Summary: SSHG, AU, Utterly shameless lack of plot. Lily has to come to some realisations about her place in the universe— and it wasn't what she thought it was.

Beta Love: No Beta, No love. GAH! Dragon found me again. How does she do that?

Warning: M for a reason, Canon-what-canon?, Lily is a (insert something non-flattering here)

The Choices We Make

A Short, Plotless Drabble

If I am to judge others, I should be subject to being judged.

You make your bed, you must lie in it.

Nigel Barker

"He's a monster, Hermione!"

"Don't be ridiculous, Lily. He's our friend."

"He's not our friend anymore. He's cursed."

"You think a curse makes him any less our friend? Less who he is?"

"It's what he is, Hermione," Lily insisted.

"And yet you are willing to stand by Remus? Date him? Crow about your numerous sexual exploits with him before you decided James was a better catch?"

"What?"

"He's a werewolf, Lily. That's cursed too. What's the difference?"

"What do you mean Remus is a werewolf?"

"Are you daft?" Hermione asked incredulously "Do you think he disappears on the full moons because he just happens to have a lunar allergy? That his mates just happen to disappear on the same nights and call themselves names that seem an awful lot like descriptive Animagus forms? Padfoot? Prongs? Wormtail?" Hermione glowered. " And Moony."

"Remus isn't a monster!" Lily protested.

"And neither is Severus!" Hermione retorted. "Our friend!"

Lily shook her head. "He's a Slytherin and a Dark wizard, Hermione. He's been dabbling in Dark magic since the very beginning. He hangs out with bloody Mulciber! And Avery!"

"They're in his house, Lily. What would have him do? Crawl into a hole and shun everyone but us? Paint a bloody target over his head?"

"YES!" Lily cried and then suddenly seemed to realise what she had just said.

Hermione's face puckered, resembling a certain feline Animagus'. "I won't give up on my friends, Lily. Not him and not you. I would like to think that whatever choices we make in our lives, we will still remember that we have always been friends. Is that not what friendship is?"

"Not when he keeps hanging out with unsavoury people like that!"

"But hanging out with bullies is perfectly okay?"

"I don't hang out with bullies!" Lily cried, her voice rising.

"I love you, Lily, I do," Hermione sighed. "We've been friends since we were little kids, but I will not abandon Severus just because he let a word slip out while he was being hung upside down by his ankles and had his pants pulled down in public. He was being humiliated and ridiculed. You were right to be angry, but not for this long. He apologised to you. He truly meant it. You pushed it right back in his face as if you've never been emotional over something and said something you didn't mean."

"Dark magic, Hermione!"

"And that curse you used on Marlene for looking in your diary wasn't?"

"I didn't mean to do that!"

"Didn't mean it or didn't mean for it to be permanent?"

Lily's face turned bright pink. "It's not the same thing!"

"Lily." Hermione's voice was quiet, barely audible. "Did you curse Severus when he called you that name?"

"What? NO!" Lily stumbled backwards. "Why would you say that?"

"It just seems awfully convenient that every time you get angry at someone, people in Hogwarts get cursed." Hermione looked grim. "I keep thinking I might be reading too much into it. That it was a coincidence, but every single time you've been upset— horrible things have happened to people. Physical things. Each time a little worse than before."

"You're wrong!" Lily said, but even as she did so, her hair seemed to come alive with her magic. Heat radiated from her body. Her eyes seemed to glow brighter green, her hair surreally red like the sky was on fire.

Hermione immediately put up a shield, but Lily's emotion powered whatever magical concoction she had unintentionally summoned. Tendrils of magic— bright red and green— lashed out viciously like spikes and impaled Hermione in the shoulders, chest, and abdomen.

"Hkkkk—" Hermione's brown eyes registered complete surprise as Lily's magic overpowered her shield and threw her hard into the ancient tree. Her head slammed into the bark of the tree, and her eyes seemed to glaze over. A slow trickle of blood escaped from the corner of her mouth.

"H—H—Hermione?!" Lily stammered, staggering backwards. She stared at her hands and tried to wipe them on herself as if to clean them.

The wind seemed to pick up, howling like a living thing as it rattled the trees and grass. The Forbidden Forest seemed to creak and moan like a wounded animal as Hermione's blood dripped ever faster upon the ground.

A low, malevolent chuckle reverberated through the moans of the wind and trees.

There was a hissing that came from deep below— the ground seemed to seep a smoky black mist that swirled and slithered around her ankles.

The low chuckle grew stronger, louder.

"Don't stop now, my beloved champion," the voice purred as a great serpent seemed to emerge from the very Earth. "Every petty little temper tantrum and selfish deed seeds the chaos I do so adore."

The serpent, who seemed like night made into form, tongue-flicked, and dark red particles spewed forth from its mouth like sparks from a fire.

"W-who are you?!" Lily cried, falling backwards onto her rear.

The serpent continued to chuckle. "Me? Oh, my dear child, I am all that is outside order. I am the great, deep Dark. I am the eternal foe of Re. I am the chaos. The tormentor. The enjoyer of— you. Ever since you drained all the magic from your sister in your— heh— jealousy. I have been so proud of your growing scorn and chaos. So content with your manipulations and feigned innocence." The serpent seemed to take a noisy breath caught in a laugh. "I am called by so many names. Some call me Apep. Others settle for Apophis. Some fear to call me anything at all."

"No, no, that's impossible!"

"Oh, don't be so coy, my dear," Apophis hissed. "You have been mine ever since you drew your first noisy breath. Your spawn have sown such wonder upon the future that even the distant past shudders in my wake. All because of you, my lovely. My champion. My best beloved. I shall set you upon the Night Throne, and we shall oppose Re at every rise of the accursed sun. You have already undergone the first changes. The Dark has incubated inside you like a fine, rare, ancient wine."

Apophis hiss-laughed. "Even now— it changes you. Consumes you from within. Hidden from even your own sight. How— glorious. Ahhh, my precious love. Come to my embrace. We shall paint the world in the unending blackness of our eternal Darkness."

"I would never join with the likes of you!" Lily squeaked in horror.

"Oh, my darling pet," Apophis chuckled. His serpent form seemed to squeeze in on itself, folding into another form. His form shifted from Remus to Sirius to Peter and then finally settled on James Potter. "We're already married, my love. My seed already grows within you."

"No! NO!" Lily cried. "This is impossible!"

"Shall I tell the world which position you like the best? Shall I— hrm— tell them of how you cried out in the height of your boneless bliss as I sealed our fates together in willing consummation? You were not saying no, then, my love. You were not even protesting. Quite the opposite, in fact. You swore to me that I was the only one for you."

"That wasn't you! That wasn't you!"

"Ah, my pet, it most definitely was—" He made his way nearer to her, his form shifting back and forth from Remus to James. He breathed upon her, and suddenly they were upon each other in all of their passion, the wind howling in triumph, their clothes disappearing, in the midst of heated copulation, unable to stop any more than one could stop the rain once it started to fall.

So enraptured with the other, they did not notice the black-robed figure of Severus Snape pulling down his hood to expose the bright sun-disc poised above his head. He pressed his mouth to Hermione's as a glittering sun-like radiance transferred from him to her. His hook-like nose shimmered as his entire face became that of a proud falcon, even as her head twisted and formed into that of a magnificent lioness.

Severus touched his sun-disc, and it instantly duplicated itself. He set the second upon Hermione's lion-head, and it glowed like the rising sun, gaining a radiance of its own as his own brightened.

The lioness' lips pulled back from glistening teeth as her muzzle twisted into a snarl. The lioness leapt upon the rutting demon of chaos and his mate, ripping and tearing as Severus pulled out a golden javelin constructed of pure sunlight. He slammed it into the bodies of Apophis and the transforming Lily, turning their bodies into writhing trails of smoke that fled screaming below the ground, chased by the rays of their sunlit discs.

Severus extended his arm to the lioness, and the snarl etched upon her muzzle relaxed as she joined his embrace.

"It is time for us to leave this place, my love," he said tenderly. "Our time here is finally over and done, and Ra demands our return."

Their forms shimmered as the form of Severus Snape enfolded Hermione Granger. He dipped his head to press a kiss to her lips, and she purred despite being in a human form.

Severus opened one palm to expose a glistening, gold and lapis lazuli scarab. It opened its wings and flew off into the light of morning.

"What of the war, my love?" Hermione asked.

"It will end as all things end," Severus answered. "Sooner, perhaps, since key players have been driven back into their unearthly forms. Apophis will always return, eventually."

"And we will be there to greet him in Ra's blessed name."

Severus smiled. "Always." He placed a lapis lazuli scarab ring upon her finger. "Shall we go, my beloved?"

Hermione leaned into his side as his arm went around her. She pressed her head against his line of buttons.

Their bodies shimmered with a golden radiance and then slowly rose and disappeared into the morning sun.

It was said that, on that very evening, Albus Dumbledore attempted to scry for the location of his most favoured Gryffindors, and was found the following morning, his blue eyes wide with horror, drooling and babbling nonsense about chaos and eternal damnation from his hiding place under his desk.

The war ended before it could truly begin, but no one knew it because no one living knew the future. Yet, it was said that on long, autumn nights, when the night was longer than the day, a Dark god eagerly pursued his flame-haired consort throughout the silent woods as they attempted to bring more children of damnation upon the Earth only to be driven back yet again by Ra's chosen.

And so it was, as it always had been.

Apophis rose in his glory to stop Ra's sun chariot only to be driven back each time that the radiant morning sun might continue to rise.

But night would always come, eventually.

In those times, Severus and Hermione were waiting.

Always.

Fin.

A/N: The Dragon and the Rose caught me again. Surprised? Not so much?

Anyway… have a short story. No really. It's actually short! (For me, anyway.) Hope you enjoyed it. Had to get it out of my brain so that other things could be written. Alas, I work again, so wish me the best in dodging Covid-19 while working out on the front lines. Be well, everyone.