There lay an invincible summer

by: Faithful Wheezy

Severus Snape sits on a swing the day after Lily's death. One shot.

Ironic that I'm posting this at the end of my summer. Anyway, there is quite a bit of flower symbolism in the story which adds quite a lot more to the experience if you can catch it.

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling created them, I messed with them.

-x-

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

-x-

Severus Snape had never felt such beautiful weather before. The sunshine seemed to be everywhere without glaring in his eyes, the sky was the deepest shade of blue, and the temperature was even complying with his hair. It was a miracle.

It was awful.

In a way, Snape thought, it made more sense this way. It seemed like every little thing in his life was going out of its way to defy him. Take, for instance, this weather. Considering that nothing was going his way, it was completely appropriate that the weather would be perfect the day after Lily died.

Snape buried his face in his hands, blocking his eyes from the sickening beauty that surrounded him and his heart from the emotions he knew he'd inevitably have to face later.

Lily Evans had died last night.

To him, Lily would always be the ten-year-old girl from the village he used to watch all those years ago—so young, so free.

So alive.

He refused to think of her with her new, wretched surname. A surge of hatred burst unbidden, heating his chest. Potter. Potter had the gall to marry her, but he wasn't strong enough to protect her.

He didn't know what to think; he didn't know what to feel. So much was raging through his head that all he wanted to do was Apparate to the nearest pub, spend the rest of his gold on all the Firewhisky he could get his hands on, drown in alcohol, and die a puny death lowly death traitors like him deserved to die.

Guilt. He knew he shouldn't have eavesdropped on Dumbledore in Trelawney at the Hog's Head. He didn't know what had possessed him. It was all his fault, really, that Lily was growing cold; a lifeless body, most likely being prepared for burial by the hands of people who couldn't possible treat her as well as he could have…

Indecision. Potter should have saved her! Shouldn't he have?

A throbbing sensation began to pound somewhere on the top of his head.

If Potter had saved her, however, it would mean that the Dark Lord would have been thwarted. The Dark Lord, with his notions of power, who promised that he, Severus, would have a good life at last—a life he deserved after years of abuse from his parents, from his peers… but was that life a worthy repayment for Lily's death?

It didn't matter anyway. The Dark Lord was gone.

The Dark Lord was gone, which meant that everything… everything he ever worked for, and everything he had lost, had been done in vain.

Remorse. All his fault, all his fault. It took everything he had not to cry her name out loud from where he sat.

Finally, the throbbing sensation in his head receded into a dull pain that he could bear, and he finally opened his eyes to take in his surroundings.

He was sitting on a swing.

He knew how bizarre his appearance was: a man in his early twenties, wearing an ebony cloak and a murderous expression, sitting on a blue swing. But he didn't care.

It was in this very park, on this very swing, that Lily had played on the very first time he had plucked up the courage to talk to her. He could have watched her for ages. On this swing, she soared higher than the strongest bird, her hair rushing around her head like a halo made of fire. He watched as she soared ever higher.

He had watched her before, wondering when it would be best to make his appearance known. From the way she acted, his ten-year-old self knew that she was smart and kind; he took a liking to her instantly the moment he saw her perform her first bit of accidental magic.

But the first time he ever felt butterflies in his stomach was the very day he spoke to her for the first time, watching her face as she swung, for the expression on her face was one of pure elation: elation, and bravery.

She wasn't scared at all, even though she was swinging much higher than a little girl should. Any higher, Snape had thought, and she could have swung right over the bars and done a complete circle.

And when she jumped off, suspended in the air, Snape had decided he should be just as brave as her: and so, he spoke to her.

Without thinking about it, Snape pushed off the ground, and he began to swing.

Higher and higher he went. Snape closed his eyes and allowed the slight falling sensation to take him completely. If the swing took him by enough surprise, he could almost feel the butterflies he felt whenever he was with Lily…

The cold air rushed into his face, clearing his thoughts a little. He was angry with everything and elated with everything, all at once. What did he feel?

He pressed his eyes shut so tightly that colors began flashing on the back of his eyelids. Orange, then yellow, then green, green, green…

Still higher he swung; without the use of eyesight, his ears had taken over, and the sound of creaking chains was nearly deafening. He could hear the blood pounding in his head, and the sound of a whimper from down the street.

A whimper.

Snape looked at the red-haired girl sitting across him. "Lily?" he asked, not knowing whether to stand up or stay where he was. "Er… what's wrong?"

Lily made another small whimper in the back of her throat, drawing her knees up to her chest. Snape just watched her; he knew it was best to wait.

Sure enough, after a few moments, Lily looked at him. "I've never… I mean," she said, struggling with her words for the first time since Snape had ever known her. "This entire world that I'm going into. Magic. We'll be going to Hogwarts in a few days! It's all… so new to me."

"And?" Snape prompted. He didn't understand at the time.

"And," Lily said, "I'm scared."

Snape bit his lip and looked quickly around the grove for something, because by the sound of Lily's breathing, he knew she was going to start crying quite soon.

Finally, he laid his eyes on a cluster of flowers in the distance, and in a matter of seconds he picked them and was holding them in a tremulous outstretched hand to Lily. "I know these aren't lilies," he said nervously, "but—"

Lily laughed a watery laugh. "Daffodils," she said, taking them. "Thanks, Sev. I'll keep them forever."

"You promise?"

Lily smiled. "I promise."

At the time, Snape had wondered how Lily Evans could have been scared of anything, especially when it came to the world of magic. To him, the magical world was his escape from the awful realities of the Muggle world he had been trapped in at the time. With every insult Tobias had spat at him, every slap and every shove he had ever endured at the hands of that Muggle he was forced to call his father, Snape knew there was a way out. Why would Lily be afraid of such a wonderful place? He had seen her Muggle sister, Petunia. Every time he saw her, she wore an ugly expression not dissimilar to his father's. All Muggles are the same, he'd told himself.

But now, Snape thought, as he pushed the swing ever higher, perhaps Lily would have been safer in the Muggle world. Better to stay mediocre forever, then to be dead. Better to have never met Potter than to marry him and become entangled in a prophecy that sealed her future. Or rather, the lack of it.

Better that she had never met Snape at all.

Creak, cr-reaaak, went the swing, as Snape swung on. He could hear someone crying.

How he wished he could sort out his emotions! He wished he could understand his heart, if he had one at all.

If Lily had chosen him instead, she would probably still be alive now. Wouldn't she? Would it have made any difference to Lord Voldemort if he loved her or not? He knew he made her smile, but her smile always seemed that much wider when she was with Potter. And he had never called her a Mudblood. He cringed at the memory. Did she ever completely forgive him?

Perhaps… it was better for her to die happy with Potter, than to live for a mediocre forever with him. Potter had money, charm, and talent. He could give her anything, everything. What could he, Snape, have offered her, anyway?

Apparently, nothing but betrayal.

Suddenly, his chest constricted, and Snape automatically took a hand away from the swing's chains to press against his heart. The movement caused him to slip a fraction off the swing, and for a moment, he was certain he would fall.

His hand wildly seized air for a few seconds before finally grasping the swing's chains, and he immediately felt foolish. Lily would have surely laughed had she seen such a display.

The thought that Lily would never see a new day hit Snape as if Hagrid had just fallen onto him from the top of the North Tower. Up until that point, he had numbed himself from all thoughts of his Lily, unresponsive and pale, but now it was the only image he could see of her.

He panicked and tried to bring the memory of her in the park back, but it was too late—reality laid its icy fingers on his neck, and far too early for his liking. She had only died last night, for Merlin's sake! She died last night, all because of him. She was gone forever, and nothing he could do would repair the damage he had done.

Angry now, Snape kicked off the ground hard, and he swung higher than he had before. His robes billowed about him, and he tried to concentrate on the loud, ruffling noise his cloak made in the wind as if hoping the sound would drown out his horrible revelation that Lily was never coming back. It wasn't working.

There had to be a way to fix things. Snape's mind raced as he ran over the possibilities. He could acquire a Time-Turner and go back in time! He could stop his past-self from hearing the prophecy, or at least, intercept his past-self from relaying the information to Lord Voldemort.

But no. Snape reflected on how his past-self might react. His past-self would just think that someone from the Order of the Phoenix had taken Polyjuice Potion to take his appearance and kill him instantly. Time travel was risky business. An effective form of suicide, Snape mused, but it would do nothing for Lily at all. He had to fix things. He had to.

He closed his eyes and leaned back on the swing, letting the swing be in control. Blood rushed to his head, and he felt dizzy with it all. Suddenly, he knew what he had to do, but he didn't want to do it. He wasn't even sure if he could. He understood what he felt.

He felt scared.

As a tear made its way down his cheek, he realized that the sound of crying he heard earlier was his own. He was scared of how people would react to the plan he was forming in his head, scared of ever trusting anyone again, scared of love, but most of all, he was scared of living without Lily.

But he remembered Lily's face, the first day he talked to her—full of elation, full of bravery, like nothing could stop her; and just like that day, more than a decade ago, Snape decided he should be just as brave as she was.

As the swing reached its highest point, Snape made a decision, and with a final kick he leapt off of the swing.

Time seemed to move slowly as he soared through the air; he thought of Lily, his phoenix, his doe, the way her fiery red hair would envelope her, and the way she would reach the ground as softly as if she had been tiptoeing.

However, his own landing was far from graceful. With a thud and a curse, Snape sat up, shaking cedar leaves out of his hair.

"Why does this place have so many bloody flowers?" Snape muttered angrily to himself, gingerly picking his way out of a hyacinth bush. Purple and yellow flowers snagged onto his robes, and after shaking them vigorously in vain, Snape gave it up as a bad job and left the flowers adorning his cloak. He figured he looked so ridiculous already that it didn't matter. Nothing was going his way anyway.

Snape looked around the park, finding, to his reluctant astonishment, that he could name many of them as a result of being around Pomona Sprout far too much for his liking. He spotted a shockingly orange flower he recognized as a marigold, as his mother used to plant them near the front door before his father trampled them down.

Making his mind up on the spot Snape reached down and picked a variety of different flowers, as he had done only once before. China aster, daisies, cyclamen, white heather, daisies, a purple hyacinth from the bush he landed in, Sprout would be proud… everything he could get his hands on.

And, just like more than a decade before, Snape couldn't help but notice that there were no lilies.

Snape swallowed uncomfortably, trying to eradicate the thought from his mind and made to leave, when he saw a flash of red in the corner of his eye. His heart leapt into his throat, and for a moment, he thought it was Lily's hair: that she wasn't dead at all, that Voldemort had merely killed Harry's babysitter last night, mistaking her for Lily. Of course that was it—

But no. The red Snape had seen came from a camellia swaying gently in the breeze; a shade of red nearly as beautiful as Lily's. He stepped towards it and picked it, stroking its petals tenderly. Then, making up his mind for the third time that day, he clenched his fist and turned stiffly around.

He had two people to see and seven flowers in his hand.

First, he would see Dumbledore. His mind was set. He no longer cared of what people would think, or the agony that he'd be facing. It was all for her.

As were the flowers. Right after Dumbledore, he was going straight to see Lily. It wouldn't take long for her burial spot to be completed—he had heard people whispering about the preparations in the streets that morning. People were no longer afraid to work and be outside as Voldemort was gone. Lily would be laid to rest, and he would see her.

He would see her, and although he wouldn't be able to hear her watery laugh or see her smile, he knew she would say, "Thanks, Sev. I'll keep them forever."

And with Lily's promise warming his heart, Snape Disapparated, leaving the lonely swing creaking back and forth in the park.

finite

Flower symbolism:

-A daffodil symbolizes unrequited love; "the sun is always shining when I'm with you"
-A purple hyacinth: "forgive me," sorrow
-Yellow hyacinths stand for jealousy—his jealousy of James Potter
-Marigolds stand for cruelty, grief, and jealousy; cruelty at the hands of his father, Tobias Snape, and the grief of his mother
-A cedar leaf: "I live for thee"—Lily is now his sole purpose of living; all his actions lead to her
-China aster: Jealousy and after-thought (the after-thought being his protection of Harry)
-A daisy stands for loyal and never-ending love
-White heather symbolizes protection from danger (see china aster)
-A cyclamen symbolizes resignation, and goodbye
-A red camellia: "You're a flame in my heart."
-Please review.