Disclaimer: Not mine, but I hope you like what I've done with them.

Chapter 1

"You really believe my loyalty can be bought for the price of a few potions ingredients?"

"No, Sev, I don't, but I do think you've put yourself in a dangerous position here. Mulciber is not someone you want to owe a favor to! You know as well as I do that he stole those ingredients-"

"I know no such thing!"

He did, of course. Mulciber's half-hearted cover story, that his last school supply order had "just happened" to contain a very specific assortment of extra potions ingredients, was fooling no one, not least one of the shrewdest wizards of their year. But Severus had a blind spot where James Potter was concerned, and it was James Potter who had put him in his current situation. After an exchange of scuffles lasting the entire first week back, Potter had evidently sneaked into the Potions classroom after hours and added his own ingredient to Severus' cauldron: a no-heat, wet-start firework, rigged to fall into the potion with disastrous effects the next time anyone removed the lid. Predictably, the next one to remove the lid had been Severus, who had received for his troubles a face full of potion, a visit to the hospital wing, and the loss of a week's worth of work. Severus was itching to get back at his nemesis, but first his Potions grade - his best subject, on which all his hopes for NEWTs rested - must be saved.

And so, he had a blind spot.

"Oh, come off it, Sev, where else would he have gotten them?"

"It's none of my affair."

"Don't be so naive."

"Then don't you be so superior! You're right, the way Slughorn adores you, you can probably afford to miss out an entire project and he'll still give you an O at the end of term - but he takes off his rose-tinted glasses when he looks at me, Lily! Those ingredients are my only chance of finishing my project on time in spite of bloody Potter!"

"So the ends justify the means?"

"Yes."

"No!"

"Come on, Lily, I'm just trying to get ahead for once in my life. This is OWL year. These projects matter, Lily! I can't afford to fall behind first week back, just because of you and your rules!" His voice had risen to an uncomfortable volume for the echoey classroom and she bit her lip hesitantly. He'd been having a difficult time lately what with Potter's goading, schoolwork piling up, and pressure from his "friends" building. He'd barely spoken to Lily in public since last Christmas holiday, after which they had arranged to spend every Friday night together, holed up in a small, disused room in the dungeons where no one was likely to come across them - and to generally avoid each other at all other times. In these Friday night meetings remained the last shreds of a friendship that she didn't want to lose. So she did what she did best with him; what she always did with Severus these days. She backed down.

"You're right, I'm sorry I made a thing of it. Shall we go and get some dinner? Marlene says it's treacle tart for afters."

"You know that's not a good idea, Lily. And besides, I'm eating with Mulciber so I can get the ingredients, and then I'm coming back down to set the boomslang skin to simmering before the weekend."

"Right, okay. Then I'll see you around, I suppose."

"Yeah. Oh, and Lily?" She turned, hopeful. "Make sure to take the west side stairs. There's been a leak over there lately, so there shouldn't be anyone to see you."

Silently, she picked up her bag and left.

She didn't go to dinner, but to the library, where she spent the next several hours engrossed in her schoolwork. When the sun had disappeared entirely from the horizon and she could be reasonably sure she wouldn't see anyone in the halls, she returned to Gryffindor Tower and trudged up the stairs to her dormitory. The Dovecote, as the girls called their dorm, was quiet in the dim light. The doves embroidered on the hangings eyed Lily suspiciously as she passed. She had charmed them during their third year to coo charmingly in the mornings in place of alarm clocks, and now they looked on resentfully at anyone who dared disturb their slumber.

Two of her roommates, Mary Macdonald and Dorcas Meadowes, were already inside. Mary lay on her stomach, feet in the air, paging through a copy of Witch Weekly. Dorcas, assiduous as ever, was spending her Friday night in a straight-backed chair at a hardwood desk, rewriting a History of Magic essay for the third time.

Lily flopped down on her bed, toeing off her school shoes and wedging her arms under her pillow. Mary looked on with concern. She opened her mouth to speak, but Dorcas was faster. "Hey, Lily?"

"Yeah."

"How's your day been?"

"Peachy."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Bullshit." Mary's eyes widened in a glare which Dorcas roundly ignored.

"Sod off."

"Make me." Whatever reply Lily made was muffled by her pillow. "Hungry, Lily?"

"Maybe."

"Kitchens?"

"Yes, please."

Dorcas stood up, filing away the essay she'd been working on, as Lily rolled rather gracelessly to the floor and began hunting for a pair of slippers. Mary crossed her arms. "I don't think I will ever understand you two."

"Probably not, you're not very clever," Dorcas said matter-of-factly.

"Doe, that was mean," reprimanded Lily.

"Oh. Sorry, Mary."

"It's okay, Doe."

"Don't call me Doe."

Lily rolled her eyes as Mary looked confused. "Okay, clearly it's time to get some food in you, too, Doe. Let's go see what they have left over."

The three girls left the Dovecote and were heading down the stairs to the Common Room when they passed dove number four, sweaty and dirty and clearly exhausted, on her way up.

"Oi, Marlene! Where have you been all night?" asked Dorcas.

"Oi, Dorcas! Where have you been all my life?" grinned an equally sweaty and dirty, but much perkier, Sirius Black from a few stairs below the girls. Dorcas' only response was to raise her middle finger and stick out her tongue, drawing chuckles from the red-and-gold-jersey-clad pair below.

Sirius Black and James Potter. Quite apart from their bad blood with her best friend, Lily had her own reasons for disliking them. The two of them rivalled her and Dorcas for the best marks in their year, but where the girls spent hours in the library revising, Potter and Black were rarely seen to pick up a schoolbook. They skated by, in large part, on charm and the easy confidence of coming from power and old money. Lily would never admit it aloud - although she was pretty sure Dorcas knew, by virtue of feeling the exact same way - but she envied the boys their skills. They got marks as good as hers, were as beloved of the professors as she was - and didn't do a day's work for any of it. It wasn't fair. And now, of course, Potter had been made captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, with Black as his right-hand man and senior Beater. As if their egos had really needed the boost.

"We had a late practice, Dorcas," groaned Marlene. "Captain Potter decided we don't need light to run stairs, so we're spending every Friday night between now and Halloween on conditioning. Kill me now, please."

"Don't give up yet, Mar! If you survive, you'll be in the best shape of your life!" enthused the captain in question.

"That's a pretty big 'if,'" she muttered darkly.

Chuckling, Lily gestured to her two companions. "We were just on our way to the kitchens, Marlene, care to join?"

"I'd love to. Go on without me, I'm just gonna shower first. I feel like I'm wearing the entire pitch right now and it's beginning to itch... I'll be down in half an hour, all right? Save me something good!"

Making faces of mixed disgust and amusement at Marlene's pronouncement, the girls continued down the stairs and across the common room to a tiny, empty alcove that afforded them direct access to the kitchens. Five minutes later, they were seated on high stools in their favorite nook, dinner laid on and plates heaping, drinking the house elves' most colorful experiment in recent memory, a Pumpkin Nebula. It was the first weekend back, still early enough for summer adventures to be the main topic of conversation. Lily had spent two weeks sightseeing in Ireland with her wonderful university professor father and her awful university student sister, before joining up with Marlene to spend August at her family's vacation home in the south of France. Dorcas had spent July with her mother's parents and August with her father's sister, earning her keep by watching her little cousins while her aunt and uncle worked. And Mary had spent most of the summer with her father, a Muggle man who lived with Mary's younger siblings in a quiet flat in Primrose Hill. She had, however, attended Emery Dearborn's famed end-of-summer party two weeks ago, and as a result was overflowing with gossip that carried them through dinner and beyond.

At some point they were joined in the kitchens by the four Marauders. The boys often showed up while the girls were there but were, as far as Lily knew, unaware of their quiet corner nook, cloaked as it was in muffling and concealing charms.

During a natural lull in the conversation, Lily and Dorcas sat listening to the boys at their table in the middle of the room as Mary pulled out a mirror compact and touched up her makeup.

"So your mum was named executor? Even though she's the youngest?" Remus was asking.

"Yeah, which is exactly what Aunt Theodora said. Of course she can't be named heir, so I don't think Uncle Nestor much cares, but Theodora got all upset about 'putting the family money into unsavory hands.' Spent the whole vacation trying to tune out her harping."

"What does an executor even do? I thought the goblins handled dishing out dead people's stuff-" Peter cut off at a glare from Remus, "I mean, I thought the goblins handled the...distribution of the worldly possessions of the...dearly departed… And may I say that I am truly sorry for your loss…" he trailed off sheepishly.

James chuckled. "Don't worry about it, Pete. My granddad's had one foot in the grave ever since Grandmother went, and he was older than the hills anyway. And you're right, the executor position is more symbolic than anything. The goblins do the heavy lifting, the executor just signs off on things like property transfers."

"The thing is," Sirius broke in, "the position goes to the heir by default, so the fact that he named James' mum instead makes it look like he was making some statement. Like he favored her."

"Which he did. Though, I mean, who in their right mind wouldn't favor my mum over Nestor and Theodora? Dead boring, the pair of them."

"Wait, I thought we liked the Dearborns. Don't we like the Dearborns?"

Remus sighed. "Yes, Pete, but no family is all black or all white-"

"Except for us, we're all Black!"

"Your sense of humor never ceases to amaze me, Sirius… Anyway, the Dearborns have some really good eggs, like Caradoc and James' mother, but the rest of the family is pretty neutral."

"Neutral by trade, to be honest. The Dearborns have developed a tendency to produce politicians, and no politician wants a strongly-stated opinion on record when he starts meeting with potential backers. Granddad hated it, said it made the family look weak. Reckon he wanted to stir things up a little at the end."

"So anyway, back to the story, the rest of the Dearborn family gets all up in arms and invites Prongs for a visit," Sirius prompted.

"Right. I was 'invited' to spend two weeks at Theodora's house this summer. Met everyone from the Minister of Magic to the head of the Chinese Delegation for Magical Sports and Games. Everyone was trying to convince me to join the family business. Got out of there the second I could. Really got her goat that she couldn't tempt me, I think, because she went to the Ministry the day I left and tried to get the executorship transferred back to her or Nestor."

"And from the gleeful look on your face I'm guessing that went real well?" chuckled Remus.

"Oh, very well. Not only did they reject her petition, but one of the Ministry blokes tipped her for an audit because of something she said about 'significant international business dealings' made by members of her family. They won't find anything, of course, but it's a hassle for them."

"And an embarrassment," Sirius smirked.

If only Potter and Black were always like this, Lily thought, she probably wouldn't half mind them. Or, she would still be jealous, but she would probably feel rather guilty about it. They had it easy, yes, but that wasn't really their fault. They didn't know how easy they had it, either - as evidenced by Potter's willingness to ridicule his aunt's kind offer of political acquaintances simply because she was "boring." And maybe they did take joy in the idea of others' pain, but it sounded like the audit would go relatively smoothly and, honestly, it was rather funny that this Theodora seemed to have brought it on herself with her own thoughtless words. Potter and Black were teenagers and, as she often had to remind herself, teenagers weren't expected to have their lives together yet. They were arrogant and entitled and so easy to hate, but she wouldn't have hated them, really she wouldn't - if not for one little thing.

"So, lads. Got any plans in the works? It's been a whole summer since our last good prank!"

That would be the thing.

It wasn't that Lily didn't love a good prank. She did. Her pranks were just...different. Kinder. At the end of one of her pranks, people were left laughing, or maybe wondering how the thing had been accomplished. At the end of a Marauder prank, they were left running for Madam Pomfrey. The boys were cruel, bullying jerks. And so, Lily felt no compunctions at all about hating the Marauder ringleaders with all of her might. Nor did she feel any remorse for pulling her wand out and silently charming a thundercloud, complete with pouring rain, into being above their table. And if the appearance of the thundercloud caused the Marauders to yell and dart for the door to the hallway, all the while pursued by an angry rainstorm which was standing up remarkably well to their attempts to extinguish it - well, Lily certainly wouldn't have felt guilty about a thing like that.

"What?" Lily said innocently, turning back toward the table to find both Mary and Dorcas staring at her, eyebrows raised. "Oh, don't tell me you didn't enjoy that. If Marlene were here, she'd be laughing her head off."

"At what? What'd I miss?" The girl in question joined them as if on cue, wet hair dancing around her shoulders.

"Oh, just Miss Lily conjuring up a storm to chase your cousin and his gang back to the Tower. You know, the usual." Dorcas answered.

"I see. And I approve. James does need taking down a peg or two." She grinned and took a seat beside Mary, nodding appreciatively at the plate they had saved her.

"So, Lily," Dorcas began decisively, "now that the gang's all here...what is going on with Snape? I know you and he met up tonight. Mary saw you going down to the dungeons after lessons."

Lily glared at Mary, who had the grace to look a little guilty. "I'm worried about you, Lily! Snape isn't good for you!"

"I already told you, nothing really happened. Just Sev being Sev, again," Lily responded for what felt like the hundredth time.

"I'm not going to stop asking, you know. And if you won't tell me, I'll just find out another way. You shouldn't make things so hard for me when I'm supposed to be your best friend…" Dorcas wheedled.

"Sev is my best friend," Lily corrected.

"'Sev' is a git and a bully, and plus, he doesn't deserve you. And plus plus, every time he upsets you, Marlene has to hex him," stated Mary firmly.

"And Lily, I don't know how many more times Marlene can stand to polish the Quidditch trophies - at least not without winning one," Dorcas added.

"That's okay, I really think we have a chance this year - or at least, if we don't win, the team is going to mutiny and exile James to a deserted island for working us to death for no reason - so, back to the point, I should be able to continue hexing Severus Snape for as long as necessary. Although, Lily, it would really be better for your mental health if it weren't necessary. Just saying."

Lily stared into her Pumpkin Nebula disconsolately. She knew Severus wasn't being a great friend just now, but wasn't it in the job description of a best friend to keep going when things get tough? She couldn't just give up on him, not after so long. She owed it to him to keep going, however hard it might get. He was worth it.

Watching Lily's face fall into a mask of worry and pursing her lips at her friends' insensitivity, Mary interjected, "Hey, Lily, isn't that Ravenclaw couple on prefect duty tonight? The one that snogs all night instead of doing rounds?"

The redhead turned, brightening a little at her friend's words. "Yes, they are. Why? Are you girls up for some fun?"

"Oh, I don't know," Marlene laughed. "What did you have in mind?"