Disclaimer: Harry Potter (c) J.K. Rowling; words on the wall from "Lisa Relander," a Celtic folk tune.

Notes: This was my entry for Vizen's Corridor Challenge on deviantART.
Originally, it was supposed to be a longer story – a Marauders' Era Chamber of Secrets sort of thing. I never planned on this bit focusing on Lily and Severus so much; but once it was there, I just kept rolling with it, and now you have this. I keep debating with myself as to whether or not I want to continue this, and maybe, eventually, I will.

The Writing on the Wall

In the walls now all the words are seen,
To mark where Lisa's sleeping.
From her heart there grew a rowan tree,
With berries red as blood.
- "Lisa Relander"

Remus Lupin, seventh-year Gryffindor: studious, loyal, and out of his dorm well past curfew. Not that it was his fault he wasn't a part of the so-called Slug Club and didn't enjoy a slight reprieve from Professor Slughorn's mountains of homework. He often wished he was able to just shirk off the work like James or Sirius habitually did, but no; the responsible student within him forbade him from ever failing to complete an assignment.

The brown-haired teenager rubbed a hand across his tired eyes and looked at the clock hanging on the wall of the library. Could it really be nearly midnight? He glanced back down at his essay. Already a foot of parchment, and he hadn't even finished his final body paragraph. Oh, well; it could wait until morning. He would wake up early and finish before breakfast. His fatigued mind couldn't organize thoughts about pickled monkshood and extract of mandrake root this late at night.

He closed the musty volume from which he had been copying a few fevered, last-minute notes and heaved it from the table, carefully placing it back in its place on the shelf, returning to hastily pack the rest of his things. The sooner he got back to Gryffindor Tower, the better; he was already in for it if Slughorn caught him wandering the hallways – or worse yet, the caretaker, Apollyon Pringle. Pringle was rarely in a good mood, and even then he never hesitated to brandish a cane at students out past curfew.

Remus glanced cautiously around corners as he navigated the corridors, ready at any moment to break into a full run should he catch sight of Pringle or Slughorn. Luckily, he caught sight of no one.

Just as he was nearly in the clear, mounting the stairs somewhere near the fifth floor, his blood ran cold. Had he heard a voice? It was just a ghost, he assured himself; Pringle may have been mad, but he didn't mutter to himself as he prowled the hallways.

"…to that damned Potter boy…"

Remus frowned; the voice was clear now – little more than a hiss, though plainly audible as the sound reverberated off the stone walls and floor. There was something familiar about it, but he couldn't positively identify the whispering tones above the creaking and groaning of the moving staircases. He ducked into an alcove as he heard footsteps approaching, and waited. The rank stench of warm blood drifted through the air, and he struggled not to gag; boggarts, grindylows, thestrals, dementors – he could handle any sort of horrific beast fate cared to throw at him. The scent of blood, though, always made him squeamish.

Then he saw the speaker – Severus Snape; well, it was certainly better than Pringle or Slughorn. Remus relaxed and started to make his way out of the alcove, to approach the greasy-haired Slytherin and ask what he was doing so far from the dungeons so late at night when a second set of footsteps, these hurried, became audible.

"Severus – wait!"

Lily Evans's red hair was visible in a flash as she darted past Remus's hiding place.

He heard Severus's footsteps slow, coming to a seemingly reluctant halt. "What," said the Slytherin boy. It wasn't a question; it was a statement, almost daring Lily to try and explain – whatever it was that needed explaining.

"Severus, I – I didn't know –"

"Didn't know what? What an ass he is?"

"No, Severus, I knew that. I had no idea what he was going to do; I didn't think he would set up something like that."

Oh. The scent of blood made sense now. Remus glanced down at the floor, and his suspicions were confirmed; a bloody stripe had made its mark across the tile in Severus's wake. Remus remembered James having said something about a joke for Snivellus – something involving quite a large amount of lobalug blood stolen from Slughorn's private stores – earlier that day. As he felt bile rising in his throat, Remus turned his eyes away from the bloody floor and began breathing through his mouth.

"Because he would never set up a trap like that," Severus was saying now. "Especially knowing that I would be the one to stumble into it!"

"Please, I'm sorry, Severus – but you know, it's not like he wouldn't have found you eventually, anyway. He and his friends have been working on that stupid map of theirs."

The map? How could Lily possibly know about the map? It was a secret of the Marauders; it was theirs, and theirs alone! Remus was filled suddenly with a sense of betrayal; would James really have told Lily about their secrets? What else had he told her?

There was a sigh. "Maybe we should just stop meeting like this, Severus."

"No, Lily; I've lost my dignity to that bastard, I'm not going to lose you, too!"

Before Remus could even stop to ponder what Severus had meant by the remark, Lily was already speaking again. "Severus, we've become different people. I mean, you know how I feel about your – crowd," she said. "And I can't make James and the others stop doing things like this to you –"

"So stop being with them!" Severus was nearly shouting now. All pretenses of caution had apparently been dropped. "As much as you don't like Avery and Mulciber, they've never tried to hurt you, even if you are a Mudblood."

There was a loud crack, presumably as Lily's open palm connected with Severus's cheek, and Remus sorely wished he could see what was happening; revealing himself, though, would have no doubt ended poorly for him. He knew Severus wasn't one to show mercy when he felt threatened or betrayed.

"You're no better than I am," Lily said, her tone low and venomous. "It's a wonder Mulciber and Avery put up with you."

There was a rustling of a cloak and a footstep as she began to walk away, but she stopped. Again, Remus longed to see what was going on between them – so much was missed in a conversation when one couldn't read facial expressions and body language!

There was another rustle of fabric, and then another brief period of silence. After a moment, moist lips parted.

Remus suddenly felt quite embarrassed; Severus and Lily thought they were alone, sharing a tender moment between two old friends. A tender moment – ha! Old friends or not, Lily was still James's girlfriend; Remus knew it was his duty as one of the Marauders to inform James of what she was doing – but then, James had betrayed him by telling her of the map, and who knew what else; why shouldn't he just keep this from James by way of revenge? An eye for an eye, after all.

"It's late," Lily's voice said.

"I don't care," came the reply.

Remus closed his eyes; all he wanted was to get back to his dormitory and go to bed. He let his bag slip from his shoulder to the floor, hoping to keep it quiet, but with no such luck. With a dull thud, the bag hit the floor; the noise was quiet, but it was just loud enough to be heard in the silence of the dark corridor.

Severus's face appeared suddenly in the opening of the small alcove, absolutely terrifying in the dim candlelight, crimson lobalug blood running in a streak from his hairline to his chin, smeared on his cheek, standing out in stark contrast to his pale skin. He grabbed the Gryffindor by the front of his robes and hauled him out into the corridor. Lily was saying something behind him, but Remus couldn't distinguish her words over the string of jumbled oaths and hexes emanating from the Slytherin's thin lips.

Remus found himself on the floor and scrambled backwards, for the first time in his life praying that Pringle would appear – Slughorn, at the very least – and save him from the swift retribution that was sure to come as soon as the Slytherin boy had the chance to raise his wand.

As soon as the wand was drawn, Remus found himself lifted into the air by his ankles – but being levitated in the air by Severus Snape suddenly became the least of his worries. He waved his arms in the air, trying to turn to get a better look at what he thought he had seen out of the corner of his eye. He couldn't really have seen –

"Severus, stop it! Please!"

"No, I've waited too long for this opportunity, Lily! Sectum –"

"Look!"

The one word Remus had managed to get out was enough to make Severus pause mid-spell and look in the direction the Gryffindor was pointing. A ghastly white face with wide, dull eyes was watching the scene from an adjoining corridor. With a dismissive wave of his wand, Severus released Remus from the levicorpus spell, and the three seventh-year students cautiously moved forward to get a better look, suddenly, silently sharing the knowledge that something much more important than their petty disagreements and emotions was happening.

The pallid face was connected to a body, stiffened and pale. It was a girl – a third-year Hufflepuff, if Remus wasn't mistaken, though he didn't know her name. He knelt beside her and put his fingers to her throat, checking for a pulse. He looked up at the other two. "She's dead," he said.

Lily was clinging to Severus's robes, her eyes wide and mouth agape in silent horror, not caring that the lobalug blood was staining her own robes and hands. Severus, too, was silent, though his black eyes were narrowed and his mouth was set in a firm line.

Remus looked in the direction of their gazes and saw that on the stone wall before them, a message had been scrawled in what looked horribly like blood.

And now the stones will answer her cry

From the wall where she lays.

And lake wind whispers her song

And her ghost shall walk the shore all night long.

Remus felt a chill run down his spine. What could have done this to this poor girl? He shuddered and turned away.

"What do we do now?" Lily asked, her voice hardly more than a choked whisper.

"It's obvious, isn't it?" Severus asked, his voice hard. "We can't report it; they'll think we killed her. We leave her until morning. Pringle will find her."

"We can't just leave her, Severus! We have to tell someone!"

"Lily," he said, more gently, "look at us. The evidence is stacked against us. And we're out past curfew as it is. That won't go over well with Pringle."

Lily looked at him, then down at her own robes, covered with a fine coating of lobalug blood. "You're right," she conceded. "But I still don't think it's right to just leave her here like this."

Remus gently touched the red-head's elbow and saw Severus stiffen beside her. "Lily, he's right. There's nothing we can do. They'll find her in the morning, and then… and then all hell will break loose. It's best to just leave her."

Lily frowned, but saw she was outnumbered. She tugged her elbow away from Remus and turned back to the Slytherin boy for a moment, looking as though she was going to say something, but settling instead with simply putting a gentle hand on the side of his face.

The werewolf looked away as Severus stooped to kiss her again briefly, and then the three parted ways, the two Gryffindors heading up the stairs to the tower, the other heading in the opposite direction.

"You won't tell James, will you?" Lily asked suddenly when they had stopped in front of the Fat Lady's portrait. "About Severus and me, I mean."

"I – no. I won't," he said. He could already feel guilt building in his chest; he wondered just how long he would let Lily and Severus's secret weigh on him before blurting it out to James. No – he wouldn't let himself tell James; he had made up his mind, and assuring Lily of his silence had effectively sealed the deal, as far as he was concerned.

"Are the two of you going to stand out here all night?" the Fat Lady asked irritably. "Or will you go in so that I might get a bit of sleep?"

Remus mumbled the password and followed Lily in through the hole behind the painting, suddenly realizing just how tired he was. He bid the girl goodnight and crept up the stairs to the boys' dormitories, climbing into his own four-poster without bothering even to undress. Just as his eyelids closed, one resounding thought jerked him awake.

He had left his bag in the alcove.