The Law of Unintended Consequences
Chapter 4
Respect and Perceptions
Of pride and heroism...
Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling, nor do I own the Harry Potter Series.
Saturday October 23rd, 1974
"JAMES HAROLD POTTER!" Lily shouted, "WHY WERE YOU ATTACKING SEVERUS AGAIN!?"
James rolled his eyes as she came roaring down into the common room again, causing the whole common room to stare at the two of them, hoping for a good show; apparently Snape had blabbed about their little battle, so Lily, his protector, was here to annoy him about it. 'What a whining little git! Stuff like that should be kept between us, not blabbed to innocents like Lily! On the other hand, maybe she would be willing to go out on a date with me in return for keeping old Snivelly free from harm. Yeah, that sounds good.' As she got close, James grinned at her and messed up his hair a little, then he said,
"Why hello Lily; pleasant evening isn't it?"
He could see a spark of mirth or possibly annoyance jump into her eyes as she responded angrily, "Don't give me that! Why were you attacking Severus again!? He did nothing to provoke it, didn't he!?"
Sirius, who had been busy flirting with Mary again, much to her annoyance, said defensively, "Hey! The Slytherins provoked us first by hexing Alexandra again; we had to retaliate!"
Lily glared at Sirius then, eyes blazing as she said sarcastically, "And was Sev the one to hex Alexandra? Did Sev actually do anything? Or was it just because he happened to be a convenient, easy target?"
Sirius looked at James, eyes begging for help, so James said, lying through his teeth, "Well he was there laughing at her when Avery and Rosier did it, so he might as well have..."
Lily frowned thoughtfully, causing James to grin inwardly. 'Phew! Glad that that's over! I hate having to deal with Lily when she acts like this; she gets so touchy, even about worthless pieces of filth like Snivellus. It really is no fun.' Then Lily glared at him again and said coldly,
"You are lying. If Snape had been there laughing, then Sirius would have mentioned that first, as it would have given you guys a reasonable excuse, even if wasn't a good one. How cowardly of you, attacking someone who is easy to hit rather than someone who actually deserves to be hit."
As the other Gryffindors in the common room chuckled a little, James bristled at this and roared, brandishing his wand as he jumped out of his chair, "How dare you call me cowardly!? I was going to give you the chance to go to Hogsmeade with me this weekend, but you can forget that now!"
Peter drew his wand too, shouting angrily, "Hey! Its not like he didn't deserve it anyway!"
James then noticed that Lily had drawn her own wand, without anyone noticing, then she said quietly, in a mild yet sarcastic tone of voice, "Well, that makes things convenient then; I was planning to go with Sev, but didn't want to break your heart, so that makes things much easier. Have a good evening Mr. Potter, and do try to act as if you are ten years of age at least, because it is clearly too tough for you to act your own age."
As the common room, minus the Marauders and a few of their supporters, laughed at him, James snarled; even though he really liked Lily, she was really embarrassing him this time. Usually she would just tell him off until he made some sort of excuse, then she would take time to think about it, but this time she had started using personal insults. Meanwhile, Lily turned her back on him and walked up the stairs to the girl's dormitory, ignoring him completely.
After the furor quieted down, Alexandra walked up to him and said shyly, "Um, thank you very much for avenging me James. It was really sweet of you."
James glanced at Alexandra Gregory, a third year Gryffindor; she was a black-haired, green-eyed witch who kept her hair in pigtails most of the time. She was fairly easy on the eyes, with a nice smile and an excellent rack, but, although she was awfully pretty, she just wasn't Lily. Nonetheless, James grinned back at her and said kindly, "It was nothing. I had to show those filthy Slytherins that no-one hexes the beautiful girls of Gryffindor house."
As hoped, Alexandra giggled and blushed before running off to talk to some of her friends. Meanwhile, James glared up towards the girl's dormitories. 'See Evans? She doesn't think that I am immature!'
'Ugh, what a headache.' Lily groaned as she laid on her bed, thinking about how her talk with James had gone. 'I know that its been a while since I saw how immature James used to be, but somehow he seems even more immature than I remembered. I mean, he didn't make stupid excuses like that the last time around to explain his behavior towards Severus had been, did he?' After a few minutes of thinking, she realized that the answer was, more or less, a surefire "Yes".
'I guess it will be a while before James matures again; if I remember correctly, he didn't grow up or stop hexing Severus until sixth and seventh year, although maybe I can hurry it up a bit this time around. Regardless, as much as I can hardly wait to be with the mature James again, my first priority has to be rescuing Sev from those awful Death Eaters. OK, Mrs...Miss Evans, it is time to think over this carefully; what did Sev tell me that I can use to help him?' Lily thought it over for several minutes, trying to come up with something that would make it easy to get him out, but getting him out would be extremely difficult, as it is very hard to convince someone to change if they truly believe that they are doing the right thing.
Then Mary came into the dormitory and raised her eyebrow at her, which was her way of saying "Start explaining now!", so Lily sighed and said, "I don't really want to talk about what happened with James down there, OK? I have a much bigger problem. It turns out that trying to help Severus not join the Death Eaters could be harder than I thought."
Mary then sat down on her own four-poster and faced Lily, who decided to stare at the top of her own one. Finally Mary asked, "What do you mean by that Lily? I mean, isn't joining the Death Eaters evil? So if Severus is as good as you always claimed he was, wouldn't it be easy to persuade him?"
Lily then sat up and looked at one of her best friends in Gryiffindor, before replying, "The thing is, he's not doing it for the chance to torture or kill Muggleborns or things like that, but rather because he wants to be with his friends and be a hero. You see, he doesn't think that the Death Eaters are really serious about the anti-Muggle stuff and what the Prophet is saying is mostly propaganda. The problem is that he isn't doing it for evil reasons, but for good ones, as, even though the Death Eaters are evil, he doesn't believe that they are as bad as they appear."
Mary frowned at this and put her finger to her lips again, seeming to be thinking very carefully; she had always been considered a tad strange by her fellow Gryffindors because she spent a great deal of time considering situations from multiple angles before coming up with an opinion when she felt that said situation was complicated, but that was very helpful in this case, because her calm, logical mind was exactly what Lily needed. Finally, she said, "I think that your best bet might be to change how attractive going against the Death Eaters is; from his point of view, he has to choose between his Slytherin friends and heroism, or what else? In his opinion, there is no reason to go against the Death Eaters because he gains nothing by doing so. What you need to do is to make going against them a more attractive option. As for how you could do that... well he is your best friend, not mine."
Mary then changed topics, "Now then, as for James Potter; I have to ask, what's changed all of a sudden. For the past four years, whenever he would hex your friend, you would yell at James a bit, but then let it go while flirting a little, but now all of a sudden you are getting up in his face about it, not that I disagree with you or anything, but what happened tonight is awfully strange."
Lily frowned and said, more than a little defensively, "Hey, I was just sticking up for Severus like I always do. Wasn't I?"
Mary sighed and said placatingly, "Hey, don't get angry, but until tonight, it seemed that you were spending about as much time flirting with James as you did yelling at him when you were telling him off. It never really seem like you were all that serious about it. Now then, unlike some people, I have to study really hard in order to do well on my homework, so good night for now."
As Mary went to grab her book, Lily's brow furrowed. 'Was that how it seemed to everyone else? Like I was FLIRTING when I told James off? Well, I'm gonna put a stop to that! When I flirt with him, it won't be when I'm yelling at him, that's for sure!'
Four Days Later Wednesday October 27th, 1974
Snape sighed exasperatedly as he handed the flask of Antivenom to Professor Slughorn at the end of class; over the past few weeks, Lily had somehow improved in her potions-making skills dramatically. It seemed that whenever he had a new idea for brewing a potion, she had already come up with it somehow.
If Lily hadn't been his best friend, he probably would have gotten quite annoyed and jealous, but since she was sharing these improvements with him anyway, it only meant that he had to spend less time on working out his ideas, because she could frequently tell him that it worked or didn't because she had somehow already tested it. That meant that he was able to blaze through the ideas, then come up with entirely new ones.
Nonetheless, although he still received perfect marks in potions, as well as more than a few house points for Slytherin, he was still all but ignored by the professor outside of class, whereas James and Sirius, who couldn't brew even a tenth as well as he could, got frequent invitations to special parties held by the professor. It wasn't like he wanted to go, unless he could take Lily too, but it would have been nice to be invited.
Luckily for him, it was now free period for both him and Lily, one of the few times each week that neither of the two of them was either in class, or in Lily's case, tutoring, although she had said to him that she was considering dropping that after the Christmas holidays. What that meant was that they now had plenty of time to hang out and study together, like they had always enjoyed doing. 'Curse the fact that she was in a different house! That means we only share two classes together!' He quickly strode into the empty classroom they usually studied in down in the dungeons and smiled lightly, happy to see his best friend and the girl he was in love with.
She noticed him and flashed him one of her patented "I've got a clever idea" grins, which, like most of her grins, always made him go a little red in the face; he profusely thanked his long hair for being able to hide his blush, then Lily said, "Hey Sev, I was thinking about what you said Saturday...Why do you want to wait until you can join the Death Eaters..." She made a face. "... to be heroic? Why don't you try being heroic and great like you said you wanted to be now?"
Snape was getting pretty nervous and started pretending to look through his DADA textbook, which he had on loan from the library, to give him time to think over his response. Honestly, it was because he felt that he didn't have the power or skill necessary to do anything heroic at the moment, and was waiting until he had some before he put himself at risk. Nonetheless, he shaded the truth a little and said, putting the book down, "How would you have me going about being heroic at Hogwarts? I mean, its not like there is any big injustice going around, except for what those Marauders get up to..."
Lily smiled and said, "I was thinking...maybe you could persuade your friends to stop hexing Muggleborns and such, instead concentrating on the people who truly deserve it, like...Potter; its not like it is a huge thing, but it is something that I would think is heroic. If you could stop them, you would be admired a lot by the Muggleborns at Hogwarts... Plus, it might give Potter fewer excuses for going and hexing you."
Snape considered. 'Somehow I think she is being all Slytheriny again with this and she has another motive, and its not like I particularly care if I am admired much at Hogwarts, not really, but it might be an idea worth doing anyway. Lily would definitely love it if I did something like that, plus having Potter hex me less would be a nice bonus, and if my friends keep up with this hexing, they might get Lily involved... Still, I dunno...' In the end, Snape replied,
"If I do that though, it might cause some problems with my friendships with Avery and Mulciber; I don't have all that many friends. I am not like you after all. You are nice, talented, and prett-ahem."
Lily flushed slightly and seemed to look at him a little oddly, then she said, "Well, if they are really your friends, they won't have that much of a problem with you doing the right thing, and if not, do you really want friends like that? I mean, how would you like to be tormented by people because of your parents? If you think its wrong, I think you really should stand up to them. I mean, Remus Lupin never stands up to his friends really, even when he thinks that they are wrong; do you want to be like him? Besides, I'd bet that the Muggleborns in the school would want to be friends with their hero..."
Snape thought to himself. Although he VERY much disliked that she had brought up his father, she did have some very good points, and the idea of being a hero and respected by people was awfully tempting, but most of all, the idea of being like any of the MARAUDERS was truly appalling. He would NEVER allow himself to be compared to them in any way which resulted in him being similar to any of them, his pride just wouldn't allow that...
Two Days Later Friday October 29th, 1974
Mary Macdonald frowned as she looked at her marks for her potions homework. 'A 'P' is not a very good sign for my chances this term. I really need to study harder if I am going to pass potions this year; it would be awfully embarrassing if I were held back. Maybe I could get some help from Lily to turn my grade around... She ALWAYS does well in that class, and seems to be doing especially well this term.' She then smirked a little. 'At least I am not doing nearly as badly as Lupin though; I strongly believe that after the O.W.L.s next year, he will be ORDERED by the Minister of Magic himself to avoid all potions like the plague...'
Noticing that the hallway she was in was completely deserted, she realized that she must have made a wrong turn, because she had gone deeper into the dungeons rather than leaving it. She decided to turn around to clear her head, when she heard a low voice saying, "Ah, it appears that we have a Mudblood spreading her slime in our dungeons."
Whirling, her eyes narrowed, she saw who was speaking just in time for him to shout, "Furnunculus!"
Mary threw herself to the side, allowing her to dodge the jet of yellow light, but missed the follow-up Levicorpus spell, causing her to yell, "Put me down Mulciber!"
Mulciber only laughed as she heard several other Slytherins passing by, even if she couldn't see them. Finally Mulciber said, "Alright Mudblood! Libracorpus! Levicorpus! Libracorpus!"
That caused her to drop to the ground head-first, rise back up, then drop to the ground again. As she tried to keep herself from crying, she was glad that she had chosen to wear pants under her robes today, as that would have only made it more horrifying for her. She shouted, barely holding off tears, "Stop it! Please!"
As she heard someone behind her, she heard Mulciber call out, laughing, "Hey Severus! Did you want to join in too for once!? This Mudblood thinks that she can pollute our hallowed halls! Personally, I think that she should be sent packing, just like any other Muggle, how about you?"
'Severus Snape? He's Lily's friend right? Maybe he will help me.' She was about to call out, begging for help, for she didn't have much else to worry about pride-wise considering that she had finally lost the battle to stop her tears, when Mulciber shouted another spell,
"Langlock!"
As her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, she saw Snape walk slowly past her, then turn around to look at her, gaze unreadable as he seemed to consider something. Mary's eyes pleaded with him to help her when Mulciber yelled out, "Hey Severus, how bout a good Furnunculus for the road? Whadaya say? Maybe we could get her to go home to her mum and dad!"
Seeming to come to a decision, Snape then turned and walked over to Mulciber...
Author's Note: Ah, a nice cliffhanger, I hope that you will enjoy it! Obviously, since this is a Lily from seven-odd years in the future, her perception of the people around her will be a bit different than before.