…Drugs can change the entire course of your life.

Their seventh year begins, and Lily turns down James Potter for the final time.

She also turns down Sirius Black.

Shocker.

Dumbledore calls Severus to his office one fine fall day.

"My dear boy… have you ever heard of an organization called the Order of the Phoenix?"

Severus hasn't, but he's willing to bet Lily has.

(He dresses up as a mad Muggle scientist for Halloween, but he draws the line at altering his hair in any way, shape, or form.)

(Naturally, Black curses it gray and full of static anyhow. Lily kisses the urge for retaliation right out of him.)

It becomes apparent sometime around Yuletide that Lily Evans is still a target… as is James Potter. And Sirius Black.

And Severus Snape.

Severus takes a deep breath and approaches young Regulus Black.

"I have a proposition for you."

It is New Years' Eve, and Lily is his, and in his humble opinion, making love at midnight is far better than a drunken, public kiss.

On Valentine's Day, Severus is enjoying a nice cup of tea in Hogsmeade with the love of his life when screaming sounds from outside.

Severus stiffens and Lily's eyes widen across from him. Before he can stop her, she rushes outside, wand drawn. (Ruddy Gryffindor.)

He watches as she saves three first years and two third years by propelling them into the waiting doorway of Madam Puddifoot's. In almost the same movement, she whirls and curses who he thinks to be Abraxus Malfoy in Death Eater's robes within an inch of his life.

Severus is busy in a three-on-one duel when he feels more than hears Lily's anguished cry behind him. He whirls, duel forgotten, to see her lying in the snow, red streaks of hair flying away from her head.

When she lands on the ground, she is entirely limp. Black's cousin is about to end her. He is too far away to intervene.

He prays the three he had been dueling make it quick. He refuses to endure an existence without her.

Instead, Sirius Black himself runs headlong and swiftly intercepts the curse.

James Potter and Remus Lupin engage those he himself had been dueling.

Severus sprints to Lily, and does not thank the Marauders as he Apparates them both to Saint Mungo's.

If she lives, then perhaps he'll be civil.

"In short, Ms. Evans, you're incredibly lucky to be alive. It's unthinkable that you're still able to bear children… but we can find no trace of any lingering curse effects in that area."

Severus had sat through hellacious hours of healing, head in his hands. He had been solely focused on her life. It had never occurred to him that the angle she had been hit might have had lingering consequences.

To his great irritation, his eyes fill with tears and his throat aches.

Lily looks at him, green eyes almost gray in the stark white of the hospital, and says very forcefully, "I don't care what you say, Severus Tobias Snape. If we have a child, Sirius Black is to be named godfather."

(Severus vows then and there to end the life of Bellatrix Black.)

Lily loses her parents in March, not to a Death Eater raid or even anything magical. She loses them to a car accident.

Petunia corners her at the funeral, livid and sure she and her "freakish people" had something to do with it.

"To me, you died in that car as well. I never want to see you or yours again!" (A wraith.)

When Severus gets Lily back to the castle, there is something harder (jagged like the tones in her sister's voice) in her that scares him.

They graduate Hogwarts with honors in different subjects.

That night, Severus proposes. (Oh Severus. Oh yes.)

The next day, Lily Evans, Severus Snape, and the Marauders are formally inducted into the Order of the Phoenix.

"Severus?"

"Hm?"

"Do you like my name?"

"Of course I do, Lily love."

"No, I mean, do you like… the theme of my name."

"What in the world-"

"I like the name Amaryllis Eileen." Lily says this in a rush, as though she's not quite certain she should be saying it at all.

Severus looks up sharply. And then he grins. "It's a far sight better than Harry. That's what Potter is wanting to name his and Dorcas's brat."

To Severus's great astonishment, Sirius Black is named godfather of both Amaryllis Snape and Harry Potter. At once.

Because they are born on precisely the same day.

When Severus encounters Frank Longbottom in the cafeteria, he barely refrains from hexing someone.

There is a prophecy, and there is a traitor.

Severus knows it is Pettigrew right away. The imbecile's mental barriers are non-existent.

He only barely prevents Black from being sent to Azkaban for killing the cowardly rat. In the end, they turn Pettigrew over to the Dementors.

Severus tells himself it's because Amaryllis doesn't deserve to have a convict for a godfather.

Lily only gives him a knowing wink, and an extra kiss in the morning.

Sirius Black shows up at three in the morning on the first of November. (They are supposed to be sleeping. That is one of the two things three a.m. is for.)

In his arms is tiny Harry Potter. He is screeching and rubbing at a lightning shaped cut on his forehead.

Lily takes one look at the baby and bursts into tears. (She has a cut the shape of a crescent moon on her forehead that will undoubtedly leave a Dark scar.)

"It wasn't enough. Moving them after Peter wasn't enough. What do I do now?" Black is practically begging, crying himself, and Severus realizes he is looking at him.

Severus sighs heavily. "You come in, Black. You cast a Silencing charm so Harry does not wake Amaryllis. And then you inform Lupin, and we figure out the babysitting schedule."

Lily looks at the tiny boy, and feels a strange pull somewhere deep in her gut. As though somewhere or some-when else, she lost something and can't recall what precisely it was.

Severus looks at Lily, and feels the same.

The year before Amaryllis Snape, Harry Potter, and Neville Longbottom are to start Hogwarts, Severus is conveniently hired as the Potions Master.

Lily sighs, and pretends it is in exasperation rather than relief.

Amaryllis begins writing of a boy named Draco. And then a boy named Blaise. And then, most frequently and therefore worst of all, a Gryffindor boy named Ronald.

Severus is starting his third Firewhiskey when Lily intervenes.

"Severus Snape! Stop it this instant. She is perfectly entitled to explore her own feelings!"

"Lily Hope Snape, never say that again in my presence!"

"Oh, you ornery man. Look what I found."

And Lily pulls out a faded photo album with moving photographs of sequined dresses and ghastly orange shirts.

And Severus sighs. "Well. At least she developed my bias for redheads."

The Dark Lord returns.

Amaryllis stands by Harry through it all.

And Severus wonders whether or not this is karma.

The Dark Lord falls.

Lily, his Lily, is standing next to him 'til the very end, scratched and bloody and bruised, but so much luckier than most and they watch the boy they have come to regard as a son win a war.

And next to him, their daughter.

After, when it is all over, Lily turns to him, exhausted and exuberant all at once. "Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we hadn't-"

"No," Severus says. (Even though sometimes, with Lily in their kitchen and in their living room and in the passenger seat of a shared car and his office and his entire life, with her blood and his blood and her eyes and his mouth on one perfect being, he wonders if this is not some delightful, bizarre illusion.)

Lily smiles. (Sometimes she looks at the pet shop in Diagon Alley, wondering if that piece of her got swept up with the glass all those years ago, or if James recognized it for what it was, picked it up, put it in his son for her to find. Sometimes Lily looks at the pictures and sees the boy that called her a Mudblood and icy terror fills her very being because it would have been so easy to have never spoken to him again, and then and then and then- but no matter now. No matter. She has always been Severus's. This is the way things were meant to end. She knows it in the core of who she is. Special. It's real. All is well.)

"I don't either," she says.

When Severus and Lily's first grandchild is born, he sits in silence for quite some time in the waiting room, glaring at the nervous and pacing father.

"Honestly, be still. This is why you were kicked out of the delivery room in the first place-"

"The baby is here!" Lily runs down the hall, hair still impossibly red, eyes still impossibly green.

Severus feels as though he might faint. He hasn't the foggiest clue why.

"Severus?" Her hands are on his face, fingers in his hair, and her lips comfortingly against his skin. "Oh, Severus."

He holds his granddaughter, and the tiny thing stubbornly refuses to open her eyes. He is curious, dying to know.

"Look at me," he murmurs. Willing.

And there.

There are her eyes.

(When he cries, the tears are more like memories.)