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Another Chance


The night of the Yule Ball was coming quickly, December a bit of a blur. James snogged Annalee McKinnon in the common room every night that month, but only while Lily stayed downstairs, trying to concentrate on her homework and getting more and more agitated. “If I was a prefect, he’d be sorry,” she muttered to Ali at the table while they were working on finishing a star chart for Ali’s astronomy class. “I mean, it’s just not proper to be sitting about in public kissing somebody like that!” Lily complained.

Ali shrugged, “Everyone does it… I mean, look at Woodhouse and Carly Shaw, they’re snogging way more intensely than Potter and Annalee are.” It was true, Andy Woodhouse was getting a bit handsy in the corner. At least James sat on his hands or else kept them right where they could be seen - on Annalee’s hips or her back. Even Frank and Ali had been caught in more questionable positions.

“Well he’d have a detention if I could serve him one, for inappropriate behavior,” Lily replied, turning back to her homework.

What she didn’t know was that as soon as she left the room, James would excuse himself from Annalee and rush off to his own dormitory as quick as possible.

Sirius meanwhile had done nothing but talk about his stereo since coming back from the Shrieking Shack. “You wouldn’t believe what Remus gave me for my birthday,” he could be heard telling anybody and everybody that would listen, “It’s an 8-track stereo! Top of the line! You should hear it, brilliant sound, like you’re in the room with the real artists! I’ve never heard music as wonderful as it sounds coming out of that stereo!” Remus always smiled as people marvelled at how lucky Sirius Black was for having such a grand friend as Remus Lupin. “He’s my best friend,” Sirius would emphasize.

Remus kept thinking about the feeling he’d had when he had first woke up in the Shack and realized Sirius was asleep beside him, with his arm around him. The memory of it burned inside him. He kept stealing glances Sirius’s way during classes and at the table in the Great Hall.

Remus wanted to say something, but he was afraid that he’d upset Sirius again and they’d end up in that awkward stage they’d been in all last year at this time and following his faux pas with the kiss. He’d spent a good deal of time repairing his relationship with Sirius and the last thing he wanted to do was muck it up again. So every time he was about to say a word, he’d bite tongue. But he couldn’t be expected to stay completely silent…

“It’s killing me, Lily,” Remus said desperately one night, sitting on the steps where they always went to talk.

Lily concentrated very hard on the hem of her uniform skirt. “Maybe you should talk to him,” she said.

“But what if I do and it makes things weird?” Remus asked, “What if I say something and he stops being around me altogether? Like last year?”

“I think Sirius would be… very understanding,” Lily said.

Remus took a deep breath. “You don’t know Sirius like I do,” he said, shaking his head, “He gets… weird… about things like this, really easily. I don’t want it to get weird between us.”

Lily said, “I just think that you need to be brave and… and say something.”

“Maybe.” But they both knew by the tone of his voice that he wouldn’t do it.

Lily’s other obsession, besides loathing Potter’s snogging and trying to get the boys together, was attempting to get herself a date to the Yule Ball. She wanted somebody impressive, somebody that would really boil Potter right up, but everyone seemed to have already gotten a date. The only person left that she could think of that would get James’s attention was Severus Snape. James’s voice echoed in her head, ”You give uncountable chances to a slimey grease ball like Severus Snape...” There was on way James wouldn’t notice it if she went with him. But then again, Severus had tried to force her into loving him last year with the Amortentia and Lily wasn’t fully certain if she had forgiven him yet.

But if she made it clear they were only going as friends -- and she was careful not to drink anything he offered her, of course, just incase… Well… it could be a very good answer to her dilemma indeed.

And so it was that two days before the ball, Lily stood outside their Potions classroom twenty minutes early, waiting for Severus Snape to arrive, biting her nails. She’d need to be very, very careful not to think about Potter at all while around Severus, she reminded herself, just incase Severus tried to snoop about in her mind. He’d get really cross if he knew what she was up to. When he came around the corner, she was leaning against the wall, hugging her textbook to her chest, and she stood upright, taking her fingers from her teeth as he approached and blushing at having been caught at it.

“Lily,” Severus said, surprised to see her.

“Hey Sev,” she said.

He came to a stop right in front of her as Evan Rosier and some of the other fourth year Slytherins went into the room, sneering at her as they went. “Mudblood,” she heard one of them mutter as they disappeared into the classroom. Lily’s cheeks went red. She looked up at Severus.

“I - I’ve missed you,” he said, staring into her eyes as though hypnotized, “I didn’t think you were going to speak to me again.”

She hadn’t been sure before.

“I missed you also,” she said, lying just a teensy bit.

Severus stared into her green eyes with a look like a lost puppy dog that’d just found it’s home and she felt a weird sort of feeling inching its way through her. Then James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter came down the hall and she could hear James talking loudly about his dress robes, which his mum was sending to him by owl and Peter was complaining that he still hadn’t got a date, to which Remus replied that he wasn’t going at all and Sirius was saying something about going just for the fun of watching James try to dance because it would be a good show, and Lily threw caution to the wind and grabbed Severus by his tie, pulling him into a deep kiss.

Severus Snape’s eyes very nearly popped out of his head in shock.

She kept him there until she’d heard James’s trainers squeak on the cobblestone floor and a muttered, “What in the bloody hell?”

Sirius called out, “Oi, Evans, you have something dirty stuck to your face! You better get it off you before it gives you a disease!”

Lily released Severus’s tie and he stumbled backward, touching his mouth in surprise, blinking at her, confused. Lily felt sick at the look on his face and was about to apologize when James drawled, “Ew, Lily, please, you can do better than Snivellus Snape.”

Lily turned on James, “Why don’t you shut up and mind your own business, Potter?”

“Very well,” he said, “Keep on snogging him, I don’t care. I have my own snogging to worry about,” and he quickly hastened through the doorway into Slughorn’s classroom.

“Seriously, though, Evans,” Sirius said, pausing to put a hand on her shoulder as he passed, “You dunno where that thing’s been.” He glared at Severus, then ran into the room after James.

Peter looked ruefully at Lily and then at Severus and shrugged as he went by.

Last to pass was Remus and he hesitated, then turned to Severus instead of Lily, “If you hurt her again, you’ll have us four to answer to, Snape,” and he looked at Lily, “You know you’re an honorary Marauder now, yeah?”

“Thanks Rey,” she said quietly.

Remus nodded and made a motion, pointing from his eyes to Severus Snape - I’ll be watching you, the motion said, and Severus nodded nervously as Remus went on into the Potions room.

Severus turned to look at Lily. “What was that about?”

Lily took a deep breath, “Will you go to the Yule Ball with me… as friends?”

“That was not a kiss that friends give friends,” Severus answered.

“Sev.”

“You’re the one that’s done it, not me.”

Lily gave him a look.

“I’d love to go to the Yule Ball with you,” Severus said sincerely, “As friends, as more, as anything you want.”

“Alright. Then that’s decided. As friends.”

“Alright.”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat and looked about, “Well. We uh, we better get in there, we’re probably the last ones.”

“We are,” he nodded.

“Alright. Well. See you.” Lily quickly ducked into the room.

Severus paused a moment, fixing his tie, tucking it carefully back into his sweater and taking a deep breath. Lily Evans had kissed him, and whether it was for show or not, that didn’t really matter because whatever it was that was making her give him one last chance, he was going to be truly and sincerely careful not to ruin it.