Remus loses the benefit of the doubt, Severus loses the benefit of the truce—and Irma Pince, if she sees how he treats his books, will lose her freaking mind.

Warnings for brevity, swotty fluff, politics, and an (at least theoretically) open relationship. Severus has a graphic imagination and is understandably taken by many for prime DE material. If this worries you, the word 'euphemism' is your cue to skip the rest of the paragraph.

Notes: Talking about what happened to the cufflinks last chapter made me think about what else doesn't get into the story because Evan is all, LALALALA, I am Bella's cousin and I only care about what I care about. :3 So here's a fun fact for you: if this had been set in the first half of the year, it would have been largely about his bland, innocent, cutthroat machinations to become Quidditch captain next year. It's not that he wants it, exactly, but anyone else but Reg would be happy to let Severus play bludger-sponge, and Reg wouldn't be able to argue with Severus about it. And he's not quite sure anyone else on the team, including Severus, could compose an elegant or efficient strategy if he read them the instructions and moved their quill-hand for them. However, the season is over now, he's secure in his success, other problems have slammed to the top of his priority list, and the whole issue is off his radar. Like, poof.

By the weekend, not only did everything feel back to normal, but everyone was being themselves in spades. Friday was the third time that week that the Slytherin and Gryffindor hourglasses in the great hall underwent a violent revolution, the fourth time somebody had to go extract Severus from the infirmary, and the second time a senior prefect had felt it necessary to look meaningfully at Evan. Ev was still too relieved (and well-petted, and well-cuddled, and well-rested, and, bluntly, well-tumbled) to care about any of this tedium except the infirmary-related bits, but prefect oblige. Or, more properly, Narcisse oblige.

It had taken a few days to pull together even a simple plan; there was so much work to do these days. Severus had thrown tutoring for profit to the winds as soon as he'd found his voice again: whipped them all instead into a flurry of group revising. It was working well, too. The rapid-fire of mutual quizzing was almost fun, and Spike's creative howling when anyone was really badly wrong was always enormously fun, as long as they only retaliated with a cushion or first-year.

Trying to explain things to other people turned out to be astonishingly helpful for cementing one's own understanding, too. Spike had cackled unrepentantly when Evan had accused him of hogging that advantage. The punishment hadn't gone well. Or, not successfully. Not as a punishment, anyway. And a couple of hours meant for Charms practice had had to be rescheduled. One of them, true, had fallen to Severus meekly and penitently reading notes aloud (ha. But he had such a riveting drinking-chocolate voice to be tolerantly, lovingly, condescendingly amused in). Still, the likelihood of either of them having absorbed much, given what else had been going on at the time, was low. Of course, Severus had absorbed—

—The point was that it had been quite difficult for Evan and Narcissa to snatch any private moments to plan in, between class, group study, public meals, and Narcissa's clubs, suitors, and fellow-barracuda roommates. Carving out even quite a simple plan and brute-forcing time for it had taken them days. She and Ev had lured Spike and Reggie into the library so Spike would keep his voice down. Reggie's volume-related flinching was a deterrant at least the equal of library norms, and accusations of neglecting him had been the easiest way to get Spike away from the rest of their year anyway.

Reg took no persuasion and needed no explanation. He wasn't lonely, exactly. He had loads of snogging and revising-buddy options, and the Quidditch team and plenty of sane witch friends to pal around with. With Spike and Sirius both acting like they'd had their legs cut out from under them, though, he'd been wild-eyed and high-shouldered for weeks, bearing a miserable resemblance to the rabbit Evan called him sometimes. Then Ev's year's whiplash dive into OWL fever had left him looking marooned and confused and sulky, all festooned about with an I'm sure I had a working and quite expensive broom a moment ago, WHO STOLE IT?! air. He'd latched onto an invitation to study in the library—like this was Hogwarts and they were all them—as if he had actual claws.

"Severus, darling," Narcissa asked delicately now. "Is it at all possible that any of this nonsense is your fault in any way?"

Severus looked up at the ceiling instead of at her. "I wouldn't say that," he answered judiciously.

"Would others, perhaps, say that?" Evan asked.

Reggie volunteered, "Siri said Spike whomped Lupin over the head with an encyclopedia."

"Good spy," Narcissa praised him warmly, giving him a little hug around the shoulders. "Severus, did you hit Lupin with an encyclopedia?"

"I certainly did," Severus didn't so much admit as proclaim. The lift of his chin rather suggested a backdrop of flourishing banners against a clear blue sky. And possibly trumpets.

"Why, Severus, why would you tome their delicate little pet swot? It was so lovely and quiet!" she mourned. "Not that we didn't miss you talking to us, darling, but everything was so nice and peaceful. You've no idea how much the girls and I got done, and Mulciber and Avery could barely get away with anything!"

Spike's mouth tightened. He looked away again, banners shrivelling. "Spike?" Evan asked, laying a hand on his wrist.

His mouth went even smaller, but then he took a breath, let it out. "Some things," he said carefully, "some things are so… some things, if a person does them, that person isn't a person anymore. They're a worm."

"Tall worm," Evan mentioned, trying for some levity. Lupin was rather a beanpole these days; Spike probably would have been better off slugging him uppercut-style.

It didn't work. "Sometimes, even if… I know it's an Evans thing to say, but sometimes you have to register an objection even if it won't do any good. Even if it'll have consequences. Not because it'll get you anywhere, just so you can go on meeting your own eyes in the mirror."

Evan and Narcissa looked at each other. "There's registering an objection, darling," she said gently, "and then there's braining someone with a block of wood bigger than their head."

He shrugged, turning back to his notes. "And there's being a doormat," he said, "and then there's Lupin."

"What on earth did he do?" Evan asked, bemused.

Then he drew back, alarmed. He'd seen Severus angry before, and seen him surly, and snarling, and afraid. He'd thought, in the past, before they were friends, that Severus looked like a scarecrow, or a rag doll, or a molting parrot. Most unaesthetic. This, though, this cold, bitter, stony savagery that made his eyes glint like torchlight on obsidian and the cords stand out in his neck, this was ugly.

Very quietly, without looking up, Severus said, "In his whole life, Reg, there is nothing your brainless, bullying, bloodthirsty bastard of a brother could do that's as contemptible as what Lupin's done by trying to be friendly with me and then taking him back."

Now they all looked at each other. "I don't understand," Reggie told Severus in a small voice.

"I know," he said, still looking at his notes. "And you're not going to. I'm sorry about that." Then he did look up, at Narcissa, still remote but more human, and shrugged. "And I'm sorry it's open war. This wasn't something I could make a pretense about. Or even think about it. He told me and I just…" he trailed off.

"Spat in his eye, Naj?" Evan asked kindly, covering his hand and squeezing it. Severus didn't answer, but he turned his hand over and squeezed back.

"Evan," Narcissa started to remonstrate. That always was the one thing she and Severus never could understand about each other. She'd cut her teeth on grace, and would always, always slide her way around a problem, without turning a hair. Refinement came more naturally to Severus's than Evan would ever have thought when they'd met, but it was a toy to him, a luxury. Pudding. Elegance was wonderful when you had time for it, but in a pinch, if you ignored that flaring hood, a spitting cobra would try a long-distance weapon first, no matter how disgusting.

Taking the painful, blinding warning was quite a good idea, too. Once they struck, you just could not get the wretched things out of your leg. And the bite was more venomous than the spray. Not graceful when pressed, naja siamensis, not like Narcissa's breathtaking, elusive shieldtail, or even Evan's streamlined and volatile pit viper. Beautiful, though, in its own moody, monochromatic way, and it by-Salazar got the job done. While beating you repeatedly. With its body. Just in case you hadn't gotten the point(y bits) the first time.

"Done is done," Evan said. "It wasn't going to last anyway, you know." She sighed. "But, Spike, it can't go on like it's been this week. You can't be in fights all the time. Our OWLs start in three weeks! Think of it, you might get Es!" he finished in a tone of great horror, and won a tiny smile.

"And the House may kill you," Narcissa put in, not unsympathetically. "I'm sorry, darling, but it's awfully distracting and it makes us look bad."

"I know," said Severus, in a voice as small as Reggie's had been. "But it's not as if I pick fights, Narcissa—all right," he went on in more his usual voice, waving her objection away before it could get rolling, "yes, fine, I hit him, but that was nearly two weeks ago. They just do whatever they want whenever they feel like it. Whenever they see me, I think, really," he added, bitter again, but not in the soulcracking way that had made Ev want to shake him until he came back to himself.

"Then don't let them see you alone," Narcissa ordered. "We can—"

"No!"

Miss Pince looked up from her desk with a glare. She had it in for Spike at the best of times, even though he'd never scribbled in any of her books. Evan had caught the edge of a rumor saying her predecessor had painfully taught him better, but he hadn't been interested in Spike back then. He didn't think it was true, anyway. Severus had always had a very firm grasp of mine-and-thine. More likely it was one of Siri's... fables? You couldn't call it slander, really, from Sirius; he just sort of... decided his speculations were perfectly logical and likely and had to be right.

"No," Severus repeated, lower but still vehement. "You lot keep out of it. This is not turning into a Black Family Feud. That is so far above my pay grade."

"You're getting paid?" Evan inquired.

Spike made a face at him. "You know what I mean. You lot get involved and suddenly you're getting into trouble and your parents are involved. Not that I'd object to it not being about me anymore, but it'd be the Cousins' War all over again, and I refuse to be responsible for that. Won't be dragging my bloodline into another one of those, thanks all the same."

They looked at each other a little blankly again. "What does your family have to do with the War of the Roses?" Narcissa asked, visibly not sure whether she was actually curious or just humoring him.

He smiled blackly. "My family was the War of the Roses. Mam's a Prince."

"What?"

Miss Pince glared up again, but Narcissa's shocked delight annoyed her less than Severus being autocratic.

Narcissa lowered her voice anyway. "Really, darling?! Why didn't you tell us?!"

He blinked at her. "Does it matter? My father's still my father."

"You little idiot," she said fondly, "of course it matters!"

"That's… disturbing," Severus decided, although he was smiling crookedly at her.

"See?" she beamed at Evan. "I was right! I told you he had too much magic to be a mudblood from nowhere!"

Evan rolled his eyes once she was looking at Spike again. Yes, Spike had as much raw power as mortal wizard could desire, but so, sadly, did Evans. Maybe there'd been something in their water growing up. Like a ley line. Or three. And Dumbledore's mother had been muggleborn, and he had everybody topped. Exponentially. You just had to be in a room with him to feel it if you had any sensitivity at all. Any size room. Granted, he was old as wands, but Evan and Reggie's granddad was nearly as old, and even Arcturus Black's presence seemed diminished when the two of them met.

"Halfblood from York, that's me," Severus said peaceably. "Only, I regret, not actually York, because that's where the grandparents are and they and Mam have been dead to each other since I Sorted. I hear York is quite a nice place. Takeaways and bookstores and fountains and everything. I'm definitely going to visit once I can apparate."

"You goose!" Narcissa declared, hugging him impulsively. Evidently, Evan thought, she'd been too enraptured to hear the jaw-dropping bit about his grandparents. "You should have said! A Prince!"

"Half a Prince and no crown jewels," Spike reminded her bemusedly, tolerating it. "So I don't see why this is important."

Surprising Evan, it was Reggie who answered. Of course, his branch of the family was its trunk, as it were, and had long since taken charge of tracking the bloodline. Paying attention to this sort of consideration had been drummed into him all his life.

"Because nobody can say you're a climber if your mum's from a family like the Princes, Spike," he said soberly. "I'm not criticizing her," he added hastily, although Evan knew thinking about mixed marriages made Reggie just as queasy as anyone else, "but when people know you have Gaunt blood, they'll say, 'oh, his mum made a mistake and he's fixing it, it's all a bit sordid but at least he knows what his duty to his line is.' Not 'he's got some nerve, trying to get his muddy hands into the Blacks.' Because, er… they say that. Um. Sorry. We tell them," he added hastily. "But they do."

"…And that's disgusting," Severus declared, making a face.

"That's how it is," Reg said, not arguing. Spike sighed.

Evan hooked his foot around Spike's ankle and squeezed his hand again. "This is all most gratifying," he said, "but the problem of keeping your highness—"

"Don't," Severus begged, turning to him in distress.

"—alive till the end of term remains," Evan went on inflexibly. No one seemed to be looking at them, so he snuck a quick kiss.

"He could stick with Evans?" Reg suggested.

"That just makes Potter hunt me down even when he doesn't see me," Severus gloomed.

"And Mulciber's an ass about it," Evan told Reg. "I could do without milady Boudicca myself, speaking personally, but he gets so ideological. It's no good Spike dodging trouble in the castle if he gets it in the teeth in the bedroom."

Severus slid him a sly glance under dark lashes. Evan gave him a little you know what I meant kick, grinning.

"Stick with Mulciber and Avery, then," Narcissa said. "That's what you used to do, isn't it, darling?"

"I did," Severus agreed, sighing, "but that got me into fights with Evans, and besides, they're just as likely as not to pick fights themselves. And those are the worst ones. I can't give anyone a chance to save face and back off if they're there, even if there's an opportunity. And Avery really likes fighting and Mulciber always wants to try out every spell he's ever heard of, and I can't pull punches in front of them, and they," he meant the Gryffs now, "always want to get creative. And I think they know, really, that four to one is contemptible. They seem to want to prove what happy warriors they are taking on a group when they get the chance, golly it's more satisfying really it is," he mocked them scathingly, and sighed again. "We've lost more points that way…"

"Well, then," Evan said, not without sympathy, "I'm sorry, Spike, but when you can't latch onto Reg or one of your Ravenclaw chums or shove Lockhart at them…"

It took Severus a second, and then he blanched. "Oh, no."

"I'm afraid so, darling," Narcissa said, patting his hand. "You're going to have to make up with Lucy."

"Making up with her I don't mind," Severus said, cringing. "As long as I can avoid making out."

"Good luck with that," Evan chuckled.

"Don't be a baby, Severus," Narcissa scolded, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "She's very talented, you know."

"I do know," admitted Severus, "but she's so grabby. And bouncy. I mean, she's so exuberant, I keep thinking she's going to eat me. I don't mean in any sort of a euphemistic way, I mean with rent flesh and lots of blood and organ scraps spattered all over the walls and tendons and marrow gnawed from the cracked and splintered bone."

There was a pause. Then Evan asked, in rising delight, "What do you mean, you do know?" Narcissa kicked him, probably for failing to join in her ew, but he really couldn't pay attention to nonsense like that when, well.

Droll, Severus told him, "I'm sorry to disillusion you, but my uniqueness is not unlimited. Not even I can put her off without interruption from the beginning until the end of time."

Evan cracked the table with his wand and all their books and notes flew into their bags. He grabbed Severus by the elbow and levered him to his bemused feet. "You're telling me all about it right now," he announced.

"I'm really not," Severus told him, blinking as he was propelled out.

"That's what you think!"

"I want to hear, too!" Reggie said forlornly.

"Nobody's hearing!"

"Isn't he precious?" Evan asked Narcissa, beaming, and shoved Spike out the door.

Art link in profile:

Storytime! (no it's not) OH YES IT IS! :DDDDD

Notes:

• You don't get a surname like Prince because all your ancestors were fishmongers.
• Pretty much everyone in the War of the Roses was descended from John of Gaunt, through one wife or another.
• Richard III (total Gryff or Huffie; read Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time for a short and excellent mystery that explains why Shakespeare's characterization was politically motivated and/or based on a confused source) and Anne Neville had a son who died about the time he would have gotten a Hogwarts letter. Richard was on the throne at the time, but he was clearly going under. Any parent more intelligent and loving than power-mad would have jumped on the chance to get their kid the heck out of Dodge.
• Elizabeth I probably didn't have a bastard child by her stepmother's husband when she was a teenager, but there was a not-totally-incredible nasty rumor about it at the time.
• Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, and great-grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville (and her mother), were popularly suspected of witchcraft by their contemporaries. Largely because they were charismatic women who married way, way up and weren't particularly meek, but hey.
• And whatever did happen to those two nephews of Richard's? 'Cause boring household accounts say they were being fed and clothed (and humiliated by being treated like, well, Richard's nephews and wards instead of his lieges) when the Lancasters (notably Harry Tudor, the future Henry VII, a Slytherin and PR master if ever there was one) were screaming they were already jailed and/or dead. And the bones found in the Tower don't fit their description.

I like to think the Tudor and Plantagenet lines buried the (double-handed battle-)axe at one of the Continental Wizarding schools. Probably, given Severus's nose and coloring, in Italy or Spain, but you never know. The whole boiling of 'em were crazy-pigheaded; it might have been Hogwarts after all.