It was the one thing he coveted the
most. A photograph, dog-eared and yellow
with age, which he kept in the drawer of his nightstand. In the picture a young girl, roughly ten
years of age, ran from the camera, but her face and upper body was turned
toward it. Despite the sun exposure one
could still see the girl’s long hair is
a vivid red, and her mouth was turned upward and open in a laugh frozen in
time. He still admired, after all these
years, the way her hair fanned out to the side, chopped off by the edge of the photo. The color of her eyes was indiscernible, but
he knew they were green.
The photo had been taken nearly
thirty years prior. He and Lily had met
on the playground, their usual hangout.
It was a holiday weekend, but neither of their families had any plans to
go anywhere. The playground had been
completely empty, which pleased Severus; he liked to imagine himself in a world
where only he and Lily existed. It was
bright and sunny, and comfortably warm.
The pair usually avoided the play structures, opting instead to talk and
play on the fringes of the playground amidst the trees, but the absence of any
other children made them less inhibited.
They sat in the caboose of a wooden train, and Severus told her more
about the magical world.
“Guess what I have,” Lily smiled
mischievously, her hands reaching into her satchel. Severus leaned forward eagerly, excited by the
gleam in her eyes. With a dramatic wave
of her arm, she pulled out a disposable camera.
Severus’ smile dimmed a little, but Lily was undeterred. She coaxed him off the train and out into the
open. “I want to start a scrapbook, and
I need you in it!”
“It’s a Muggle camera,” he replied
somewhat sourly, squinting in the sun.
He had a hard time keeping still; cameras (Muggle-made or not) made him
uneasy.
“So?” Lily retorted. “Don’t just stand there, do something!”
His patience was wearing thin. “Like what?”
He felt unexpectedly weary; the sun’s heat was bearing down directly on
him and his dark, baggy clothing. But it
was too late, for Lily quickly raised her arms and took a picture of him in
mid-sentence.
She flashed him another cheeky
smile. “Candid camera!” In a burst of annoyance, Severus made an
attempt to grab the camera from her, but she darted away laughing, and
continued to turn and take pictures behind her as the pursuit turned into a
game. He chased her through the
playground, over and under bridges, down slides, and through tunnels. Finally, he cornered her near the monkey bars
and managed to take the camera from her.
“Wait,” she reached for it, “I have an idea.” She wrapped an arm around his shoulder and
leaned against him, with her face towards the camera as they both held it. He felt his stomach leap at the closeness of
her body, and blinked at the flash. She
withdrew quickly, but let go of the camera and ran off. On impulse, Severus raised the camera to take
a picture just as she began to turn around…
Two days later they met again at
the playground. Severus noticed that she
had a paper bag which he immediately recognized as the kind the pharmacy put
developed photos into. Lily steered him
toward a picnic table and they sat down.
“I got doubles,” she explained, “but most of these didn’t come
out.” She pulled out a stack of glossy
photos. Looking through them, Severus
noticed that most were of him, but extremely blurry. He rushed through his stack, eager to see
only one picture. He was met with
disappointment; the left side of his face had been chopped off by the edge of
the photo, and Lily’s face was completely washed out so all one could see were
her eyes, and the faint outlines of her mouth and nose.
“I’m still going to put it in my
scrapbook,” Lily shrugged. “It’s the
only one with both of us in it.”
Severus flipped to the next, which
was the one he had taken of Lily running.
It had turned out surprisingly clear, and he found it striking. “We should have used a wizard camera,”
Severus replied sourly. Lily did not
respond to this comment, replying instead that he could keep one set of the
photos if he wanted. Severus looked them
over again, and decided only to keep the one of the two of them and the one he
himself had taken. He hid them in the
pocket of his oversized shirt; the last thing he wanted was his father to see
them and start asking questions.
Those days seemed a lifetime ago. Severus ultimately lost the shot of both him
and Lily. The picture, in light of
everything that had transpired since, had taken on an almost eerie
quality. But he still had the picture of
Lily, frozen in time. Perhaps it was the
wizard in him, but the stillness of the Muggle photograph was profound and
unsettling. It seemed to underscore the
fact that Lily was dead, and irrevocably gone.
As he ruminated over it, he tried not to think about what had become of
her set of the pictures. Had she thrown
them away? Torn out those particular pages of her scrapbook? Was his photo, like him, without a partner? His work was cut out for him, and the photo
served as a daily reminder. He held it
dearly; it was the only part of her he possessed.
