"Just leave me alone."

"I will not leave you alone, Severus Snape!" she shouted, her fists balled and her face crimson with frustration. "This isn't you! You're better than this!"

Severus had become bored with her insistent nagging. For nearly an hour, he had explained to her why he was reading the book she found in his schoolbag, and for nearly an hour, she had yelled at him for it.

"If you care so much, how about you tell your little Gryffindor friends to stop following me about the grounds. I wouldn't need to learn these spells if it weren't for them."

"You can defend yourself other ways," Lily argued, folding her arms across her chest, "like we learned in Defense Against the Dark Arts. You know, the class that teaches us that this type of magic is bad."

"Do you honestly think I haven't tried that?"

"I think that if you have and it's not working, it's time to go to a professor!"

He sighed. The only girl he ever loved would never understand him, and sometimes, that fact was too sobering to handle. He was Snivellus, the strange Slytherin boy with greasy hair that followed the beautiful redheaded Gryffindor far too often for their classmates' liking. She was attractive, popular, intelligent—everything that a girl could ever hope to be, and worst of all, she didn't even realize it.

"Do you have any idea how much worse it is if they get detention because I told a professor?" he asked, quietly. "Whenever I land in the hospital wing, it's because I did just that, so I'd appreciate it if you would excuse me for deciding that's not in my best interest."

Her face fell. "Severus, I didn't know—"

"Well, now you do. With that embarrassing admission out of the way, can you please just leave me alone?"

Lily chewed on her lip for a moment, studying him as she so often did. The empty classroom held more of their secrets than she would ever tell the rest of the world, and maybe that was what infuriated Severus the most. He hated arguing with her, but arguing with her in the one place that was supposed to be their safe haven? That was agonizing.

"Books like that have a lot of propaganda, you know, about people like me."

"Muggle-borns, you mean."

"Yes." She blinked back tears that were suddenly threatening to fall from her glossy green eyes. "Muggle-borns."

Severus frowned. "I don't care that you're Muggle-born—and I never will. It's just a book."

"Can you promise me that?"

"I promise."

"And those spells—you can't use them. Promise me you won't."

Severus drew in a deep breath. "If Potter—"

"I don't care what Potter does!" she shrieked, her watery smile suddenly gone. "The spells in that book are atrocious and you are far too good to be slinging them about just because James Potter calls you some names!"

"It's magic, Lily. Like everything we've learned here at Hogwarts, it's magic. No better, no worse."

"You really don't get it, do you? Dark magic consumes you, Severus! It takes every bit of light and goodness in you and it molds it into something evil! That is why it's forbidden. It's not meant to defend yourself! It's meant to hurt others, and in the process, it will hurt you too."

Severus narrowed his eyes. "Will it hurt me worse than you did? When Black asked you if we were an item and you said that we weren't?"

"I said we're not because we're not, Severus!"

He stared at her. It was the first time she denied it in their safe haven—the one place they were allowed to be honest with each other, with themselves. Perhaps before it wasn't the truth, but this time, it was.

"I see."

"Severus, I—"

"You said all you had to say, Lily. Now, if you don't mind, I would really rather be alone right now."

And with that, he opened the book.

This is a quick work for the HPFC Rubik's Cube Challenge. I'm working on solving the White side. The concept was "Just leave me alone".