"What do you think's behind here sev?" Lily whispered to her long-time friend, they were fourteen years old and she had just found a very large and ornate tapestry hung up on the wall of a corridor.

The two of them had gotten lost when they were so deep in conversation that they forgot to pay attention to which staircase they had begun climbing; and now found themselves in an unknown part of the castle. 

Severus walked smoothly over to his dear friend's side, and looked the tapestry up and down, "I think dumbledore's gone positively mad, why is he hanging a giant carpet in an unused corridor?" he exclaimed.

Lily couldn't help but giggle, "stop being silly" she said bashfully, "it's a tapestry, but what do you think is happening in it?"

"Maybe it's trying to tell us that trolls look ten times worse in tutus" he shrugged, a slight smile crept across his face.

Lily couldn't help but let out a shrill laugh at his comment, she bumped him with her shoulder slightly, causing him to lose his footing slightly; but Severus didn't mind one bit, all he could do was smile at Lily's reaction, he stood there so dumbfounded at the fact that she was his friend, more than anything.

The strange tapestry, Lily found out later, was actually a depiction of Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls ballet. She shook her head slightly, still feeling the after effects of a good laugh, "but what a peculiar thing" she remarked, shaking her head slightly.

***

Three year later, in his sixth year, after he had made the deadly mistaking of calling Lily a mudblood, Severus found himself standing in front of the the tattered tapestry depicting a delusional old wizard attempting to teach small brained trolls the art of ballet.

The tapestry held years of memories between Lily and Severus, hundreds of different messages to each other scrawled upon the back of the fabric, with little lines through the ones that had been read. The messages  slowly moved upwards in height as they grew taller.

Severus flipped the tapestry back and stepped behind it, at the top of the array of neat and messy handwriting, severus penned in a message, that he desperately hoped Lily would see

"Lily, I am so terribly sorry about what I said. I ask you to forgive me, but I know you never will. Please know, that I will always carry the guilt of my words, and that I will always have hope. I am here for you, always."