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The Cinema


Severus sat in the window of the library at Spinner’s End. It was pouring rain outside and on the edges of the horizon, there was a thunderstorm brewing, flickering lightning every few minutes. The droplets sped down the pane past him as he stared out over the dreary, narrow street he lived on. Everything was abysmal and grey and horrid. Outside, a cat streaked down the uneven cobblestoned road, shrieking as it went - there were no other signs of life out there, though. It wasn’t unusual, either. Even when it was sunny and beautiful, Spinner’s End and all the other streets that ran adjacent to it were typically void of life.

Life just wasn’t worth living on Spinner’s End, Severus thought.

They’d come back to the house while Voldemort was away, doing Merlin knew what, out of the country. The Malfoy mansion was only welcoming when he was there. Otherwise, it was too obvious that the other followers of Voldemort only accepted Eileen Prince and her half-blood son because Voldemort did. When his eyes were turned, however, she was not welcome and by extension, neither was Severus - though he got the distinct impression that, should he choose to turn his back on her, they would’ve gladly taken him in as their own.

But he wasn’t about to abandon his mother, however ashamed of her the family was.

And besides, being home at Spinner’s End meant that he was within walking distance to the Evans’ home and the pond where Lily often came to see him.

When the rain started to let up, Severus got up from the bench and shouted to Eileen that he was going out and, without waiting to hear her response, he ducked out the door, tucking his wand into his belt.

He kept his wits about him until he’d gotten out of his own neighborhood - it was so rough, you just never knew when you’d need to draw the wand in self-defense, and Severus stayed at the ready. They’d ended up there because it was low cost housing and that was all that Tobias Snape had been able to afford before he died, and it was all that they’d bothered to keep of his - the dismal little house in the middle of a bad neighborhood. “One day,” Eileen promised him all of the time, “We’ll buy a manor, like the Malfoy’s have got and we’ll have a house elf and we’ll be treated like royalty, like we deserve.”

Severus would’ve been okay with just being treated like human like he deserved some days.

The Evans lived in a little house in a small, good neighborhood, which was up a long hill, past the pond, and through an old school yard playground, which was where he and Lily had met, many years ago, when she’d jumped from the swingset and he’d watched her slow herself down before hitting the ground to stop herself getting hurt. She’d done it without knowing she’d done it at all, but he’d recognized it for what it was - the first vestiges of magic. It had been shortly after that when he’d approached her and told her about Hogwarts. He didn’t fit in with the people that lived in Lily’s neighborhood - he stuck out like a sore thumb there - which was why he rarely came all the way to her house. He hated the way people looked at him. It was similar to the way that James Potter and the other Gryffindor boys looked at him. At least Sirius Black had a reason to - with the family history and everything that was tied him - but James Potter barely had a clue who Severus Snape was. It was James Potter’s stare, therefore, that bothered him most.

Lily’s sister was outside, holding a little umbrella, even though the rain had stopped. She was talking to a couple of girls that Severus didn’t recognize - they probably went to school with Petunia during the year. It always made Severus marvel at how completely different the two sisters were, considering they were twins. Petunia’s hair was dark and coarse and her eyes were a different shade of green - more like a hazel. Lily’s hair was fire red and soft and her eyes were the perfect bottle green that Severus so loved. Not to mention their personalities were like night and day.

Petunia stared at Severus as he approached the house, a sneer curling across her mouth and her nose bunching up as though she’d smelled something horrid.

“Lily about?” he asked her without saying hi. She didn’t deserve the courtesy.

“She’s inside,” Petunia replied shortly.

Severus turned at the walkway, headed for the door.

“Who is that?” whispered one of her friends.

“Nobody. He’s just an awful boy that Lily insists on hanging around with,” he heard Petunia reply. “He’s a freak from Spinner’s End.” This apparently was all that the others needed to hear to agree with Petunia that he was awful and a freak and they all were sneering at him when he glanced back.

Lily answered the door when he knocked and she looked surprised to see him - that’s how infrequently he visited this far from Spinner’s End. “Sev,” she said, “Hi.” She spotted Petunia and her friends laughing and could tell just by the way they were doing it that they were laughing at him. She made a face, “Bully on you lot!” she yelled and ushered Severus in. “C’mon, we’ll go up to my room.”

In all the time that Severus and Lily had been hanging around together, he’d never been invited up to Lily’s room before. He felt odd following her up the stairs and down the hallway to the bedroom. It was larger than it ought have been for one person, and he could see all the space that had once been taken up by Petunia’s things, where Lily had never bothered to put her own things. Half the room seemed as void of life as the streets of Spinner’s End. He looked around nervously at the half that did have things - cluttered together and stacked upon one another, in some places rather haphazardly, so that it seemed absurd that she didn’t use the full space available.

Lily sat down on the edge of the bed and Severus nervously pulled out her desk chair to sit on. He noticed on her desk was a half-finished letter addressed to Remus Lupin and he swallowed back the urge to make some comment about it. He was on Lily’s good side at the moment and he would rather stay there. He pulled the chair ‘round and settled himself down facing her. “Quite the storm this morning, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t really notice,” Lily said. She was running her fingers through her hair, which was something she did when she was bothered about something or she was uncomfortable. Severus recognized the action from two years prior, when she and Petunia had first started fighting.

“Something the matter?” he asked her.

Lily shook her head, “Not really, no.”

Severus looked about, trying to find something to talk about, he hadn’t really had a purpose for coming other than just laying eyes on her. Even the greyest days were brighter for the sight of Lily Evans. He spotted her broomstick leaning against the closet door. “Are you going to play for Gryffindor again this term?”

“I’ll try out. I don’t know who the new captain is yet, but it’ll be up to them, I s’pose,” she murmured.

Severus nodded. He realized that quidditch probably hadn’t been the best topic - it would bring up Derek Bell and the last thing he wanted to talk about was Derek Bell. Well maybe not the last thing, but he was pretty close to the last thing. After all, how would he ever be able to explain to Lily that it had been his auntie Bella that had murdered Bell and that she’d been lorded about the Malfoy mansion as a heroine for having done it? That she’d bragged about it to Narcissa, even? How could he explain to Lily that Derek Bell’s death was one of many that simply had to happen for the Good of All? If the people in the resistance didn’t die, then Voldemort’s whole cause would tanker down and if that happened - well, then, wizards would never gain power, would they? Wizards like Dumbledore were too eager to lay the power down.

But Severus so desperately wanted to take it up and get his mum the manor house she dreamed of.

“Are you going to play for Slytherin?” Lily asked excitedly.

“I don’t know how to play Quidditch,” Severus replied, shaking his head.

“I’ll show you,” Lily offered. “Go get your broom, I’ve got a snitch, we can play at catching it.”

Severus’s face reddened. “I don’t have a broom.”

“You don’t?” Lily looked surprised. “I thought all the boys had brooms.”

“No,” he answered. “I don’t even want a broom.” This wasn’t true. It was more like Eileen Prince could never afford broom in a hundred years of saving. There was no way that Severus Snape would never even ask her for one, knowing how upset it would make her to be unable to provide it for him. She’d probably steal one if he asked and he’d rather not take that chance. If the aurors ever caught her stealing and sent her off to Azkaban -- well, Severus didn’t know what he’d do.

Lily sat forward eagerly, “I didn’t think that I did, either, Sev, but they’re really fun! James taught me a few tricks at practice this term and ---”

Severus could not help but roll his eyes at the mention of James Potter showing off, as usual. “Oh of course he did,” he said.

Lily stopped. She hadn’t meant to mention James Potter. Severus’s face always got so weirdly dark whenever she did. She cast her eyes away for a moment, trying to think up a new topic of conversation. Finally, she turned back. “Have you ever been to the cinema?”

“The cinema?” Severus asked, confused.

“You know, the movie house. They have lots of films playing there this summer… there’s scary ones. We could go see a cinema. You want to? There’s loads of popcorn and soda there…” she looked eagerly at him, her eyes pleading him to agree.

“How many galleons does it cost?” he asked warily.

“Don’t worry about that, I’ll pay for it with my allowance. Mum still gives me allowance in muggle money and I don’t know what to do with it most of the time unless I cash it in at Gringott’s, and we’re not going to Diagon Alley until it’s back to school, so I’ve got extra!” Lily grinned, “We can get gobs of butter on our popcorn, Sev, it’s delicious. And sometimes if you ask nice they’ll put the nonpariels on top so they melt a little bit on the hot popcorn -- C’mon!” she grabbed his hand, hopping up from the bed with excitement.

And so it was that Severus Snape saw his first film. He sat in the dark next to Lily Evans, his palms sweaty from nerves and sticky from popcorn and chocolates. Lily was engrossed in the screen, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open even as she chewed on popcorn. Severus found watching Lily more entertaining than the movie itself. She sat in her seat, scrunched down so she was nearly laying in the smelly cloth, with her feet braced against the seat in front of her. She chewed on a gummy worm, which she’d insisted were just as good as any candy they could get from the witch’s trolley on the Hogwarts Express, and she covered her eyes when the film got too scary, passing the popcorn bucket to Severus to hold so she wouldn’t drop it when she shrieked. Severus could’ve described every detail of her reactions - the way her eyes widened and her chewing slowed… the way she took a sharp inhale of breath and sipped her soda absently from the long, twisty straw… the way her fingers sifted about through the popcorn and mechanically shoved a handful into her mouth…

When the film was over, she led him out of the movie house and he carried the half finished bucket of popcorn in one hand as she continued reaching in and munching on the kernels. “That was sooooo scary!” she announced as they splashed through puddles that had formed on the ground. “The part with that woman on the stairs made me shiver!! Weren’t you terrified?”

“Very,” Severus replied, though he felt that he’d already seen scarier things in real life than any movie could depict… and also he had no idea what woman she was talking about.

When they got back to the Evans house, Petunia and her friends had gone and Lily leaned against the little fence that lined their yard. She smiled up at Severus, “Thanks for going with me to see the movie,” she said.

“It was great,” Severus answered.

“I really was upset before, but I’m feeling better now,” Lily confessed.

“What were you upset about?” Severus asked.

Lily shrugged, “I dunno, just things.”

“Petunia?”

“Oh always Petunia,” Lily laughed.

Severus hovered there in the yardway a few more moment, unsure what else to do. He felt like this was the part where he ought to do something and he found himself wondering what a bloke like James Potter, who had it all and then some, might do in a moment like this.

Probably kiss her, he thought, but he didn’t know if she wanted to be kissed and he didn’t want to just do it, afraid she’d hate him or something for it. So he stood there awkwardly, not doing anything except staring at her, as though memorizing her features.

“Well,” Lily said awkwardly, “I better go inside. Mum and Dad will be calling me in for dinner any minute anyway. So… I’ll see you -- tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Severus nodded.

Lily nodded, too. “Alright. See you then.”

“Bye,” Severus said. He stood right where he’d been, watching as she walked up the walkway and pushed the door opened. She paused to look back as she closed the door behind herself. When it had shut, Severus turned and started his walk back to Spinner’s End, replaying the details of his date with Evans through his mind… never once pausing to think whether it had even been a date at all, or if it was just an afternoon at the cinema with a friend.