"Lily Evans. Do you remember her, the Gryffindor mudblood? The one they teased me about all of those years?" Severus asked, lifting his hand to pull Alecto's from his hair but keeping her fingers tentatively in his grasp as he his eyes fell to study them, "Before I'd come here, she'd died. Her and her husband, and nearly her son. It was my fault. I told... the Dark lord, about a prophecy and... When we spoke, the other day, and I realized that you weren't the same Alecto I'd last seen, that you were some younger reflection, I went looking for Evans."
He linked his fingers curiously with Alecto's and rubbed his thumb alongside her own, his eyes still down, though unfocused now.
"I loved her, with such a passion... that I could see her in every word of poetry I read, could hear her voice on the wind, her laugh... when she died it destroyed me. And she knew, she knew all of it. She simply... never wanted me. She, of course, tried to soften the blow but the truth is still the truth. What kind of creature lets someone pine, let's someone suffer like that for so long? She couldn't... tell me, not really, why she fell for that lout, that ridiculous jock, while I could tell you a thousand reasons I fell for her, but she doesn't understand. Maybe... I must sound so ridiculous. It just, I wanted to be with her. I never saw myself anywhere else. I wouldn't know what to do with anyone else."