My Immortal

Author's Note: I had to write this after reading Deathly Hallows. The title comes from the Evanescence song. It came up on my iPod today when I was on the bus and I knew it was Snape. Just knew it. Specifically the line about her presence not leaving him alone. Snape is a haunted man.

Dumbledore: "After all this time?"

Snape: "Always."

Harry Potter is not the only one that visits the Mirror of Erised. Severus Snape goes every day, in the hours just before dawn. He leaves the classroom the Mirror resides in and goes straight to the Great Hall for breakfast, as though Lily had really been there. Like in the old days when they would meet before breakfast.

He doesn't touch the surface of the Mirror. It's too smooth and cold and hard. Lily was more than an image trapped beneath glass. Something about seeing her there, untouchable, confirms the fact that she is dead even more than the intervening years. There is no hope in the image. What the Mirror offers is not a maybe. It is taunting him.

He sits in front of the Mirror. Cross-legged, like a boy. Watching her smile at him.

Some nights he is at her side, arm about her waist as he had never dared when she was alive. Those images are infrequent, as though the Mirror senses his despair at his own cowardice.

Dumbledore knows he visits. Snape is certain of that. The Headmaster mentions Potter's visits and wonders aloud what the boy sees.

"His parents, I suppose. What boy of that age, having never known them, could see anything else?"

Dumbledore gives him a searching look and Snape wants to cower away, not to meet that bright blue gaze. But he stands up straight and meets Dumbledore's eyes. He has nothing to be ashamed of – he is proud of his loyalty. It is one thing that no one can condemn him for.

"I will speak to him tonight I think," Dumbledore muses. "Men can waste away before that Mirror, wondering."

Snape answers before he processes the words.

"You don't need a Mirror for that."

The End.