Mini Fest

Dear MA, what a beautiful surprise in the wee hours of morning! Thank you so much for picking my prompt and writing this ultimately beautiful and bittersweet fic. I know mini_fest isn't a gift exchange fest, but your story feels like the perfect gift - it contains everything I love: beauty, sadness, heartbreak, poetry and wonderfully vivid and beautiful descriptions. Usually, I don't quote much in my comments, but this time I really felt the urge to give everybody else a glimpse into the beauty you wrote and the strong emotions your story evokes:

Inside was a small glass globe, black as midnight; tiny glittering snowflakes were falling across its surface, turning and drifting endlessly, just as the snow had fallen that night so long ago...
There's so much loneliness in these words, just wonderful.

The scent that was uniquely Severus teased her nose: a mixture of wood smoke, herbs, a coppery tang, and beneath it all something bitter, like unshed tears.
My new head-canon scent of Severus Snape. I love it when characters are given unique scents, and this is just so perfect!

Yet gradually she'd been drawn to the tall, thin boy with his black eyes and bitter tongue.
*swoons*

Long conversations by the river, the warm sun making them drowsy and too relaxed to keep up their defenses; sitting companionably under a tree in the summer dusk sharing a bottle of wine liberated from her parents' spirit cupboard; midnight walks under the stars, trading their stories.
Sounds like a teenager's perfect summer. :)

"I've never brought anyone here before, Peony," he added, as if to reassure her.
I love you for this, dear MA. I think you made Petunia very happy by giving this to her - knowing a part of Severus her sister never had.

Pure white flakes drifted downwards slowly, lazily, dreamily, landing in his hair like falling stars. She was the happiest she had ever been.

And she never saw him again.
Beautiful. Precious. Probably my favourite lines. :)

She married Vernon that autumn. He was a good man, steady, dependable, and there was no point in holding onto dreams.
Wow. Oof. So much sadness and denial in these two sentences!

But each Christmas morning she became for a brief moment a child again, breathless with the excitement of knowing that something magical awaited her under the tree.
I'm so glad she had at least this one moment every year to remember true happiness.

a neat cottage with a tidy little garden out front and ivy round the windows, its deep green leaves dusted with the silver of a hard frost.
*imagines this and dies at the beauty of the picture*

"He was young. We all were."
Sometimes there are no words to describe one's feelings.

Thank you again. Your story brought Petunia closer to my heart, and your young Severus stole it from the beginning. I have a very soft spot for this pairing, and the more fic I read about them, the more I think I may become a shipper one day...