One look from Severus’s dark eyes and three seconds, the space of a breath or a heartbeat, and Hermione Granger jumped up from the green sofa. “I’ll just – that is – perhaps – I’ll see you later,” she said. She stumbled over the strewn books and scrolls on her way to the door. Severus smirked at her graceless exit.

The box on his lap was open. The crack between the box and lid widened, the dark triangle expanding as Severus opened the box, one protective hand smoothing the lily pattern on the lid. “Harry’s box,” he murmured.

Severus felt his heart pause a beat. The box was full. Perched on the very top of its contents was a delicate gold ring that sparkled with a small ruby. Lily’s engagement ring shone in the dim light – Severus reached out to touch it with his forefinger and he felt the cold of the metal, a silent reproach, a memory of the warm finger that had once worn this ring. Severus lifted the ring out of the box and caressed the smooth gold band. It was gold to match the sunlight that Lily had loved, and a ruby to match her hair. She had teased him, telling him that she’d turn him into a Gryffindor one day.

Severus slipped the ring onto his finger – made for Lily’s delicate hand, it fit onto his smallest finger – and closed his eyes. He could still picture her face, her mouth with its upturned corners, when he’d presented her with the ring. Now the ring warmed to his skin – this metal that had once felt smooth and cold to Lily against her own delicate finger.

Severus blinked twice, blinked the image of a still Lily lying on the floor of her cottage at Godric’s Hollow out of his mind, and turned back to the box.

A book, leather-bound and worn, the pages inside filled with Harry’s distinctive script, was next in the box. A quill and a pot of ink – perhaps Harry had put them in the box the last time he’d written in the book? Or were these also treasures that Harry had hidden away in his mother’s box?

A pile of papers – the top was a marriage license, Lily’s and Potter’s names written with a kind of solemn dignity. Severus closed his eyes again – he did not want to picture Lily and Potter signing the license, less than a year before they were both killed. He set the pile of papers aside, underneath the journal.

Severus lifted a small circlet of dried poppies out of the box, his reverent hands trembling. The poppies were bleached with age and fluttered in the cool dungeon air. Severus had made this circlet of flowers for Lily, sitting in the sunlight by the lake, when they were fifteen. “Gryffindor flowers for a Gryffindor girl,” he’d said as he handed the crimson flowers to her. She had kept them – Harry had kept them – for all of these years.

Lily had slipped the circlet of poppies around her wrist and, with a rosy tinge to her cheeks, brushed her lips against them, red touching red. She had worn them all day, a quiet freshening spell sent at them at odd intervals by Severus. The flowers had looked like a violent scar against her slim tanned wrist – but that sunny day, Severus had read no omens into it.

Lily, who had hated Herbology, because “there was no point in mucking around with all those boring, useful plants,” had loved the bright, flashy flowers. The pale elegant lily that was her namesake held no attraction for her. She had liked bright sunny daffodils and tulips and poppies – any flower that was flame-colored. “You were a Gryffindor before you ever got here,” Severus had teased her.

Severus brushed the faded poppy petals with a gentle finger. Had Harry understood the significance of the poppies? Had he kept this faded circlet of flowers, thinking that James had given it to his mother? Had it pleased Harry to think that his father was the sort of man to bring flowers to his wife?

Severus shook his head, setting the poppy circlet down to rub at his temples. “It doesn’t matter,” he told himself. “Harry didn’t have either of them so what does it matter, if he took some comfort in thinking that? Potter made her happy, that’s what mattered.”

The open circle of the poppy bracelet stared at him, unblinking. Potter made her dead, it seemed to say. “That’s not how it was meant to happen,” he told it. He shut the flowers back into the box and stalked away. He refused to have conversations with dead flowers.

After two glasses of whiskey and three hours of broken nightmares, Severus gave in to the magnetic pull of the box. The box held answers – and more questions – about his beloved Lily and her beloved Harry. Years swirled and melted together, brought him close enough to touch Lily, to feel her touch, to see her again, when he held the box that she had held.

The dried poppies rested on top of a small pile of photos. Severus held them with his fingertips as though the photos would ignite. Lily waved and blew him kisses, her red-gold hair a corona around her face, while she held baby Harry and Potter scowled at him. The wind that caressed Lily’s hair and sent it in elegant swirls around her face only served to make Potter’s hair more untidy, and he swept his hand through his dark locks. Potter scowled at Severus again before bending to coo over baby Harry, a silent “mine – never yours,” shaped by his lips. Severus turned the photo face down to avoid Potter’s possessive gloating.

The next photo was of him and Lily, the two of them sitting by the lake during their last year at Hogwarts. Severus had a casual arm around Lily’s shoulders, her hair twined around his fingers in a smooth, fire-gold net. She was smiling at him. She hadn’t looked at the camera. Her lips were the ruby red color of the ring that glinted on her finger.

Severus dropped the photo. Had Harry seen this? Had he thought – what had he thought? Severus bent to pick up the photo, scraped his knuckles against the cold stone dungeon floor. If Harry had seen this, why had he never asked Severus about his mother? Had the boy never wondered at their intimate pose or at the tender look in his mother’s eyes?

Next was a photo of Lily and Potter at their wedding, the happy couple beaming at each other. Lily’s hands were clasped in Potter’s hands and her left hand sparkled with the diamond engagement ring that he had given her and with the gold of her wedding band. The beautiful corona of her hair was masked and dimmed with the white lace of her veil. Potter raised a hand to touch her cheek, a soft gentle touch that made Severus hate his old rival with deeper bitterness, before pulling her close in an embrace.

Severus turned to the last photo. It was a picture that Lily had taken of him in their fourth year. He’d been brewing potions in the dungeon – Professor Grimmell had let him use one of the small labs reserved for the upper years to experiment – and the potion he’d been making was on the verge of exploding. Smoke billowed out of the cauldron in hazy greenish puffs – Severus still remembered the clinging musky smell of it, boiled newt skin and porcupine quills, one of his least successful experiments. Lily surprised him by taking the photo at the worst second, had giggled after taking it and jerked the camera out of his reach.

Had she kept the photo to remember their friendship, the days before Severus had spoiled everything? Had she kept it to torment Potter, a subtle Slytherin hint that he wasn’t her first choice? Had she even remembered that she had it, locked away in this box?

What had Harry thought of it, his hated Potions Master making a mistake with his brewing? The boy had never mentioned the photo, not to Severus or any of the students – Severus had heard no rumors circulating the school about the nasty Potions Master who ruined a potion. Had Harry wondered why his mother kept the picture? What had the boy thought?

Severus sighed, placing the photos back into the empty box. He wanted to shut away his memories and unanswerable questions in a box, but the mental walls he had put up around them had fallen. He set several rings of protective wards around the fragile circlet of dried poppies before retiring again for the night.

Severus stood by the lake and watched his dark reflection shimmer in the still water. With absent, careless fingers he shredded the early daffodils apart, casting their torn petals onto the surface of the lake where their impact with the water made small concentric rings. His hands were pale against his dark robes and their distorted reflection in the lake lost them their elegance. The ripples and shimmers of the water made his thin fingers look clumsy and awkward.

Severus had stood here, beside the lake in this spot where the shadows of the Forbidden Forest never reached the velvet grass, two decades ago. He and Lily had stood here. The sunlight had cast their reflections onto the lake, but the lake had been rough with wind and their reflections were distorted.

The sunlight had glinted off the ruby ring that Lily wore. The shine of the light on her ring had matched the shine of the light on her smooth hair. Her face was pale and her eyes were cold and Severus had stepped away from her.

Severus looked down at the daffodils that his fingers were tearing into small pieces. He bent to pull some more daffodils out of the patch where they grew. His movement sent their cheerful blossoms bobbing up and down. Shredding the blossoms, he tossed the fragments into the lake.

There had been no daffodils growing here that day. He had stood here, and Lily had stood there, and he had said hurtful distant words and he had stepped away from her when her eyes turned cold. He had pushed her away, and she had run to Potter.

She had run to Potter, and she had died with Potter. He had killed her with his rejection. Severus shredded the last of the daffodils and flung them into the lake. Sunlight glinted off of the ruby ring that he wore on his smallest finger.

Severus sat on his velvet green sofa, watching the empty fireplace and tracing the lily pattern on the lid of the box. He had locked the memories of Lily inside – the photographs, the poppy circlet – but he still wore the ring. It was tight on his finger and he kept the metal warm with the heat of his body. Lily had worn this ring.

His free hand touched the journal that Harry had left in the box, felt the leather cover rough under his fingers. It felt like an intrusion on Harry’s privacy, touching the book where he had kept his secret thoughts.

Harry must have known of the relationship between Severus and his mother – known or suspected – or why would he have left the box to Severus? The pictures, the ring, the poppies – but why include the picture of James and Lily, why include their wedding license? Perhaps the boy had wanted to taunt his hated professor, wanted him to feel his loss again. Severus shook his head. No.

He lifted the book and picked up the stack of papers beneath it. He let his fingers ghost over Lily’s signature on the wedding license – he touched the paper where she had touched it – before looking at the next paper.

Harry’s birth certificate was glossy with the official seal of the Ministry. He touched the seal with his forefinger and felt the light zap of magic that the official seals contained. Then his eyes focused on the writing and he gasped. Aiden Severus Snape was printed in Lily’s distinctive spiky handwriting.

Severus’s hands clenched and unclenched in tight, frantic spasms. What joke was this? “Lily, why would you do this?” he whispered. His breath rattled the parchment in his hand. The official Ministry of Magic seal – Lily’s own handwriting – could this be a joke, or was it real? Severus looked down at the ruby ring that held his littlest finger in a tight metal embrace.

“Lily,” he said. “Oh, Lily, why would you do such a thing?”

He stared at the parchment, waiting for it to explode or burn or disappear. It remained inert. The Ministry of Magic seal vibrated when he touched it.

Severus put down the papers and took his head in his hands, rubbed at his temples in frantic circles. “Lily, what does this mean?” he asked the silent dungeons.

He paced the room, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor. Harry James Potter – Aiden Severus Snape. He was listed as the father on the birth certificate. He twisted the ruby ring around and around in endless circles on his little finger. Was Harry his son?

Shaking, Severus returned to the velvet sofa where he had left the papers. There were two more papers in the small pile of papers that had held Lily and Potter’s wedding license and Harry’s birth certificate. Had Lily left him with an explanation? Severus’s hands shook as he picked up the papers.

Underneath Harry’s – Aiden’s? – birth certificate was another official Ministry form, glowing with its own seal. Severus traced the ink with an uncomprehending finger. This certified that Aiden Severus Snape was adopted by James Potter and renamed Harry James Potter. The handwriting was firm and strong, like Potter’s handwriting always was. Rattled like an empty sieve, Severus set the adoption certificate next to the birth certificate.

“Lily, what did you do? Why didn’t you tell me?”

The last paper was Lily’s and Potter’s will, or a copy of it – it lacked an official seal. Short and brusque, it left all of their belongings to Harry James Potter. Potter had added in an addendum – dictated by Lily, Severus imagined, the style was too flowery for the blunt Potter – that although Harry was not the son of his body, he was the son of his heart and that he acknowledged Harry as his sole living heir despite the lack of a blood connection.

Severus set this aside as well. With careful hands, he placed all of the papers into the box and he walked, shaking, to his liquor cabinet. He’d never heard of a more appropriate time for a glass of whiskey or three. He carried the bottle back to his sofa and sat staring at the carved wooden box.