Going Back by h_vic

Lily had always believed in the value of never going back. It could only bring heartache, if things had changed, and mar the recollection of what had once been and should be cherished.

When she’d left school, she’d severed almost all ties with Spinners End, believing there was nothing left for her there. Her only remaining connection was her parents after all, and they were happy to visit her and James instead, understanding perhaps that she didn’t wish to return to a place that held only fragmented memories for her. Her relationship with Petunia was unmistakably shattered, and perhaps they recognized too the weight of her broken friendship with the strange boy from the wrong end of town, of whom they had never quite approved, but who had seemed oddly important to their daughter.

She didn’t believe in going back, and yet that was exactly what she found herself doing. The contradiction frustrated her. She supposed it made her a hypocrite, and that was not something she wished to be, although perhaps that was the least of her sins that day.

She stared at the abstract flickering of the bare trees flashing past the window and wondered yet again if this was the right choice, or if there was really any choice at all. Had there ever been any choice from the moment Deidre Evans had returned from the post office and telephoned her daughter with the news she’d heard?

As the train slowed and shapeless, grey blurs coalesced into dilapidated houses, Lily contemplated changing her mind. It would be so easy – get off the train at the next station, cross the footbridge, wait on the opposite platform and go home. No one would know; she hadn’t even told her husband where she was going. No one could judge her or tell her she was wrong to return to her real life. No one would call her a hypocrite or worse – a coward. If she stayed on the train, she might be called that and more, but she would deserve it if she didn’t.

Perhaps that was why she had chosen to use Muggle transport – the time that travelling would take gave her the chance to turn back at any stage. Or perhaps, it was simply that it felt right to return to where her life had once been in the way that she had travelled then.

As the train rolled into the next station though, she stayed seated. People bustled past her, bags clipped her shoulder, doors clanged and swung, and then the train shuddered back into life; the station was left behind; and Lily had missed yet another opportunity.

~~~


Lily rested her elbows on the rickety, wooden fence and tried to ignore the sparse, icy drops of rain that lashed across her cheeks as they sought to make her abandon her resolve. She would not view them as an omen, not when she had come this far. Squinting against the frigid breeze, she scanned the graveyard and spotted his tall form, swathed in melancholic black. His head was bowed, and his shoulders were awkwardly hunched as he stood before a grave that somehow seemed shunned by its fellows. A lone, uninspiring wreath set on the raw, unsettled earth marked it as a recent addition to the graveyard.

He had not seen her; his back was to her. She could still walk away, but her feet drove her inexorably forwards through the low gate and towards the tragic figure, compelled by a will no longer her own.

She stopped a couple of paces away from him, respecting his solitude, but he had heard the soft shuffle of her approach and turned to face her. The briefest glimpse of shock flashed through his eyes, all but invisible had she not known him as she once did, before he schooled his expression. The only hint remaining of any emotion was a slight tightening around his eyes and a thinning of his top lip, which paled at the tautness.

“I’m sorry, Severus,” she blurted out suddenly. She had no control over the words. She had made no conscious plan to say them. She had been unable to decide what to say. The words had made the decision for her.

“Don’t be,” Severus said coldly, a sneer twisting his narrow lips more tightly. He turned away from her to stare at the unyielding granite of the soulless headstone. “She wouldn’t have been if it was you.”

Lily recoiled slightly from the detached venom in his voice. She hadn’t really expected that he would welcome her presence with unbridled acceptance, but she had presumed that they would maintain at least a hollow façade of civility. What she had not expected was this impersonally cruel tone, as if she had done him – or perhaps society itself – some vague and nebulous wrong to which he had no immediate personal connection.

“Why are you here?” he demanded suddenly, brutally.

“It’s a small town,” Lily explained, almost apologetically. Although why she should be apologetic, she was not sure, when she had borne the overtures of friendship, which he seemed to be rejecting. “Bad news travels fast.”

He nodded once, his back still to her, and his voice seemed oddly strangled as he said, “I hear congratulations are in order.” His shoulders were slumped forward in a manner that she knew would normally be deplorable to a man who carried his height as carefully as Severus did.

She didn’t follow him in his abrupt conversational switch and found herself staring at him dumbly, much to her disgust – she had promised herself that he would not get the better of her this time.

He must have sensed her confusion, as he couldn’t see her face, or perhaps the silence had just dragged on for too long. “You married Potter.” His tone was accusatory, and Lily flinched. “It’s a small town; bad news travels fast,” he echoed.

“I’m sorry,” Lily whispered again, lacking anything better to say and scrabbling to regain the purpose with which she had come. The rain had grown heavier whilst they stood there, and she couldn’t help but shiver as a freezing droplet crept down her collar. Not that Severus would see to judge her weakness.

“Sorry?” His voice was sharp as he whipped back around to stare at her in a sweep of waterlogged, black cloth. “What for?” he demanded. “My mother’s death? I thought I’d already made it clear that you shouldn’t be. For leaving me to find out about your wedding from the town gossip? What business would it be of mine, after all? For marrying Potter—?”

Lily may have only come up to his shoulder, but she seemed to grow in anger, and had the uncanny ability to look down on him from below. “I will not apologise to you or anyone else, Severus, for marrying the man I love!”

Severus looked as if he had been slapped at her words. His hand was even half lifted, though whether it was to ward off the imagined blow or to massage away the almost-real sting was unclear. Lily found herself wondering, if she had raised her hand, whether he would have tried to prevent the inevitable, or merely sucked out the metaphorical venom afterwards. She had never quite come to that conclusion over him; she was forced to admit that she didn’t understand him well enough.

“So does your husband know you’re here?” Somehow, the treasured title seemed to roll from Severus’ lips as an expletive so vile that Lily almost felt the heat of a blush on her neck. But she had not come here to argue with him.

“This isn’t about James,” she said, a carefully constructed neutrality in her voice. “I just thought you might need a friend…”

“Is that what you are, then?” Severus asked, and when she stole a peak at his face, his dark eyes seemed to roil like the thunderclouds forming above them.

“I was once…”

“I don’t need your pity!”

Lily would have expected to feel anger surge through her at his snarling rejection, but it was the soft warmth of sympathy, not the heat of fury, that pulsed gently through her veins. She stared at this man she had once known, his features now contorted into bitter lines, and an unwitting hand reached out towards him. For a brief moment, she ached to bridge the chasm between them.

“I don’t need anyone!” He stepped back a pace as if to prove his words to himself.

“Don’t push me away,” Lily urged him gently. “I know you’re hurting. I understand that. You don’t have to pretend it’s all fine. She was your mother; you’re allowed to grieve.”

“You don’t understand anything. You never did understand half as much as you thought.” The rain had plastered his hair flat against his head, and the contrast between the angry flush of his skin and his dark hair made him seem almost feral. His black eyes burnt like coals below a darkened brow. Lily forced yet one more layer of hurt down within herself, persuading herself that it was the spirit of grief not Severus’ own will lashing out at her.

“I will shed no tears over a woman to whom I was little more than an irritation.” His almost casual disregard shocked Lily, and her hand fluttered unguided to rest briefly on her own stomach. Severus eyes followed her instinctive movement and then swept up to her face as her hand fell away. His eyes were blank, as incapable, it seemed, of having true emotion reflected in them as the dull, moss-covered gravestones that surrounded them.

“Congratulations,” he said coldly.

“Don’t, Severus, please don’t,” Lily begged him. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t bear the thought of holding that conversation with him, but it was more than her taut nerves could take. “There must have been something the two of you shared – she was your mother. There must have been some happy times you shared. Hold on to those.”

“Perhaps,” he conceded reluctantly. This ought to have been a turning point, at which Lily could finally believe that Severus was softening towards her presence, but it was not. An uncomfortable silence settled between them, and she could see that something poisonous was twisting its way through his thoughts.

“Why did you come here?” Severus pressed her again suddenly, his gaze stripping her actions bare.

Lily stared at him bewildered. “I told you – I thought you might need a friend.”

“But it changes nothing,” he stated bluntly.

“Does it have to?” she asked, her soft voice whipped away by the jealous wind that swirled around them.

“You’ll go home to your husband, and he’ll still loathe me as much as I loathe him, and I’ll never see you again…”

“What would you have me do, Severus? Leave James? I won’t do that for you or for anyone. And it’s not as if he’s the only barrier between us. What about your so called friends? Where are they today?” The words came out in a rush and she cringed as she said them, waiting for the explosion of his anger, but it didn’t come. He just stared at her through the broken barrier of the rain as it sheeted silently between them.

“They’re not here.” His voice carried an edge sharper than the wind that swept across the graveyard, but it was not directed at the absent Slytherins. “I can’t imagine how their whereabouts could matter to you though as you won’t be here tomorrow.”

“I’m here now,” she whispered, reaching out a hand to rest lightly on his shoulder, and this time he didn’t turn away as his eyes came to rest on her fingers sitting upon the coarse fabric of his robes.

A gentle silence settled between them as the rain trickled to a stop.