InsaneJournal

fic-ish
Random unfinished fragment that I don't really intend to so anything else with. I briefly considered starting a filter for these kinds of scratchpad/"sketchbook"/"scrapbook" things, because I know there are some people who don't mind looking at such whereas others avoid anything but fully finished works and won't even touch a chaptered WIP until it's done, but I figure it's better to have it public behind a cut and them that ain't int'rested, they's don' have to click.

So. Severus and Lily genish/unrequited (whatever you want to call it - pretty much like it is in canon), off the terribly original idea of a slightly different take at the portrait hole and then follows a few of Severus's thoughts. ~600 words.

"Slipped out?" There was no pity in Lily's voice. "It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends – you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"
He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking.
"I can't pretend any more. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."
"No – listen, I didn't mean –"
"– to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"

"But you are different, Lily. It's obvi—you've got—it's not just having Muggles for parents. I've got a Muggle father," contempt and resentment dripped from the phrase, "you know that. It's something else. I can't really exp—"

Lily cut him off with an exasperated noise, her lips pressed into a thin line, and squeezed her folded arms tighter against her chest. "You can't really explain it, hm? You don't think that could be because it's rubbish? You don't get it, do you, Severus?"

"Get—get wh—?" he stammered, and again she cut across him.

"Oh, forget it! Just bloody forget it. I can't talk about this now. I'm so furious with you I can hardly see straight. Only I'm not even sure there's anything left to say that would get through your skull. I thought you were smarter than this, Sev."

She sighed, still frowning. He merely looked at her wide-eyed, like a child unable to figure out what it was being punished for.

"Well," Lily continued, "if you want to jump off this particular cliff, I can't stop you, but I'm not going to say it's okay because it isn't, Severus, they're just wrong and even evil, and I'm not going to pick up the pieces at the bottom." She turned with a sad and angry look, tears beginning in her eyes, and walked back through the portrait hole.

Too late, Severus found his voice again. "No—Lily—wait!"

But she was gone.

Severus wanted to roar "Damn everything to hell!" as he whirled and stalked off towards the stairs, but given the hour he settled for painfully back-handing a suit of armor as he passed it. He swore and gingerly rubbed his knuckles.

"Serves you right," it muttered after him.

He hardly saw anything as he hurried back down to the dungeons, where he flung himself on his bed without speaking to anyone and hastily drew the curtains. Thoughts flew around his head:

Deny it? How could he honestly deny it? There had been talk of just that among the Slytherins, of course. He had even, as he lay in bed at night, imagined what it might be like to be a Death Eater himself; the idea had its perks. Damn her black-and-white ideas about everything!

Didn't get it? What was not to get? She was the one who didn't get it! Of course he said "Mudblood". Half of the people in this house did; certainly most of his friends. Sometimes it made him uncomfortable, but it was just a word, after all. He had to make concessions if he wasn't going to ruin his chances for the future. He was already at a disadvantage with some of his housemates, being half-Muggle—not a fact he advertised, but he knew he could never have concealed it for long, so he hadn't tried. To some of these people even that was a Mudblood, so it was a difference he was at pains to make between himself and the other kind.

And Lily was hardly the other kind. Her parents were all right, for all they were Muggles. He refused to believe that someone like Lily was bringing in some kind of contamination to the bloodlines of wizards. But what about her horrible sister, or his own father, or his grandfather Snape, who was cut from the same rough cloth? Why should a wizard like Severus or a witch like Lily—or even his mother!—have to hide from the likes of them? It wasn't right!

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