Loving Lily: A Snily Story

Chapter 104 - A Grave Mistake

Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!
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Late one stormy night, Severus returned from yet another impromptu meeting with Voldemort to find Lily staring out the window at the pouring rain while she aimlessly rocked in the wooden chair.

She didn't bother to look over as Severus swept across the room, careful to make his footsteps heavy so that his presence would be known before he managed to startle his wife.

Her emerald eyes were glazed over with a poignant dismay that shattered Severus's heart to witness as he made it to her side, knelt down, and took her hand in his.

"............Lily?" He asked in his velvet voice.

Slowly, she turned her head to glance over as her features twisted in a tormented frown, "Hey, Sev.......What's the matter?"

"........I'm home, my love." Severus answered in his low drawl, as if he expected that simple phrase to give her reason enough to take comfort and drop her morose countenance.

The smile he received in return was genuine but short, too short, fleeting and flashing as it graced her lips and died like a shooting star moving overhead, "Oh........How nice.......I'm very glad, dear"

The pained look that crossed his face sent Lily spiraling through instant regret as she shook her head and nodded quickly, "I-I didn't mean to sound so flat! I'm very happy you're home, sweetheart, I am! It's just that-.......I'm afraid my mind-"

"-Is on other matters, I understand." Severus nodded sympathetically as he raised Lily's hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

He hoped his small act of commiseration may help her to forgive his rudeness, but his heart swelled as she slipped her fingers from his grasp and threw her arms around him.

"This is turning out far worse than I ever could have imagined." She confessed beside Severus's ear in an exasperated little sigh, "No one mentioned this child......Trelawney did not predict it, Dumbledore did not prepare for it, what are we supposed to do, Sev?! I can't confine her to the manor. She won't listen to me anyway! She'll........"Lily gasped for breath as she thought, "She'll....."

"Harriet will have to forge her own path, my love." Severus wisely determined as he moved back long enough to gaze into her emerald eyes, "Has she not done decently so far? The war and how it shall end is in her hands more than ever before."

"Aren't you frightened, Sev?" Lily asked with a disheartened chuckle that rang with bitterness, "Even if this war were not.....if the war had never happened, she's a child! What kind of mother can she be? She still needs mothering herself!"

Severus's black eyes scanned Lily's fair face as he took a long moment to think.

"She inherited your intelligence, my love." Severus reassured Lily, "She's headstrong and reckless, certainly, but she'll do her best. She's nearly seventeen.....You were only a few years older when she arrived. I'm certain that with our guidance....she and the child will be perfectly fine."

"The child......." Lily sighed.

"The father worries you more than anything else." Severus wisely concluded, "There is little we can do to change that."

"Suppose something goes awfully wrong?" Lily pressed, "How......How is this even possible, Sev?! For him to come from a horcrux, a single shred of a soul and.....and......"

Her face twisted into a scowl of disgust as she imagined what Tom Riddle had needed to do to result in Harriet's precarious condition.

"Do you think she's lying?" Lily asked with an undisguised hint of hope in her voice, "Do you think it's possible that Draco may be-"