The Worm That Turned

Chapter 7 - With a Bit of Luck

Getting inducted into the inner circle was a big deal for Severus, but even that wasn't enough to wipe the thoughts of Lily from his mind. He endlessly replayed his three recent encounters with her. After such a long time without seeing her, he felt almost drunk on the fresh contact he'd had. It was amazing to him that the defences he'd built against his feelings for her had crumbled so completely in the face of her presence.

As he lay awake at night, he ran through the same pointless arguments in his head. He was being stupid. His feelings for her brought nothing but pain and misery. There was no rational reason for him to like her. She had rejected his friendship, was on the other side of the war, and was in love with his most hated rival. Even if they did somehow become friends again, it would mean losing Lucius, his hard-won standing with the pureblood crowd, his home, and quite possibly his life. From a logical perspective it made no sense whatsoever to feel the way he did.

Yet to his annoyance, it made no difference. His emotions couldn't just be switched off. He despised himself for this, which only made him feel worse. He wanted to move on and forget her, but she filled his every waking thought and invaded his dreams. The looming date of her wedding just made it worse. As it drew closer, he felt an increasing desperation to do something.

But what? Even Severus knew stopping the wedding was unfeasible. He did seriously consider killing James Potter, but shied away from the idea. Partly because Lily would never forgive him, and though he hated to admit it to himself, partly because Potter had once saved his life. Of course, there was always the chance Potter might get himself killed of his own accord, but Severus doubted his luck could be that good. Luck was something that Severus had never possessed in abundance.

That was when it came to him, so suddenly and brilliantly that he sat up in bed. Why on earth hadn't he thought of it before? There was a way of getting luck, and more importantly, he even had it within his reach. He had been brewing some Felix Felicis, the luck potion, for months. He'd planned to share it with Lucius when they next did something dangerous. In the unexpected excitement over the Pillar he'd forgotten to use it, and since then they'd not had to do anything serious enough.

He decided to wait until the wedding day itself, and take the potion then. He'd travel to the wedding venue, and... do something. He wasn't quite sure what. Stopping the wedding would be ideal, but improbable. But maybe there was a way he could make up with her, get her to be his friend again. Then it wouldn't matter so much if she married Potter. It would make no difference when the Death Eaters won and Potter was killed. War would eventually achieve what luck and even Severus' considerable talents could not. It would see Potter dead and Severus in a position of power. All he needed to do for now was get Lily to feel better about him.

He went through to the kitchen and uncovered his smallest copper cauldron, which sat in a corner under stasis spells. The potion glimmered golden in his wandlight, and fat droplets jumped merrily above the surface. He'd kept it in the cauldron, slightly heated, because he believed he could concentrate and prolong the potency that way. It took a long time to make, and then only in small quantities at a time, so it made sense to Severus to try and find a way of maximising its effectiveness.

'Beautiful,' he spoke out loud, a bad habit born of living alone. 'Just what the Healer ordered!' He smiled down at the potion for a while longer, before carefully covering it again and returning to bed.

The day of the twelfth dawned rainy. Severus watched the grey skies out of the kitchen window. He understood that people hoped for good weather on the day of their wedding. Clearly Lily and Potter had not been taking their Felix. Unlike him. He crossed the kitchen gleefully and extinguished the flame under his cauldron. It was time.

The book suggested a maximum of two tablespoons' dose at once, which should equal a day's worth of good luck. Severus hesitated. His tweaks to strengthen the potion would alter that, but he may not have been successful. Felix should not be taken in excess. But the risks of it not working were too great. He decided he'd go for the full recommended dose. After all, his luck was so rotten to start with he probably had more to compensate for than the average man.

The potion was tasteless, but had a pleasant viscosity on his tongue, like thick hot chocolate. He'd expected it to feel warm as it went down, like whiskey, but it didn't. For a moment, he thought he'd made a mistake with the recipe as nothing happened. Then the most wonderful feeling spread over him. His face lit up in a spontaneous smile. He stood up straighter and un-hunched his shoulders. He felt like there was nothing he couldn't achieve. He felt... amazing.

Feeling almost lightheaded, he went to his wardrobe and found his dress robes. They were looking rather dusty, and he had to spend some time working on them. But it didn't matter, he felt confident that he had plenty of time. He took a shower, and even brushed his hair, before putting on his robes. 'Fit for a wedding,' he told his reflection in the mirror.

'See, if you just made an effort more often... Now that nice young man that used to own me, he knew how to take care of his appearance,' replied the mirror.

'Life's too short,' Severus said smugly. Nothing could dent his good mood, not even preachy furniture. He splashed on some highly scented aftershave that Lucius had bought him for Christmas and he'd never opened. Then he took his wand, concentrated, and apparated himself to the northern town where he and Lily had grown up.

He arrived by the old mill, and was greeted with a surge of memories that even the Felix couldn't mask. Unable to resist, he walked around to the brick wall where he and Lily had whiled their summers away, discussing magic and making grand plans for the future that hadn't come to pass. But today he felt like those dreams might still be possible. Today, anything was possible.

'Instinct', driven by Felix, told him the way to walk. He strode the streets of his old town, at once familiar and different. Here was the place where he and Lily used to part of an evening. He could almost smell the balmy summer air, feel the sense of loss he'd experience the moment she walked away. There was the place he'd always sneak a glance back at her. And here, here was the turning that she took in order to get back to her house.

But he didn't follow that path. Felix told him to carry on, following the line of the river. It was even more dilapidated than he remembered. The banks were strewn with litter, the occasional upturned shopping trolley rearing up like the bones of some ancient monster. The water was an impenetrable greyish-brown, giving off a faint smell of decay. He kicked away the odd hypodermic syringe and neatly stepped around dog's mess.

Even these depressing surroundings couldn't dampen his mood though. He had a sensation of lightness, as though he was walking several feet off the ground. It was almost an out-of-body experience. Slight haloes appeared around objects. He saw visions of Lily and of their future together, so clearly they seemed more real than the hulking mill. For the first time, he truly believed that she would come round. One day they would look back on the past three years of estrangement and laugh. 'Do you remember when you were dating James Potter?' he would ask, and Lily would screw up her face and then collapse in gales of laughter. 'James Potter!' she would exclaim. 'I haven't thought about him in years!'

It was a long walk that took him right through the grotty centre of his hometown, across the river again, and into the nicer area. The posh houses, as they'd known them on Spinner's End. He was amazed by how modest and ordinary they looked now. Years of friendship with Lucius had given him a rather bigger idea of what constituted 'posh'. He headed through the park where he had first met Lily. The river seemed different here, nicer. The banks were higher, which meant the murky water was less obvious.

Now he began to sense he was nearing his journey's end. He found himself outside a hotel. It had probably once been a stately home, now tastefully renovated. It boasted 'river views'. Not the nicest location in the world, but probably the nicest in this town. This, he knew at once, was where Lily would be.

Movement caught his eye, and he noticed a man standing at the end of the drive. He was a big, burly kind, dressed in an old trenchcoat. His hand was unobtrusively holding a wand. Severus stooped and pretend to tie a shoelace. Of course, Lily and James would have magical guards around their wedding. It stood to reason. That left him with the small matter of how to get past them. He would need to get lucky...

He stood there for a minute, hoping that Felix would simply create a distraction. But he soon realised that the potion couldn't create miracles from nowhere. He would have to meet luck halfway. Sighing, he felt in his pocket and removed a blank piece of parchment. Then he walked confidently towards the guard, holding his wand tightly. Once he was close enough, he quickly cast a Confundus charm. For a second the guard's face contorted as though to shout out, but then it slackened. A puzzled frown furrowed his brows.

'Good morning, I'm here for the wedding,' said Severus. He spoke quietly, so as not to draw unwanted attention from the other guards.

'The wedding...' repeated the guard, struggling to focus on Severus' face.

'Here is my invitation.' Severus held out the scrap of parchment. 'Now you will let me through please, I don't want to be late.'

'Yes... yes. Yes, you have an invitation.' The guard stepped aside. He recovered enough to add, 'Enjoy your day, sir.'

He didn't waste any time, moving quickly down the driveway. He could see banners outside the hotel, no doubt in honour of the wedding. But Felix told him not to go to the front door. Instead, he found himself walking down the path to the left of the building. At the rear of the hotel, he found they had one of those silly glass buildings Muggles seemed to affix to their houses these days. He wasn't sure of the Muggle word. He supposed they weren't fancy greenhouses.

But he wasn't interested in the architecture, because his eyes had alighted on the sight he most wanted to see. Lily, alone. She was standing in a doorway at the top of a short flight of steps leading from the glass building into the grounds. She was wearing a big white dress and her hair was piled up on top of her head with artfully arranged tendrils framing her face. She was staring out at the grounds. Her face was relaxed and completely happy, the green eyes clear and bright. It was the face of someone with no dark secrets eating at their soul. Only someone as full of pure goodness as Lily was could look as radiant as she did. Or so it seemed to Severus anyway.

Awestruck, he spent what seemed like an eternity staring at her, although it would never be long enough. He was overwhelmed by the strength of his feelings for her. At that moment he would have done anything, anything at all to be with her. Then he pulled himself together and moved forwards, hands suddenly shaking, but Felix urging him on. He had that strange feeling again, of walking slightly above the ground.

Sensing movement, Lily turned and her eyes widened as she saw him. Her relaxed posture changed immediately, tensing as she straightened up, her wand appearing in her hand from some secret compartment in the dress. 'What are you doing here?' she asked in a furious whisper.

'I'm sorry, forgive me,' he said, stopping a short distance from her at the foot of the steps. 'I had to come. I had to see you.'

'Why? We haven't spoken properly for years. It's my wedding day, Severus. I've other things on my mind!'

'But you were on your own,' he pointed out.

She gave an exasperated sigh. 'For ten seconds on my way back from the toilet. I wasn't expecting... I wasn't... what the hell are you doing here, Severus?'

'We used to be friends, best friends. Can't an old friend wish you well on your wedding day? You might have stopped caring about me, but I still care about you. I wanted to see you. I didn't know that you'd see me.' He let Felix guide his words, and began to move away. 'I'm sorry. I didn't come to cause trouble. I'll go.'

'Yes, you should,' she replied, 'I don't know why you came in the first place. Did you think you were going to stop me marrying James?'

'No, of course not. I just...' he trailed off, even Felix being unable to help him articulate what he was doing there.

'Well, you're too late - we're already married. Not that it would make a bit of difference if we weren't.' She shook her head. 'I don't understand you, Severus. You're part of an organisation that wants to kill me. That has tried to kill me. And you stand there saying you care about me.'

'I do!' He glanced around and lowered his voice. 'I do care about you.'

'Oh yes, that's right. I'm the exception that proves the rule. It's just my whole family, my husband, most of my friends that you want dead... so that's all right. And you don't even understand why it's so wrong! You come here... you come here...' Words failed her and she finished with a frustrated squeak.

'Listen, Lily. I'm not a bad guy. I'm not! I'm a Healer, I save people every day. That's real, it's not put on. I've even saved some of your Order. I don't know what I'm meant to do to make you like me again,' he finished with a sorrowful pout.

She drew a deep breath. 'That's the problem, Severus. You never needed to do anything to make me like you. I liked you all along. I liked the old Severus Snape. You were my best friend, Severus, and I really meant that. I told you and told you not to change, not to try and mimic them. But you never listened, you couldn't stop yourself. And bit by bit, that boy I knew slipped away. I watched him go, until the day I realised I was talking to just another pureblood elitist who'd do anything to get his own way in life.'

He gaped at her in silence, Felix telling him to let her have her say. She continued, 'Maybe there's still a trace of that old Severus Snape hidden someone deep inside you, trying to get out. But he can't compete with this persona you've created, this Half-Blood Prince. You've been pretending so long now, Severus, it's not pretending anymore, it is you. And I'm not sure that you can come back from that, even if you really wanted to. And you don't. You don't want to, do you? You just want me, as well as everything else you've got.'

It was like that time during the row outside Gryffindor tower that she'd accused him of wanting to join the Death Eaters. He couldn't move to deny it, even though he wanted to. Because he knew it was right. 'You don't just leave,' he said in a choked voice. 'You don't just walk away. No matter how much you want to.'

'Then you shouldn't have joined up in the first place, should you? I don't have any sympathy for you.' She moved away, then hesitated, apparently drawn back. 'No... actually that's wrong. I'm really sad for the Severus Snape that was my best friend. The boy that first told me I was a witch, and went on bike rides on the moors with me, and taught me to write with a quill. I'm desperately, desperately sad to see what's become of him. I look at you, knowing what you are, and I can't quite believe that you're the same person.' Suddenly her eyes were bright with tears. 'It's like he's dead, and you killed him. Sometimes I think, was it my fault, the way you turned out? Was there something I could have said or done to reach out to you, to save you from yourself?'

Tears choked him, and he felt his nose begin to run. 'Lily,' he said, in a gravelly voice. 'It wasn't your fault. You... you are the best thing that ever happened to me. Don't you ever, ever for one minute think that anything that went wrong in my life was your fault.' Cold lines ran down his checks now, chill in the wind.

She was crying too, though she put her hand up to her face to try and stop it. She opened her mouth to speak again, but Severus' luck had run out. He heard James Potter's voice, from somewhere within the church. 'Lily? Where are you?'

She half turned, her voice slightly higher than usual. 'I'm here! Just coming.' She shot Severus a very hard look, the meaning of which was clear. He melted back, crouching behind a particularly large decorative shrub. James Potter appeared behind Lily, his black hair as messy as ever beneath a top hat. In other circumstances Severus would have had a laugh at what a prat Potter looked, but he'd never felt less like laughing in his life than he did right then.

'What are you doing? Not running away are you?' he asked, his voice light and happy. It was the voice of a man who had never known the bitter disappointment or sheer despair that Severus had. He moved to kiss her neck, hands snaking round her waist. Severus, who hated witnessing any public displays of affection, for a moment wondered if it would be such a bad thing to kill Potter right there. One single killing curse, clean and simple. But he knew he couldn't.

'Just having a breather, it's a bit intense, isn't it? I don't think I've ever had my photograph taken so many times in the rest of my life put together!' She reached round in a practiced motion to rest her hand on his cheek.

'That's because you look beautiful.' They kissed, a lingering moment of lips on lips that made Severus nauseous. Why wasn't the damn Felix working properly? This was not how he defined good luck, being forced to witness Lily cavorting with his enemy. 'Come on, Mrs Potter,' said James, with a smile.

Lily slipped her hand into his and turned away from the doorway. But just for a second, she glanced back over her shoulder, before she was gone from view. Her expression was... what? He couldn't tell. Regretful? Pitying?

Severus sank down, head in his hands. He felt bits of bush prickly against his back, the knobbly grass underneath him. The Felix was still dizzying him. He remembered how he'd felt, so confident, so invincible. He couldn't understand why it hadn't worked out how he wanted it to. The stupid potion had been his last hope, it had let him down! Everything and everyone let him down! Even a good luck potion wasn't enough to negate the ill effects of being Severus Snape.

He stayed behind the shrub for a long time, until voices roused him. Black and Pettigrew, lurking outside for a quick smoke. Their laughter and jokes grated against his ears. He tried to disapparate and failed, guessed they'd put an anti-apparition jinx on the area, and was forced to crawl away and climb over a wall before he could vanish.

The flat was cool and quiet, mockingly so. In the kitchen he kicked over the copper cauldron, sending spots of golden Felix Felicis all over the kitchen. His whole body was shaking, with sobs and with that odd giddy feeling. He swept the crockery off the worksurface nearest him, and half-heartedly threw his wand across the room. Then he slumped, still shivering, against the wall.

He cried for a while, but he had an odd, disembodied feeling as he did so. He felt as though his heart was skipping every other beat, as though his lungs were too small to hold enough air. His thoughts raced feverishly through his brain. Random images of Lily, memories of their friendship, desperate plots to win her back. He envisaged killing Potter as he appeared behind Lily in the church, so clearly that for a few minutes he thought that that was what had really happened.

Felix had been his last hope. A part of him had still hoped it might be strong enough to make Lily dump Potter. But now he realised that no amount of luck was going to change things between Lily and him. It had gone too far for that. She was not going to give up on Potter, and she was not going to forgive Severus. Seeing this clearly for the first time, without the rosy tinge of disbelief, was such a bleak prospect that he groaned out loud as though in pain.

It was killing him, this love for Lily, this hopeless obsession. Nothing worked. Trying to forget her didn't work, trying to win her over didn't work. He was a wreck, a gibbering wreck thanks to her. He had to do something... but what? What? He sprawled on the cold stone floor of the kitchen, gazing unfocussed at the fireplace, when it occurred to him. There was a way to stop loving someone, he knew it. He'd read about it.

Tears suddenly gone, he was reeling towards the bookshelf, steading himself on furniture. He leafed through Moste Potente Potions, then discarded it. He went on to try The Potion Makers Companion, and finally found what he was looking for, near the back. The paper of the page was pristine and crisp, lacking the thumbprints and handwritten notes of most of his books. He'd never made this potion before, never even read the recipe. But it didn't matter! He was a potions genius, there was no way he could fail.

The feeling of giddy confidence was returning to him, as he retrieved the cauldron and washed it out without his usual care. He'd found a solution to his problem. He'd gone about everything the wrong the way, treating the symptom and not the cause. What a fool. It had taken Felix to make him realise this. Perhaps the unsatisfactory encounter with Lily was all part of it, an unpleasant but necessary way of making him realise the right thing to do. He was lucky after all.

He brewed the potion quickly, being less than meticulous in his measurements, throwing in ingredients and stirring casually. There was no doubt at all in his mind about his ability to make the potion perfectly first time, or that making it was the right thing to do. He counted down the hours whilst it brewed, unable to stay still. He paced around the flat, picking things up and putting them down again, pushing his hair back and forth off his shoulders. If only he could go and do one of Lucius' drilling exercises now! It would be ideal for working off this energy. He gave a loud 'ha!' at the thought of Lucius' face if he had been party to that last thought.

The last ingredient he obtained from his room, from an envelope he kept under several layers of enchantments. A single, copper coloured hair, purloined from the back of her chair one DADA lesson near the end of his final term at Hogwarts. He carefully cut it in half, and then shrugged and threw the whole thing in. Because once he'd drunk this, he wouldn't care about her any more. He wouldn't want to keep her stupid hair. It would be over.

Finally, the Hate Potion was ready. He took a goblet - he had repaired the damage of his earlier rampage - and filled it with the cloudy potion. 'Goodbye, Lily,' he said dramatically, before draining the drink in one go.

He waited, wondering how fast it worked. Would he experience a gradual disillusionment, or a sudden realisation of dislike? Did it simply wipe away those thought patterns, or did it work with the brain to alter them bit by bit? He hoped the former.

Now at last the Felix must be wearing off. He felt less giddy. The walking-on-air sensation was gone. In fact he felt heavy, lethargic. He sank to the floor beside the fire. His vision was fogging, his hearing turning tinny. Little by little, he slumped down to lying, and the last thing he saw before blackness descended was the bottom of his copper cauldron, gleaming in the dying embers of the fire.