
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/51186.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_Rowling
  Relationship:
      Severus/Lily_-_Relationship
  Character:
      Albus_Dumbledore, Lily_Evans, Severus_Snape
  Additional Tags:
      Exploration, Masturbation, offscreen_non-con
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-01-15 Words: 3279
****** Her Eyes ******
by Atra_Materia_(TheDarkMaterial)
Summary
     He hadn't had to ask the mirror to show him the fairest in the land.
     It knew who he wanted, and every year, it showed him a little more.
He'd found the mirror in his second year. At the time, it had been in Dungeon
Eight; covered with a musty blanket that revealed only its toes. Had the rat
not scurried beneath it, he might never have noticed it - but the rodent,
having skidded into the far side of the drape and panicked, began to thrash
about with such force that the cloth was dislodged.
The portion revealed was merely a sliver, but in the darkness of the down-
below, its radiance was undeniably unnatural. He let the rat go - forgot about
it, really - in favour of reaching for the curtain; a black moth drawn in by a
silver flame. Dust rose in choking puffs as the cloth, yanked away, collapsed
into puddles on the floor; motes that swirled in artificial moonlight, tendrils
that writhed around him and stretched toward him. When the clouds cleared, he
could see two sets of eyes in the mirror: His own, hollow pools of black, and a
pair so vibrantly green and close that their owner must have been right - over
- his shoulder. (When had she gotten there? How had she come up so silently
that he'd failed to notice?)
He jumped and whirled to face her, lips already shaping in words his head
hadn't yet figured out, but the dungeon - and the doorway - were empty. For a
long moment, he but stood where he was and stared hard at the shadows, willing
them to give up their secrets. When they refused, he turned back to the mirror.
He'd been twelve then, and the visions had been innocent. He knew where babies
came from - ("A Muggle book? For heaven's sake." "Well, what do you want to
give him, Eileen? Where_the_Wizard_Puts_His_Wand?") - but the process didn't
interest him. When Severus looked into Erised's Eye, it showed him only a boy
in black robes and a girl in a flowered dress; his hair clean and hers in
pigtails.
He hadn't understood it, and he hadn't thought much of it - in fact, once the
rat had reappeared, the mirror had fled his mind as swiftly as the rodent
originally had, and he'd gone to finish chasing down his homework (it was
Transfiguration, and it hadn't gone well). It wasn't until two weeks later that
he recalled what had occurred in the dungeons and resolved to go back for a
second look.
That day, the girl in the mirror had reached shyly for his hand. After that,
he'd crept down whenever he had the chance - he didn't want to miss classes for
it, of course, or risk trying to sneak out of Slytherin after curfew, and he
had to make time for Lily - the real Lily - as well. But during lunch and
dinner, and sometimes in the afternoons, he could slip away when no one was
looking and gaze unmissed into the glass.
                                      ***
When he was thirteen, she kissed him. It started the way it always did - half a
sandwich in his hand, which he'd finished somewhere along the way, and a series
of furtive glances over his shoulder to ensure that he wasn't being followed.
There were still crumbs on his fingers when he reached Dungeon Eight (and what
a relief that had been his first day back, to find that it hadn't been moved
over the summer), and when the Lily of Erised moved to twine her spindly digits
around his, he wiped them self-consciously against his robes as if it was
really him she'd be taking hold of. The girl in the mirror laughed, then, and
before he knew what was happening, leaned in to find his mouth with her own.
Their meeting was quick and clumsy, but Severus would swear later that he'd
really been able to feel it. Her. Afterward, his lips tingled.
                                      ***
Somewhere between the end of their third year and the beginning of their
fourth, Lily - 'blossomed', her mother had called it; he'd overheard her at the
park one day. ("Do you think it's a good idea to let her keep hanging around
with that odd little boy, now that she's becoming a woman?" "Oh, don't be
silly. They've practically grown up together - he might as well be her own
brother. I can't imagine he'd ever think of her that way.") To Severus, who'd
witnessed every change as it happened, the outcome of the metamorphosis was
nothing special - she was simply Lily, just as she'd always been. To the boys
who'd last seen her when her chest was flat and her hips devoid of sway,
though, she was suddenly Lily Evans, and would you look at the rack on her?
("Where'd she come from - what do you mean, she's been here for three years
already? I've never seen her before in my life!")
That was the year that Potter and Black first put their eyes on her. As she
walked through the Entrance Hall, James let out a wolf whistle that made her
stiffen, and Sirius - well, it didn't matter what Sirius had said; what
mattered was that it turned her crimson and quickened her pace. Severus could
have done any number of things in response to the insult - he could have
attacked the boys, though he'd never been much of a fighter and they
outnumbered him two to one, or he could have jinxed them, or he could have said
something insulting right back - but in the end, he settled for glaring
pointedly over his shoulder and sliding his arm around Lily's waist before
escorting her away. He settled on it for two reasons; one, because he really
did want to protect her, and two, because it gave him an excuse to feel her up
- no, out. Out. Feel her out.
She didn't shy away from the touch, but neither did she seem particularly
interested in encouraging his hands to roam. He was practically her brother;
they'd grown up together, and she just didn't think of him like that.
The Lily in the mirror, though - that Lily wore her robes a little tighter,
hooked their neck a little lower. That Lily smiled coyly and winked at him, and
when the Severus in the mirror put his arm around her, she leaned closer in
such a way that the robes slid off her shoulder. It was a white shoulder,
smooth and unblemished, and he could follow its line either toward her arm, or
in along her neck. If he chose the latter, it took him to the ridge of her
collarbone, and her collarbone to the dip of her throat, and the dip of her
throat to the soft swell of her breast. When his hands - because it was him in
the mirror, wasn't it? And if it was, then they were every bit as much his
hands as those that fidgeted in front of him - found their tentative way to her
chest, she laughed and laid her own gently beneath his wrists, and when he
fumbled with the clasps that held her clothes in place, she showed him how to
undo them.
She was naked to the waist, and the unbuttoned portion of her robes fell to
hang in soft folds around her hips. He could see to her navel and beyond; even
to the subtle shadow behind and just above the cloth. If his eyes travelled
down, her hips flared; if they travelled up - and admittedly, there was more to
see upward just then - her form curved in until it met her ribs. Above that, it
was reshaped further still by the just-budded breasts. Even in their sudden
abundance, they were girlish still; fresh, untouched, not yet distorted by time
and milk and the suckling mouths of babes. They were as pale as her shoulder -
paler, perhaps, for her shoulders had known the summer sun - each tipped with a
pink rosette. In later days, more jaded days, he would look back on the memory
and realize that her nipples had not been so perfectly round, that one of the
mounds was just slightly larger than the other - but at that moment, she was
flawless; a marble goddess rising from the midnight sea. Her hair was loose and
wild, red ribbons framing her face like a gift meant only for him, and her eyes
- god, her eyes. If he lived to be six hundred, he would never forget those
eyes. The green of spring; the promise of life.
He might have uttered her name, but her breast was in his mouth. He was
fourteen and knew nothing of foreplay; he only knew that he had to taste her -
had to take her, to take what she was offering him before she came to her
senses and took it away. She would forgive him, anyway; the Lily of the mirror
could forgive all sins just as could the Lily of the real world - the Lily who
defended Severus as Severus defended her; the Lily who would someday be as real
in his arms as this. This Lily tasted much as he imagined that one would;
faintly of soap and faintly of perfume. His own skin tasted of salt and the
snake scales he'd been scraping for Potions, but hers - hers was clean and
sweet. Pure.
The pink nub grew tight and hot under his tongue, and as her fingers crawled to
his shoulders, where they curled in and latched on hard, her back arched to
lift it all the more. She made no sound - she never did, for some reason; for
all the seeming realness of the mirror-dreams, that was one detail they lacked
- but her mouth was open in such a way as to suggest that she was gasping, or
moaning, or perhaps calling out his name. Somehow, even as his hands were on
her waist, they were in his robes; they had hold of his cock, and something
warm and wet was dribbling over his digits and to the floor.
The spell was abruptly broken. He stared in disgust at the tiny puddle that had
formed beside his shoe - it was on his robes, too, and he could tell that it
was going to dry to an all-too-visible white. The Lily of the mirror didn't
seem to mind, though; she only smiled and waved as he turned swiftly and slunk
away.
He couldn't meet the real Lily's eyes the first time he encountered her in the
halls after that - or the second - and even on the third, he was still
convinced that the flush of his normally-sallow skin would give it away.
Eventually, the shame lessened enough that he could carry on a conversation
again. He was doing as much for her as himself, after all; so that when she
finally came to him, he'd be ready.
                                      ***
Midway through his fifth year, she let the robes drop all the way. It was well
after midnight - he'd given up on trying to make it to and from the dungeons
(with a towel in his hands, no less) unnoticed, and besides, everyone was
sneaking out those days. Even the self-righteous snots from Gryffindor.
Actually, the Gryffindor lot was probably the worst about it - they all
believed that no one would ever suspect them of deliberately breaking the
rules, and took wild advantage of the fact.
The mere thought of James and his lackeys made Severus grit his teeth and go
tense, and the Lily of the mirror noticed that. White willow-branches, her arms
draped his neck and her lips turned to brush his ear. They moved with the same
silence as ever, but he knew what she was saying: He needed to relax, and she
knew just how to help. There were her shoulders, danced over by ringlets as
messy as they were artful, and there were her breasts - fuller, now; their
nipples more ruddy than baby's-room pink - and there - There was that thatch of
curls he'd only ever gotten a glimpse of before, doing as much to reveal what
lay behind as they did to conceal it. He understood then what Sirius had meant
when he'd once murmured, "Do you suppose the carpet matches the drapes?" as
Lily passed by; if Severus had grasped it at the time, he would have given
Black an eye to match his name and socked Potter similarly for sniggering in
reply. But with the Lily of Erised beside him, guiding his hand between her
thighs, it no longer mattered. He knew secrets they would only ever wonder
about.
His fingers had become as calloused as they were nimble, the victims of
slipping knives and caustic chemicals, and he feared that he might snag her
skin on them as a pair of silken stockings might be snagged and so torn - but
she had fought him hard to be first in their class, and knew herself what
became of an adept potion-maker's hands. Even had she not, she would have
forgiven him; she always did, always had. The roughened digits explored
gingerly the part of the cleft that crawled onto her torso; parted the delicate
folds and dipped down to find what else laid there. When they reached the nub
hidden at the apex of her thighs, she shuddered and her hips rocked forward; he
wound his other arm around her waist and pulled her in so that her back was
against him, and let its hand rise to seize her breast.
There was warmth and wetness between her legs, though the texture of the latter
was subtly different from his own emissions; it spread across her labia and
matted the scarlet curls. His thumb continued to stroke the swollen bud above,
and when she pressed pleadingly down against his hand, he at last allowed the
rest of his fingers to curl in and search for the hungry opening that he knew
was there - somewhere -
They found his prick easily enough, though, as they always did; tightening,
tugging, releasing. When he came this time, it would be into the towel; he
would fold it up and secret it away to the laundry inside his sleeve and no one
would be the wiser.
Six months later, he called Lily - the real Lily - a Mudblood, and after that,
there was no need to worry that he'd be found out anymore. There was nothing he
could do that would lower him any further in her eyes; nothing that could cause
her to turn away so quickly. So sickly.
He went to the mirror once more before the end of term. In it, Lily was on her
knees with her robes askew; her lips parted to speak unheard words. The Severus
of Erised had his cock out, and after Lily blessed him with her forgiveness,
she would probably bless that by taking it into her mouth.
It was what he wanted; the mirror would never have shown it otherwise. It was
also a dream, farther from reality than ever, and it meant nothing. The eyes
that had once been so brilliant were lifeless, empty; the silent words so
hollow as to echo off themselves, the sex as cheap as what he could have gotten
from a Muggle whore. That Lily might have forgiven him - would forgive him, as
she inevitably did - but Lily, the real Lily, would not. Always before, he had
believed what the mirror had shown - had held out hope for it to reflect in the
world beyond - but he knew then that it lied, and the knowledge left a bitter
taste in his mouth - something metallic and unclean; something as impure as the
blood that ran in them both.
On his way back to the Slytherin dormitories, he stopped to put the towel,
still folded, back in the linen room.
                                      ***
In the spring of his sixth year, he raped her.
She had refused to speak to him over the summer, going so far as to get up and
leave if she happened to see him headed her way. Eventually, she'd stopped
coming to the park altogether. He'd sent owls, and the owls had been sent back
with the letters still in their beaks. It was Lily, not pride, that had
prevented him from apologizing - and so, it became Lily who was at fault for
the rift between them. He had wanted to believe her as pure as any of the old
families, only to find her no better than what she was - a child of filthy
blood, of Muggle blood.
What did that make him?
He still wanted to believe her pure - perhaps for his sake as much as hers. In
the darkest recesses of his mind, he still did. But the rift was a raw wound,
and it festered, and when he returned to Hogwart's to see her laughing with the
Gryffindor girls and turning her face from him, it was as if salt had been
rubbed into it all over again.
When he stood before the mirror, it was night both outside the walls and in the
glass, and the green eyes of Erised's Lily were wide with terror.
                                      ***
He was seventeen when he looked into the mirror for the last time. Its silver
sky was darkened by the clouds of a coming storm, and the ground below moist
with some glistening fluid. He knew the scent it would have had, could he in
fact have smelled it; it would have been cloying and metallic. There was a
figure at his feet - a man, half-stripped and still, his skin rent by countless
seeping gashes - and at his side, there was Lily; blood staining the hem of her
white robes. Her eyes were greener than he'd ever seen them: Vivid and vicious;
so intense they seemed to belong to something that was not human. Beautiful and
monstrous all at once; a Lily who delighted in the jealousy she roused in
Severus and who reflected it right back at him. The Lily that could have been,
should have been; a Lily who would have remained offended by Potter's advances
and continued to reject them.
He groaned and half-bowed his head, letting it rest against the mirror as he
fumbled to find the opening in his robes. His shaft was already engorged and
aching, and when his fingers brushed it, it leapt as if touched by Lily
herself. He lifted his eyes, intending to steal another glance at the woman who
had loved him, denied him, tormented him -
There were three pairs of eyes in the glass, and the third - as blue as a
summer sky - overlaid Lily's in a way that they could not had they been part of
the scene themselves.
"I think," Dumbledore said quietly, "that it may be time to move the mirror,
before another soul is lost to it."
Severus said nothing for a time. Bitterness warred with self-preservation; one
wheedling with him to snap back that he was already lost and had been for some
time, the other prompting him to hold his tongue. In the end, it was shame that
won out; he only nodded numbly and pushed away from the mirror, withdrawing his
hand as surreptitiously as possible from his robes.
In the doorway, he paused to gaze a final time into Erised's Eye. The glass,
though it gleamed with the same silver sheen he'd seen from under the curtain
that first night, was empty, and he found himself wondering if it had always
been so. Lily was not there, certainly; or at least, not his Lily.
His forearm itched, and he reached absently into his sleeve to scratch it.
There was a siren's whisper in his head; the call he'd never been able to hear
in the mirror.
It was time to answer it.
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