TITLE: speaking a dead language
FIRST PUBLISHED: October 13, 2023
SUMMARY: Lily and Severus might have stopped being friends, but they will always speak the language of flowers.
oOo
I.
It's July, and following the bend of the open river, their shoes caked in mud and eyes squinting along the glare, they are standing under the sun in the place where water meets earth, where the purple stems of mugwort peek up, adorned with small, bright-white flowers and pointed gray-green leaves. Severus crouches down on his haunches to pick a few of the weedy plants—for him, every step in the outdoors is a foraging job, and Lily is not sure whether that is something shared by all wizards or just something specific to him. She has not met any other wizards, you see. They are nine years old and the years until they will go to a shining school of magic, a castle on a hill, seem as though they will last forever, their future only a mirage on the horizon.
"What do you use that for, again?" Lily asks, as Severus begins to shred the leaves in his hands, his gaze caught on something far in the distance, past the sparkling bend of the river.
Her voice draws him back, and though her friend doesn't stop the twisting little motions of his hands on a pungent leaf, he stands up and tucks the rest of the plant into the big, stained pockets of his overlarge greatcoat. "Use it for a lotta things," Severus says. "Herbs, it makes food taste better."
"Isn't it bitter?"
"Can't have food without a little bitter in it," Severus says. "In potions it takes down swelling, pain, sickness. Or you steep it in tea and it gives you power over your dreams."
Lily makes a face. "That sounds gross. Anyway, why would you want power over your dreams?" Her dreams are always marvelous adventures, full of wonderful surprises and strange, impossible, vibrant landscapes, creatures found in fairytales, flight under a gentle sun.
Severus's mouth twists. His palm spasms around the leaf in his hand, his fingers stained green. "Dreams are part of the mind," he says. "You can't learn Mind Arts without mastering them."
"Mind Arts…" Lily says. "Occlumency and Legilimency?"
"Yeah."
She thinks she understands why Severus would want to protect his mind. It is for the same reason he protects his body, for the same reason he protects his words. He is strange, and inward, and careful, and when you try to poke in too much at him he snaps at you, closed like a coiled spring. "But you said barely anyone knows that," she says, suddenly worried. "There aren't lots of mind readers at Hogwarts?"
"Of course not," Severus says dismissively.
She supposes that even one mind reader at Hogwarts is one too many for him. Severus has already told Lily the easier way to avoid someone creeping around in your thoughts, and that's to avoid looking into their eyes. It's a funny way to protect yourself, Lily thinks—it feels too much like running away—but since she has no knack for the Mind Arts herself she tries to remember it.
Severus is very good at practicing looking away; but it only makes the people who see him give him disdainful glances and accuse him of being rude. It is not as though he'd find mind readers among muggles—"but, sometimes," he's explained, "if I look into their eyes I see what they're thinking like—like they're speaking real quiet and if I try, I can almost follow." That, too, must be uncomfortable. Lily thinks that a world full of mumbling eyes must be like peeking into a thousand shallow pools filled with secrets; she doesn't know why Severus always looks so keenly into her own eyes, then, if the sensation makes him so uncomfortable—and she has never asked.
"Mugwort," Lily says. "What else do they call it, in the…"
"Wormwood," Severus says. "In the flower language."
It's another one of those things that wizards know that Lily doesn't. So many languages the children will come to school knowing—languages of flowers and spells. Lily had never learned Latin at all until Severus taught her grammar and gave her, with a kind of solemn significance, his battered Latin copy of the Bible to read; it was so old and well-read that the pages were soft and rounded along the edges; the spine all curved and creased; and without saying a word Lily had known it was the most precious thing Severus owned. Ever since then, she has been reading it in the evenings before bed, her voice stumbling, surprised by phrases she recognizes made strange.
"Oh, wormwood," Lily says, and brushes her fingers along the tops of the bright white flowers. "Absence. That's a sad meaning for a plant like this."
"It makes sense," Severus says. "Wormwood only grows in abandoned places."
"It shouldn't have to mean absence, though," Lily says, and sits down in the weedy place, so the flowers brush against her shoulders; she tilts her head toward the sun and meets Severus's liquid-bright gaze. "It should mean… strength. And never-giving-up. Helpfulness."
"Well," Severus says, and for a moment he's silent. "It doesn't."
"Maybe," Lily says, "the language doesn't know it well enough."
II.
"I never meant to call you mudblood, it just…"
"Slipped out? It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your Death Eater friends—you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you? I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."
"No— listen, I didn't mean—"
"—to call me mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"
He struggles on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turns and climbs back through the portrait hole.
And it is the last time they ever talk.
III.
The world is sunny on the day of her parents funeral, as though it doesn't know or care that Lily, seventeen years old, is now an orphan. She and Petunia have barely glanced at each other throughout the whole affair, and Lily walks around the tables with their white cloth and their stolid funeral arrangements of flowers, seeing nothing, until all of a sudden her eyes fell on a small basket sitting in the corner, tucked away. It could not have been arranged by the same people, by the people who had arranged the funeral. The basket is small, wicker-woven and unpainted, and the flowers that fill it would never have been picked by the mortuary: tear-shaped petals of scarlet geranium, waxy leaves of allspice with bundles of white flowers, pointed-sharp leaf of black poplar, small white sprigs of dame's rocket that grows along the train tracks, sharp-needled spruce pine and the coiled budding whorl of weeping willow that Lily remembers looking up into as a girl by the river, the dusting of pollen that would get over their hair and clothes. Comforting, compassion, courage. Despair not, God is everywhere. Hope in adversity. Mourning.
She holds the basket in her hands, finds tears glimmering in her eyes, and this is where Petunia finds her, snappish, impatient, "the service is about to start, I couldn't find you anywhere—" one look at the basket in Lily's hands, held cradled against her chest, the wild unfitting edges of flowers and tree-leaves and weeds. Her mouth twists. "I thought you weren't talking to that Snape boy anymore!"
"I'm not," Lily says. "He's just giving his condolences—"
"He wasn't invited," Petunia says. "How did he even get in here? No one's here yet. I would have seen him."
No one would have seen Severus, if he didn't want to be seen.
"That's a horrid bouquet anyway," Petunia says. "Horrid. It looks like a witch's cauldron. If you must keep it, move it at least so the guests don't see it—"
"Oh shut up, Tuney!" Lily bursts out. She looks up to meet her sister's eyes, her own eyes wet. "You're just worried about your damn reputation in front of your damn fiancé! At a time like this!"
"My reputation!" Petunia shrieks. "How dare you—I'm the one who was here when they died, who ID'd their bodies—I'm the one who set up the funeral while you stayed at your freak school, making pigs fly and kissing toads—don't talk to me about my reputation, Lily! Don't you dare!"
"Fine, then!" Lily says coldly. "Take your stupid funeral then—I don't want it—" and even as the first guests are streaming in she's walking quickly out of the doors, Petunia running behind her but stopped by the sudden influx of people, caught in the current of well-wishers and propriety. Lily doesn't know where she's going, doesn't know why, until she's reached the broomstick stashed in the bushes by the car park and swinging one leg over the smooth wood, the basket still in her hands, she's rising into the air, with nothing but a concealment charm hiding her from the muggles beneath. The clouds are white like spun candy, the wind brisk in the sun, and it dries the angry tears on Lily's cheek even as she begins to regret her storming out, regret the service she's missing, regret not staying to say goodbye to her parents properly. Petunia will never forgive her.
It doesn't matter. She's lost in the sky, the broom like an extension of her own body; she's alive and flying as she was always meant to be, one with the world, the tangle of her thoughts left somewhere behind her on the cold ground.
She alights under the willow tree. The river by Spinner's End looks dirtier and meaner than it did through a child's eyes; the wild abundance of freedom shown as a wasteland, brownfield of neglect. The sturdy roots of the tree is still sturdy under her hand and her back, when she tucks herself into the lee and looks up; and Lily takes out her wand, because now for the first time she is of age and the Trace can't touch her, and she transfigures out of the bare earth a smooth round hazelnut caught in a bramble of raspberry, sets it there beneath the tree guarded by witchlight. Reconciliation, remorse. Lily doesn't know if Severus will see this, but if he ever comes to this tree again, the same tree whose whiplike twig is still tucked into her bouquet, then maybe—
She doesn't know how to speak to him again.
She isn't sure she wants to.
But, this—this is different.
(They've always talked better in gifts than they ever did in words).
IV.
Amid the crowds of packages given to her and James in their wedding, brown paper and wax seals and scrolls and strange pouches in shimmering fabrics and pelts, is a wreath of flowers charmed to stay fresh, no nametag attached. It's James who picks it out as the two sit by the fire in the Potters' house, laughing and sending each other sly glances at one in the morning, skin still warm from where they had touched, cider held close in clean mugs, James—chestnut-skinned, wild-haired, wearing bright wizarding robes chased with silver and beaten gold, Lily in an old t-shirt, worn and comfortable. Her husband frowns at it, says, "that's a pleasant gift," his voice sharp. He tosses it to Lily. "Must be for you," he says, and there's an unasked question in the way she takes it, looks deeply at the wreath in her hands. He's right. The white and purple ivy geraniums on their spurs, the pale purple lilac, bright red berries of thorn apple and fleshy, serrated strips of aloe. Bridal favor, disappointment, deceitful charms, bitterness. Lily isn't sure whether the message is made better or worse by the small, pale, five-petaled flowers woven into the wreath, delicate volkameria—may you be happy. Is it a well-wishing, Lily wonders, or a warning?
She breathes in the mingled scents, places it on her head regardless, leans across the pile of half-unwrapped gifts and kisses James full and close.
V.
In the days before the move to Godric's Hollow is complete, Lily cannot stop for a second. She feels hunted; feels trapped; sees the same reflected in James's eyes, and at least he has the freedom of his cloak, comes back with rain and night on his skin, whispered words about daring escapes, motorcycles, and Sirius—trusted Sirius, her husband's closest friend. She loves Sirius too, she thinks—at least she loves the way his eyes grow soft and crinkled at the corners when he looks at Harry and takes his godson on his knees, reverent, as though he means to protect him from all harm. Harry himself, the green-eyed menace, toddles after her, half-flying in leaps and steps, landing on the ground too lightly. Lily has never realized how much Petunia's dislike of that quirk of hers must have come from fear, not until she's watching her boy hang suspended in the air, halfway through a leap and untethered from gravity, and feels her heart in her throat. It doesn't help mend anything. It doesn't make her hate the stupid vase Petunia gave her for Christmas any less.
She's packing, and saying her goodbyes one by one, feeling as though she is about to be entombed, afraid for herself but more afraid for her little boy, so small and already burdened with the weight of prophecy. She checks each incoming package for curses like it's second nature, flinches at unknown sounds. The four extra vials of potions ingredients in the apothecary package—in addition to what she ordered, she rolls around in her hand, wondering—the repeating leaves of the oregon ash and the berries of rowan, and white, delicate cherry blossoms captured in preserving liquid, the downturn bells of royal-purple columbine. Beware of a false friend. I watch over you. Deception. Folly.
They are going to cast the Fidelius over a house on Godric's Hollow, and no one knows who the real secret keeper is going to be, not even Dumbledore— Sirius, her husband's trusted friend, is the face, the false-front, the trap. There is a spy in the Order, and the not-knowing crawls up Lily's throat and into her trembling hands. What can she do? A few potions ingredients that would never be traced back to their giver; a warning she doesn't know how to heed. Surely Voldemort's forces don't know, yet, about the spell, the force that will protect them from any and all prying eyes. Surely. We aren't using Sirius, Lily reminds herself grimly. We aren't using Sirius; and we're safe, we're safe—
She tries to believe it.
Before Lily can rethink it, she's transfiguring a michaelmas daisy from the edge of a linen napkin, writing the edge of a small card, an address she still knows by heart in a grimy town in Cokeworth, where she was born. She ties it to the leg of Paracelsus and sends the barn owl off, watching it wing away into the blue. She feels tied down, tired, and she holds Harry on her hip and croons to him, tuneless and low, don't worry darling, don't worry, you're safe.
Farewell.
It is the last message she will ever send him. She does not know, yet, how much it is a portent.
VI.
The boy looks just like his father.
It's the first thing Snape notices, watching him down among his Gryffindor peers. Fine robes and snowy owl and sharp-edged wit; the boy walks through Hogwarts as though he's a king reclaiming his rightful place. Snape doesn't know where he's been brought up in the wizarding world, but Potter walks around with galleons in his hands and new textbooks and a red-headed friend in lockstep, and when they meet in the potions classroom for the first time Snape finds that hatred is hard to swallow. Green eyes, her eyes, staring at him, swallowed in the flesh of his enemy. He has long since mastered the tells of his body, but his hands urge to twist and pick at the edge of his robe. It turns his tongue sharp instead, and he snaps out, "Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
It isn't something he would expect every first-year to know, but kings in their castle deserve no mercy.
Asphodel. The muggles have long-since moved the plant out of the genus Lily, but the Greeks knew that it grew on the shores of the dead, a muddy, winding river that looks, in dreams, like black earth and the lowering of a chimney-stack in the distance and a willow-tree with a bramble at its feet.
My regrets follow you to the grave.
Potter stares back at him with those green-glass eyes and his thoughts roil. He thinks that Snape is unfair. He thinks that Snape expects too much. He thinks that if Snape is determined to hate him, he is well-prepared to hate Snape back.
Good, Snape thinks viciously.
"I don't know, sir," Harry says, with nothing but arrogance dripping from his voice.
Snape's mouth twists into a sneer.
"Tut, tut," he says. "Fame clearly isn't everything."