November 4th, 1975
"Five of Kneazles," Warren Avery said, flipping his card over.
"Eight of Dragons," said Perseus Padgett, flipping his over. The boys had situated themselves at a makeshift cards table, which was in truth just an average wooden table cursed with the oddity of being pentagonal. Water rushed through the hidden pipes overhead. Outside the windows, the lake was a rare, electrifying green, unlike anything found in nature. You became familiar with the changes of the lake after enough time spent as a Slytherin, but in all five years, Severus had never seen the water so strange a colour nor so stirred up. Strange whirlpools stormed past the tall windows, flinging seaweed and small fish against the glass. Even Professor Slughorn had been perplexed when he'd come to take the roll; he had paused for a moment, staring at the absurdity of the transformed marine world. Once or twice, younger students had risen the cry of mermaids, and a flurry of students had pressed their noses to the glass. Nobody saw anything definite, but there was definitely something lurking just out of sight, and Severus couldn't be sure that he didn't see a distance flash of scales.
"Two of Kneazles," Raimund Rosier frowned. Avery grinned and took his card, adding it to his hand.
"Six of Owls," Augusta Gamp said, the only girl playing. All eyes turned to Severus.
"Ace of Dragons," he said quietly, flipping his card. Padgett's face darkened. Severus plucked the card up. He didn't smile, but it was a near thing. Gamp put her Six of Owls to the end of her hand. Severus slid his Ace and new Queen behind his other cards.
"I'm hungry," Avery grumbled, revealing his new card. "Ten of Hippogriffs." None of them had eaten since lunch; and dinner had gone by the wayside when they were confined to their common room. The house-elves weren't responding when they were called, which stirred Mulciber into a temper.
"Eight of Hippogriffs," Padgett grumbled, relinquishing the card.
"Four of Kneazles."
"Jack of Dragons."
"Seven of Kneazles," Severus said, taking Rosier's card and earning himself a glare.
"I haven't won a single card yet," Rosier complained.
"Bad luck," Gamp grinned, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
Three more rounds passed with little conversation, until Jugson interrupted Avery's next reveal.
"Padgett," he said gruffly. "Gamp. Prefect meeting."
"With all the houses?" Gamp asked, setting down her cards. Jugson jerked his head sidewards.
"Just Slytherin. Your sister and I called it." Gamp inclined her head. Both she and Padgett stood and followed Jugson up the stairs to the boys' dormitory. Severus supposed that they didn't exactly have the usual meeting rooms available, but a frown still crossed his face. He wondered if Lily ever went up to Lupin's - and by extension, Potter's - dormitory. Was she up there right now, doing as the Slytherins were?
He tossed his cards into the pile Gamp and Padgett left behind. By Sunday morning, rumours had been flying around the common room - under heavy questioning, Lauren Clarke had admitted she'd seen Potter snogging someone, but she couldn't identify the girl in question. Of all the Slytherins, Chloe Dennings had been the only other one at the party, and she hid from everyone's interrogations. Severus had dismissed it at first as likely being some idiot girl like Macdonald - it hadn't been until Rosier smirked at him that the thought had even crossed his mind.
It was no secret that Potter stalked Lily, and believed her to be his future wife or some other such bullshit. Rosier had innocently posed the question of why Potter would kiss another girl if he liked Lily so much, and while Severus had sputtered out some excuse, some reason it couldn't be her, could never be her, he hadn't entirely believed himself when he tried to go to sleep that night.
But he'd been right. It hadn't been her. With any luck, Potter was completely over her, and this new girl would take all his attention and Severus would never have to make eye contact with him again. There'd be a couple of slipped trip jinxes, of course, but only to make sure Potter knew where they stood. If luck was on his side, he'd never hear Potter's voice again, unless it was cursing as he slammed into the ground and his friends split their sides open laughing at him.
Luck was never on Severus' side, however. He knew this well.
"Well, there's no point in playing with just us," Rosier said, and discarded his hand. Avery copied him. A long stretch of silence passed between them.
"Perhaps we should do our homework," Severus said. Rosier shrugged.
"Can one of you help me with Transfiguration?" Avery asked. "Father will kill me if I don't get an 'EE', and at the minute it all sounds like Mermish."
"Your father should kill you anyway, your brother would be a much better heir," Rosier said. Avery gaped and put a hand over his heart, as if mortally wounded.
"Silas is a Hufflepuff!"
"Hufflepuff or not, he'd still do better."
"Shut up."
"Maybe you should've been the Hufflepuff."
Severus stood and went to the boys' stairs, leaving them to debate the merits of Hufflepuffs. The staircase wound deeper into the lake, but as he descended, it grew unnaturally warmer. Torches burned with bright blue flame, and the stone walls glowed in the light. He arrived at the door of his dormitory, marked with a golden number '5' in the same way the houses in Cokeworth were denoted. He didn't enter to retrieve his schoolbooks, however. Instead, he continued down the stairs, passing by another door, and only stopping when he came to the very end of the stairwell. To his right, the largest of all the doors awaited. Runes scratched the walls, spiky and spidery - they were entirely unfamiliar, and he occasionally topped the class in Ancient Runes.
He crept to the door, and pressed one ear against the heavy wood. His ears rung, filling with a low buzzing sound. Of course. It had been the enchantments of the dormitories that had given him the idea of the Muffliato charm in the first place. Very well. He instead took to the silver handle, and twisted it very, very slowly. The tiniest click sounded as it opened. Severus applied a miniscule amount of pressure, and the tiniest sliver of light trickled through the gap between the door and its stone frame. He held his breath. Nobody shouted, or stormed towards the door. A few agonisingly slow, anxiety-ridden moments passed. His heart beat, beat, beat against his chest. And then he allowed himself to relax, and focused on the prefects' words.
"We could send an owl," Wilkes said. "It could leave through the Entrance Hall and fly up to Ravenclaw Tower. They might have a better idea of what's going on. Even if they don't, we can narrow it down to something that's happened in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff."
"Yes, but that would be assuming they haven't shut all the doors and windows," Lysandra Gamp said. "And at present, we can't even get into the dungeons."
"It's so strange," Augusta Gamp said, her voice high-pitched. "I've never felt like that before."
"We don't know, for sure, that something bad has happened," Jugson said. "The castle might just be…"
"The castle has stood for nearly ten centuries," Wilkes cut in. "It wouldn't just do this."
"Maybe it's been too long," Jugson said, and Severus could nearly hear his shrug.
Frowning, Severus shut the door. How did none of them have any clue what was going on? He was just as knowledgeable as they were, it seemed, and there were six of them, four of whom were older than he was. The prefect badge was as useless as his father. He finally went to his room and grabbed out his books and supplies in order to do his homework. Rosier and Avery went on about something else, now, and Severus kept his head down, making a start on his Defence essay.
He was halfway through when the prefects emerged from the staircase. He crossed the last 't' of his sentence and looked up. Jugson set his jaw firmly. Lysandra frowned. Wilkes folded his arms across his chest, staring at the bright water sizzling beyond the windows.
"D'you think they've figured out dinner yet?" Avery asked. Severus shrugged. Rosier drummed his fingers on the table.
"We won't know until dinner's in front of us," he said finally. Severus resisted the urge to roll his eyes. How insightful. He thought that what the pure-bloods had in lineage, they lacked in any type of common sense. Augusta Gamp headed over to some of the other girls in their year, and Padgett returned to their card table, sliding into the seat by Rosier. He fiddled with his badge for an awfully long time. Severus longed to slap his hands away and confiscate the thing. If he spent more time thinking and less time playing with himself, maybe Severus wouldn't be confined to the common room with dozens of other students.
"Well?" Rosier asked, after a long stretch of a silent few minutes. Severus had added four more lines to his paragraph. Padgett thumbed his badge – his face grew more smackable – and then cleared his throat.
"There aren't any spells we can think of to use to contact the other houses. We can't open our windows to let an owl out, and the door out has sealed itself."
"What?" Severus interrupted. "I thought Professor Slughorn locked it, not the castle." Two very different things. Slughorn locking it meant that the teachers were concerned, and that the incident was more to do with rules and convenience and what-have-you. The castle sealing itself was considerably less common, according to 'Hogwarts: A History', and meant that whatever was out there wasn't just Peeves or an escaped creature from the Forbidden Forest. Padgett winced.
"Er – Lysandra Gamp didn't want to scare the younger kids," he said, fingers going to his badge once more. Severus gritted his teeth. One day he was going to smash that thing into a million tiny little pieces.
"The castle wouldn't do that unless it was something really bad though, right?" Avery asked. "Something completely fucked?"
"I wonder if it did it when that mudblood died," Rosier said.
"What?" Severus frowned. A muggle-born had died? At Hogwarts? Come to think of it, it sounded vaguely familiar, but he thought there would've been a lot more gloating if someone had managed to off one of them in the last few years.
"You know, the one in the girls' bathroom? Always floods it? My Aunt Olive told me this whole story about her," Rosier said offhandedly. "Aunt Olive saw her the night she died – she got killed in the bathroom, Aunt Olive said it was some sort of creature that did it, not a person, but she wasn't there. Obviously. Anyways, Moaning Mudblood or whatever they call her, haunted her for ages, until her brother's wedding, when it got too much and Uncle Isidor called in a few of his co-workers and they ended up banishing her to that bathroom."
"Bullshit," Padgett said.
"What? I swear, it's true."
"Don't you think we'd hear about it more?"
"What, do you go around having heart-to-hearts with your mummy all the time?"
"Do you go having heart-to-hearts with your auntie all the time?"
"Fuck off, Padgett. Go ask Evan, he'll tell you."
"Do you want me to tell you about the rest of the meeting or not?"
"What else did they say?" Severus urged. His mind whirled, trying to process the idea. A creature in Hogwarts? Killing a student? Had the castle sealed itself then? If it had, maybe it was a creature roaming through the corridors.
Did that mean somebody had died?
Lily?
Lily wouldn't be stupid enough to get herself killed by an animal, Severus reasoned. But what if it had a taste for muggle-borns? What if that was why it went after that ghost in the first place?
"What else?" he demanded.
"Er, as I said, there's no spells we can use to contact the other houses. The house-elves aren't responding. We're stuck," he said. Severus stared at him. Another swarm of fish swam right past the window, nearly touching the glass, all of them with bulging eyes, a black trail of ink following them. The fire crackled low; students spoke in whispers; pipes rushed through the stone walls. Somewhere he couldn't reach was Lily. The girl who made flowers grow in the palm of her hand. Maybe she was safe in Gryffindor Tower – safe, relatively speaking, hemmed in by James Potter and the laze-about louts of Gryffindor house.
Maybe she wasn't. Maybe she hadn't made it back in time. She could've been in the library, studying, or down by the lake, laughing with her friends, or chatting away to that oafish gamekeeper as she did every so often, telling him about her mother's garden. One glass window was entirely obscured by the strange inky darkness. A first year burst into tears. The pipes grew louder.
"You're fools," Severus snarled. "All of you prefects are complete idiots."
"What?" Padgett blinked, adjusting his badge. His stupid, stupid badge that he hadn't once earned, that he'd gotten solely on the merit of his blood and the fact that he didn't openly curse people in the halls.
"Get Jugson and Wilkes, now, and come to our dormitory," Severus ordered. How had they not thought of it? Why were they so useless? He tore off a scrap of parchment and dipped his quill in his inkwell, before speeding down the staircase. As he reached his dormitory door, he could hear steps echoing above in the stairwell. He burst into his room, eyes flicking from dresser to dresser. Padgett's owl, Castor, preened himself in his cage. Severus crossed the room and tore the door open. Castor blinked his big, round eyes. Severus grabbed the bird's body with his free hand and ripped it from the cage, ignoring the squawks of protest and the frenzied flap of wings.
"What are you doing with my owl?" Padgett demanded, Jugson and Wilkes hot on his heels. Finally, Severus thought. He thrust the owl out towards him.
"Take it," he said. Padgett put his arm out, and Castor landed gracefully, ruffling his feathers and glaring at Severus. "Is it well-trained?"
"Of course," Padgett sniffed. Severus nodded, and handed his quill and parchment over to Jugson.
"Write a letter to one of the other houses' prefects," Severus instructed.
"Don't tell me what to do," Jugson snapped. Nevertheless, he snatched the parchment up and took to the tiny desk in the corner, scratching away. Wilkes narrowed his eyes.
"What of me?" he asked. Severus adjusted his robes.
"How good is your Bubble-Head Charm?" he asked.
"Excellent," Wilkes replied, without hesitation. Severus waited. Wilkes raised his eyebrows. "You thought of this on your own?"
"Yes," Severus said impatiently. Wilkes' eyebrows raised further. I'm not an idiot, he thought. I'm not Avery, for God's sake. Wilkes turned to Jugson.
"Don't address it to the Hufflepuffs," he advised, and then looked back at Severus. "They won't hold with it. Half of them cry over killing a spider."
"What?" Padgett demanded, putting a hand on his owl's head. His eyes were wide, though his furrowed brow half-hid them. His hand shaded the bird's eyes. "You're not killing Castor. He was a present for my eleventh birthday. Get your own owl, Snape." He practically spat out the last word. Severus glared.
"If the owl dies, it's Wilkes' fault, not mine. I'm not casting the charm," Severus said. Wilkes shook his head.
"Castor won't die," he said. "My Bubble-Head Charm is great. I achieved full marks for it in my O. ."
Jugson finished the letter, and Padgett attached it carefully to the owl's leg. Severus explained his idea, and Wilkes withdrew his wand from the pocket of his robes, and carefully cast the Bubble-Head Charm on Castor. Severus opened the door to the adjacent bathroom, and let the three prefects enter before him. Jugson flipped up the toilet lid. Wilkes cast another charm on the letter, making it waterproof for the time being.
"Owls can't swim," Padgett said. "He's going to panic. He's much too big, besides."
"Isn't he well-trained?" Severus asked. Padgett scowled.
"The Hogwarts pipes widen to accommodate anything travelling through them," Wilkes said. "And your owl will do what it's told. Doesn't your father train post owls?"
"He does," Padgett said.
"Go on, then," Jugson said gruffly. Padgett nodded stiffly. Severus took a step back.
"Deliver this to the Ravenclaws. Go through the pipes, don't try to get out early, you'll be stuck," Padgett told his owl. He then grabbed it firmly and flipped it upside down. The bird hooted in alarm, and Padgett thrust it bubble-head first into the toilet. The bird wriggled, and Jugson slammed his hand on the flush. The bowl filled and the bird squirmed in Padgett's hands, who looked up at the roof and pushed it deeper. The bottom of the toilet widened just enough to fit the owl, and all at once, the water and Castor tumbled down into the pipes. Padgett wrenched his hands away, and beelined for the sink. He vigorously rubbed the soap against his skin.
"And what if there's nobody in the dormitories?" Padgett demanded, fingers covered in bubbles.
"I would be very surprised," Wilkes said. "There's bound to be a Ravenclaw reading a good book in bed at any given moment of the day."
November 4th, 1975
"Thirty-two firewhisky bottles on the wall, thirty-two firewhisky bottles! Take one down, pass it around, thirty-one firewhisky bottles on the wall!" The line finished on Peter Pettigrew, who took a gulp and gagged furiously. The rest of the circle roared with laughter. Lily massaged her temples.
"Can you believe this?" she asked Remus. He grimaced, and gave an awkward little shrug.
"I guess they're trying to keep spirits up," he said.
"Spirits indeed," Lily replied coolly. "They nearly let a second year in the circle."
"He did have an awful lot of facial hair for a twelve-year-old," Remus said, smiling. Lily snorted. While true - the kid seemed to be taking inspiration from Hagrid - it was still a bit disconcerting. A group of those deemed too young for the actual firewhisky circle sat pouting on the floor in the corridor by the portrait hole, slapping down Exploding Snap cards with little care for the game and much more care for sending the older students the dirtiest looks possible.
Lily folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against the wall. For whatever reason, they'd all been ushered into the Gryffindor Common Room and sealed off from the rest of the castle. In the first couple of hours, there had been several ill-advised attempts to knock down the door, break the windows (which had shut themselves) and fly out, and tunnel through the floor. Laura Vickers had tried her hardest to convince the prefects that the common room ought to be vacated so the Quidditch team could still hold their practice, especially in light of their loss last week, but before Lily could get a word in edgewise, Marcus McLaggen and Alice Rhysfield had shouted that idea down to kingdom come.
Laura seemed to have found a coping mechanism, though. The bottle stopped at her, and she gulped down two mouthfuls of burning whisky. Lily winced. The singing resumed.
"This is the worst game of pass-the-parcel I've ever seen," she said dryly. Remus tilted his head to one side. Lily smiled bemusedly. "Didn't you ever play?"
"We lived quite isolated," he said. "And I believe Hogwarts parties are typically quite different to those before school." Lily frowned. In between long weeks filled with tight ponytails and long grey pinafores and jump-rope and maths lessons, birthday parties had sprung up like the first flower of spring and every child in the class had stampeded to squish in someone's cramped backyard to scrabble over the cheapest sweets and maybe a tiny toy for the lucky child who got the parcel in the very middle. It punctuated her childhood and marked dates - for instance, she had fallen from her bike and scraped her whole left shin three days before Jean Parker's eighth birthday, and her mother had made her wear stockings because Mr. Parker worked for the government and so it wouldn't do to look a dag in front of him and show off how silly she'd been.
"We can play pass-the-parcel at my birthday," she told him. "Mary loves it."
He inclined his head. "Alright." She pressed her lips together, raking her eyes over the crowded common room. Marlene, Alisha, and Amy had joined the circle of firewhisky-passers, but Mary had retreated to the dormitory an hour ago and hadn't returned. Laura Vickers sat next to John Brown, the Quidditch captain, and Dale Roshfinger's older sister Betty, and Alice Rhysfield and Frank Longbottom compared notes with Marcus McLaggen. Nobody seemed especially distressed. She pushed herself off the wall.
"Would it be alright if I nip upstairs and check on Mary?" Lily asked. Remus blinked a few times.
"You don't have to ask me," he said.
"Just - cover me in the prefect stuff, alright?" she asked. "I'll try not to be too long." He nodded.
"Yeah, I will."
She dodged a fleet of flying cushions controlled by gleeful first years and headed up the girls' staircase. At the fifth landing came the door to her dormitory, and she entered her room. Mary was on her knees by her bedside, hands clasped together, head bent over.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen," Mary muttered. Lily gently shut the door. Mary's head snapped up.
"It's me," Lily said softly. Mary stood up, brushing off her knees, and then sat down on her bed. Her eyes were wide, and her tight blonde curls dangled loosely around her face.
"Is there any news?" Mary asked, face drawn. Lily twisted her lips, and sat down next to her friend.
"Not yet," she said. Mary nodded. Lily laced her fingers together. "You've missed some lovely singing, though."
"Mm," Mary said, frowning. Lily clicked her feet together. They hadn't even heard from Professor McGonagall yet – as Deputy Headmistress, Lily supposed she was rather busy with whatever was going on, but…still. It was hard to make a plan of what to do when they had no idea of how long it needed to be for, or even what they'd have access to. Was it worth advising kids to do their homework if there was no class the next day? What kind of scale were they looking at for things – was it just the castle throwing a tantrum, or was it something…newspaper-level? She squeezed her fingers tighter. She didn't see how it could possibly be something that bad, given all the castle's wards and protections, but at the same time…there was probably no greater concentration of muggle-borns anywhere in Britain than at Hogwarts.
And lots of people weren't fans of that nowadays.
"Are you alright up here?" Lily asked. "On your own? I can stay, if you'd like. Or get some of the others to come up. Or I can see if we can clear out the common room, maybe we can banish them all to Potter's dormitory…" Mary said nothing. Lily thought better of her idea. Cramming all the runamucks into one dormitory was a recipe for disaster. The castle was bound to end up in ruins, if whatever was going on outside wasn't already heading it in that direction.
"I just don't like it," Mary said finally. "Something feels wrong." I know, Lily thought instantly, the words unbidden on her tongue. Aside from the chatter of people, the castle was oddly silent – noises she'd never before noticed were now sorely missed in their absence. The last time she'd felt like this, she'd been about eight or so. The last time she'd felt like this, the day had ended with her grandfather's death.
Lily hugged herself. Logically, she knew that sort of thing was born from superstition, and that it only really came true if you bought into it. But it was hard to dismiss things like that when she'd been a little girl who could make flowers bloom in the palm of her hand and leap from branches twelve foot high and never get so much as a bruise.
"If anything was really wrong, Mary, they'd evacuate us," she said. "They wouldn't leave us in a dangerous place." It wasn't as if they weren't capable of a mass-scale evacuation – there was at least one fireplace in each common room, and half a dozen in the Great Hall, as well as brooms, carriages, boats, and she supposed most, if not all of the staff, would be talented enough at apparition to take a few students alongside.
"But what if the rest of the world is more dangerous?" Mary asked softly. "Where's safer than Hogwarts?"
Lily couldn't answer that.
November 4th, 1975
The bottle passed from his hands into Sirius', into Peter's, and so forth. James sung, spurred on by the growing alcohol content of his blood, and watched the firewhisky make its way around the circle. He knew the game well; not as well as he knew Quidditch, but near enough. Unfortunately, unlike Quidditch, this didn't take half so much concentration, and without the struggle of remembering the words, his mind was free to roam. And roam it did: right out of the room, through the castle, sniffing for hints like a niffler after gold.
What had been different today? What had been strange? His classes had seemed duller than usual, the food bland, the conversations stale. November 4th had been one of those days that dragged on forever, like the day before your birthday or the hours leading up to a meeting with a teacher where the agenda was a surprise. He'd ducked out for a smoke and had a heart attack when he heard heavy footsteps coming by, but it had only been Hagrid, who had asked if he'd seen a flying chicken anywhere and then hurried off. Until students had come running through the corridors, urging everyone to get to the common rooms as soon as possible, it had been a complete waste of time. A write-off.
The bottle came back around, and he jerked it at the last second over to Sirius, just as the song died. Sirius grinned and gobbled it down. Smoke streamed out his ears. The song started again.
Why had the exits sealed themselves? Why were they stuck in here? Where was McGonagall? From what Remus had said, even the prefects didn't have a good grasp of it all. No briefings from professors or anything, not even from Nearly-Headless Nick. Where had they all gone? He drummed his fingers on his knee. What he would've given to see beyond the walls of Gryffindor Tower. Hell, even just to get to the top of Gryffindor Tower, to see if there was an army of giants or something storming towards the castle. Maybe that's why Hagrid had wanted a flying chicken – to feed his giant army or whatever. There was no way anyone that height was human.
He passed the bottle on. Where were the teachers? His dad reckoned there were all sorts of things down below the school, deep in the dungeons, and he could believe that. At least it'd get the Slytherins first. They wouldn't be missed. Well, maybe Lily'd miss Sev a bit, but she'd get over it. What sort of thing could be down there? A dragon? But why would they keep a dragon in the school? Didn't they need to fly and shit? There wouldn't be enough room, unless there was some really, really tall massive chamber underneath Hogwarts, but that seemed ridiculous.
"Moony," he said, breaking his rendition of the song. Remus leaned against the wall, arms crossed tightly, eyes drooping. "Moony!"
"Mmmmm?" James climbed to his feet, and shrugged off Sirius' quizzical look. Sirius scooted towards Alisha and closed the gap. Remus rubbed his eyes. James pushed a pile of books off a small wooden end table and perched himself on it. Remus frowned. James frowned too; it wasn't nearly as comfortable as he'd hoped – the edges were rather sharp, see, and dug into the back of his legs.
"You're sure you haven't heard anything?" James asked, tapping his toes against the floor. "Not even anything that could be a message? A weird series of knocks? Random puddles?"
"Nothing," Remus confirmed. "We don't know anything more than that everyone has to stay here." James paused. Confinement. Huh. Was that the Ministry's doing? Dumbledore had never seemed too worried about kids being in the thick of it.
"By Godric," he said suddenly. "We're stupid. We're so, so fucking stupid."
"I'm aware," Remus said dryly. "What'd you think of?" James jumped off the table and clambered past groups of younger students. Peter hollered at him. Where was it, fucksakes? There was music playing from somewhere. How had nobody else thought of it?
"Could you lovely chaps get the fuck out of the road?" he asked two second years, doing his best to be kind. They scrambled away. What respect for authority, James thought. Bloody stick-in-the-muds. He dove for the object they had zealously guarded. His hands wrapped around it. In that moment, it gleamed brighter than any snitch. He smashed his fingers against the dial furiously. Music crackled. A chorus of groans nearly drowned out the very faint voice he caught. He fidgeted, turning past a Quidditch commentary station, the screams of a Mermish song, and a heated discussion about the keeping clean of kneazles' nails. James ripped his wand from his pocket and thwacked it against the glass bulb of the wireless.
"Louder! Louder!" he shouted at it. The bulb lit at once. It looked as if a fiery, flaming tornado had been locked around the coiled wire. It spun ferociously, gaining speed with every revolution. The channel screeched; a wave of heat burst out. James barely shut his eyes before it hit him; for a moment, his entire face burned. Then it passed, and so too did the pain. He flung his eyes open; from every corner, curious eyes glued themselves to the radio. Even Barty Crouch watched, firewhisky bottle in hand, tie hanging loose.
The wireless chanted at them. Over and over. It took a moment for him to register the deep, gravelly words, and another for him to realise what the words actually meant.
"FLO DIGGORY'S PERFUME. FLO DIGGORY'S PERFUME. FLO DIGGORY'S PERFUME. FLO DIGGORY'S PERFUME."
He snorted. "Someone's wank-thoughts have ended up on the radio." Kind of anticlimactic.
"How would that even work, Potter?" He froze, and looked to the stairs. Lily Evans descended, her hair a fierce fiery halo, her arm wrapped around the shuddering shoulders of Mary Macdonald. She patted Mary on the shoulder and came down the steps three-at-a-time and was at his side in a moment, wand pointed at the radio. "How'd you think of this?"
How had he thought of it? It just seemed…like something to try, sort of. He'd been going for the news, honestly – if something really bad had happened, Hogsmeade would be aware of it, and in the last few hours, an owl easily would've reached London. It wouldn't be like the reporters to sit on a breaking story about Hogwarts, unless something even more dire was going on – in which case, that'd be splashed all over the airwaves.
"I'm smart," he said instead. Lily rolled her eyes, and turned her back to him.
"Remus! Laura! Alice – come on, I think we should have a look at this." Alice Rhysfield already encroached on James' other side, Frank hot on her heels, and Marcus McLaggen scrambled for as many quills as he could possibly fit in his spindly fingers.
"Excuse me," Alice said. "I need to see that." James slid out of the way, and watched as the prefects surrounded the radio, wands out.
The chanting continued. "FLO DIGGORY'S PERFUME." She did always smell of flowers, like a nicer version of the Hogwarts gardens. James couldn't really blame whichever bloke it was for thinking about her. She was gorgeous, and not even that prissy for a Ravenclaw.
"Jamie?" Lisbete appeared at his elbow. He'd hardly seen her all day – not on purpose or anything, it just hadn't happened.
"Where've you been?" he asked, slipping his arm around her. Sirius smirked at him. He casually gave him the two-fingered salute, hand against Lisbete's arm. Peter crossed his eyes, flipping his lids. James pulled a face back.
"I had lunch down by the Quidditch pitch with a couple of the girls. We watched the Ravenclaws practice. Glen Vane's a real dish, don't you think?" Lisbete chattered away. Sirius pointed at Peter, and then mimed slitting his throat. Peter whacked his hands away. The radio kept chanting. The prefects all seemed to be tapping it at once – what good was that meant to do? It'd just confuse the thing, and they'd lose the channel, after it took him so much effort to get it. James thought it was quite an achievement to tune into somebody's thoughts, actually. A round of applause might've been more fitting than being shoved out of the road.
"Jamie?" Lisbete said again. James rubbed his eye and looked down at her. "What do you think's going on?"
"I think someone likes Flo Diggory," he shrugged. Wasn't that obvious?
"Her perfume," Lisbete said. "I mean, I think it's just that one from the top of the shelf in that shop in Hogsmeade. That's why nobody else wears it, we can't reach." James squeezed her shoulder, grinning goofily.
"I don't think they want to wear it for themselves," he said. Lisbete raised her eyebrows.
"Why not? It is a nice smell."
"Well – why would a bloke want to smell like Flo Diggory?"
"What do you mean? It's a girl's voice."
Holy shit.
It was too.
How had he missed that? He'd been so focused on the words that the tone had hardly registered. But it was definitely a girl's voice – not Flo's, but still recognisable. He shut his eyes. Whose? Whose? Not Lily's, not any of the Gryffindor girls from his year…he'd have recognised that. That voice had answered questions in class. He was sure of it. He could hear it in the background – Remus had been telling him to pay attention – she was asking something about their O. …
"Fuck," he said. Lisbete frowned up at him.
"What, Jamie? What is it?" she asked, voice high, blue eyes searching his face.
"I know who's saying it," he told her.
"Oh!" she paused. James ran his fingers through his hair. Who, who, who? What class had they been in? What else had she said? Why did nobody else recognise it? "Jamie?"
"What?"
"Who is it?"
"No – that's it. I can't – fuck." He pulled his arm away from her, and turned in a circle. Both hands gripped tufts of hair, and he squeezed his eyes shut, scrunching his nose. Who? Who was it? She was there. Mystery Voice Girl was there, sitting in the corner of the front row – but whose face did she wear?
Fuck.
November 4th, 1975
Severus' back ached. He leaned against the tiled wall, robes bunched around him, waiting. Padgett hitched himself up onto the sink, his feet dangling close to Severus' eye level. His dark leather shoes shone in the bathroom light, even the toes, and his socks were thick and completely concealed the space between his shoe and robe-hem. The toilet lid was flipped up, an open door. The others had trudged off to their dormitories to open their toilets in case the bird came out of the wrong one. As of yet, there was no sign nor word of Castor's triumphant return, or even survival.
"If you've drowned my owl, I'll chain you to the bottom of the Black Lake," Padgett threatened.
"You may try," Severus said. Many minutes passed in silence after that. He counted all the tiles in the room twice over, and then satisfied himself by running his finger along the grout between each square. Padgett sighed a few times, as if he were about to speak, but no words ever came, and so Severus learned to ignore his attempts at communication. He had not expected it to take so long for a message to be delivered just to the other side of the castle; cross-country trips could regularly be made by any well-fed and well-bred bird.
He glanced up at Padgett, who now leaned his head against the mirror, eyes shut. He could've been sleeping. Severus knew him least of all the boys in the dormitory – their beds were furthest away from each other, with Padgett's in the far corner, close to the bathroom, while Severus' was by the door. He didn't know what had made him choose that bed right there. Perhaps it had been the sheer desperation to claim one as his, to not be left to sleep on the floor or sent home. Half of him had been convinced for the first week that he was in danger of being sent home, that Tobias Snape would show up on the doorstep of the school, setting aside his disgust for magic to get one of his favourite toys back. It had never happened; Severus wasn't sure the man even realised he was gone. That gave him little comfort.
Though the others knew not the extent of who his father was, they had picked up on enough, recognising it from their own lives, and sought to empathise. But for all their fathers may have hit them too, they still had the luxury of the fastest brooms and ornate beds and chaise lounges and yet had the gall to complain. Severus would've begged his father to beat him more often if it meant he could openly practice magic at home, and could sleep in a place that didn't reek of shit and sawdust. He had dismissed the likes of Avery as quickly as possible. He didn't need their sympathy or their friendship. What did he care if the boy had a few bruises? His robes were brand-new.
"How are you finding the Defence essay?" Padgett asked, after an age. Severus raised his eyebrows.
"I wasn't aware we were here to chat," he said. Padgett exhaled roughly.
"I didn't become prefect just to piss you off, Snape. I was a good candidate in my own right, and I've got plans, and the first years can actually talk to me," Padgett said. Severus resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course Padgett thought he was jealous. It was just like him, the git, to take every chance to brag about his position. Yes, Severus had wanted to be a prefect, but he was hardly losing sleep over it now. It was November, for God's sakes. Nobody carried on about it for months. Severus pointedly didn't look at him, instead focusing on the tiled wall opposite. It was much more illuminating than Padgett could ever hope to be, anyhow. All Padgett wanted in life was to get some boring job at the Ministry like everyone else. He had no curiosity about magic, no desire to create, no desire to learn more than what was covered in class. He was a stock-standard idiot, Severus thought, and that was likely why he'd been chosen prefect. Not every house could appoint someone as talented as Lily. He wondered how she ever put up with him in meetings.
"Identifying the primary use of the spell was quite easy, but it's the secondary uses I'm struggling with. The textbook was rather vague in that area," Padgett said. Severus wondered what would happen if he cast the Killing Curse on himself. Maybe Padgett would end up in Azkaban. More likely, he'd be hailed as a hero if it came out that Severus had a muggle father.
"You're uncreative," he said finally. "That's why you can't think of anything. That's why you couldn't think of a way to communicate with the other houses."
"For all we know, you haven't either, and you've just murdered my owl, but I'm still talking with you and holing up in here with you instead of being with my friends, aren't I?" Padgett shot hotly. Severus looked up at him. His cheeks were red. Maybe it was something about having a surname starting with 'P', or containing double letters, that made you an idiot. He had the same sort of self-righteousness as Potter. It made Severus' skin crawl.
"How noble," Severus said, loathing dripping from every syllable. Padgett rubbed his temples.
"Whatever it is you want to do later on in life, you won't get there by being a git to everyone you meet. I know you go to those…meetings, with Jugson and that, and maybe they're happy to be sneered at by a fifteen-year-old with no name, but that won't hold when you get into the real world. One day, someone is going to punch you, and even if it's a fucking Gryffindor mudblood, I'll have no choice to cheer them on because you're such a fucking arse. For fuck's sake, Snape."
"What a hero you are," Severus drawled. Of course Padgett would be the type to turn coats if it suited him, the slimy weasel. "Maybe you should go room with Potter." Padgett jumped off the sink. Severus stood at once; Padgett was a little taller, but nearly as slender as he was, not heavy-set like Avery or Rosier. He was a shitty duellist, too – he fired off spells in the same patterns they'd been taught in class. "What are you going to do, Padgett? Levitate me?"
Padgett rubbed his brow with the base of his palm, like some middle-aged man who carried a briefcase and drove round in some stinking car and gave him dirty looks when he tagged along to church with the Evanses. He'd fantasised about smuggling his wand in his pocket a great many times, and as the priest served communion, a flick of his wand could transform the wine to true blood…he'd imagined the look on those snotty men's faces when it tasted different a thousand times, and it shot pleasure through him like a lightning bolt.
"No, Snape," Padgett said. "I won't levitate you. That's why I'm a prefect and you're not." Severus drew his wand. The coward did nothing, didn't even flinch. Maybe some part of him knew he deserved it. "We're waiting for Castor to return."
Snape snorted, and then raised his wand. "Calv-"
SPLASH! A hoot echoed through the room. Severus dropped his wand. Water sprayed, droplets clinging to his hair. He spun around. Castor emerged from the toilet, feathers ruffled and soaking, a bubble still tight around his head. In his beak was a small envelope, barely kept dry inside the charm. Padgett pushed past him and popped the bird's bubble, taking the letter at once.
"I need to take this to the others," Padgett said at once, already halfway out of the tiny bathroom. Severus stared at him.
"Your bird soaked me and it was my idea," he growled. Padgett paused.
"Don't be a dick, Snape," he said, and left. Severus picked up his wand and carefully dried his hair, staring at himself in the mirror.
What a dick.