Lily stared into the picture he had given him, lively eyes scanning its movement. The Bulgarian Quidditch team soared, triumphant, through a cheering mass of fans. "They move?" She asked, as if she couldn't really believe it.

"Yeah," Severus stuttered, a crooked grin creeping over his features. "Yeah, they do." Pressing a strand of hair behind one grimy ear, he stuck his hands into his pockets. Glancing nervously from a tree to the ground to his shoes, he shrugged.

"Do they all?" She whispered, finally tearing herself away from the colorful scene.

"Y-yeah," he managed, gaze wandering up into her eyes. Wincing instinctively, he shook a little bit as he held her gaze. He forgot to move; he forgot to breathe.

Lily held the picture out to him, smiling a bit reluctantly. She finally held it out to him. "Thanks." She looked stunning in her green dress and he wished for a moment that he looked stunning too.

But Severus wasn't quite sure how to achieve such an impossible feat, so he merely shook his head, afraid to touch any part of her precious body. "You can keep it." His voice sounded dry and scratchy. Nervousness was working its way from his chest into his mouth. He shuddered as an anxious chill slid up his spine.

Her eyes lit up and she broke his gaze, fingers pushing at the picture, turning it over and running over its shiny surface.

"Oi!" the Keeper yelled, waving a hand grumpily in the direction of the sky. "Stop that!" His tiny face frowned up at her.

"Oh my," she gasped, attempting to keep a hold of the picture without barely touching it. "They talk?"

Snape couldn't help but giggle, hiding his face behind long black locks. "The more expensive ones do." He hadn't really realized it, but it had come out proud.

Eyeing him, she said, "Oh really?" Something in her tone wasn't right.

"Uhhh…it was just a fact. I mean, uh, not all of them…that talk…are." It came out wrong and he knew that nearly everything he said came out wrong. Backing up, he shuffled his feet and winced, afraid of her displeasure more than his father's angry hand.

Her eyes softened slightly. "Oh." A cheerful look showered her face with beauty, and he let out an involuntary intake of breath.

"When…we go to Hogwarts…we should go sit in the Slytherin stands together," he said, awkward and unsure. The ground looked dry, and despite the fact that the grass was still green, Autumn was coming.

"Okay," Lily agreed, sliding the picture into one of the large pockets in her dress. "Does it matter what house you are in?"

Snape's chest lit up, an unfamiliar feeling in his drab world. He ignored her last question: hanging onto this beautiful emotion was important.

She blinked at him. He ran his dirty hands over his too-short pants.

Glancing at his watch, he noticed with a skip of that oh-so-familiar dread that his father's hand was set to "home." "I have to go!" His voice was louder than it had been throughout their entire conversation. Scuttling back into the woods, he still felt a hint of elation, overlapping and mingling with the darker feelings that plagued him.

"I'll…I'll see you at…at the…the platform!" she called back, obviously unsure of how the train worked.

"Okay, okay," he mumbled, realizing too late that she probably couldn't hear him. In the back of his mind he saw a mentally constructed stand, colorful and bright, and Lily and him sitting together, laughing.

The Slytherin colors flew high, green and silver flapping merrily together in the wind.