Lily Evans was not the sort of person most people imagined when they thought of the Head of Slytherin.

Of course, most people probably still imagined Horace Slughorn, who had held the post from 1928 all the way through to 1989.

On the most superficial level, it would be difficult to find anyone who was less like Slughorn than the short, green-eyed red-head. She taught in practical healer's robes and sensibly low-heeled boots, and though she wasn't quite as slim anymore as she once was, no one had ever compared her to an overstuffed striped sofa. Her views on what it meant to be Slytherin and her political agenda were quite different from the old wizard's as well. Some of that was due to the fact that she was about fifty-five years younger than the former head of House, having just turned thirty-one. Some of it was almost certainly due to the fact that she had been a Gryffindor in school. Even more of it was likely due to the fact that she was muggle-raised, and had therefore fought for the Light in the War.

Not that she was a light witch. If anything, she considered herself Ambivalent: dedicated to both poles of magic equally… though she had admittedly made her reputation as more of a dark sorceress during and after the War. Slughorn's reputation, on the other hand, was as an apolitical facilitator of relationships and encourager of the advancement of the 'right' (richest and best-connected) people – an attitude which he had fostered in his Slytherins since he had taken over the House, and which had therefore shaped the entire nepotistic, graft-riddled organization that was the Ministry of Magic for well on half a century.

Unlike Slughorn, Lily thought that there was something hollow about trading on one's family name and flattering one's way into unearned authority. That was probably the muggleborn in her talking: no one knew more about pulling oneself up by one's boot-straps than a girl who had learned about Magical Britain when she was eleven, and spent the next ten years desperately trying to learn enough magic to keep herself and her friends alive in the middle of a war where her existence (and that of those like her) was the main source of contention. In her view, ambition was best served by Hufflepuff work ethic, Ravenclaw open-mindedness, and Gryffindor boldness. The world had seen how far deception and the pursuit of power had gotten her in 1982: chained to the prisoner's seat as the courts decided her fate. It was true that the deal she had struck to win free had been ruthless and cunning, but it had depended on charm, honesty, and good will and intent (and not a little bit of luck) to succeed, rather than carefully controlled, well-orchestrated plans and politics and blackmail, which was the popular interpretation of the 'Slytherin' approach.

Really, she didn't think there had been much to recommend her as Head of Slytherin, aside from the fact that nobody really doubted she could do the job. The same could not be said for the rest of the staff. Slughorn had rather let the House take care of itself in the last two decades of his tenure, the lazy old bastard. As might be expected when the students with the best connections make the rules with little to no adult oversight, the Death Eaters had found Slytherin House a prime recruiting ground, and it had been utter chaos after the social upheaval at the end of the War. Lily had begun the process of taming the Snake Pit from her previous position as the Inter-House Disciplinary Mediator, and when Slughorn finally elected to retire, her fellow staff members had obviously seen no reason that she should not continue to do so from a position of greater authority (her history and apparent general unsuitability notwithstanding). And the Hat had confirmed her as a suitable candidate.

Dumbledore's eyes had twinkled madly when he introduced this decision at the ratification meeting of the Board, suggesting that the time had come for a change of pace, and assuring the shocked Board Members that she had his full confidence.

Of course she did. She was bound to his service by a magical contract, his paramenein: a bond-slave, in essence. In exchange he stood as her custos: guard, warden, and guarantor of her good behavior. Much as the terms under which she had proposed this arrangement and the subsequent stripping of her citizen status rankled, the arrangement itself was the only thing that had kept her out of Azkaban or Nurmengard when the International Confederation learned what she had done. If she served loyally and faithfully, making every effort to oblige him and proving her good will and reformed character, the War Crimes Tribunal had allowed that her custos might petition to relax the terms of her sentence after twenty years from what more or less amounted to 'house arrest' to 'parole.'

Really, she had gotten off lightly: if they hadn't been in a state of war when she committed her 'crimes,' and her side hadn't won, she probably would have been chucked through the Veil for some of the stunts she had pulled. Well, if He Who Failed French had won, she probably would have been conscripted by the Death Eaters, actually, because they weren't too timid to find a use for ritualists, but that was beside the point. In any case, she was very lucky to have avoided a prison sentence, even with the leniency shown to the Light warriors when they were brought before the Tribunal.

In the meanwhile, however, she now had to deal with the day-to-day and year-to-year minutia of running Slytherin, along with the scheming, spying, and manipulating necessary to keep the various factions within the House in check, and the usual stresses of teaching the Healing elective and acting as Dumbledore's girl Friday. At least she didn't have to deal with Inter-House issues, anymore: the job of Disciplinary Mediator had gone to Aurora Sinistra, the youngest member of the faculty and only Slytherin alumna, who had hired in the year before Lily was promoted.

Well, they said it was a promotion.

Mostly it was a lot more absolutely thankless work. Two years had not been enough for the students to become accustomed to her way of doing things, and unfortunately, she didn't really expect it to get any easier for another year or three.

She collapsed onto a sofa in her (ridiculously verdant) Common Room, conjuring a glass for herself and filling it with a quick aguamenti. She had just finished the annual pre-move-in room-check, a process which involved breaking and removing all the illegal wards her students had placed on their rooms over the course of the previous year, examining the belongings they had left behind for contraband (which she confiscated for analysis and, in the case of the 20-year-old bottle of Irish muggle whisky hidden in James Warren's sock drawer, drinking), and leaving detention slips on the pillows of the worst offenders.

This was the third year in a row that a significant portion of the upperclassmen were returning to a month's detentions for trying to ward their Head of House out of their rooms along with the other students; stocking illegal potions, alcohol or muggle drugs (where Ananda Grey had managed to come across an entire envelope of LSD, Lily had no idea); having possession of restricted or banned literature and illegal ritual paraphernalia (Adelaide Pierce was a naughty girl indeed, bringing to school not only a ceremonial athame, but one finished with human bone instead of dragon or even goblin); and in one case, abandoning an unstable magical experiment with the potential to destroy half the dorms half-way through (Sherrinford Pierce, Adelaide's younger brother, and a Ravenclaw miss-sort if ever she had seen one).

One would hope that Slytherins were, in general, intelligent enough not to leave blatantly illegal materials lying around when they knew she was going to search their rooms, but they had youthful arrogance in common with her own former housemates, and somehow never suspected that their super-secret hiding spaces behind headboards and in the magically expanded and disillusioned hat-boxes shoved into the back of wardrobes would ever be discovered.

Idiots.

Still, it could be worse. She could be Head of Ravenclaw. Filius had asked for her assistance on more than one occasion, when it came to cleaning out their dorms of a summer, and it was always a nightmare. She was constantly surprised that there had only one major, tower-damaging explosion from that House since the beginning of her tenure at the school.

She couldn't help but hope that her kids were sorted anywhere else, purely for their own safety.

Of course, she rather hoped that they would manage, against the odds, to both be sorted into her new clutch of Snakes. It would be for the best, for the sake of avoiding appearances of favoritism (and probably for their popularity), if they weren't, but she was selfish enough to want to see and interact with them as much as possible, since her movements outside of the Castle had been so limited throughout their childhood, and her contact with them even more so. Since her arrest at the end of the War, she had only seen them in person a handful of times, mostly over Christmas. (She would have preferred Yule or Samhain, of course, but given the nature of her crimes, she was never allowed off the Grounds on those holidays, and even her participation in the students' observations was supervised.)

She was just considering whether Gryffindor or Hufflepuff would be better for Jimmy and Victoria, based on what she knew of them from their brief meetings, even briefer letters, and the reports Sirius had given her over the years, when the shrunken, enchanted mirror she wore as a locket pulsed with warmth against her skin. She answered it at once, enlarging it to the size of a compact, and opening it to see a pair of familiar, grinning, silver-grey eyes.

"Hey, Lils!" he said brightly, his tone immediately assuring her that nothing serious was wrong.

"Paddy! I was just thinking of you. Long time, no see," she smiled back. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Can't I just want to see your pretty face? Hear your dulcet tones?"

Lily chuckled. "Incorrigible as you are, you never call me just to flirt. What's up?"

"Well, you see, the thing is… we arrived to the train a bit late this morning, and didn't have a chance to get the kids' trunks un-shrunken and stowed away, so James and I were wondering," there was an incoherent mumble from somewhere outside the range of the detection charms, and Sirius corrected himself: "Fine, I was wondering, if you might be able to meet the train and un-shrink the kids' trunks so they can get changed and Minnie won't give them a week's detention for showing up out of uniform."

Lily just blinked at him for a long moment. "Sirius Black, you are still the most irresponsible – how did you cut it that close?!"

He snorted. "We got there in plenty of time, but then Jimmy ran off and got side-tracked, and Vic decided to get in on the fun, and by the time James got his grown-up act together well enough to get the show back on the road, we were running rather late."

"And I suppose you were just an innocent bystander in all this," she suggested, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at the man.

He rolled his eyes. "Anything I could have done would have made it exponentially worse, believe me."

She sighed. "Fine. I'll get Dumbledore to let me go collect the firsties. Even he wouldn't force a mother to see her children for the first time in three years from the High Table at the Sorting, and he still owes me." She had missed her last scheduled visit due to an unfortunately timed time-turner accident, and because she couldn't even explain what she had been doing that was so important that she hadn't had the time for her own children, James had refused to re-schedule. He seemed to think it was better if she never saw them at all, rather than chance getting their hopes up and then having to disappoint them.

Then again, he also seemed to think it was better if they never had any interaction with her, period. He made a point of supervising their visits, and it was written all over him that he thought her a dangerous influence, and one which he wanted to keep as far from his children as possible.

Their break-up, in the wake of her trial, had been a nasty one. He hadn't known the half of what she had got up to working in the Safehouses. Oh, he had known about the big things, the Major Workings she had done in front of everyone, to turn the tide of a battle when all hope seemed lost if she did nothing. But he hadn't known about the ritual healing or the bio-Alchemy or her correspondence grimoire and the reports she had exchanged with an Applied Metaphysics researcher at Miskatonic. He had known she had an interest in soul magic – he had given her access to the Potter-Peverell Library, for God's sake! – but he hadn't realized that she had been working on ways to use that knowledge. The ICW Investigators had broken the cipher spells on her private journals, and thrown everything she had worked on since the age of fifteen in front of the courts, and her lovers: every detail of her self-experimentation with blood magic and runic casting; every twisted, terrible, beautiful corruption of healing charms she had crafted to kill; every thought on the Powers and the details of her relationships with them.

Sirius had understood, both her obsession with the most primal, most dangerous of magics, and why she had never mentioned it to him (the reformed scion of the Darkest house) or to James (who had always been of the Light, through and through).

James had not.

He could not find it in himself to maintain a relationship with a witch he considered dark, even though he had loved her since they were eleven years old. Even though she was the mother of his children.

When she had been stripped of her citizen status and rights as a legal entity, custody of her children had been turned over to their fathers: it was only through Sirius' intervention that James had been convinced to let her write, and see them at all, let alone to send them to Hogwarts. The terms of the latter accommodation had been that she communicate with them only by means he approved (only letters, which she was sure he read – she was fairly certain that he worried she would try to turn them against him if she was allowed to speak to them directly and privately, as with Sirius' mirror), and all visits were to be supervised at his convenience. He had to be terrified – not only were they out of his protection for the first time in years, but they were nearly within her reach, and he had built her up in his mind as being as evil as the Morrigan herself.

"Lily? Lily? Hellflower!"

"Huh?" she startled, brought out of her thoughts by Sirius's voice.

"Geez, Lils. You're a million miles away."

"Just thinking. Sorry."

"Yeah, well, I should get going. But call tonight and let us know where the kids end up." He was practically vibrating with excitement.

She laughed. "Of course. Should be around eleven – I have to lay down the law for Slytherin before I'll get any privacy."

"Sounds good. I'll be waiting!" She was sure he would. If she didn't call by eleven, he would probably call her at two minutes past.

Speaking of the time… "Gods and Powers, I need to be up in Dumbledore's office in five minutes. Later, Pads!" She leapt from the couch, headed for the Slytherin back-door that opened nearest to the Headmaster's tower.

"Go, go! And don't forget, about the –"

"Trunks, robes, un-shrinking. Yes, I'll take care of it, you irresponsible bastard! Say 'hi' to Jamie for me," she added sincerely. Their relationship had been less than cordial for years, but she couldn't really hold onto her resentment toward him and his visitation restrictions when she would soon be able to invite the kids to tea every weekend if she liked.

Sirius looked slightly startled, but he said, "Will do. Ciao, cara!"

She snapped the case closed, shrinking it back to medallion-size as she reached the open corridors.

She was slightly out of breath, but exactly on time when she reached the statute that guarded Dumbledore's staircase. "Licorice wands," she panted, and it hopped aside to allow her access to the spiral stair. She took the precious seconds of its ascent to compose herself.

"Ah, Lily, my dear, do come in," the old man called before she could knock.

"Hello, Albus. You wanted to see me?"

"I did indeed! Sit down, dear girl. Oh, my – you look rather flushed. Are you quite alright? Would you like a lemon drop?"

Lily rolled her eyes. That was simply what six flights of stairs did to a person. "No thank you. I'm fine, Albus. What's up?"

"Well, there are several matters I wished to discuss. First of all, I've reviewed the plan you proposed for your section of the Gauntlet protecting the stone." He looked over his spectacles with a disappointed little frown.

"And?" the witch prompted. The room she had proposed was ancient Palmyrene trap enchanted to produce multi-sensory illusions in response to the intent of anyone who entered it. It could project anything from an endless plane to a shifting labyrinth of hallways to a boggart-like simulation of one's greatest fears (though in that case the enchanting was far more complicated). So long as the intruder wished to advance, the illusions would befuddle them. As soon as they wished to retreat, the way back would become clear.

"And, do you not feel that a Zenobian Box might be just a little advanced for this particular venture?"

She didn't, particularly. The secret to defeating the trap was to disable the senses affected. In the version of the Box that she had proposed, the intruders would need to blind themselves and fly or levitate to find the edges of the space, as it projected the illusion of movement based on walking, the floor shifting with each step to bring one back to the same spot. After that it was a relatively simple matter of feeling one's way through the doorway to advance. Difficult, possibly slightly dangerous, depending on the spells the intruders used for levitation, but not too advanced for most NEWT students to figure out, after a scouting trip and a few hours in the library.

"That depends. Do you still plan on actually hiding the Flamels' Stone at the end of it? Because if so, I'd say the Antlion Oasis is too easy a variation."

"Lily, my dear, we've been over this. You were there when Nicholas discussed his concerns about the stone's safety. The rumors that the Shadow is seeking it…"

"Yes, I know. And if it's true that the Shadow is a vampire, a Zenobian Box might slow him? Her? Them, anyway, enough to be captured, but I still think you'd be best served letting me implant it for you, or at the very least keeping it up here under a pile of wards."

"Ah, but the Gauntlet is not only a challenge for the would-be thief. I seem to recall you enjoyed participating in it yourself your seventh year. And the true defense of the stone will not be the Gauntlet itself. That will be a Carolline Concealment, secure from the average thief, and doubly so from the attempts of a vampire."

The witch sighed. A Carolline Concealment (hiding an object 'through the looking glass' – or rather, in a pocket-dimension tied to a mirror until certain conditions were met) was a very specifically targeted vanishing/conjuration enchantment triggered by an intent-based charm. Presumably the mirror itself would play a part in the intent-recognition, if it was doubly safe from vampires. "Very well. I still think that my sixth and seventh-years will be able to figure out the Box, though, with a bit of research. And some of them are bound to logic out what's happening. Perhaps you could assign each of us a year-level to challenge, and place them in order: use the Gauntlet to see which students are ahead of their peers, you know?"

The old wizard stroked his long beard. "Hmmm… do you know, I think that's an excellent idea. Very well. I shall look at the proposed challenges, and see what adjustments we might request. I hope you know you have just volunteered to assist with those adjustments, my dear." His eyes twinkled with mirth.

"Why Albus," Lily drawled. "When have I ever declined to assist when requested?"

He chortled. "Quite so, quite so. Then. What else was there? You are prepared for the start of term?"

"Everything is ready for my first month of classes. The monitoring charms have been in place on Quirinus' chambers for weeks. I just finished the Slytherin room-checks…"

"Anything I ought to be aware of turn up in the room-checks?"

Lily sighed and handed over a list. She hated turning her students in for their illegal possessions, but not enough to risk taking the fall if Dumbledore realized she was protecting them. "I would appreciate it if you just let me leave it at confiscations and detentions," she said as blue eyes skimmed down the parchment. "They'll never come to respect me if they think I'm constantly running off and squealing on them to a higher authority," she pointed out, subtly reminding him that his end-game was a pacified Slytherin, not sending students to Azkaban for having possession of Class V non-tradable ritual materials.

"Have you given any more thought to the idea of an extra-curricular Practical Defense club?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

She winced slightly. But if that was the price of her autonomy within Slytherin… "I have twelve free hours a week, compared to the core professors, but I'd really like to keep at least half of those for dealing with emergencies and, you know, typical mayhem. I could knock together a general curriculum along the lines of Preventative Measures, but you know I'm not much of a duelist… it may not end up being what you're looking for. And the logistics are a bit rubbish. I'd have to at least try to do a couple of sections so that everyone could attend at least one… maybe with multiple levels?"

"You were the one who wanted to try to find a way around that pesky Defense curse, Miss Evans," Dumbledore twinkled.

"I did at that," she admitted ruefully. Teach her to suggest good ideas. What did it get her? More work.

"I think three levels, with two sections each should suffice. I shall reserve the Great Hall for you during the hours of seven to nine, Monday through Saturday."

Damn. So much for keeping a few free hours. She kept her disappointment from her face, though. "And Slytherin?"

"Oh, I think you've amply demonstrated your ability to make the correct judgments on enough decisions recently that I have no doubts about the management of your students and their adherence to the school rules. Though I do expect all confiscated items to be disposed of properly and in a timely manner. And you will keep me apprised of the results of your inspections – annual and spot – as well as the punishments you hand out. I shall require reports, for the sake of accountability and precedent."

"I would expect nothing less," she said drily, with a smile to take the sting out of it.

"Quite right," he chortled again. "The world does, after all, run on parchment. I shudder to think what I would do had I not a single report to read on a given day. My poor heart might not be able to stand the shock."

She snorted with laughter at that image. "And in World News today, the Supreme Mugwump has expired after an acute case of stress relief?"

"Indeed, indeed," the old man murmured, sobering. "But there is one last thing I wished to discuss, Lily."

"What is that, Albus?"

"Your… children," he said delicately.

Lily was certain the temperature in the room dropped five degrees as fear swept over her. What could he possibly want to say about her kids? And why would it warrant such a tone? "What about them?"

"If… well, if, that is, they are Sorted into Slytherin… I think it might be best for Aurora to deal with any matters of discipline involving them, even if it is otherwise a strictly in-house matter. For the sake of avoiding any potential conflict of interest, you understand."

She did. For a moment, she had thought that he might be about to suggest that she could not have them in class when the time arrived, or associate with them outside of lessons. It was a great flood of relief that she stuttered, "Y-yes. Of course. That makes perfect sense. We should do the same for Draco Malfoy, too."

"Ah, yes… I had forgotten Narcissa named you his godmother."

To be honest, Lily forgot that most days as well. By 1981, Narcissa had been desperate to secure a future for her son in the event that the Light triumphed over the Dark Lord; when Lily had been captured in January of 1982, Narcissa had let her go in exchange for an Oath of Godparenthood. It clearly hadn't been her only back-up plan: the Malfoys had weathered the end of the War much better than Lily had, and in any case, she had played even less of a part in Draco's life than she had in her own children's, but it was still a potential conflict of interest.

"Do you want to tell Aurora, or shall I?"

"Oh, you may do so, if you happen to see her." He consulted a scrap of parchment on his desk. "Well, I do believe that concludes everything I had wished to discuss at the moment. We still have a little time before Rosalind arrives for my next meeting. If you'd like to stay and keep me company, I'll have biscuits sent up…"

"Well, perhaps just one," she grinned. "There is one other thing I was hoping to ask you. A favor, actually."

He finished calling an elf and ordering tea and pastries before he asked, "Oh? And what might that be, my dear?"

"Well…" she began, drawing out the word. "As you may recall, it's been several years since I've been able to see Jimmy and Victoria…"

"For which I am, for my part, terribly sorry, my dear," he offered, all false-sympathy.

She sighed. "It's not your fault James is a prat. But anyway, I was thinking… if it's not too much trouble, for the sake of the children, could I perhaps take Milton's place this year, bringing the firsties across the lake? I… I really think it would be better for them than having to sit through the Sorting and the Feast without even a chance to say hello."

"And for you, I dare say," the wizard suggested.

"Well… yes. It's been three years, Albus. Please. I don't want them to think I don't care, sitting up at the high table and hardly sparing them a glance."

He shrugged. "I don't see the harm in it. But Lily, this must be a one-time exception. If you catch them breaking the rules or have them in class, or even in the Defense Club, you are to treat them just as you would any other student. Am I understood?"

"Perfectly, sir!" she assured him quickly. The tea arrived then, and she helped herself to a biscuit (lemon, of course), though she declined a cup. "I'll just let Milton know, shall I?"

Dumbledore chuckled, eyes twinkling merrily. "Yes, yes, I'll let you get off to it. See you at the Feast, my dear."

"See you then, Albus," she grinned.

Now all she had to do was wait the two and a half hours until she could reasonably take the Fleet across to Hogsmeade. She sighed. Well, perhaps she could figure out a basic syllabus for her Defense Club to help pass the time…