September 1975

There was a gap in the bookshelf and Severus could just see Lily through it. She was with a group of Gryffindor girls again and he wished they would leave soon. If they didn't, he might have to brave them. They were the same ones who had prevented him from speaking to her on the train. They had barely seen each other at all the holidays. She looked different. She was doing her eyes differently. She'd done something to her hair, too. It was longer, smoother, glowed differently in the shaft of light which slanted through the windows -

"Prince?" Mulciber's voice amputated his train of thought.

"What?" he snapped.

"We were saying, about the Potions essay," said Mulciber. His coarse face wore a very dark, irritated look. Avery beside him was merely bemused, his shrewd eyes darting between Severus and the bookshelf.

Severus felt himself flushing from embarrassment and irritation. He glanced down at his notes from the morning. The essay was on variations of ingredients for the Stengthening Solution, two rolls of parchment. It was one of the topics he'd already studied during the holidays and wouldn't take him longer than half an hour.

"Fourteen sickles," he said.

He rather enjoyed Mulciber's scowl.

"Fourteen? You're having a laugh. It was ten last year."

"So it was," said Severus. "And it's fourteen this year. Or I might just let you write your own for once. I could use the time to revise for OWLs. Take it or leave it."

Grumbling, Mulciber reached into his robes and pushed a shiny, new galleon across the table. Severus changed him. That made it just over five galleons he had saved, which was enough for a silver cauldron, but ridiculously not enough for a decent silver necklace. There was a nice one in the window of Orville and Gilder - a good, long chain with a pendant in the shape of a tear-drop vial, for a heart-stopping seven galleons four sickles. If he could save enough by Christmas...

"Same for you? I'll write it differently so he won't be able to tell, of course."

He looked across at Avery, who shook his head.

"Not me. I'm going to do my own work this year, for OWLS."

Severus raised an eyebrow.

"Well, well. Miracles do happen."

Avery merely laughed and gave him the fingers.

"You should know. From what I hear, you'll need a big one to get into a certain someone's pants."

Severus felt the heat rising further up his neck. He disguised it with a toss of his hair. Fortunately, he was saved by Mulciber's own brand of comic timing.

"A big one, eh? If she likes a big one, tell her I'll do her. And I won't charge her for it or nothing either."

"Kind of you," said Severus, who hadn't meant to reply at all. "But I'm not so sure she'd take the special offer. That's the difference between us, Mulciber; you couldn't give it away."

Mulciber stared at him, beady little eyes popping and that beefy vein over his right temple pulsating madly. There was a tense moment's silence in which he tried and failed to play it cool.

"You're a right little prick, Snape!" he managed, at last. He swung his bag at Severus, who only just managed to deflect it with a slowing charm.

"I'll have it ready by Thursday night, shall I?" called Severus, as he watched Mulciber storm off. A smirk was tugging the corners of mouth. He let it out to play.

Avery evidently didn't share his feelings. He was wearing a grimace that, typical of Avery, couldn't seem to decide on whether he was amused or exasperated.

"What?" snapped Severus, who wished Avery would leave as well, seeing as he wasn't buying. He didn't have time for this, not if he was going to do four rolls on Strengthening Solutions and catch Lily on her way out.

"Sev, mate, you want to think about sorting it out," said Avery, in a would-be-wise way.

"I don't know what you're talking about," lied Severus. "Mulciber is a fool."

"Not saying he isn't. Only I'm not, and this isn't the first time you've blown up about Lily Evans."

Severus bent over his potions book and began to pretend to scrawl in the margins. His hair fell conveniently across his face. He was infinitely glad for this because of the next four words that came tumbling out of Avery's mouth.

"You should fuck her."

There was a silence, as if Avery expected him to say something in reply. He couldn't as he couldn't even breathe properly.

"I mean it," continued Avery, who suddenly dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Mulciber's an idiot, but he's not lying about girls. I went over to his place in the holidays – they were all over him."

"Who were?"

"Anthea Greengrass-"

Severus sneered. Anthea Greengrass was easier than first year Divination. Severus liked the idea of of going up to her at the Hufflepuff table one day and offering to brew her some first class contraceptive potion at half the price of the stuff she bought. But she probably wouldn't appreciate the joke.

"-Perdita Wakefield was another one."

Perdita Wakefield was a fourth year Slytherin with a fat arse. Severus wasn't impressed.

"And then there was Mary something ... you know, the blonde Ravenclaw."

"Mary McDougal?" Mary McDougal was a sixth year and very nice-looking. Severus could barely contain his incredulity.

"Yeah, that's her."

"And he's supposed to have ... had them all? Are you sure?"

"I reckon. Then there were the Muggle girls from the village, but they don't really count. Good for practise, apparently."

"How?" asked Severus.

"What?" Avery looked bemused. "A girl's a girl, mate. You should know that, of all people. Doesn't mean she can't still be a decent fuck, as a contingency. It's all the same, if you know what I mean -"

"No, I mean, how did he manage it? Love potion?"

"He reckons it's his 'raw animal attraction'. Girls respond to confidance – they want to be going out with the top dog, and Mulciber knows how to show a girl a good time. He won a date with Wakefield in a duel with her boyfriend, took her out to see the Wending Warlocks concert, and it was a done deal. You'll want to try something else for Evans, though. She doesn't strike me as a Warlocks fan."

"I'm not interested in-"

"Keep telling yourself that. All I'm saying is, brother to brother, you want to be making your move pretty soon. Fifth year's for shagging – everyone knows it – and she's not bad looking for a Mudblood. Actually, you might be onto something with the love potion. You should be able to whip one up, right, HBP?"

"Yes, but I'm not-"

"Doesn't that take months to brew? You might want to start some anyway – there's bound to be others who need a bit of help. You could make a killing. What is it? A galleon a pop at Zonko's, if you can get it into the castle. Reckon Filch can smell the stuff."

"One galleon, four sickles, two knuts. But they'll knock off the knuts if you buy more than one."

"Right. So charge a galleon. You can spend it on, I don't know, flowers and chocolate and necklaces – all the stuff that Muggles like. And if she doesn't want to...well, we'll find you someone else."

"Find me someone else?"

"Yeah."

"... why?"

"Well, we're not letting you go through fifth year still a virgin. It's embarrassing. All Slytherins together, and all that. You'd be letting the side down."

"Are you saying you've done it?"

"Wheels are in motion. A matter of days, mate."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Anthea Greengrass."

"Fair enough."

"Better go - I can see you want some alone time with her."

Severus felt himself getting warm again.

"You sure you don't want a copy of the essay? Since you're going to be occupied with Greengrass?"

Avery laughed as he swung his satchel over his shoulder.

"Good try, mate. But I will have some of that potion."

With Avery gone, Severus was left alone to watch her through the gap in the bookshelf. He watched her for another two hours, not writing a word of Slughorn's essay. He thought about that necklace in Orville and Gilder's, but mostly he thought about her neck.

He also wondered how cheaply he could get the ingredients for, where would be a good place to brew it without getting discovered, and what the demand would realistically be. Of course he would never use it on her. Of course not.

He waited and waited, but the Gryffindor girls did not leave until the library closed. And because he made sure to take his time packing up, she did not see him and only walked off laughing with her friends.

-0-

Author's Note:

Doing some tidy-tidy on old disks and found this thing lurking away. It was origianlly meant to be the second part of a series of loosely connected one-shots which cover Snape's adolescence and the early Voldemort years, all focussing in some way on potions and, rather inevitably, also on Lily Evans

But as the first part is nothing to rave about, I've decided to put them out of sequence and do some major surgery. There will be hopefully more of them coming.

Hope you liked this little piece - please drop me a review and tell me what you think.

-Zhangers