Lessons

"You sure you want to do this?" Sirius jokes, fidgeting with his dress robes. He smiles cheekily, but his eyes are glued on James' face, just searching for a moment he can grasp onto, a little hesitation to run with.

"No, mate, you got the bike ready?" James answers, grinning broadly at Sirius in the mirror. But he's still working on his cuff links—there wasn't a moment's pause at that. In that smile, Sirius sees: James is already down that aisle, already gone, never mind that they're both still standing here.

"Parked out front," Sirius promises, knowing already that's exactly where it is going to stay.

Sirius Black is a boy who has never learned to share; who knows aught but having and losing and nothing in-between. He balks at this ceremony, because it is the end of JamesandSirius and the beginning of JamesandLily. He won't admit to himself that his days of coming first were already long gone, disappeared before that diamond ring ever graced Lily's finger.

He is smiling and managing through because he is learning. Learning to share, learning to give, learning the in-between of here and gone.

SevandLily is years dead, and Severus Snape buries himself in the back room of the Apothecary's shop on the day its ashes scatter to the sea. The sunlight is shut out from here—too many precious things in jars and vials to degrade in the light, and he is thankful. Somewhere it's shining on her, on them.

He brews obsession and counterfeit love in the dark on the ugliest of days. It's tempting under his hand, somehow, even when he knows it would fail. Somehow…he almost thinks a moment might be worth it, if he could delude himself to believe the false light he could paint in her eyes.

His hand trembles over the jonquil flowers, the last ingredient, and he cannot. He knows her green too well and no paint could recreate that; knows things can never be as they were, and this work before him is nothing but desperation and lies.

He throws a handful of chrysanthemum into the cauldron instead, white petals sinking into the liquid, and the potion is ruined, useless. Such is truth, white and hateful.

"What are you making?" Aisling-the-other-apprentice asks, in the friendly, older-sister way that grates on him.

"Nothing. A mistake." His curt words shut her down, and she turns back to her own cauldron and notes and says nothing more.

He vanishes the mess with an angry flick of his wand; he loses again, that is his lot, and it is an ache in the hinge of his jaw. Severus turns back to another book, keeping his eyes on the black inked lines because her name chases him in the cream of the margins. He reads, determined, and does not learn.