`` bittersweet surrender } closed

[Liberty Martin]

`` severus tobias snape
`` 1977, aged seventeen
`` outside the gryffindor common room


here we are, clinging to what left of a broken heart
it's gone too far but i don't think you know it: it ain't over yet
we were walking out the door when our eyes met
how did we forget where we were going
oh bittersweet surrender

It had taken Severus a long time to find out where the Gryffindor common room was. After days of searching for it himself, he’d finally decided that the only way he was ever going to work out where it was (because there were more corridors and staircases in Hogwarts than he could count, and so searching the castle methodically would have taken him all year) was to follow some Gryffindors there. Of course, he couldn’t do that dressed in his Slytherin robes, since his common room was in the dungeons, and he knew that the Gryffindors had a tower, so after dinner one evening, he had taken off his cloak and his tie, the two things that bore his house’s colours, and as surrepticiously as he could, had followed a group of second years to their common room. That was how he’d managed to find his way to the corridor outside the portrait hole tonight; every day now, he spent his evenings sitting out here just a little way away from the entrance to the Gryffindors’ common room, just waiting. Sometimes he brought a book or completed his homework, but for the most part, Severus just waited.

Sometimes it surprised Severus how patient he could be. Every night for over a week now he had sat here, waiting for that familiar flash of red hair going in or out of the portrait hole, and every night he had been disappointed. Not that it mattered; if he had to wait out here every night for the whole year, if that was what it took, then there was nothing that was going to stop him doing that. Severus could be almost bloody-minded in his determination when there was something that he wanted, and he wanted this more than anything else. Even more than he wanted to have new clothes for a change, even more than he wanted those awful Gryffindor boys to leave him alone, even more than he wanted his father to stop being drunk and abusive, Severus wanted Lily Evans to forgive him. He knew that he’d done an awful thing to her, but that had been almost two years ago now. Surely she would be able to forgive and forget after all that time?

He knew that if the situation had been reversed, if it had been Lily that had called Severus a rude name, he would have forgiven her in an instant. It wasn’t even as though he’d meant to hurt her, not in the way he wanted to hurt some of the people who were apparently her friends now. She seemed to have replaced his friendship pretty quickly, which hurt Severus a lot; he knew that he would never have a friend as good as Lily had been, which was why he was trying so desperately to get her back in his life again. It was as though he didn’t function properly without her there – a piece of him was missing and he knew that it wouldn’t get back into place until he was granted forgiveness. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though; Severus had done everything he could think of to try and talk to Lily, and each time she had said that she wasn’t talking to him and moved away before he could think of anything to say that would convey how sorry he really was. This was a last resort…now all he needed was for this to be the night that he managed to see Lily going in or out of her common room, and hopefully everything would be back to normal again. He couldn’t survive another year like his sixth – it had been far too hard without the promise of his meetings with Lily.

A glimpse of red hair out of the corner of his eye made Severus leap to his feet, ready to chase after the girl if necessary, but he realised with a sigh that it wasn’t Lily at all, just a fourth year with a similar shade of hair – though not such a pretty shade. Merlin, it seemed as though he was going to be in for yet another long night. Sitting down again with his back against the wall, Severus closed his eyes. Maybe it was the same theory as watching a pan of water boil; the more you watched, the longer it took to boil. Therefore, closing his eyes would eradicate the watching and hopefully make the boiling – or rather Lily’s appearance – happen a lot sooner. It was a faint hope, but a hope nonetheless. He was willing to try anything to get to see her again.

[Lavender Brown]

`` lily elizabeth evans
`` 1977, aged seventeen


once, as my heart remembers
all the stars were fallen embers
once, when night seemed forever
i was with you

When Lily had first discovered the truth about what she was the world had seemed to hold so much promise. Despite the fight with Petunia that eventually led to the decay of their sisterly bond, there had been so much hope that things would be better than they had seemed before. She had been so certain that she would arrive at the school and though having never been around a real witch or wizard before, she would turn out to be a bit of a natural. She and Severus would be the closest of friends and it would be completely inconceivable to find them apart. While some of her expectations had been filled in a most splendid manner, Lily had been unable to hold true to all of what she had intended for her life.

It had hurt her to lose a little piece of her dream when she had discovered that the houses that she and her closest companion had been sorted into were absolute rivals. It had made their relationship far more complicated than it ought to have been, but Lily had been intent on making it work. There had been secret meetings and quiet discussions in the darkened corridors between classrooms when they really should have been making their way to their separate lessons. Everything had seemed, if not perfect, at least tolerable for the time being. After she finished Hogwarts, Lily knew that their houses would not matter and for a day or two in her fourth year, she had been quite convinced that the two of them would be together forever.

The day that had changed the rest of their lives had started out like any other at the end of a school term. There had been exams, of course, but the joyous feel of the freedom that came upon their completion had swept over much of the school. Despite the fact that there would be other students around, Lily had thought it best to meet by the lake. The view was stunning in the early summer sun and the sound of the waves gently lapping against the rocky shore had always lulled her into a peaceful state that was most desirable after the end of a particularly stressful day. She had been running behind, however, and by the time she had burst onto the scene, the fight between the four Gryffindors known as the Marauders and her best friend had already begun. She had done all that she could to defend him, but in the end it had not been enough. He had degraded her in a way that he had never done before and though she had forgiven him for so many things that were associated with being in such a radically purist house, a personal attack was one line that she had been so sure he knew better than to cross.

Lily had spoken to him only long enough to tell him to leave her be and she had been done with it all. There were moments, though, when she had caught herself gazing over at his table during breakfast and wondering just how he was. She could tell that the truth would never be what she wanted to hear. While she had bounced back from the incident nearly as well as she had gone in, it had not been the same for Severus. He had never come out and told her so, but Lily had been certain for quite some time that she was one of the few confidants the boy had possessed. When their relationship had gone sour, she had known in the back of her mind that he would be quite alone and it troubled her that it had not stopped her from shunning him. Was she really such a horrid person that she would condemn someone who had offered her so much and asked for nothing but her time in return to such a fate?

There had been times when she had wanted to forgive him. Seeing him around the group he had begun to associate with, however, had been more than enough to make her certain that she and he would never see eye to eye once more. It had hurt her more, perhaps cut even deeper than that which had severed their friendship so completely, and she had taken to spending her time around James Potter and his lot instead. She knew that it would only serve to anger, or perhaps devastate was the more proper term, Severus more, but the need for companionship had become too strong and the truth was that James was simply there. She had grown fond of him over time, but in the beginning it had not been so. She had found him to be just as rude and uncouth as in the beginning, but he had made her feel justified in her anger, and eventually, almost certain that she had made the right decision. Despite herself, she had appreciated his effort in the end and she knew now that it was pride alone that kept her from a reconciliation with her former friend.

As much as she wished to push the thoughts that had flooded her from her mind entirely, as Lily traversed the corridors from the library to her common room in the towers above, her thoughts could not help but continue to wander in the same manner as they had been for the past several hours. The studying that she had intended had been forgotten early on and she wondered at how much time she had wasted lost inside herself that afternoon. The corridors were nearly deserted and she knew that it must have been getting on in the evening. Soon the curfew would likely be into effect, though it mattered very little to her. She had been named Head Girl for her seventh and final year at Hogwarts, so really, the majority of the school's rules held little sway over her actions. Still, there was no joy to be found wandering on her own and at least in the Gryffindor common room there would be a cheerful fire and rambunctious company to keep the lonely chill of fall at bay. When she rounded the corner that led to her house's portrait hole, however, her plan for the evening crashed around her.

The air felt heavier than she had imagined it would and Lily had to pause to force it in and out of her lungs. She had not expected Severus to be there, though she had heard hushed rumors around the common room that he'd begun hanging about. She had hoped that they were just the bored mutterings of younger students out to get under the girl's skin, but it seemed that it was not actually the case. Lily fidgeted for a moment, tugging at the hem of her white uniform shirt. She felt herself shivering and she wondered if it was simply from the cold draft that was a constant presence in their castle home or if for another reason entirely. It made her wish she hadn't left her school robes on her bed, though she doubted very much that the thin layer of black material would have done much to soothe her just then.

"Severus," she said, her voice far softer than it had been in quite some time.

The truth was that it had always felt more appropriate to be soft-spoken around him. He, himself, was so very quiet that it had always seemed as if her personality alone would be enough to drown out anything he might say or do. She could not be sure why the habit had stuck despite all that had occurred between them in recent years, but it seemed to slip back to her as naturally as breathing. It maddened her and made her want to cry all at once, though she opted to show neither emotion as she stared at his slumped figure as flatly as she could. It was only after a moment that she realized his eyes had been tightly closed and she sighed, her mind heavy with the realization that she likely could have slipped by unnoticed had she only took the time to assess the situation.

"You oughtn't be here."

[Liberty Martin]

here we are, clinging to what left of a broken heart
it's gone too far but i don't think you know it: it ain't over yet
we were walking out the door when our eyes met
how did we forget where we were going
oh bittersweet surrender

[/right]

He might only have been alive seventeen years, but it seemed to Severus that he had already made many mistakes that he would probably regret for many years still to come. So many people managed to get through life with minimal problems affecting their well-being, skipping down the path of aging until finally they popped their clogs, old but happy. They never regretted anything; Severus, on the other hand, repented almost everything that he had done. What was the point? He could so easily have been one of those happy people whose only problem was whether they would drink tea or coffee in the morning…but only if he’d been born someone else. It seemed to him that it would have been impossible to be a happy person when your father was an abusive alcoholic and your mother had to work hard to keep a respectable home on the pittance he gave for housekeeping money. The bastard. One of the many mistakes Severus felt he had made was not standing up to his father when he’d been younger; even now, he preferred to go and sit in a corner of his bedroom with his nose firmly buried inside a book than to defend his mother against any drunken rage that there might be when Tobias Snape finally rolled in from the pub at some unearthly hour of the night. They should have left, should have forced him to leave. Maybe Severus might not have grown up to be such a failure if he hadn’t had a father like that.

That was what Severus was; a failure. Yes, he was clever, he wasn’t even going to attempt to be modest about that (especially not when it came to his two favourite subjects) but success in academic subjects wasn’t everything. Sure, he could perform pretty much any spell in existence, even if it wasn’t one taught at school, and could retain information from a book he had read like a sponge, but one could spend too much time reading and learning. Severus had so few friends – the people that he hung out with were nothing more than people to talk to – and the one friend that he had treasured more than all the other people he knew put together was the one that he had failed and betrayed. He hadn’t even managed to get her to speak more than a few words (the few words being something along the lines of ‘leave me alone’) for over a year now, however hard he tried. He obviously was not trying hard enough, because rebuilding the friendship he had lost meant more to him than anything else. That was it; he had to try harder, so he might be able to get somewhere and not feel like such a failure anymore.

It wasn’t going to be that easy, though. Severus had known Lily for a very long time now, and if there was one thing he could say about her, aside from the fact that she was the most beautiful girl that he had ever met, it was that she was determined as hell. He could understand her being angry at him – in fact, he didn’t blame her for it in the slightest – but it had been so long now; this was determination stretched to its limits. Why wouldn’t she talk to him and let him try to explain? Why wouldn’t she at least attempt to forgive him? Why did she avoid his glance when he looked at her in the Great Hall, as if she never wanted to talk to him again? Why, why, why? He hadn’t hurt her intentionally, couldn’t she understood that? He had been young (not that his age had been any kind of an excuse) and he’d been pushed into a corner so dark that he hadn’t been able to see a way out of it. Even if he had been able to see, there would have been four Gryffindors, all of a much stockier build than his lanky one, blocking his way out. The Marauders; the name left a nasty taste in Severus’ mouth, he loathed them all so much. They – specifically Potter – were the reason that Severus had lost his only true friend, and they were the ones that now got to spend time with her. Didn’t she know what awful people they were, what they had done to him over the whole course of his school life? And the rumours he’d heard that Lily and Potter…fancied each other…they killed Severus inside. Slowly, his heart was being chipped away; each time Lily brushed past him despite his protestations, each time he failed to regain her trust, it started to crumble into a thousand tiny pieces.

“Severus”

It took Severus a moment or two to realise that his name had been called; he had been so deep in his thoughts that it was almost as though he were asleep. However, that was the one voice that would wake him even if he’d been entirely unconscious on the floor. “Lily!” What was she doing here? He knew that he had been waiting out here every night for the past couple of weeks for her to appear, but he hadn’t expected her to actually come and talk to him, especially not while it appeared he was asleep – the situation as he’d seen it in his head had involved him chasing her down the stairs as she went on her way, begging and protesting as she went. This was almost too easy; not that he was about to complain. This was what he needed; he was going to grab the chance with both hands and cling on tightly. Maybe this would be the night that Lily would forgive him and they would be able to start building their friendship up again. Severus scrambled to a standing position, almost tripping over his feet in his haste to do so, and found himself at a loss for words. Now that she was here in front of him, all the apologies and long speeches he’d had worked out in his head for months had disappeared, leaving him grappling for words.

“You oughtn't be here.”

Her words made Severus’ initial pleasure at seeing her turn into a feeling of disappointment. She wasn’t going to tell him to get lost again, was she, not after all the time he had been sitting out here, waiting for her? “I know,” he replied with a sigh, leaning against the wall behind him but never taking his eyes off the Gryffindor. “But I had to see you…I had to speak to you.” He looked at her from beneath his curtain of hair, trying to assess whether or not she was in a good enough mood to talk to him or whether she was now going to give him the cold shoulder, her initial words towards him making the loss of his hope even more of a bitter blow. “Will you talk to me today?” [/font]