This is to be a multi-chapter story of Snape's life, from the time he began teaching at Hogwarts to the time of his death. Snape's point-of-view, focusing primarily on his feelings for Lily, but also on Harry. Flashes back often to his childhood. Not a lot of action so much as it is a character study, my perception of the most elusive, ambiguous, and enigmatic character in the Harry Potter universe.

This story will be about twenty chapters long, perhaps more, and each chapter will be a thousand pages at minimum. I plan to update at least once a week. This is my first Harry Potterverse story. I hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I of course am not JK Rowling and do not own these characters, make no money from writing about them, et cetera.

Prologue

"Hey, Sev?"

"Yes?" Severus looked up from his Potions book and mustered a frown at the familiar mischief in Lily's smile, though an unfamiliar blush almost obscured the freckles on her cheeks.

"What is it?" Severus asked tersely, narrowing his eyes with suspicion. Lily's blush deepened further.

"Oh, nothing," she replied, glancing down at the ground and plucking a few blades of grass with her dainty, ink-smudged fingers. Severus noted abstractedly (and not for the first time) that the grass was nearly identical in color to her eyes, which at the moment were partly shadowed by her foxish eyelashes. He'd always heard that redheads made the most powerful witches, and now he knew this was true.

"I doubt that it's 'nothing'," Severus observed, turning to his book again and scratching a note onto the margin of the page with his quill. "Surely 'nothing' wouldn't cause you to blush like that."

"Am I blushing?" Lily giggled, and out of the corner of his eye Severus saw her bring her palm up to her mouth to hide her bright smile. He smiled too, behind the protective curtain of his hair.

"Are you about to tell me that you fancy someone?" Severus asked, and try as he might to keep his tone neutral, the very words caused a hot rage to well up in his throat. "For I can see no other reason why you should manage such an un-Evanslike bashfulness."

"I'm not being 'bashful'."

"Aren't you."

"No!"

"Well then?"

"Well what?"

"Do you fancy someone?"

"Maybe," she shrugged. His rage cooled into an iron lump that choked him. "But never mind that," she added, waving the topic away with a hand. "What I want to know is: have you ever kissed someone?"

The quill paused in his fingers, and it was only after he realized he'd been staring at his page for a solid minute that he formulated the wherewithal to answer "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason." That giggle again. "I'm just wondering if you did, that's all, and if so, what was it like?"

Severus bit his lip. After a moment, he replied "Since you're asking me this, I take it that you've never kissed someone yourself?" Merlin, please make it so.

She shook her head so vehemently her hair was a copper blur. "Never."

"I should hope not."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that I can't think of a single person in the world who'd be worthy of such a thing."

"Oh, Sev!" She shoved him on the shoulder. "But you didn't answer my question."

"Well, what do you think the answer is?" he replied testily, pressing his quill so hard against the page that the nib left a small hole.

"Why not?" she asked, a shimmer of merriment in her voice. "You know what they say about boys with big noses, after all."

"Lily!" He nearly dropped his quill at that, and felt his cheeks burn with a blush of his own. Merlin's beard!

"Sorry. But that's what Mary told me."

"Mary's a fool."

"So it's not true then?"

"I refuse to continue this offensive conversation," Severus muttered, lowering his head so that his hair shielded the entirety of his face, and surreptitiously adjusting his clothing since the comparative appendage in question had begun to stir.

"All right, all right, Mr. Prude! What I was going to say is that maybe we should practice."

"Practice what?" Severus snapped, glaring at his book.

"Practice kissing." Pause. "You know, so that when it happens for us, we're ready."

He thought his heart would burst from hate and jealousy. "Practice with whom?" he spat out.

"With each other, stupid."

The quill quite fell from his hand this time, and the page before him blurred into fog.

"Sev?" Lily asked after a moment, peering into his face. Though the tunnel of his hair, her eyes were electric, and while the blush beneath her freckles was gone, her lips seemed redder somehow than they'd ever been. She was a Muggle neon sign of desire and desire's fulfillment.

"I..." he began, and stopped. Looked down at his book. "I don't know," he managed to finish, barely a whisper.

"Am I that horrible then?" she asked with a laugh, though a tremor of nervousness ran through her voice, and it was like an arrow to his heart: before his courage could fail him, he dropped his book, leaned forward, and pressed his lips to hers, savoring the sweet warmth of her mouth until he drew away at last in fear of her disgust.

As it turned out, she hadn't been disgusted. Not in the least.

It had been the last day of August, the day before their fifth year at Hogwarts was to begin-the year where everything had ended for him. But on that afternoon, by the river near Spinner's End, under the shelter of their friendly tree, he'd tasted the only sweetness he was ever to know in this life, a sweetness Lily Evans had been generous enough to share with him as she would a treat from Honeydukes. The memory of that golden sunset hour echoed in his soul like the ring of a bell.

Years later, he would ask himself: had she meant to let him know her feelings that day? Had she hoped that he'd say something akin to the words that had been buried deep in his heart since the moment he'd first seen her? It was an idea that both soothed and tortured him, in that his feelings might have been reciprocated, but if so, how differently his life could have turned out had he not been such a coward!

He worried the idea like a sore tooth, especially when that damnable Potter boy sneered at him over his cauldron in Potions class-how dare he! Did that arrogant brat not know that if Snape hadn't been such a fool, The Boy Who Lived could well have never been born?

But no, Potter didn't know, and he would never know, if Snape could possibly help it. If he'd had his way, no one in the world would have known it, either. For the one person who should have known-the only one who should have known-was gone forever, no trace of her left save for the eyes of the boy with the face of Snape's worst foe.