a pair of legs dangling at the summit. He put forth his own, carrying the weight of each of his actions to the top. And at the edge of it lay the man whom he hated the most. James Potter.
“Snivellus… Snivvy!” James and his friends had made his life at Hogwarts anything but enviable. Evil, demon spawns, and all the horrible things of the world combined as one. The Marauders they called themselves. The only thing that they had marauded was Severus himself. In the end, betrayed by the man whom he most trusted, James Potter lay there a corpse of his old self. Those eyes hadn’t changed, the hair he so glamorously owned hadn’t changed, nothing about him had changed, but Lily didn’t think so. He too had been a prey of Severus’s treason.
As he stood there in the silence of the man he hated the most, Severus couldn’t help but feel a river of guilt and pity upon him. Lily saw something in James that Severus could never. Lily must have been right, he argued with himself countless times.
The loud cries became louder by the second as Severus walked the final broken hallway of Godric’s Hollow, and stopped at the door where it originated. Inside it laid the broken remains of a battleground. Of the spells disembarked, and the ones deflected. Lily had fought bravely against the dark lord. By the side of the broken room was the crib in which the cry never stopped. The spitting image of James Potter cried restlessly at the sight of what was in front. And then there was her. Lily laid inert to the cries of her own son. Her eyes still open, her blood still leaking. Lily laid there silent, still, and with a smile.
As he turned through the foyer to find the woman he adored, Severus felt his legs fail miserably. He slid down the jamb of the doorway till he planted level with her on the ground. His heart burned so cruelly that he wished upon his own death. His eyes flooded with tears he never knew he could produce. “Li-ly,” he whispered. Severus sat there unable to move, shivering at the sight of agony. He could no longer hear the boy’s disoriented cries. He could only hear what must have been her final cry for help. “Lily,” he called again to be left unanswered. As his eyes refused to close or look away, Severus felt the life inside him slowly drain away into the depths of hell. “LILY!” he cried and crawled beside her broken face.
Severus took her deeply upon his arms and held her frigid body close to his chest. “Forgive me,” he whispered in a broken tone. “Forgive me,” he repeated a thousand times. Lily didn’t reply. Lily didn’t move. Lily didn’t cry the same for him. “Forgive me,” he cried into her once auburn hair. It felt to him as if time had stopped still. He could hear nothing in his ears but the soothing voice of Lily from his memories. He wished to sit there for eternity, atoning for a sin that he could never repay. “Lily,” he called once more, hopelessly.
For the last time, Severus held her face and looked at it with a crushing pain in his chest. The sparkle of her green eyes had damped like the smoking embers of a burnt candle. Then he heard the child’s cries again. Annoying, unrelenting, like his father he continued. As he looked at the child within the crib, Severus gasped again and shook. The tears in his eyes riveted through his bony cheeks once again.
“You have your mother’s eyes,” he told the young boy, still holding Lily to his chest.
It was then that the room felt a frosting chill. Severus looked out the open window to find a dark cloak hanging outside of it. A dementor. It had come for the boy.
“No,” he mumbled out loud. “You will not take Lily from me,” he added.
The sills of the window began to colour with ice, and the panes of glass began to crystallize. The cloaked demon slowly crept inside the room where the remnants of Lily’s memories had remained for one last time. “NO!” he shouted, still holding Lily to his chest. He then looked at the boy once again, and saw his mother’s eyes still sparkling bright.
“No,” he mumbled.
Severus took out his wand and pointed it at the ghoulish dementor. Then, with all the memories of his frivolous little life, remembering the only happy times while he adventured with Lily, he cried, “EXPECTO PATRONUM!”
A blast of white light sprouted from the end of his wand and pushed the dementor out the windowsill it came in through. He hadn’t noticed it at the time, for his eyes were fixated on the woman in his hands. But it wasn’t the Patronus he had performed a thousand times before that sprouted from his wand. It was different, it was stronger… It was a doe that came out of his white bloom. It was the one he marveled at a thousand times before. It was hers… It was her… It was Lily. It was her doe.
He looked at the young boy once again. The young boy named Harry. The one with his mother’s eyes. The boy who lived. And he felt it again. The life inside his hollow self draining out alongside Lily. With one final loud cry, he tugged Lily to his chest and wept for all the memories she had gifted him so graciously. He never remembered the moments of life that he had lived. If it weren’t for the memories Lily inhabited, Severus would have remained a human husk. A body without a soul. It was because of his mother’s love that Harry became the boy who lived. If it weren’t for his eternal love for Lily, Severus knew, he would have been the boy who never lived.
