For a Life

Severus and Lily stopped seeing each other after the end of the pregnancy. It wasn't that Severus objected to her decision to abort. He agreed that they were too young to raise a child. He mixed the potion himself.

All through the night, he sat with Lily while she bled and vomited and sobbed. But afterward, she told him that he was too quiet. She suspected he was judging her. He could not explain that his soul felt torn.

When Lily agreed to go out with James Potter, Severus believed she must have been punishing herself. He didn't say anything about it; Lily already knew how he felt about Potter and his friends.

That time, when she found herself pregnant, she chose marriage. She still felt too young to be a mother, but James, she explained, had desperately wanted to keep the baby. He wanted a family with her, even if she didn't think it was what she wanted... not yet.

She took this to mean that James really loved her.

It had not occurred to Severus to contradict what Lily said she wanted, regardless of his own feelings.

By that time, he was involved with Tom. Nobody else called him that, Severus knew, not even Lucius Malfoy, whom Tom displayed like a trophy beside himself at gatherings -- so bright, so wealthy, so much his creature.

"We share a secret," Tom had whispered in that low, hissing voice that Severus could not resist. It was what Severus imagined Salazar Slytherin must have sounded like... Parseltongue. No matter Slytherin's dedication to the purity of wizardry, Severus and Tom were both halfbloods and had hidden it from the others, first at school and now in the world. They could do it because they were smarter than everyone else.

Tom had sent Severus to spy on Dumbledore because Severus was the only one he fully trusted, not only to learn exactly what the Headmaster of Hogwarts had planned, but to report that information precisely as he heard it, with no personal agenda. How could Severus have known that the prophecy he overheard would make Lily a target?

James was doing foolish things, sneaking about with Black and the werewolf, putting them all in harm's way. And Tom hated mothers. Still, his cronies left Lily alone; Tom promised Severus that they would. In the crisis, he would have spared Lily, had she only turned away.

The Boy Who Lived should have belonged to Severus. He told Dumbledore so -- he deserved the right to raise Harry. Of course, Dumbledore did not listen, insisting that the boy be hidden with his Muggle relatives instead. A mother's love would protect him, Dumbledore said.

Severus did not point out that Lily's love alone had not spared her son. He had saved the child; he had insisted that Lily not be harmed, and, in doing so, provided her with the opportunity to choose to die for Harry.

Harry might save the rest. It was already too late for Severus.