Days and evenings slipped through Severus Snape as a string of beads slipped along a chain, both beads and chain heedless of the movement. Severus moved through the smooth rounded days like a dreamer. He had lost his sneer and his dry sarcasm – he walked through Hogwarts in his billowing black robes, deducting points and teaching lessons without malice. He did not rant when cauldrons exploded, he did not make snide comments about Gryffindor foolishness to Minerva McGonagall at staff meetings, and he did not stalk the Hogwarts hallways late after curfew to catch and frighten unwary students. It was as though he was floating under the surface of the lake, able to see the world through a seaweed-green dim filter and make sluggish responses, but unable to break through the surface of the water and touch the life he observed.

He spent his evenings and his free hours locked in his dungeon rooms, sitting on the sofa in front of the fire. His skin was sallow and moonlight-pale, paler than usual, with lack of sunlight. The low table next to the sofa was cluttered with untouched tumblers of whiskey, drinks that Severus had poured for himself and forgotten – they left pale rings on the dark mahogany wood of the table where beads of condensation had dripped down the sides of the glass and sunk into the wood. His rooms took on other signs of his preoccupation – books and scrolls were left out of their places, his careful organization disrupted. Severus ignored the clutter and the discarded glasses and spent his evenings on the sofa, clutching the box.

He continued to finger the smooth wood of the box and trace the engraved lilies on the lid. He sat on the sofa and stared at the box in the evenings, he spent his free periods between classes staring at the box, and he ducked into his office during classes to check that it was still there. The box grew in his mind, snaking vine-like tendrils into every thought. It was his Lily’s box, the only memento of Lily that he possessed, it was Potter’s box – Harry’s box – it was his box, his treasure. He ignored his experimental potions, tolerated his classes and daily obligations, and focused his life on the small cherry-wood box.

His evenings were full of memories. He stared at the box and traced the design on the lid and lost himself in memories of his Lily. She was a ghost in the room, a memory almost strong enough to sit on the sofa and place her hand over his, trace the pattern of the box with him. She was his golden-hearted Gryffindor, his green-eyed girl, and he lost his heart to her once again.

His mind, which was trained and honed by years of lies and disguises and Occlumency, had broken through the masks and the shells to dwell on the memories that he had locked away. He had forced himself to forget – now he remembered.

He remembered eleven-year-old Lily on the Hogwarts train, her open face alight with a smile that shone like sunlight on red poppies and her green eyes sparkling as she shook his hand – he remembered that first touch, the feel of her pale skin against his pale skin, her hand smooth and clean while his was stained and oily from potion-making. He remembered her first Chocolate Frog, her pure bright delight at the new world around her. He remembered that her laugh rippled like sunlight on the lake. She was light and fire and she was delighted by everything – not knowing that she was as foreign and strange to Severus as his world was to her. They were both entranced.

She was bright and sharp like no indoor fire – she bore no resemblance to the fire that leapt and crackled in Severus’s fireplace. She was like sunlight, wild and ungraspable, her temper as untamable as her flame-red hair. Lily, thirteen, holding the carved wooden box to her chest as other girls cradled dolls or Puffskeins, traced the design on the lid with her free hand. She was silhouetted by sunlight and reflected in the lake. Her copper hair was blown by the wind and she sat with Severus, the two of them speaking of light meaningless topics – their friendship yet untouched by the shadow of James Potter and the other Marauders. Severus touched his hand to his left elbow, remembering how she had grasped that elbow with her pale hand to make a point – he could still feel the imprint of each slender finger on his skin as though she had left a permanent mark there.

Severus remembered fourteen-year-old Lily, surrounded by books in the Hogwarts library – books piled higher than her head in wobbly towers. He remembered the scratch of her quill on creamy parchment, the spiky lines of her handwriting, the clean flow of the ink in dark lines. Her smile burned with a quiet fire, a rosy smile at some secret delight – Severus watched her from a shadowed corner and wanted to touch her pink lips with his rough fingers.

Fifteen-year-old Lily wore emerald-green robes and a pearl necklace to the Yule Ball. She laughed like ripples of sunlight skittering across the ice of the frozen lake and she danced once with Severus and once with James Potter. Severus had watched her dance with James from the side of the room, his fingers clenched into sweaty fists and his breathing uneven and rough. When she had finished dancing with James, he took care to wipe the sweat from his fingers before he asked her to dance. She was weightless in his arms and he was weightless too – he didn’t feel his feet touch the floor once.

He remembered a sixteen-year-old Lily throwing herself at James Potter, her face flushed with anger as she raised her fists to hit Potter’s shoulders. Her words tumbled out, mixed together in her rage, as she defended Severus from the Marauders. He remembered the coppery smell of her hair, flaring in a corona around her face. Severus had been humiliated – first by the Marauders and then by the pity and defense of a girl. Unforgivable words had crossed his lips that day, and that open-hearted girl had forgiven him. Shadows in her eyes, she had placed her small pale hand against his cheek the next day and forgiven him.

Lily’s son had once worn robes of a similar color – his eyes were a perfect match for his mother’s eyes, although his complexion was not as pale. Severus had watched the boy dance as he had watched the girl dance, with pain wrapped around his heart like a chain. Now – this boy, this once-hated boy, who had been arrogant and disrespectful like Potter and who had a laugh like Lily’s laugh, like ripples on still water – this boy had given him the cherry-wood box with engraved lilies, had brought him back to his locked-away memories. Severus wanted to hate the boy for shattering open his careful, ordered world and he wanted to love the boy for Lily’s sake, love him for having carried something of Lily into the world past her death.

Harry’s ears had been shaped like Lily’s ears. His fingers had been shaped like Lily’s fingers – though Severus remembered the boy’s fingers clutching a cauldron or a broom and he remembered Lily’s fingers clasped in his, smooth skin on rough skin. His bravery and his determination to save people – that had been Lily’s fierceness, the burning passion of her quick temper carried over into her son. A year after Harry had died, a year after Harry had freed him from his servitude, Severus began to grieve for him – began to grieve for a boy who had something of Lily in him – began to grieve for the open-hearted boy who had left a precious gift for a disliked professor. Severus traced the smooth pattern on the cherry-wood box and let his tears fall as they had not fallen since her death.

He remembered Lily. He remembered Harry. A jumble of memories cluttered his mind, overflowing the constraints and boundaries he had set for himself. Fragments of memory haunted him during the day, superimposed themselves over the world around him. A wide-eyed first year student with dark hair became Harry, staring at his Potions Professor – confused by the unexplained hatred in Severus’s voice and eyes. A red-headed girl sitting by the lake and teasing the octopus was Lily, carefree and laughing in the sunlight. A Gryffindor girl who stood up to the teasing of older Slytherins – that was Lily, defending him again from the malice of the Marauders. A Ravenclaw turned in an essay with clear lucid logic and spiky handwriting like Lily. A Slytherin was caught out of bounds after curfew – Harry, sneaking around the castle late at night with an invisibility cloak, slipping himself and his friends into trouble and danger despite the best intentions.

Despite the memories that haunted him and pursued him through the night and day, Severus clung to the box – the box that had brought him this pain, the box that Lily had loved, the box that Harry had given to him. His fingers learned the lily pattern by heart and began to memorize the grain of the dark wood. One night, Severus sat by the fire that was burning down to embers and traced his finger down the side of the box to open it. His finger snagged on the catch, the smooth gold metal cool in the dungeon air.

The box refused to open. His fingers scrabbled at the catch, leaving sweaty desperate fingerprints on the metal as it warmed to his touch. The stubborn box did not open and Severus, resigned, cradled it in his lap as he had once seen Lily cradle it. He held the smooth wood and traced the pattern of lilies on the lid with a practiced fingertip. He held the box, held his memories close to him – its contents were less important now than his memories were.

Severus’s distraction, his preoccupied reverie with his memories, did not go unnoticed by the other inhabitants of the castle. Albus Dumbledore invited himself to tea in Severus’s quarters on a student-free Saturday afternoon. Severus hid the carved cherry-wood box underneath one of the green velvet cushions of his sofa – hid it close enough to him that he could stroke the smooth wooden sides of the box without the Headmaster noticing. The Headmaster’s words flowed past him like beads of sunlight carried away by a river. Severus was caught up in the stream of his memories, his mind learning new constraints and patterns as the old masks and locks had fallen away.

He poured the Headmaster tea, smiled and nodded without listening to his words. The steam rose from the hot liquid like a snake slithering out of its den. Severus added milk and watched the lazy white swirls form before stirring in the sugar and passing the cup of tea to Albus. He poured himself a cup and with a subtle flick of his wand, added a shot of whiskey to it. The wood of the hidden box was as smooth as pearls under his fingertips.

Albus was cheerful and eccentric and offered Severus some Muggle candies, which he declined. Comments about the weather were ignored, inquiries about potions classes were dismissed – Albus’s chatter washed over Severus like birdsong, a bright floating stream of sounds that held little attraction.

“Severus, my boy,” Albus said at the end, “Is there something troubling you?”

“No, Headmaster – there is nothing,” Severus murmured.

“You can come to me with any problems that you might be having,” Albus said.

Severus smiled and shook his head and touched the smooth sides of the box under the cushion, careful not to let Albus see the box, careful to keep his secret.

The evenings turned warm and damp as the school year drew to a close – just one more month until the brats left him alone with his quiet dungeons and his box and his memories of Lily. The box still refused to open and Severus was nowhere close to an understanding of why Harry had left the box for him. The boy tormented him still, filling his life with ungraspable mysteries and memories that he had chosen to lock away. Severus lit a fire in his fireplace – not needing the warmth, he stared into the red-gold flames, the fire the color of Lily’s hair.

Fourteen-year-old Lily, with red-gold hair and a mouth that always smiled, sat next to him and they stared at the lake. Its smooth surface was unmarred by ripples, the green seaweed that lurked beneath the surface just ungraspable out of reach. Severus had reached over and placed one fingertip against Lily’s hair, traced one coppery tress with his fingertip. Her hair was soft and smoother than the surface of the lake.

Lily, fifteen years old, chose to ride with him on the Hogwarts Express instead of sitting with the Marauders. He remembered Lily’s smile – sweet and smooth and warm as sunlight. James Potter had hexed him, but Severus hadn’t felt the pain.

Lily, seventeen, was wearing a golden engagement ring and smiled up at him through her eyelashes. Severus remembered the taste of her lips, the velvet feel of her mouth against his mouth. Lily, with bare fingers less than a month later, smiled at James Potter. Severus, skulking in the shadows nearby, turned away as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss Potter.

Lily, ageless, with her red-gold hair framing her face with a corona, sprawled pale on the blue tile floor. The house at Godric’s Hollow had been silent and James had sprawled on the floor a room away from his wife – husband and wife separated in their deaths. Lily’s eyes were still open but the green eyes did not sparkle, did not reflect the sunlight. Severus knelt by her body and touched her smooth cold hand with his large rough hand. He lifted her body, carrying her as he would have carried a bride across a threshold. Her body was light, as though death had taken away her weight. Severus carried her into the next room and placed her on the floor next to James Potter – let the wild red corona of her hair spill onto James’s face.

“The brat gave me this box to torment me,” Severus whispered into the silence of the dungeons. The crackling sound of the fire covered the sound of his voice, covered his pain. He pulled at the catch, pulled up on the lid, tried again and again to open the box. “Why? Why did he do this to me?” The box refused to open. Severus poured himself a tumbler of whiskey and drained it in two quick gulps. The lines of the lily pattern were smooth and unchanging underneath his fingertips.

Albus appeared as Severus finished his third glass of whiskey. Severus cursed the fact that the Headmaster of Hogwarts, the most powerful wizard alive, had nothing better to do with his time and power than spy on his professors and interfere with their personal lives. The irritating old man always showed up when Severus was drinking.

“Have you no respect for my privacy, Albus?” he asked, careful not to slur his words.

“My dear boy,” the Headmaster replied, “Had you forgotten about our chess game?”

“Our chess game,” Severus repeated. Each word fell with perfect enunciation in a slow smooth arc, echoing in the quiet dungeon.

“Why yes, you had promised me a rematch – don’t you remember?” Albus said with a smile and bright happy eyes.

Severus sighed and sank down onto the velvet couch. His wand trembled only a little as he summoned the chess board and cleared the half-filled whiskey glasses off of the low table. Albus conjured himself an armchair in bright Gryffindor colors – Severus grimaced but said nothing.

The pale and dark ivory pieces of the chess set clinked, soft and uncertain, in the silence between the two men. The Headmaster ate lemon drops like an addict, letting the silence stretch between them. He was a master manipulator, but Severus was Head of Slytherin House – he began to demolish Albus’s pieces in efficient silence, refusing to speak first.

“What a beautiful box you have there,” Albus said as Severus took his knight with a pawn. “Wasn’t that Lily’s box?”

Severus looked up from the chess board at last. The Headmaster was staring at him, the merriment gone from his eyes. “Yes,” Severus said. “It was.”

Two more moves – Albus moved his castle and Severus captured it with his queen. “How is it that you recognize it?” he asked.

Albus popped a new lemon drop in his mouth, held it between his teeth for a minute. “I like the sweet taste of these, Severus – you get used to the sourness after a while. Are you sure you won’t try one?” When Severus shook his head, the Headmaster continued. “Well of course I saw Lily carrying it around when she was at school here – she was attached to it, dear girl, since her grandmother had given it to her. Hagrid brought it back from Godric’s Hollow when he fetched poor little Harry out of the ruins, and I gave it to the boy when he was older.”

Albus’s eyes were brimming with questions, but he voiced none of them. The Headmaster appeared wise because he waited and listened. Severus sighed. “The Granger girl brought it to me,” he admitted. “Ha- Potter left it to me in his will.”

“Ah, I see,” the old man nodded. He blinked when Severus captured his queen, putting him in checkmate. “Why, I do believe you’ve won again, Severus. We’ll have to do this again sometime.”

Severus ran his finger along the side of the box, searching for that invisible crack between the lid and the bottom. He knew that there was no crack there – Lily had charmed it closed. He remembered the bright shine of sunlight through the library windows on her face, the light sparkling on her lips as she paged through an old charms text looking for the spell. She ran her tongue around her teeth while she thought, a habit Severus had found endearing. The shape of her fingernail against the creamy pages of the book –

No. Severus had been lost in his memories for too long. “I will know why that boy gave me this box,” he whispered. He shook his head and focused on the box, his fingers gentle as they traced the grain of the wood, searching for an entry.

Lily had charmed the box to open only to her touch, but Harry must have opened it as well. Harry had wanted for Severus to have this box, had wanted him to open it. “What did that boy say? That I could open it if I remembered the first day we met? No, it was the first day I spoke to him – what did I say to him?”

Severus fingered the unresponsive clasp, the cold metal that refused to open the box for him. He remembered a small boy with bright green eyes and an innocent smile – Harry’s first potions class. The boy hadn’t known anything at all about potions, he’d been impossible during his first five years at Hogwarts though he improved in his sixth and seventh years.

There had been nothing exceptional about that first potions class, but the boy had remembered something. “What did you remember, Harry?” Severus murmured to himself. “My usual first speech about how you can bottle fame, brew glory and stop death?” The fire crackled and Severus stretched his cold bare feet toward the warmth – even in late spring, the dungeons were chilly.

Severus’s Potions Professor had made a similar speech during his first potions class, but he had paid no attention. Lily sat across the aisle, and her copper hair swayed in the breeze made by the heat from the fire under her cauldron. Professor Grimmell, noticing that Severus was inattentive, had thrown a handful of porcupine quills into his cauldron. He’d had to scramble to fix the mistake, humiliated in front of the class when his potion frothed green.

No, Harry’s potion had been adequate – not perfect, but quite adequate for a boy raised by Muggles. He’d never seen a cauldron before, never made a potion before – Severus supposed that the boy’s Gryffindor courage was all that made him persevere in the face of the odds against him. Without background knowledge, with a Potions Master who mocked him and Slytherin classmates who sabotaged him, it was a wonder that the boy had turned around and made good progress in his final years. Severus sighed, remembering the set look on the boy’s face in his seventh year, the hunched shoulders as he curled in on himself, the determination with which he stirred and chopped and measured precise amounts, the glint of pride in his eyes when he handed in a perfect potion.

He remembered the battle in the boy’s seventh year – the second-to-last battle. The foolish Gryffindor boy had been in Hogsmeade with his friends when the Death Eaters attacked both the village and the school. The boy had managed to escape injury through some minor miracle and he showed up, smelling of blood and the backwash of curses, in Severus’s dungeons afterwards. “Let me help, Professor Snape,” the boy had demanded. There was a fire in his eyes – like the light that had shone in Lily’s eyes – and Severus had conceded, setting some of the easier potions and salves for the boy to make. There had been a silence, tight with mutual dislike, between them as they worked, but Harry had been faithful, precise and clean in his measurements. Poppy kept them busy for hours with demands for potions to heal the students who had been injured in the battle, but Severus had sent the boy away when he was pale and worn-looking. “Tired hands make mistakes, Potter,” he had said, too tired to put real venom in his voice.

Severus ran his finger around the perimeter of the box in a continuous loop. What had inspired the boy during that first Potions class? Had he set some word as a password to the box? What did he expect Severus to remember? Severus poured himself a glass of whiskey and took slow shallow sips.

Condensation ran down the sides of the glass like beads of memories running through Severus’s mind. He tapped his fingernail against the glass, the quiet sharp sound echoing for a brief instant. He almost smelled the potions that he had made with Harry that evening, over a year ago, still lingering in the air – the sharp tang of mint, the musky smell of wormwood, the crystal-clear spiky smell of the pain-numbing draughts that the boy had made.

No – further back, to the boy’s first year. “Focus,” he muttered to himself. He let a harsh little sip of whiskey slip down his throat. Why did Harry think he would remember? What had been so important? Severus traced a line around the perimeter of the box, finding no answers.

Severus went to the door, his bare feet silent on the cold stone floor. He rested his forehead against the heavy grain of the wood and closed his eyes for a moment, blinking the sleep out of them, before opening the door. He blinked again. “Miss Granger,” he said.

The frizzy-haired Gryffindor nodded. “Professor Snape,” she said. Her arms were piled full with books and more stacks of books floated in the air behind her.

Severus scowled. There was sunlight shining in through a high window, light shining into his dungeons and leaving a bright patch on the stone floor of the hallway. “Miss Granger, what are you doing here before noon on a Saturday?”

The wretched girl blushed and stammered. “Pro-Professor, did I wake you? It is past ten after all, and I thought that if I called on a Saturday, you wouldn’t have any classes.”

Severus moved aside and gestured for the girl to enter his study. The piles of books bobbed in her wake like obedient ships floating down a river. Severus scowled at the books and called a house elf for coffee.

The Granger girl took tea, and was sensible enough not to speak to him until he’d finished his second cup of coffee. Severus looked up from the scalding dark liquid in his third cup when she said, “Professor – would you call me Hermione instead of Miss Granger?”

“Miss Granger,” he said, his acerbic tongue recovering from the dull fog of sleep, “Do you think that you can invade the privacy of my quarters with a small library and demand to be on a first name basis with me?”

She looked down at her teacup, the golden-brown liquid pale with cream. “I wasn’t asking to be on a first name basis with you, Professor – just for you to call me by my first name. I’d rather not be called Miss Granger.”

Severus blinked, caught off balance with no objections ready. “Very well, Hermione,” he said. “Please explain to me why you’ve decided to move your latest research project to my rooms.”

“I haven’t, sir,” she said with Gryffindor sunshine, earnest and open. “These books are yours. Remember – Harry’s bequest?”

Severus took another gulp of coffee. It scorched his throat with welcome heat. “I hadn’t realized that there were so many of them.”

“His textbooks, the books that he had bought for himself, all of his parents’ books that were retrieved from Godric’s Hollow, and all of the books that were stored in the ancestral Potter vaults – he had quite a lot of potions and defense against the dark arts books,” Hermione said.

Severus glanced at the books, haphazard piles with no organization, and felt a headache coming. He drank more coffee.

“Would you like help organizing them? Your own books are organized so well – it must be hard for you to see books like this, in no particular order or system,” the Granger girl said – too clever for her own good, that girl.

“Ah – Miss Granger,” Severus said, setting his coffee mug down and folding his hands on the table. His long pale fingers twitched.

“Hermione,” the girl reminded him.

“Yes – Hermione. Do you happen to know where Harry’s first year Potions text is?”

Severus sat on one end of the sofa while Hermione perched on the other end. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, tapped her fingers while she read, leapt up to look for another book – so this was the Granger girl in research mode. It was no wonder she’d had the top grades in her year, with this intensity and dedication. “Something you said to him the first time you spoke to him,” she said, touching her quill to her chin.

Severus traced the lily pattern on the lid of the box with his forefinger. “I must admit, I don’t recall what I said to that particular class.” The Granger girl – Hermione – had spread out before her all of the references that pertained to the potion they’d made that class in a ring around Harry’s first year potions text. She flipped through pages, frowning.

“None of the ingredients we used in that potion are the password,” she said. “We’ve tried all of the substitute ingredients that are known, too. It’s got to be something else – Harry wouldn’t have picked anything too difficult, would he?” Her voice still trembled when she said her friend’s name but she kept her focus on the project before her. “Wait – wait just one minute,” she said and dashed over to the stack of books perched on Severus’s table.

She returned with a smile – the first smile Severus had seen on her face since she was a student. “Harry’s first year potions notes,” she said. “He found a spell in the library when we were in our third year. He used it to turn his notes into books, said he was tired of having so many scrolls floating around. They do get annoying, you must admit.”

Severus reached for the book. It was something that Harry had written – that wide-eyed boy who he had insulted and belittled, Lily’s boy who had saved him in the end. This book had been in Harry’s hands, had been touched by his fingers, bore the imprint of his thoughts.

The handwriting on the first page was spiky and uneven. Blobs of ink marked places where his quill had paused.

Bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses

Bottle fame, brew glory, put a stopper into death

Powdered root of asphodel added to an infusion of wormswood – makes the Draught of Living Death

Bezoar – in the stomach of a goat, will save you from most poisons

Monkshood and wolfsbane are the same as aconite

Severus jumped when Hermione’s hand brushed against his. Her hand was cool and her fingernails were rough. “You did rather intimidate him that first day,” she said. “He felt bad because he didn’t know anything. He thought you hated him and he didn’t understand why.”

“I …” Severus stopped. Touching the lily-carved box gently, he whispered “asphodel,” and the clasp came open with a quiet click.