Muddled

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling, and thus do not own anything in here! Unless you want enough books to last you for about five years and a lawsuit, please don't sue me.

A/N: This used to be called I love you, Lily. Then one midnight, I decided it was time to fix the ending, which I had long thought was too rushed. That led to cutting three lines out of the flashback, throwing in a lot more reflection at the end, and, of course, a title change. I like it better now.

Severus Snape looked down at the coffin that held Lily Potter, then pulled a wizard photo out of his pocket. From it, a boy and girl waved at him.

Flashback:

"Lily?"

"Yeah Sev?"

"Mum found out."

Lily's face contorted in horror.

"No! Who told?"

"I don't know."

"What do you think they'll do?"

"I don't know. But it's going to be bad. All of our line has been in Slytherin."

"We're almost at the station."

"Yeah."

"Lily?"

"Yes?" She looked at Severus.

"Um...well...I'm sorry for all the fights and mean things I said."

"Me too."

"Sorry about all the fights and mean things you said and started, or sorry about all the fights and mean things I said and started?" He winked, and Lily threw back her head and laughed.

Then she looked down, shoulders gently heaving in a mixture of laughter and tears.

"Don't worry," he said softly. "No matter what they do, I'm your brother and I love you."

If only she'd remembered those words. Severus looked at the photo, the photo oblivious to the fact they looked so different, the photo that did not, could not betray her green eyes and red hair, did not reveal how she straddled Slytherin and Gryffindor, green in lineage but red in all else. But it could show how dark he was, black hair, black eyes. Black. A color, he supposed, you ended with when muddling together Slytherin and Gryffindor. The problem was, green and red were not meant to be mixed. They just ended in...black. Lily had kept them seperate. Lily had suceeded, while Severus had just ended up with a dark mix of confusion from past and future choices.

But Lily had died. That was another thing the picture hadn't betrayed. Sorrow. Sorrow and death.

She shouldn't have. She succeeded. She led the battle against the dark side. He did just the opposite, before he changed. Too little, too late.

I could have saved her.

But he'd failed, muddled all the choices together into black.