Shimmering
Harry Potter fanfiction
One-shot:
Severus Snape wore a red carnation to the Potters' wedding, to which he had not received the merest hint of an invitation... Of only one thing was he certain. He would not be staying for Sirius Black's speech.
“As shimmering there, ah, the lovely bride, and they danced to the reel in the flickering light."
-The Reel in the Flickering Light
Severus Snape wore a red carnation to the Potters’ wedding, to which he had not received the merest suggestion of an invitation.
Regardless, he attended. He had, he reflected, always had a streak of masochism.
“Which side?” asked Mary Macdonald, lush in lavender and with her hair in a neat chiffon as she accepted the simple white card with curving calligraphy at the door.
“The bride’s,” he sneered through the mouth of that Flukes boy who had been from Hufflepuff. The man whose face Snape had picked out for this wedding, with more care than he imagined the groom had taken choosing his dress robes, was having the soundest sleep of his life in Room Number Nine above the Leaky Cauldron.
The trouble he had gone to meant nothing.
She directed him to the right with a sickeningly sweet smile she had never given Severus Snape, who, like Mulciber, called her Mary the Mudblood. He fought the thoughts pinning the name on her still and headed in without a nod of thanks.
It was to be a marvelous affair. James Potter and Lily Evans were well-liked in the wizarding world, if not in Severus Snape’s circle of friends.
The bench was hard against his back and he clenched his hands against the edge beneath him till they ached and he knew this was no dream. Snape found himself trembling as the cheery witch seated beside him, the pink-cheeked girl who went with one of the Prewetts and had a common Muggle surname, asked him if he knew Lily from Hogwarts.
“Before,” he said curtly, and ignored her thereafter.
The surroundings were more tasteful than he would have expected from Potter’s crew. He supposed it Lily’s doing, these sweeping white banners in the high-ceilinged building- a closed bottle-making factory on the outside; the absence of glitter and balloons in favor of shimmer and stardusted begonias, the low vesper light that cast the scene in timeless gold. The crystalline fountain containing an extravagant waterfall pouring gold and Gryffindor scarlet, Snape mentally attributed with disgust to Potter or Black.
It was a physical effort to not raise his wand at the man himself in the front, shaking his stiff or jittery leg and muttering lowly to Sirius Black, who was constant as ever at Potter’s left.
He wondered what had become of arrogance and toeraggery, and why Potter looked pale instead of smug. Black might have been supporting him, for the big Quidditch hero seemed poised to fall over.
Perhaps Snape had made a mistake coming, for he was sure of little anymore, and hardly the love that had brought him to this stiff seat. Of one thing only he felt certain.
He would not be staying for Sirius Black’s speech.
The opening chords of Barwith’s softest and second-best known motion from the Wizarding Suite swelled, and women from the House his Lily Evans had been Sorted into appeared to step forward one by one. Once the wizarding official waiting in the flowering front had replaced the Evans after Lily, the bridesmaids would walk back with the Marauders, Frank Longbottom, and apparently Davy Gudgeon, since he was up there too for reasons Snape could not comprehend. He tried desperately to keep his glare at a low-wattage and hoped Flukes’ round cheeks made him look appropriately delighted.
Marlene McKinnon was a surprise, since Lily had loathed her when last he was her confidant, but then, he supposed, Lily had fallen fully in with the Gryffindors and that Order. Once, she had loathed Potter, too. McKinnon winked at Podmore and the Prewetts as she passed, picking apart her petals while maintaining a too-straight face aimed right at Potter and Black. The silky flower shreds floated in her wake, some drifting to land on Snape’s shined black shoes.
He shook his foot to cast them off and looked past McKinnon at another woman he unfortunately recognized. She was an Auror, Longbottom’s twenty-something wife who’d questioned Severus recently. He hadn’t been aware Lily knew her. Round-faced and quick-eyed, the Auror looked about, enthusiastically waving and brightly beaming at everyone she recognized with a complete absence of decorum. He looked away when she grinned happily at him.
Greta Catchlove, the Hufflepuff, was a choice that made him resist both a smile and the impulse to hex the bridesmaid into oblivion. Blonde and a few dress sizes fuller than the other bridesmaids, Lily had helped her through Herbology and in return Greta’d shown her the passageways her brother had told her of, including the one to the kitchen.
He’d never appreciated Lily’s lack of interest in catching Potter and his gang, even when she was interested in knowing what they were up to. He was glad she had chosen Greta, because it spoke to him of the kindness he adored, though he doubted Lily and Greta were close still either. Lily faced a harder, stronger path than her school-friend, bravery that would only end one way against the Dark Lord. He hated Potter for the fight she was taking with him perhaps most of all.
Mary Macdonald came after, merry and very self-sure, glowing since she would walk back with Black and her friend was marrying the charming James she had always been sure Lily liked deep down. Mary the Mudblood, pretty though she be, represented all the reasons he had lost his Lily, and Severus had to stare at the floor and murmur under his breath to keep from losing control and lighting her bouquet on fire. Never mind Potter’s potential reaction to an interruption of his wedding from Severus Snape, Lily’s fury at such a seeming-attack on her fellow Muggle-born Gryffindor would be more unbearable than this whole scene. Severus kept control.
He was expecting a fifth bridesmaid to match the fifth groomsman, but that slot was untaken, and as ever, Lily Evans surprised him.
Her beauty in that moment when she stepped into view seared into his black heart forever. It was a moment he had feared longer than he knew he loved her, losing her this way, flush in the wonder that she was, young, kind, beautiful and above all else, bright.
She shimmered, from no spell in the veil but in the green eyes sparkling clear behind it. And their gaze was locked on James.
“Oh,” sighed someone, perhaps the Jones girl on his left, with envy, but there was nothing but Lily, drifting forward like a dream in his eyes even if she was stepping a touch too eagerly.
Potter’s smile split his face and stretched past his glasses to the fringe of his dark hair. Snape did not want to see him, but as he followed Lily’s progress, her destination was impossible to render Invisible. Quite against his will, his gaze flicked frequently to follow her wonderful eyes.
She seemed to hesitate as she passed the bridal side, emerald eyes sliding over her crowd, and Snape pretended Lily Evans searched for his face. At his cool core, Severus knew Lily looked for Tuney, who had not cared to come. Lily’s smile did not falter as she again looked straight and sure at where she was going, Sirius Black grinning like an idiot and bouncing on his heels behind him.
She was even with him now, near enough for him to stare at her perfect lips and her long pale neck, which it would do injustice to compare to an ungainly swan’s. He saw her smile broaden for Black, that man’s best man, and for a moment, Severus truly hated her.
And then she was past him, nearer and nearer the end of his world. Snape waited for the moment when her feet would fail, when she would whip out her wand and hex Potter silly for slipping her Amortentia, but instead he watched Lily’s back, beautiful like the rest of her, glide away from him to Potter.
Evans, he saw James mouth at her. She picked up the pace past a twinkling Dumbledore in the first row and Minerva McGonagall, who was wiping her eyes, and took his extended hand. She gripped it forcefully as she stepped beside him.
He had never seri- deliberately considered interrupting, but for a moment he wanted to blast the roof off and blame it on the Wizarding Suite gone wrong, he considered if he could fire off the Killing Curse at Potter before Black leaped in the way, wondered how quickly he could Disapparate with the marrying official.
All ways, he knew, would hurt her, and so he stayed in his seat, not hearing a word behind the steady drowning hiss, sometime buzz, in his ears that was the only salvation of his sanity. The next sound he heard was a war whoop from Sirius Black and Snape looked up from his hands in time to see Lily throw her arms around Potter.
Sev looked back down and fingered the carnation in his buttonhole.
It was, he decided, not only the first but the last wedding he would attend.
Lupin, laughing and looking younger than he had through most of their last year of school, linked arms with McKinnon to follow after, Gudgeon went nervously with Catchlove, Frank with his wife, and Mary Macdonald, with painfully clear displeasure, with Peter Pettigrew, as Sirius Black, luckily unaccompanied and jumping about like a madman, punched the air and hustled the merry couple out the back.
Lily Potter tossed her flaming hair out of her face and tilted her head back with an expression Snape fought seeing, and let Potter, too dumbstruck to look cocky, tug her down the aisle.
Her elegant train fluttered by him, and letting his hand hang, the sleek fabric brushed against his knuckles, which, he remembered belatedly, were tanner than Severus Snape’s.
He had no reason to follow to the reception, but like a nocturnal wanderer trapped in dream Snape, in Flukes’ body, shuffled after the crowd being directed by the eager groomsmen to the Portkeys that would take them to the reception.
He was pressed between Barnabus Cuffe and Bertha Jorkins, which was not a pleasant place, and found Frank Longbottom’s guiding presence leading his hand to a pot brimming with lilies.
He had to see the ordeal through. Snape barely felt the jerk on his navel through the sickness roiling in his stomach.
Remus Lupin led him easily to a seat prepared for Flukes before steering the insufferable Bertha Jorkins somewhere her gossip would not cause a fiasco. He sat as if Stupefied.
“Their parents would be so delighted,” said the blonde woman at his table. She jangled her large earrings as she nodded her head at her own statement, fingering the fluorescent green feather poking out of a high pocket. “Presumably, of course, since the bride and groom are a touch young- don’t you think?” He gave no response, so she continued her attempt at conversation. “Such a shame the Potters didn’t live to see their son marry such a wonderful witch.”
He remembered when Lily hadn’t thought the word witch at all wonderful, as the only other person yet at the table rattled on. “…The Evans’ were Muggles, yes?”
He glared at her, which was less impressive on Flukes’ baby-face.
“Such a shame, a car crash, wasn’t it? One forgets how fragile Muggles-”
She cut short under his deepening glare, not wanting to be mistaken for a sympathizer for any cause. He had the strong impulse to swat her with the impressive roll of silverware, feeling almost giddy, and then the wedding party swept back in.
A rather ragtag band fronted by Gudgeon began to set themselves up, and Sirius Black was shouting something over the general hubbub of congratulations. The dance floor cleared for Lily and James.
Lily pulled a face and whispered something in Potter’s ear, which was oversized, in Severus’ opinion. Potter called something to Peter with a finger snap Severus had seen too many times. At once Black and Lupin and Pettigrew were steering everyone back onto the floor, and Black muttered something in Emmeline Vance’s direction. Vance started grabbing partners for everyone left standing.
The woman beside him asked a question he did not hear, and then got to her feet like the rest of them.
They were sharing the first dance, and, Snape realized with a pang as he watched his Evans wind her ringed hand intimately into James Potter’s hair, unnoticed but by him, they would have it that much more to himself.
“Ho, there,” said Marlene McKinnon, who was laughing too loud as she shoved through the sudden crowd and noticed he was still seated. “Flukes! Go dance with Curd!” She gestured at Greta Catchlove, which struck him as nonsensical, but then it wasn’t past McKinnon to have had a few, early or not.
“You could dance with me,” Mary the Mudblood offered quietly as she stepped before him from McKinnon’s wake, smiling at the man she thought he was.
He surveyed Macdonald, who he could hate for he could not hate Lily. “No,” Snape told her without a smile or kindness, and she excused herself awkwardly with a hasty back-step and went elsewhere.
Severus Snape couldn’t hear the music for the laughter, but somehow- perhaps magic- it had started, and the Potters danced with their guests.
He looked at his hands and found they were once again his own. He could feel his nose hooking forward, and would hazard that his hair was darkening. Snape pushed back his chair and locked his eyes on the just-married pair through the hundred-some who loved Potter and her- but none as he loved her.
Spinning in the dance, under his arm, she looked like the Muggle notion of a fairy.
She had loved her fairy tales, and shared them with her friend from Spinner’s End along with chocolate biscuits and toffees, and Snape had given her the stories from his mother in return, from Beedle the Bard, full of its pots that hopped and raspberry bushes that could pick you.
Once Sev had read from Beedle’s book of a silver-legged spider and the red carnation who stepped up to dance with him, because flowers could step reels in that world, and Death be cheated, and love was always won. Once, in a time gone now, before he knew that in a magical world, there were still dreams that did not come true.
He had to leave her, now, to a fairy tale ending which he hated that he did not share.
So Snape, Slytherin and Death Eater, pulled the flower from his buttonhole with silent fingers as he watched the former Gryffindor Quidditch Captain and Head Boy of Hogwarts sweep the glowing Lily Potter gracelessly around the room. Their glorious, stumbling happiness, far away from his small empty table, exuberated their enchanted guests.
He crumpled the petals until his pale palm stained red, and letting them fall on the tablecloth as perfect a white as Lily’s dress, stood up, and left without dancing.