It was Valentine's day again, and this time, Gabriel had a whole lot more girls after him.
Part of it was due to the fact he was now legally a Black, but most of it was because of his personality and the fact he planned to stay.
Severus was very, very surprised that he had few of his own. For the past four years he had only ever gotten a platonic chocolate and card from Lily, and suddenly he was dealing with having his own fans.
It was an odd feeling for him.
"Want me to check yours while I check mine?" said Gabriel.
"Deal."
Between the two of them, they managed to ferret out the potioned chocolates.
Severus was mildly surprised Gabriel found so many in his own stash.
Gabriel then had an idea for some quick pocket change. Once he had finished with his hand written thank you notes (convincing Severus to do the same) they two immediately offered to double check the chocolates of the other boys like they had their own.
The pure bloods and some of the half bloods jumped on the offer. Checking all that chocolate was a tedious task none wanted to do, so the chance to get someone else to do it for a small fee of three galleons was a bargain.
They only found thirty out of five hundred, so Gabriel felt it was a small price to pay for an hour's work.
Severus saw what Gabriel had in mind, and he just knew that this was an excellent way to make some cash off the same idiots who thought half-bloods made them half wits.
Gabriel was on his way to the library when he saw Sirius bullying a first year Slytherin.
"Dammit, not again."
Gabriel rounded the corner and hit Sirius with hex that forced him in place. The firstie looked at Gabriel with wide eyes before he nodded gratefully to him
It was well known among the staff that Gabriel took his job protecting the younger years very seriously.
"I have told you before Black, leave the first years alone. In case you've forgotten, first years grow up rather fast and some of them can hold a grudge long after you leave. I'm going to take you straight to Flitwick and see you get a detention," scolded Gabriel irritably.
Sirius and James had been getting worse of late, and Gabriel fully blamed their hormones kicking into full gear. Remus had tried to reign them in, but Gabriel knew a lost cause when he saw one.
Lily's attitude problem had started to simmer down after her father's near death thanks to a heart attack and the scare she had gotten worrying about him. Most of her personality had slowly started to calm down after learning how close a call it had been, since she was actually closer to her father than her mother.
Gabriel was just glad she had given up trying to snare him as a boyfriend, and that she had started to repair her relationship with Severus after he had convinced his friend to send Micheal Evans a get well soon card and some wizard candy that no one would bat an eye at.
Apparently some of the potions he had laced the chocolate with had helped Micheal's recovery a little bit.
Once he delivered Sirius to Flitwick, once again sighing over the idiocy of teenage hormones, he though the matter was over.
It wasn't.
James and Sirius waited until they knew he would be in the library with Remus looking up things that would help the younger students with their tests that were looming around the corner to target Severus, who had started talking to Lily again.
It didn't end well. For anyone.
Gabriel was in the library when he saw the two Marauders corner Severus in a way the teachers wouldn't see at a glance. His frown turned to white hot anger as he saw them push his friend to the ground and spill his bag, and knew that the Marauder's bad habits were starting to take a turn he had been trying to avoid for months.
They were turning from arrogant pranksters into outright bullies, and he was not pleased.
Fortunately Remus saw the same thing, so he needed no explanation as he raced out the door.
He reached the ground floor and outside in time to see James Potter use a common silent jinx that caused people to be hung from their ankle on his friend, and he saw red.
James didn't know what hit him. One minute he was taunting a quickly-turning-red-faced Severus Snape, the next he was on the ground holding his jaw from a nasty right hook. Sirius found himself on the wrong end of a very pissed off Gabriel Black, and was left with a broken jaw and black eye from the teen's well thrown punches. Peter tried to escape, but Gabriel wasn't letting him go that easily...he had been the one to rip Severus' bag from his hands.
By the time a teacher heard about the fight, it was all over. Gabriel helped his friend off the ground after he broke the hex and glared defiantly at Dumbledore, who had been the first authority figure to arrive.
"What is the meaning of this Mr. Black?" he asked Gabriel. The teen noted he wasn't even going to address the Marauders, likely blaming the Slytherins for this mess.
"Sirius, James and Peter were pushing Severus around, and Gabriel ran out of the library to help him," answered Remus. Seeing the betrayed look on the faces of the other Marauders, Remus gave them a disappointed one of his own at them.
"I've been trying to curtail their bullying for months, but someone keeps giving them detentions that don't fit the crime," said Gabriel angrily.
He had kept track of what the Marauders got after he caught them bullying, and to say he was pissed was an understatement.
They only got lines or a minor cleaning job under Filch, not what others had gotten in the past for similar behavior. And when asked by Gabriel why the punishment had changed, he had been told Dumbledore had overruled the teachers in question.
Needless to say the heads of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw were rather unhappy with the headmaster at the moment. Gabriel at least insured that a neutral third party would give the detentions and not their head of house, who was definitely biased towards them.
Severus glared at Dumbledore.
"I was trying to work on a new potion recipe when James waltzed up and started bad mouthing me and my mother. Apparently he doesn't like the fact that Lily and I are friends again. Then Sirius pinned me to the tree and Pettigrew ripped my bag open. Gabriel got here in time to get me down from the hex James used on me," said Severus, eyes black with anger.
In another life, Severus had been stuck in the air for nearly thirty minutes before a teacher got him down. It had only cemented his hatred for James Potter and Sirius Black.
Now he was just pissed at them and waiting for Gabriel's idea of payback for this stunt. He knew that while Gabriel could take a lot of grief for himself, he always stood up for his friends.
When faced with proof from Remus (Severus was outraged that Dumbledore was so clearly biased towards Gryffindor) he had to give punishment to the other three. But the fact they only had to do lines made Severus very certain he would never again trust Dumbledore.
"LINES?! Those bastards humiliated him, could have damaged his notes and things and all the got were lines?" hissed Narcissa angrily.
Narcissa liked Severus' acid tongue, and he didn't mind making the beauty potions she favored for a much lower price than she would have had to pay.
Gabriel had been very surprised that Narcissa had sent Severus chocolate for Valentine's day.
"He wouldn't believe Gabriel, but when Remus backed his story about seeing it from the window he had no choice but to believe him," said Severus angrily.
Gabriel hated lying, except about where he came from.
Gabriel was currently seething by the fire. What James and Sirius had done nearly wrecked all the work Severus had put into coming up with the winning combination to recreate the potion Remus needed.
Remus, when he heard what it was about, had agreed to be a very eager test subject. If this worked his name would be on the published recipe for the potion as one the first test subject, and he would get some of the gold for helping make it. Not nearly as much as Severus or Gabriel, but a small portion.
"Can we step up the prank you've been doing?" asked Narcissa.
Gabriel's ongoing prank against the Marauders was considered the highlight of fifth year. None of them had figured out who was mimicking their voices so well that they kept getting into trouble.
As it was, Gryffindor was well behind Slytherin.
"No. I'm thinking of something much more effective than stepping up a rather harmless prank," said Gabriel.
"What do you have in mind?"
"What do you know of illusions? Ones that only target specific people and leave everyone else confused?" said Gabriel, remembering something from third year where Remus spoke of the incident that nearly cost Snape his life.
Sirius had tricked Snape into going into the Whomping Willow, only to be saved by James at the last second. If things progressed as they should, Sirius might try to do the same thing next year...and this could be used as a catalyst to knock some much need sense into those idiots and teach them a valuable lesson.
He just needed to get the Potters in on his plan.
James and Lily never got together until seventh year, after James lost his parents after his sixth. Gabriel planned to save the Potters, but he still needed a wake up call from the death of someone close.
Narcissa's eyes gleamed.
"What do you have in mind?"
"I'll tell you and the other Avengers later. Don't want the headmaster," Gabriel spat the word out like a vile disease, "Catching wind of my idea."
Dumbledore had lost a great deal of support from the neutral families in Slytherin, and a good portion of support from the rest of the houses. The fact he had only given lines to the Marauders involved in outright bullying would not sit well with the parents of their usual victims.
"So what's really going on Gabriel?" asked Severus once he had cast the charms to prevent eavesdropping.
"Sixth year, Sirius tricked you into the Whomping Willow during a full moon and you came face to muzzle with Moony. James barely saved your life," said Gabriel bluntly.
"Why the hell would I listen to Black?!"
"You wanted to know where Remus disappeared to. Needless to say you hated werewolves after that, and held a barely restrained resentment towards Remus."
"You plan to recreate the event."
"More like something close to it. You won't be near Remus, but we need to insure that word of a rogue werewolf is heard nearby. Remember my plan to be a double animagus?"
Severus nodded...then his jaw dropped when he came face to muzzle with a massive wolf.
"What the hell is that?"
"A dire wolf, an extinct magical wolf. They became the smaller breeds we know due to lack of available foods. Anyway here's the real plan."
Severus was impressed with the cunning of Gabriel's devious mind.
He planned to let Severus pretend he wanted to know more about Remus, since Gabriel had never once spoken a word of his condition out of respect for his privacy. Sirius would likely use that to tell Severus about the willow and try to get Severus bit.
What Gabriel planned was for a copy-Severus to do the investigating and then make it look like another werewolf spotted him first and tried to bite him. His dire wolf form was big enough to be mistaken for one.
Then, once the year ended James would receive word of the Aurors looking for a young werewolf and were investigating Remus. They would fake his death, giving him all the excuse he would need to avoid the Marauders and make them face cold hard reality that their actions had serious consequences.
Once seventh year began, Remus would reappear and tell them what had really happened to a point and insure that the message stuck.
An entire summer of believing they had caused a close friend's death should be enough of a wake-up call that the Marauder's needed to get them to stop. If not, then they were going straight to St. Mungo's to check for any spells altering their personality.
It was devious, cruel, and most importantly one lesson that should stick firmly in their minds about what they were doing was wrong.
And, as Gabriel had noted the escalation of their bad habits, it would also start to shift the attention from Gryffindor onto Slytherin.
After hearing what punishment they got from the Headmaster, Gryffindor was slowly becoming the least liked house instead of Slytherin.
Such outright favoritism from someone like Dumbledore was not a good thing, and Slytherin had been gaining popularity for months now since Gabriel became prefect.
The other houses were starting to follow his lead, not Dumbledore.
The fact he was acting like a much more pleasant and friendly Tom Riddle was not lost on him either.
Gabriel groaned as he finished the last exam. He hated end of term tests, and OWLs were infinitely worse.
However he took great pleasure in the fact that he hadn't had to suffer Hermione's inevitable study sessions from hell for it.
Severus once asked why he had never tried to get back to his own time, and had been surprised by Gabriel's answer.
"I like being in the past more than the present. Here no one stares at me like the next coming of bloody Merlin, or talks about me behind my back outside of wondering why I'm such a nice person and still in Slytherin. Plus there's the fact that I don't have to deal with Ron's jealous tendencies, Hermione's hellish study guides, or Draco's damn taunts all bloody year. I can actually have a normal school year without some grand adventure. Why would I want to go back when I like being a snake more than a damn lion?"