Chapter 2 – Glimpses of Truth
"You fucking bastard." James yelled, throwing caution to the winds as well as his wand. He punched Sirius and it resounded with a loud crack that echoed down the hallway.
"I'm not the only one at fault here, you were there too," Sirius tackled him and slammed him into the wall. The boys had given up on wands, something that was very unusual for two full blood wizards, but it was a more personal fight and therefore deserved a less cool and collected form of fighting. They have given up on talking and were desperately fighting one another. They were a blur of fists, arms and legs. Both boys were bleeding from the violence they were doing to one another. The hallway was small and they had run one another into the walls more than once.
"What the hell do you guys think you're doing?" Lily's voice was pitched and strained, "Stop it!" Remus stood next to Lily and said nothing; he simply looked at the ground. "This is getting ridiculous. You're wizards, not petty gutter boys with nothing better to do than beat one another up. I don't care what happened, just stop." The boys continued to tussle but at Lily's words, and the fact that she now stood between them, they stopped.
"Get up and go into that classroom. Now!" Lily took them into an empty classroom and instructed them to sit in chairs next to one anther. "You sit there and dammit don't make me tie you up."
"I always knew she liked it kinky," Sirius drawled. That was the wrong thing to say because James lunged at Sirius, threatening to kill him, toppling both their chairs over and knocking Lily over in the process. The boys stood back in shock. Lily was sprawled on the floor, looking a little dazed.
Remus walked over and helped her stand up. "That's enough," Remus said, taking charge of the situation. "James, you sit back there and Sirius you sit over there. We ought not to heal them, they hardly deserve it," he said in his quiet yet commanding voice. It hinted at maliciousness, but was still calm and collected. "You two really are inconsiderate imbeciles," Remus continued as he began to heal a cut on Sirius' head.
"You never think," Lily added.
"You're always so quick to condemn me, you know that Lily." James said spitefully.
"You make it too easy," Lily glared at him, "That goes for you too, Sirius." Lily was purposefully not gentle when she rapped James on his hand in order to stop his knuckles, which had split during the fight, from bleeding. "You lot need to grow up. You too Remus, and Peter, even though he isn't here. I don't particularly care what happened…"
"You should," she heard Sirius mumble from his corner. "It's the only reason Remus is hanging out with you."
"That's not true Sirius," Remus said, looking towards a hurt Lily, "Lily and I were study partners and friends before all this," he made a big waving gesture as if 'all this' meant Hogwarts.
"He's right Sirius," James chimed in glumly, "Just because you messed up, doesn't mean you can take it out on Lily. Taking it out on me is one thing, but Lily wasn't even involved." James' emotions were flip-flopping all over.
"Says you," Sirius sneered before storming out of the room. The door slammed behind it with a force that nearly shook the room.
James followed him out saying, "I'm going to be late for Quidditch," and stomped off in his own direction.
"We didn't finish healing them, they're going to have bruises tomorrow," Lily whispered softly, her eyes welling with tears, not just for herself, but for the boys who all seemed so lost and alone. Their loneliness made them vicious and spiteful. "What happened to you guys Remus?"
"I don't know, maybe we've changed. Bad things happened, bad blood, bad choices. I don't know if we can go back." Remus looked down and scuffed his foot against the floor. "I don't really like how things are, but I don't think I can forgive them, or myself."
Lily looked at him with something akin to pity. She had once believed that the four marauders were boys of uncommon strength and ability, but it was only now that she saw that they drew their strength from one another. "I'm sorry Remus. I don't really know what to say." She sat down, with her head in her hands.
"I should probably heal my own bruises now. Too bad we can't heal emotional ones as easily, huh, Remus?" She looked up but he had gone, as quietly and Sirius was loud.
The days went by as quietly as ever and the boys still hadn't made up. But they weren't fighting anymore either. Lily wasn't sure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. When they were fighting, at least it meant that they still cared. But the passive nothingness that it had become was worrying.
Lily, Dorcas, and a few others were in the library that day. They had had every intention of studying, but the study session had degraded into a gossip session. Dorcas had tilted her chair so that it was balanced on the two back legs, "If you aren't careful, you might fall over," Lily said as Marian giggled and pretended to edge towards the chair with the intention of toppling it over.
"You'll never take me. Never!" Dorcas yelped and landed her chair safely on the ground.
Marian giggled, "So Lily," she wiggled her eyebrows, "What's going on with you and Remus."
Lily quirked hers in response, "Me and Remus? Nothing," she shook her head, "Trust me Remus and I aren't like that."
"Oh yeah?" Dorcas looked at her very seriously, "Then why haven't you danced with nearly as many guys as you normally do. You didn't even dance with Severus – he was crushed by the way," Dorcas said looking down and making to clean her fingernails.
"What is it with you guys suggesting that I am with guy friends?"
"Mainly because," the other girls looked at one another, "you insist on being alone, even though you could be with just about anyone," Marlene chimed in.
"Don't be ridiculous. Maybe I don't want to be with anyone. Maybe I don't think it's safe to be with anyone." Lily shivered and noticed her comment had made the other girls uncomfortable, "And what about you Ms. Fortescue? I hardly think that Sirius Black is the type to make you happy; especially with how he is right now." She added.
"Oh Lily, Sirius and I are just having fun, it's not well, serious." Marian told her brushing off the suggestion that anything big was happening between her and the infamous Sirius Black.
Dorcas looked between the girls and then asked, rather out of the blue, "What's going on with the fearsome foursome anyways? The school isn't the same without them. I'm beginning to suspect that even Severus misses them, though he would never admit it," Dorcas said sarcastically, rolling her eyes at the idea.
The girls laughed at the very thought of Severus missing the four marauders and their antics. They looked at Lily and waited for the answer. She might not have been their best friends, but she was in the boys' house and year and was occasionally friends with them. "Honestly," Lily looked down at her hands, "I have no idea. It's weird though. We actually get peace and quiet in the tower and we don't have to worry about booby traps or jinxes and the like. They've been this way since late September or so. I've never seen them like this. They've had their tiffs, but they never stop talking for this long."
"Sirius told me that he and James got in a fist fight." Marian added.
Dorcas sighed and looked at them. "It has something to do with Severus." She cocked her head to one side, "He won't tell me what happened and I get the feeling that for one reason or another, he can't. He was different for a while in September as well.
Newts potions were hard. Lily had Severus for a partner, and according to Professor Slughorn, together they probably could have made any potion in, or not in, existence. It was silly really, that two such different people could work so well together to create such difficult concoctions. Together, Lily and Severus Snape had never gotten anything below an absolutely perfect from Slughorn. Absolutely perfect was apparently above outstanding. Separately they were equally capable at potions. But when working together, it was like a dance, to see them working around one another in sync in the dark and chilly dungeons. Lily always looked so odd in the dungeons, Severus always fit right in, but Lily, Lily was vibrant and alive. They were such opposites, yet surprisingly good friends most of the time. They had quarreled though, at the end of fifth year when Severus had unforgivably called Lily a mudblood. That argument had been slowly patched up, but things were never quite the same between the two.
Dorcas had originally introduced Lily and Severus back in first year. She was in the same house as Severus, who was a bit of an outcast in Slytherin, being a half blood and all. But then again, Dorcas wasn't exactly a picture perfect Slytherin as she didn't believe in blood prejudices. But Dorcas Meadowes was still a Slytherin and a respected one at that because she was one scary witch with a wand.
It was through potions that Lily and Severus had formed their tentative friendship. At times they were the best of friends and at times they couldn't stand one another. Right now, they were somewhere in between.
"Pass me the fluxweed," Lily instructed Severus without really looking at him.
"Lily, I know you said you forgave me, but sometimes I get the feeling you haven't," Severus said softly while obediently handing her the jar that contained fresh fluxweed.
"Ah, sorry Severus, I guess I'm just distracted." Lily answered and finally looked up at him. He looked tired and wan, as if he hadn't been sleeping or eating enough, "Severus, are you feeling alright?" Lily asked; a wrinkle of worry showed on her face.
"I'm fine," he brushed off her worry of him with a wave of his hand, "just haven't been sleeping well. I'm working on a new potion," he told her secretively.
"Want any help?" Lily asked him kindly.
"No." His reply was short and he deftly changed the subject of their conversation, "So what has got you so distracted?"
Lily rested her head in one hand while stirring the bubbling fuchsia contents of the cauldron with another. "I don't know. It's," she looked at him for a moment and then her eyes wandered around the rest of the class, "It's nothing."
"I know what nothing is," Severus told her. He had seen where her eyes had landed; on a tired looking werewolf stirring his cauldron, on a handsome black haired guy goofing off at the back of the class, on a shorter blond boy who was stuck working with a difficult Slytherin, and on the one guy he truly disliked – James Potter. Her gaze had also landed on him, on Severus Snape. "It's them, isn't it?" He nodded towards the tables where the four split up marauders sat with their various partners.
"It's just," Lily sighed and let Severus take over the stirring of the cauldron, which was now a sickly green but smelled of sugarplums (exactly how it was supposed to look and smell). "Well honestly, something is going on with them." She started tentatively, "Dorcas says that you know something about it or were part of it or something."
Severus looked at her almost nervously as she continued, "Besides, I hate secrets, you know that," Lily winked at him roguishly as she went back to working on the potion and perfectly slicing the fluxweed with finesse.
Severus looked at Lily thoughtfully. He wondered how much she really knew and wasn't letting on. He also couldn't help but wonder exactly what Dorcas, or other people, had told Lily. Severus couldn't wait to leave Hogwarts, where truth and rumors floated around faster than air. If he wasn't careful, someone would find out too much about him.
Peter knew he shouldn't have been down in the dungeons alone. He hated feeling weak and scared. He knew he was both and he absolutely hated it. It made him feel sick to his stomach. He didn't understand why he couldn't be handsome like Sirius, smart like Remus, or a Quidditch idol like James. He didn't understand why he couldn't be great. Sometimes he resented them for everything that they had. But that was only sometimes; it was much easier to resent them when they weren't talking to him. And that was all because Remus was a monster, Sirius was an idiot, and James just had to play the hero. Sometimes it wasn't fair. Sometimes he wanted to be great. But for right then, he was willing to settle for being Peter Pettigrew and getting out of the dungeons before he ran into any Slytherins, nasty or otherwise.
Sadly, he wasn't that lucky. "Well, well, what do we have here?" A voice whispered out of the darkness of the dank and gloomy hallway.
"Why it's little Peter Pettigrew," a girl's voice cackled. Peter knew that voice; everyone knew that voice. That voice belonged to the craziest head girl ever. He really didn't get why the headmaster had appointed a clear You-Know-Who supporter and sadist to the head girl position. For Bellatrix Black was both sadistic and a future Death Eater, perhaps even already a Death Eater.
It came as no surprise to Peter that the two people who accompanied the illustrious head girl were the Lestrange brothers; Rodolphus and Rabastan. Peter knew he was in trouble then.
"Perhaps we should make him dance," Rodolphus suggested while leaning on his slightly shorter brother Rabastan.
"Or we could stick him like a pig and roast him," Rabastan said, clapping his hands. Noticing the sweat on Peter's upper lip he commented thoughtfully, "After all, he does look an awful lot like a pig."
"Been eating too much, have you Peter." Bellatrix Blacks voice was high and clear. Her face on the other hand was still in shadows. She had a more horrible suggestion that her boyfriend or his brother. "Perhaps he's just depressed because he has no friends." She cocked her head to the side and looked at him shrewdly.
"That's not true," Peter argued licking his upper lip and reaching for his wand.
"Poor Peter has no friends and no one loves him," Bellatrix continued in a sing-song voice, ignoring his dispute.
"That's not true," Peter said stamping his foot, but realizing that perhaps Bellatrix wasn't entirely off the mark. His so called friends weren't talking to him and girls didn't like him. He was basically a nobody.
"Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her," Rabastan parroted and sniggered with Rodolphus.
"Peter, you could be great you know," She said softly, not moving to hurt him or curse him, which was unusual for Bellatrix. "You could have anything you wanted, if you so desired. But instead you choose to be a silly ninny with nothing. I could help you become great. I could give you friends, I could give you lovers," her suggestion was dark and twisted and Peter knew that, most of the time.
"I don't want your gifts. I want you to leave me alone." Peter was gripping his wand and pointing it at the group. He knew that if it really came down to it, his wand would be useless against the three seventh years standing before him.
"Come now Peter," Rodolphus said, slinging his arm around Peter's shoulder in an almost friendly way, if it weren't for the fact that he was pushing down on Peter, "Everybody like Bella's gifts."
"Not everybody Ruddy," The voice was loud and came out of the dark rather suddenly. A short blonde girl stepped into the light. It was Dorcas Meadowes looking surprisingly intimidating. She had on severe black robes and her hair was pulled back, for once calm and out of her face. She was short, but she stood ramrod straight and held her wand in front of her. Dorcas Meadowes was a Slytherin not to be messed with. She might have been a year younger than Bellatrix, and there might have been three of them and only one of her. But she was a pureblood from a very powerful family, and people didn't like to piss her off. She knew just as many curses as Bellatrix and wasn't afraid to use them. It didn't hurt that her father had been the Minster of Magic. "Why don't you bounce along Bella? Peter isn't interested in your bull, are you Peter."
He shook his head agreeing with her on the outside, but on the inside he knew things were not so clear cut. Bellatrix glared at Dorcas, turned sharply, and walked off with the Lestrange brothers following her. She called back from the end of the hallway, "Twenty points from Slytherin for your impertinence Meadowes."
Dorcas sighed, "I guess she doesn't care about winning the House Cup anymore. She hasn't for quite some time now," she informed Peter knowingly. "You shouldn't be down here alone. It isn't safe for anyone but us Slytherins." She shivered slightly, "Now go on back to your nice, warm, dormitory; I'm sure your friends are waiting for you."
Peter's only thought as he walked back to the Gryffindor common room was, 'What friends?'
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