Snape struggled to give Harry the memories that explained what had happened, why he had had to do what he did. He held on as tightly as he could, trying to filter into Harry just how important it was for him to see them. Snape felt himself drifting. He knew that he was about to die, after all these years he would finally get his wish. For him, life had been fueled by the dream of Lily loving him as much as he did her. She had been his one true friend, and though she didn’t know it, his whole world. Severus knew that he wasn’t easily liked and that had only made him love her even more, because she had been his only chance. He had tried since the day that he had met her, done the best he could to get her to realize how much they were meant to be together, but than the day had come when his pride had gotten the better of him. The pain of the memory burned him, almost as much as when he saw James and Lily together, it didn’t compare, though, to the pain that he had felt when he found out that Lily was dead. That pain had been beyond imagining. It was as if the Crusio spell was being done directly onto his heart. It was exactly that pain, and the regret of not having been able to help her when she most needed it, that had turned Severus good. Every day after that, he asked himself the question of what Lily would have wanted, and whether what he had done would make her happy. This very thought led him to work undercover for Dumbledore, and he knew that he had played his part well. His part of the deal was sealed and now the path was open for Harry to finish it. As much as he hated him, Severus knew that he would be able to do it. With that thought in mind, Severus looked up and saw once more Lily’s eyes. The eyes that her son had inherited and that Severus had looked at with pain. Every time he had looked at those eyes in the face of the man he had hated so much he felt as though it was just James was mocking him again, rubbing in the fact that he had gotten Lily and not him. Now he wanted nothing more than to look at them, even if they were in the face of the one person he hated the most. As he looked at them he felt that he had done right. Lily would have been happy for all of the things that he had done. She would forgive him, and to him that was the only thing in the world that mattered. He hadn’t gotten Lily to love him, but at least now he had accomplished her will. As long as Lily was happy he would be too. The sparkling green of Lily’s eyes began to fade as the darkness engulfed him and he clung to it with all of the strength left in him. They were the last thing he saw. Severus felt himself smile, not on the outside, but on the inside as he felt all bitterness leave him. Lily was happy. Snape drew his last struggled breath and thought no more.
