A/N: Hello! This chapter is a bit shorter than usual. It was actually longer, but I decided to split it in two because about half of the chapter explored one subject, while the other half changed to something else. I hope it's okay!

Slugs

On the next few days, Lily spent a lot of time practicing for Quidditch Team tryouts along with Cedric. They woke up before the crack of dawn every morning so they could get to the field before anyone else did. Although Cedric had already granted his place in the team, Lily would have to overcome Wheeler if she wanted her position. Of course she was the favourite for the next beater, but she wanted to make sure she would be chosen.

The tryouts were set to happen on Saturday morning, just before Gryffindor's first practice. They were supposed to take only half an hour. Megan had charmed Lily's pillow to ring at five o'clock, so the girl was violently woken up. She changed into comfortable clothing, took her broom and went outside, where the birds were starting to wake up. Her stomach was twisted, so she didn't risk eating before the trials and went straight to the field. In the middle of the way, she met Snape and Draco Malfoy discussing something she didn't arrive in time to listen to, and the potions master dismissed the boy to talk to Lily.

"I hear your tryout for beater will be today," he said.

"Yes, I am heading to the pitch right now," she answered.

"Well, good luck with that. Hufflepuff will need the best beater they can get, especially against Slytherin."

Lily nodded and thanked him.

When she arrived at the pitch, however, the team was leaving already.

"What happened? Did I miss it? It can't be, it barely took me fifteen minutes to get here! Where are you going?"

"Relax, Lily, you didn't miss the tryout," said Heidi, "Wheeler came earlier and took his name out, he said he saw you flying yesterday and decided you were our best option, and that he'll try again next year for another position."

"What?" said Lily, still not quite getting the meaning of her words.

"Congratulations, Lily, you are in the Hufflepuff Quidditch Team!" said Cedric, as he lifted her into the air.

"No way!" she yelled.

"Lets go to the common room and celebrate!"

She went along with them, and passed by a very sleepy Gryffindor Quidditch Team on their way to the field. She only had time to shout "I'm in!" to the Weasley twins, and hear them cheering, and jokingly saying that they would still smash Hufflepuff when they played, before she was pulled onto Anthony's shoulder and to the Hufflepuff common room.

The Hufflepuffs were having their breakfast in the common room to celebrate the new team, with a special permission Malcolm Preece - the new captain - had managed to get from Professor Sprout. Megan and Hannah came to congratulate Lily, and Elliot Wheeler shook her hand. Susan, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Lily had a half eaten sandwich in her hand when Susan crawled through the tunnel into the common room, her long auburn plait looking unusually untidy, and ran towards her to warn about something that had happened at the quidditch pitch.

"Lily! It 's Ron Weasley. He tried to curse Malfoy, and the wand backfired."

"Where is Ron now?" Lily asked.

"They went to Hagrid for help," said Susan.

Lily ran out of the common room and through the corridors through which most of the students were still walking towards the Great Hall, including Hector.

"Hey, Lils! Did you get in the team?"

"Yes! But something bad happened, I have to go find Ron!" She said.

"Do you want me to go with you?"

"No, it 's okay. Go eat your breakfast, I will tell you all about it later," she said, and rushed up a staircase and through corridors across the castle to go outside to the quidditch pitch.

Ginny was sitting by herself writing in her diary, sitting on the steps outside, and for a second Lily considered warning her about the situation, but the girl seemed a bit melancholic already and she decided not to bother her any further. So she crossed the pitch and ran down the stairs that led to Hagrid's cabin.

She ran as fast as she could down the stairs towards Hagrid's hut. She rolled her eyes when Lockhart, who was heading up the hill, winked at her and wished her a good morning. In fact, Lily went straight past him and ignored his compliments regarding the Quidditch Team.

Hagrid's hut had a light white smoke coming out of the chimney, and a strong scent of tea made its way into Lily's nose. Maybe, after all, whatever had happened to Ron wasn't so bad. In fact, Hagrid seemed rather calm when he answered the door - quite the opposite of Lily, who was sweaty, panting and had her hair all over her face.

"Hi, Hagrid… uhm… Susan told me Ron was here."

"Hello, Lily! Come inside, come inside!" Said Hagrid, with his strong accent.

"Oh, yeh, yeh, he is. Come in, have a cup o' tea."

Tears rose to Lily's eyes when she held the large mug which burned the tip of her fingers. She tried to take a sip, but merely placing her lips close to the scalding tea made her flinch away with her lips slightly burned.

Ron was sitting on a chair but Lily could only recognize him because of his hair, because most of his body was hiding under the table as he bent over a bucket. She couldn't quite tell why until he vomited a huge slug. There were no words to describe her disgust at the sight, in fact she felt like she was going to be sick too, but managed to hold back and looked away from the slimy mollusc.

"What the - Ron, what happened?!"

"He tried to curse Malfoy and his wand backfired"

"I mean… any reason is a good reason to curse Malfoy, but why did he try to curse Malfoy?"

"Malfoy called Hermione something - it must've been something really bad, because everyone went wild," Harry explained. Lily had a pretty good idea of what Malfoy must have called Hermione.

"It was bad," said Ron, emerging over the tabletop looking pale and sweaty. "Malfoy called her 'Mudblood' Hagrid-" but he didn't have time to finnish because he had to dive under the table again as a fresh wave of slugs made their appearance.

"He didn't!" Hagrid growled and looked at Hermione.

"He did," she said. "But I don't know what this means. I could tell it was really rude, of course-"

"It's about the most insulting thing he could think of," said Ron, but he was again interrupted by slugs, so Lily had to explain.

"Mudblood is a bad name for someone who is a muggle-born. As if your blood was dirty or diseased because you have non-magical parents. Some pure blood families - like Malfoy's - think they are better or more powerful because they have no muggle blood in them."

"The rest of us know it doesn't make any difference at all. Look at Neville Longbottom - he's pure blood and he can hardly stand a cauldron the right way up," said Ron.

"An' they haven't invented a spell our Hermione can't do," said Hagrid proudly, making Hermione go a brilliant shade of magenta.

"Anyway, it's a disgusting thing to call someone. Most wizards these days are half-blood anyway. If we hadn't married muggles we would have died out."

"Yeah, even the ones who consider themselves pure blood must have had some muggle ancestor at some point," said Lily.

He retched and ducked out of sight again.

"Well, I don't' blame you for trying' to curse him, Ron," said Hagrid loudly over the thuds of more slugs hitting the basin. "Bu' maybe it was a good thing yer wand backfired. 'Spect Lucius Malfoy would've come marching' up ter school if yeh'd cursed his son. Least you're not in trouble."

Lily wondered whether Molly Weasley would have sent Ron another howler or a congratulating card if the spell had worked. Harry looked like he was trying to open his mouth to say something.

"Harry," said Hagrid abruptly as though struck by a sudden thought. "Gotta bone to pick with yeh. I've heard you've been given' out signed photos. How come I haven't got one?"

Harry furiously opened his mouth to say "I have not been giving out signed photos," he said hotly. "If Lockhart's still spreading that around -"

But obviously Hagrid was only joking, as he laughed and patted Harry on the back - which caused the boy to be launched face first on the table.

"I knew you hadn't really. I told Lockhart you didn' need to. You're more famous than him without trying."

"Bet he didn't like that," said Harry, sitting up and rubbing his chin.

"Don't think he did," said Hagrid, his eyes twinkling. "And then I told him I'd never read one of his books and he decided to go."

Then Hagrid invited them all to go see the huge pumpkins he had been growing behind his house. There were a dozen of them, each the size of a large boulder.

"Getting on well, aren't they?" said Hagrid happily. "For the Halloween feast ... should be big enough by then."

"What've you been feeding them?" said Harry.

Hagrid looked over his shoulder to check that they were alone. "Well, I've been giving them - you know - a bit of help -"

"An Engorgement Charm, I suppose?" said Hermione, halfway between disapproval and amusement. "Well, you've done a good job on them."

"That's what your little sister said," said Hagrid, nodding at Ron. "Met her just yesterday." Hagrid looked sideways at Harry, his beard twitching. "Said she was just looking around the grounds, but I reckon she was hoping she might run into someone else at my house." He winked at Harry. "If you ask me, she wouldn' say no to a signed -"

"Oh, shut up," said Harry. Ron snorted with laughter and the ground was sprayed with slugs.

"Watch it!" Hagrid roared, pulling Ron away from his precious pumpkins.

"Is that why Ginny was looking so gloomy when I saw her on my way here?"

"I think so. I bet her diary is all about Harry!" said Ron.

At last they decided to head back to the castle for lunch. Lily was eager to update Hector on what had happened, especially because he would be able to help Hermione in a way none of them had helped. However, the first person they ran into when they walked into the school was professor McGonagall, who announced Ron and Harry would be doing their detentions for arriving on a flying car that very night, at eight o'clock. Ron would be polishing trophies all night under Filch's supervision, while Harry would be helping Lockhart with fan mail.

"Filch will have me there all night," said Ron heavily. "No magic! There must be about a hundred cups in that room. I'm no good at Muggle cleaning."

"I'd swap anytime," said Harry hollowly. "I've had loads of practice with the Dursleys. Answering Lockhart's fan mail ... he'll be a nightmare."

Lily gave Ron a couple tips about how to polish metals and went to have lunch with Hector, who was already sitting with Padma Patil at the Ravenclaw table.

"Hey, Lils!" said Hector cheerfully. "What happened earlier?"

"Ron and Harry got in trouble. Ron tried to curse Malfoy and ended up vomiting slugs all over because his wand backfired."

"Oh. I wish he had done it right, Malfoy would have a hard time complaining to his father if he was vomiting slugs. But why was Ron trying to curse Malfoy?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Malfoy called Hermione a mudblood. I don't think anything has been done about it. I think talking to her about your muggleborn club would help. Have you talked to Dumbledore?"

"Not yet, but I did some research on the library. Did you know a muggleborn was actually killed inside Hogwarts about fifty years ago? Her name was Warren, but I couldn't find her first name. She was found dead in a girls bathroom. No one ever found out what happened to her."

"That 's awful! How did you learn that?"

"I spent three afternoons in the library reading lists of names of students to figure how many muggleborns enter Hogwarts every year on average, and one of the names was Warren's, but there was no record of her final year. So I got curious and went after her name, and I found a newspaper from June 1943 with the news about her death."

"That is awful. You should definitely create the club."

"I will, I've talked to a few more people in Ravenclaw, they all thought it was a great idea. I will talk to Hermione after lunch and then I will see if I can find Dumbledore before the weekend. Are there Hufflepuff muggleborns in our year?"

"I think Justin Finch-Fletcher."

"Nice. I'll talk to him."

They changed subjects and kept eating their delicious meal, which was composed of spaghetti with tomato sauce. When Lily finished eating her she excused herself to go talk to Snape. It was weird, at the least, that nothing had been done about Malfoy.

The potions master, of course, was in his office, which was located at the dungeons. The girl knocked on the door, which was answered soon.

"Hello, Lily. I was wondering how long it would take you to come to annoy me," greeted Snape in a bored voice. Lily rolled her eyes.

"Why hasn't Malfoy been punished for calling Hermione a muggleborn?"

"Because I hadn't heard about it yet," said Snape, changing his tone to a more surprised one.

"Oh."

Snape turned to sit at his desk and took his quill from the inkwell, and started scribbling something on a piece of parchment.

"How is your mother doing? Is her pet wolf still living at her home?"

"Don't call my godfather a pet wolf, please."

"He is a wolf, however."

"He is a human being."

"He could have killed me once, haven't I told you?"

"He can't help when he turns, you are perfectly aware of that!"

"That is precisely what I am talking about. He can snap and kill your mother anytime, or you."

"She is brewing Wolfsbane potion for him. It is perfectly safe when he takes it."

"We still don't know if something can cut the effect of the potion. If he misses a single dose...''

"We are all aware of that."

"It doesn't seem so," said Snape as he finished writing his note for Malfoy and folded it in the shape of a bird, which took off in a second and left the room, probably toward the Slytherin boy. "A few hours cleaning the owlery should teach him, but you are not allowed to say it was me who gave him detention."

"Why is that?"

"Lucius Malfoy knows I was a Death Eater. I must remain on his good side, if something happens in the future, so I can remain a spy."

"You mean he could still return?"

"We must be prepared for that, yes."

Lily suddenly felt cold, and the room seemed to become darker even though it was the middle of a summer day. She had encountered Lord Voldemort once in the previous year, and even though he had been in a very weak shape, it had been the scariest moment of her entire life. In fact, she hated remembering that moment, so she changed subjects.

"Who are you going to say gave him detention?"

"Dumbledore."

It made sense. Malfoy already hated Dumbledore - and the same could be said about his father. It would only make both of them hate Dumbledore a little further, instead of exposing Snape.

When Lily left, there were only a few hours left of daytime, which she spent near the lake with Susan and Megan until curfew, and then they all went to the common room to watch a new hair spell Emily Brown had created, which allowed her to braid her own hair as she pleased within less than a minute. Lily tried to perform the spell several times to tie her hair on a ponytail, but all she could do was what looked very much like a mouse nest on her head, which forced her to take a bath to try and untangle her locks with the aid of warm water and hair conditioning potion.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed it, even though it was shorter than usual. Please, let me know what you think!