The evening was quiet and the clammy dungeon study was warmed by a crackling fire. Severus Snape sat on a green velvet couch and stretched his bare feet towards the fire. His skin was golden pale in the flickering light and shadows kissed his face and neck. He held a tumbler of whiskey in one hand, but did not drink.

The silence of the room was punctuated by small cracks from the fire and by the soft sound of Severus breathing. He stared into the fire, his eyes unfocused and his breathing even. The ice was melting in his whiskey, and condensation dripped off the glass, down his pale elegant fingers, and onto the green velvet of the sofa, but he paid no heed to the moisture. He took even, deep breaths of the dungeon air, savoring the acrid smell of pine from the fire and the rich golden smell of the whiskey.

The comfortable study overflowed with books and scrolls – they filled every shelf and covered his desk, his table, and every flat surface but were kept in meticulous order. Books and scrolls were arranged in neat precise patterns, each in their place. Flickering light from the fire shone on the gold embossed titles and leather covers, but the Potions Master made no move to select reading for the evening. The clamor of his heartbeat against his breastbone, the susurrus of dungeon air in his throat, and the flickering light of the fire were enough to charm him into a tired reverie filled with the quiet satisfaction of having no further duties to discharge. His lesson plans were prepared, his marking was finished, and his Slytherins were safe in bed – Severus had no further obligations. With the war long since over and one master dead and the other placated, he had no one to whom he must answer and no claims on his evening.

Quiet, tentative raps at the door to his study broke the silence and his reverie. The knock was repeated before Severus pulled himself off the sofa and went to the door. His bare feet slapped in a quiet pattern on the cold floor. He pulled open the heavy wood door to see Hermione Granger standing there. She was carrying a scroll bound with a black ribbon and a wooden box.

“Miss Granger,” he said. His voice was dry but lacked the automatic rancor it had held when she was his student – when he was the servant of two masters and walked a knife blade with his life. Now his voice was tired, aged like good whiskey, and though he had the power to make cutting remarks with his tongue – just as whiskey had the power to burn the throat – he refrained. “May I enquire as to the reason for your presence here?”

Hermione Granger blinked and stammered before answering in a thin stretched voice ready to crack. “Pro-Professor Snape, I – May I speak with you in private, sir?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Do please come in, Miss Granger.”

He led her to the sofa by the fire and gestured for her to take a seat. He did not offer her a drink – he certainly did not drink with his former students – but rather seated himself and stretched his feet toward the fire again. The warmth erased the memory of the cold stone floor from his skin.

Miss Granger was pale and trembled as though she’d cast a Feather-Light Charm on herself and been caught in a breeze. Her eyes were shadowed and she spoke with an uncharacteristic hesitation. “Have – have you read the Daily Prophet today, sir?”

“No, I have not. I have very little use for that wretched waste of ink,” Severus said without making any of the harsher comments that once tempted him.

“You – I guess you hadn’t heard, then,” she said. Her fingers trembled and she twisted her hands in her lap. “The – since it’s been a year after You-Know – after Voldemort’s defeat and – and there’s been no news of Harry – well, the – the Ministry declared him legally dead.”

“Miss Granger …” Severus paused, rose, and poured her a tumbler of whiskey. He handed it to her, careful to brush his fingers against her fingers to steady her. “Miss Granger, I am not unsympathetic to your loss – I know that you and Potter were close. But I do fail to see why you have approached me for comfort. You know very well that Potter and I were … never friends.”

She clutched the drink in one small hand, her knuckles turning white in bright contrast to the golden liquid, as though she was clinging to an anchor. With her other hand, she fidgeted with the scroll that she had placed in her lap. The shadows cast on her face by the firelight moved as she fidgeted. The shadows were as dark on her pale skin as the black ribbon that bound the scroll. “I don’t – I don’t think you realize how much – how much he respected you, sir.”

Severus raised one elegant eyebrow and said nothing. He did not admit to the Granger girl that Potter had become quite tolerable after his fifth year at Hogwarts or that he owed the boy a debt of gratitude greater than a Life Debt for ending the war and releasing him from Voldemort. The silence was filled with the sound of wood cracking in the fire and the strong sweet smell of whiskey. Miss Granger took a gulp from her tumbler, the moisture shining on her lips as she swallowed without coughing.

“I – well – I suppose, I suppose maybe you did know then after all. Well. At any rate – he asked me to take care of his will for him, you know.” She took another gulp of whiskey.

“Well.” She set the tumbler down on the table next to the sofa and unrolled the scroll partway. The crackle of the parchment was louder than the strained, quiet tone of her voice. “I’ll just read it to you then, shall I, sir?” Her tense, nervous half-smile flickered faster than the firelight and disappeared.

“To Severus Snape, I wish to leave the cherry-wood box that was given to me by my mother. It is spelled shut but he will be able to open it if he remembers the first time he spoke to me. Other than the box and all its contents, he may have any of the Potions or Defense against the Dark Arts books that I possess or have stored in my vaults. I’m sure he owns many of them already, so any of the books that he does not want are to go to Hermione Granger. If I do not survive the confrontation with Voldemort, I’ll never be able to give Professor Snape half of what I owe him, so I hope that he will accept these few things that I can give him.”

Miss Granger’s voice wavered in uncertain patterns, like the beads of condensation that slipped down the smooth sides of her glass of whiskey. After she finished reading, she took another large gulp of the drink. There were tears bright in her eyes but she did not shed them.

Severus stared at the cherry-wood box. He had often seen it in Lily’s possession – the color of the wood had matched the dark highlights in her hair. “Why?” he asked.

The girl shook her head. “He doesn’t explain any of the bequests.” She passed the box to him, her fingers lingering for an instant on the smooth wood. Severus hesitated before taking the box – it was as though he was reluctant to accept a connection to Potter while she was reluctant to release the connection.

“I haven’t sorted through the books yet,” she said. “A lot of them are in the Potter vault. I – I’ll send the Potions and Defense books to you in a week or so.”

Severus nodded, not saying anything. He felt the heavy weight of the box – Potter’s box – Lily’s box – not knowing why Potter had given it to him. The smooth wood was cool to the touch, chilled by the dungeon air.

He was still staring at the carved wood when Miss Granger drained her glass of whiskey, made her excuses, and left. He was shaken by the fact that the Potter boy, who had hated him, had bequeathed him this treasure – too shaken to comfort the grieving girl. Her footsteps echoed on the stone floor like the stutter of a heartbeat that had fallen out of rhythm with itself, faltering and uncertain. The quiet sound of the closing door and the return of silence to the dungeon washed over Severus like an ocean wave, wild and ungraspable.

Engraved in the dark cherry-wood, lilies twined around each other, bound together by sinuous vines, and he traced the patterns with one sensitive fingertip. This had been Lily’s box. Emerald-eyed Lily, Lily who he had loved, had treasured this box, had treasured her son enough to die for him. He pressed his finger on the lid of the box, hard enough to leave an imprint of the lily pattern carved there.

Lily had loved the pattern on the lid, had traced it with her own small finger. She had once touched this box just as Severus now did. This box connected him to Lily more than it connected him to her boy – this box had been hers. She had left the box to Potter and not to Severus when she died. A brief flare of resentment, like a spark from the fireplace – she had left everything to the brat and nothing to him when she died. Severus traced the pattern cut into the polished wood, the smooth beautiful lines calming him. Shadows flickered over the pattern, dancing their arrhythmic dance on the cool wood, overlaying it with their own changeable pattern. The noise of the fire echoed in the silence and banished the cold of the dungeon.

Potter – his childhood nemesis had a son, loved his son, and had died. The Potter brat had been an exact copy of his father for five years. In his sixth year he was different – quiet, studious, and preparing for his fate. With the weight of the Prophecy on his mind, the boy had resembled James Potter very little.

Severus didn’t hate the boy – not even because of his father. He didn’t hate the Potter boy, not after the noise and blood of the battle, not after the noise and blood were followed in an abrupt jerk of Fate by the quiet of his freedom. He couldn’t hate the boy – Harry – after seeing the expression on his face that last morning, quiet and wistful and resigned. The boy’s emerald eyes had been wide, like Lily’s had been the last morning that he saw her – almost as though the boy was looking toward a future he would never have. Severus snorted, disgusted by his own sentimentality. He hadn’t drunk any of his whiskey, not even a swallow of it, and there was no reason to be maudlin.

He traced the lily pattern in an endless spiral with his fingertip, following the vines around the perimeter of the box. Harry had left it to him – had given him Lily’s box. The boy must have cherished the box, treasured it as his mother had – because his mother had treasured it, and because he had precious little else that had belonged to her. In the end he had left the treasured box to his hated Professor – perhaps not so hated, the past two years, but never a favorite. The smooth pattern of the lilies held no answer, no explanation.

“If he remembers the first time he spoke to me,” Severus repeated the words from Harry’s testament. The words dropped from his lips into the silence of the dungeons and were swallowed by it. The first time – how could he forget the first time that he saw the boy, pale and thin and tousle-headed? The boy had been a mirror reflection of James with Lily’s green eyes pasted into his face behind those ridiculous thick glasses. Seeing him had pierced through the mask that Severus had worn then – yes, he could admit now that the mask was gone that seeing the boy, James’s son, had hurt.

“Lily,” he whispered, his finger tracing the pattern on her box in an endless spiral, in mindless repetition. His quiet evening had been shattered, just as an ocean wave shatters on the shore and disappears, and he was caught up in thoughts of the past and the woman he had loved and left. He stared into the golden fire, stared past it, looking at memories of an emerald-eyed girl and her emerald-eyed son.