The dark was rising. Severus Snape was one of the first people to become aware of its insidious influence. The whispered name of Voldemort insinuated itself into Slytherin conversation like so many dirty socks into Severus' closed trunk, polluting the already uninviting environment.
He hated that. One would think twelve-year-old wizards were capable of picking up after themselves, yet the mess kept on encroaching. Consequently, he spent as little time in the dormitory as possible. He couldn't stand the mess and he didn't want to hear about some old freak who went around calling himself stealing dead bodies in French. He had better things to do with his time.
Well, try to do, anyway. Evil as it was, Severus suffered from the common adolescent malady known as a social life, and it kept getting worse. Try as he might to focus on his studies, his free time was constantly divided between three primary facets: Being dragged on unsavory pursuits with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of their Slytherin cohorts; actively hating James Potter, his gang, and Gryffindors in general; and having his company cleverly monopolized by Lily Evans. The former two were respectively given and unavoidable. Lily, however, was an enigma.
As a Gryffindor and a good friend of Potter, any interaction she had with Severus Snape should have been apologetic dismissal at best, if not downright cold rejection. Instead, she graced him with her amicable presence and amiable personality whenever she saw fit. There was a brilliant mind under there somewhere, Severus knew, but sometimes he really had to question her sanity.
"Are you insane?"
Sitting in a chair in the library, Severus reared up to his full height in peevish alarm.
"How many times to I have to tell you no? Which part of that do you not understand, the 'n' or the 'o'?"
"I'm going to do it, Sevvy," Lily assured him merrily. Severus cringed at the use of the nickname. "This Christmas you're going to wake up and go into your dreary little common room to open presents, and there they'll be! A pair of gleaming bright gold enchanted scissors, just waiting to take off about ten centimeters of that ridiculous hair of yours!" She mimed a snipping motion with the fingers of her right hand.
"I like my hair this way," Severus growled, eyeing Lily's hand in a way that promised leg-locking curses and worse if it didn't go away. Sensibly, she withdrew.
"You are no fun at all, you know that?" Lily informed him. "Fine. If you're going to be that way, let's get on with this studying."
"That's what I say." Severus' voice raised a decibel from sheer exasperation, earning him a severe look from the librarian. He quickly looked down at his books to avoid getting into further trouble by glaring back.
"You really are just an insufferable Gryffindor sometimes, you know that?" he snapped, mimicking the tone Lily had just employed. "If you're going to be that way, why don't you go find your boyfriend, Potter? He always has time to waste."
He shifted his attention to the Muggle Studies book under his nose (Accidental Etymology: "When Pigs Fly" and More), but his focus was jolted back to the present when Lily solidly smacked his upper arm.
"He's not my boyfriend!" she hissed, but she was turning red everywhere from the neck up. (Her blush clashed horridly with her fiery hair, Severus noted.) "And there's nothing wrong with Gryffindors. Admit it, you wouldn't have any fun at all if it weren't for me!" She smiled disarmingly.
"O no, none at all," he replied, sarcasm dripping from his tongue like honey from an oversaturated hunk of comb, and not nearly so pleasant. "If it weren't for you I'd spend all my time with Lucius, and he's dull as a box of fireworks. Or, even worse, I might actually get something done! Go away, Evans. I really don't have time for this."
With that he turned firmly back to his textbook, determined to ignore Lily should she speak again.
But she did not, and after a minute or so she seemed to decide she didn't have time for Severus, either. She packed up her things and left the library, presumably to go work in her common room or the Great Hall. Severus felt a sort of grim satisfaction at having driven her away. If everyone was either afraid of him or simply disliked him, they would leave him alone. Being alone was by far preferable to being tortured daily with one stupid thing and another.
Lily would be back, though, and as long as Lucius and his cronies didn't know about it Severus would continue to tolerate her for reasons he couldn't, or wouldn't, fathom. In the meantime, rather than contemplate his accursed social life, he would do his homework and try to draw it out as long as he could stand it in order to delay the return to his dorm. If anything annoyed him more than Lily Evans, it was dirty socks in his trunk!
Some hours later, he reluctantly conceded that he was finished with his work for the night and began to pack up his things. He had missed dinner, but he didn't mind much. Severus tended to eat only when he felt hungry, which wasn't often. He couldn't have missed the evening meal by too long, though, for the library was just beginning to fill up with students looking to get some last-minute research in before curfew. All the more reason for Severus to leave. He picked up his bag and headed out of the library en route to the Slytherin common room.
He had not gone far before a tell-tale sound met his ears and the stench of refuse filled the air. This he ignored. Almost instantaneously, his wand was in his hand and his bag hit the floor with a dull thwock. He didn't know where they had gotten the dungbombs, but if James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, or that little twerp Peter Pettigrew showed so much as a shoelace, Severus was prepared to make sure they lived to regret this.
However, they didn't show, and only an elusive sound of boyish giggling bore testimony to their presence. Severus fumed, his dark eyes glittering coldly with rage—though perhaps the effect was due mainly to the acrid fumes in the air.
"Potter!" he bellowed, "I know you're there! The next time I see you you'll wish you'd never heard of dungbombs! You'll reek for a month! You hear me?"
"You hear something, Lupin?" said James Potter's laughing voice.
"Not a thing," answered Lupin. "Peter?"
"Nuh-uh," squeaked Peter Pettigrew. "Black?"
"Matter of fact, I did," Sirius Black said sagely. "Sounded snivelly!"
They had a good laugh at that while Severus tried in vain to locate them, stalking up and down the corridor and examining everything in it. Before he could figure it out, the laughter ceased.
"Whoop! Time to run," said Potter. "Smell you later, Snape!"
With the scuffle of four retreating pairs of shoes, the corridor fell silent again, but not for long. Only a few seconds went by before Severus found out what had precipitated the Gryffindors' sudden departure. Mrs. Norris appeared at the end of the hall and sat, red eyes fixed on Severus, tail curled smugly about her front paws. Her master was not far behind, and Severus was caught.
He didn't say a word as he was hauled off to detention. It was early enough in the evening that Filch decided not to wait until the next day to deliver his punishment. Why wait when the fun could begin now and Mrs. Norris' several litter boxes needed cleaning? Severus had learned early on that there was no point in trying to explain himself to the caretaker of Hogwarts, and that anything he said would probably be used against him, so he kept his mouth shut even when Filch deliberately provoked him. Instead, he passed the time by devoting his energy to hating Potter and thinking murderous thoughts about him and all Gryffindors—except Lily. Lily had always been his friend before she was Potter's, however little sense it made. No way was Severus giving him the satisfaction of messing with that!
By the time Severus got back to his dorm, after trying with marginal success to wash the stink of cat and dungbombs off himself, he had come up with five more ways to skin a cat, four potential methods of fulfilling his promise to Potter, eight additional torture techniques he'd like to try on the rest of them, (five golden rings!), and one more reason to put up with Lily. His homework was done, and Lucius was asleep already, so Severus wouldn't have to be endlessly taunted about the episode until tomorrow. All in all, he had to admit that it hadn't been such a bad day, after all. Maybe… maybe tomorrow the Voldemort craze would fade away just as it had come up, and his dorm mates would finally learn to take proper care of dirty laundry, and Lucius would stop being an asshole, and he, Severus, would take his final revenge on Potter and his gang.
As Severus fell into a sleep that proved to be fitful and uneasy, he had the strangest feeling that somewhere, the Ironic Overpower of the Universe was laughing at him.
"Well, that wasn't so bad" is right up there with "well, it can't get any worse" on the list of phrases guaranteed to call unwanted attention to yourself on a cosmic scale. If any one of us had learned it sooner, we would have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.