I Was Right
Chapter 5: Altercations
As the mood of terror and confusion sweeping over the world outside Hogwarts worsened, the Slytherins became even more excited and exultant, and every time news of attacks or disappearances came their way they would talk about it triumphantly--not to mention rub it in the faces of other students, especially the Gryffindors.
"Those fools really didn't know what was good for them, did they?" Wilkes said as he and the other fifth-year Slytherins waited outside the dungeons before Potions class, eyeing the Gryffindors and raising his voice purposefully. "If you ask me, they had it coming to them. I'd say they were almost as stupid as Potty and his family are," he said, glancing over to where Potter stood.
"Shut up, Wilkes," Potter said.
"How much blindness," Rosier rejoined, "does it take for a couple of Muggle-loving wizards--like the Lovegoods--" he named a couple who had been murdered in their home only the night before--"not to see who's winning?"
Sirius Black growled deeply and took a step towards them. Resignedly, Snape braced himself in case of still more fisticuffs. It just wasn't his thing, and he didn't want to mess up a Potions class, but he'd have to pitch in if his fellow Slytherins persisted in this idiocy. Didn't Rosier and Wilkes realize there were better things to do with their time?
"You'd better watch out for that Mudblood girlfriend of yours, Potter!" Avery called, with a glance in Lily's direction. "Who knows if she'll be next--oof!"
"No, Sirius!" Lily cried over at the Gryffindor side, but it was too late.
Moving so quickly that they had hardly seen him, Black had shot forward and landed a good one squarely on Avery's stomach. Avery doubled over and straightened with difficulty, only to be slugged in the face this time.
Snape glanced over at the Gryffindors, expecting Potter and Lupin to come and break Black away. Instead, the normally mild Lupin went straight for Rosier and began pounding away without a word, a cold fury in his eyes. That was the frightening thing about Lupin--the unpredictability and wild abandon that sometimes flashed behind the calm outward appearance.
There was no ending this peacefully now--why wouldn't Professor Zabini hurry up? Not that he'd mind seeing Potter and his friends being beaten to pieces, but that seemed extremely unlikely in this event.
Wilkes had just slammed a struggling Pettigrew against the wall, and Potter and Lestrange had just grabbed each other's collars, when the Potions professor finally showed.
"What is the meaning of this, boys?" She cried, her usually quiet voice shaking in anger.
"The Gryffindors! They attacked us!" Shrieked Dahlia Mulciber, pointing at Black, who held a bruised, bleeding, and dazed Avery by the front of his robes, and Lupin, who was just getting off a prostrate Rosier.
"That's not true!" Lily said. "Professor--"
"Silence! Snape?" Zabini turned to her prize student.
"Completely unprovoked, unilateral attack, Professor," Snape began in a low voice, carefully avoiding Lily's eyes. If he couldn't have the pleasure of seeing Potter getting his face beaten in, points taken from Gryffindor and detention would do just as well. "Notice how only my fellow Slytherins sustain injuries--"
"He's lying, Professor," Potter suddenly spoke up. "They were insulting the memory of the Lovegoods."
Zabini looked sharply at Snape. "Is this true, Snape?"
This wasn't the way it was supposed to go at all. "Professor," Snape said in his smoothest, most persuasive voice, "we were merely discussing the wisdom of their course of ac-"
But the look Zabini was giving Snape was hard and cold. "I can imagine what kind of a discussion it must have been," the Professor said shortly, cutting him off. Then she turned to the Gryffindors. "And did you boys think you would defend the memory of the Lovegoods with your fists?" She spoke sternly, but with sympathy in her voice. "I understand why you acted as you did, but fighting is against the rules nonetheless. Eight points from Gryffindor, two points apiece."
Two points for each of them? It should have been at least ten points each, and detention! Snape shot a glare at Zabini and the Gryffindors(except one) that would have felled all of them if looks could kill; but Avery decided on the course of whining.
"But Professor, Black really hurt me. If my father hears about this-"
Professor Zabini turned to the Slytherins with quite a different look in her eyes. "Then go to the hospital wing, Avery, and act like a man," she snapped. Her eyes swept over the Slytherin fifth years with unmistakable contempt and anger. "Fifty points from Slytherin for words and actions unsuited to Hogwarts students."
Snape was still seething when he swept up to the library after barely touching dinner. The grins and laughter from the other House tables had given his stomach a clenched feeling, making it impossible to eat.
At the corner table where he usually sat, he was tearing a roll of parchment to pieces with his pen under pretense of writing an Arithmancy essay when he heard light footsteps, and Lily sat down across from him, heaving her books down. They often shared this table--it was nearly surrounded by bookcases containing books like Flobberworm Behavior, Diet, and Development; A Day-by-Day Account or The History of International Standards on Robe Lengths; A Comprehensive Guide. Nobody ever came there.
"Still mad?" she asked, pulling out rolls of parchment and writing tools from her bag.
Severus remained silent, still scribbling furiously and tearing away some more parchment. Inexplicably, he didn't blame Lily for what had happened. For him, the incident was little more than an excuse to be angry with Potter again.
"You know, you couldn't possibly hand that in," she remarked, looking over at his supposed homework. "Professor Vector will have a fit."
He wordlessly continued his scrawling until the parchment split completely in two with a loud rip. He threw his pen down in disgust and wished some convenient students were sitting around so he could snarl "What are you staring at?" at them. Instead, Lily took his hand. "Let's go outside," she said. "You're not getting any work done this way anyway. The weather's too good to waste!"
It was a clear March evening with the scent of moist soil and leaves in the air. They walked in the warm evening breeze, the cobalt sky slowly darkening above them, a waxing moon shining silver on the horizon. Severus felt his anger and humiliation slowly subside, both by the beautiful evening and Lily's calming presence.
"It's terrible about the Lovegoods, isn't it," she said sadly. "The strikes are getting worse--crueler and more brazen every day."
"Yes," he murmured. It wasn't easy to switch gears from coldly exultant with Lestrange, Jin and the others to subdued and sympathetic with Lily, and it was harder still not knowing which he really meant. "Nobody's safe anymore, nobody knows whom to trust anymore."
"There are dark times ahead," Lily sighed, and Severus was reminded of Dumbledore's words to him in his third year. "James says Dumbledore is very worried. Dumbledore has so much on his hands--not only Hogwarts but the entire magical community looks to him for some sense of security."
Severus nodded. The only enemy our Master truly fears is Albus Dumbledore. The voice came to his mind unbidden. It was Septimius, speaking in a meeting that he had overheard outside a door last summer, out of morbid curiosity. The Death Eaters seemed to think themselves quite safe in Snape Manor, and had set no special wards around their meeting-room.
If Hogwarts is ever to be broken, it is through isolation, not through direct confrontation, Septimius had said. And our Master's victory is not ensured until that Muggle-and-Mudblood-loving Dumbledore is destroyed.
Then they had gone on to talk about Aurors and other wizards who were causing trouble for them, which of them might turn and which must be killed or--'neutralized,' and about new strikes against Muggles and Muggle-borns, and so on and on into the night. Talking of treachery against the entire wizarding world, against all that humanity believed to be true and right.
And no matter how hard he tried to deny it, he was a part of that treachery--someone who knew, yet kept quiet; and by keeping quiet, thereby giving assent to all the atrocities, the bigotry and bloodshed, to Voldemort's rise to power.
No. No. It couldn't be. He was not...
Shuddering inwardly, he tried to shake off this train of thought. "With all this going on, isn't James worried about you?" He asked, breaking the silence. Maybe, if he mentioned Potter, Lily would bubble over with her usual happiness and help him forget these thoughts.
Big mistake. "I can take care of myself," Lily said curtly, sounding like she had been through this conversation many times before, and Severus quickly realized he had better let it go at that. He metaphorically kicked himself for stupidity.
It wasn't as if Lily and Potter, for all everyone gushed about how perfect they were together, were without problems. Though she never spoke directly of it, Snape could tell Lily sometimes felt left out because James was far too busy with his friends and Quidditch and seemed to have little time for her, especially since their second year--he seemed to be spending increasing amounts of time with Sirius, Remus, and Peter, poring animatedly over books in the library.
After a few more moments of silence Lily stopped and turned to face Snape. "Severus, there's something I need to know," she said, as if she had made up her mind about something difficult. He knew the tone, after more than two years of knowing her.
"Fire away," he replied, somehow uneasy. It was obvious that his lame effort at changing the subject to Lily's love life had failed spectacularly.
"Are you a sympathizer of Lord Voldemort?" She was steeling herself, he could see, both to ask the question and to speak the name without fear. "I want to hear an answer from you, in your own words."
So here it was, the question he had dreaded for so long--perhaps because he feared betraying his family, or feared losing his only friend, or because he didn't know the answer.
They stood for a long time facing each other, just looking at each other in the gathering darkness--two teenagers sharing an unlikely friendship, gazing across two feet of space and an abyss separating them.
"Lily!"
Lily and Severus both turned, startled, and saw James Potter striding toward them. Crossing the grounds quickly with his long legs, he grabbed Lily to pull her away from Severus, and faced him angrily.
"What are you doing here? What did you lure her out for?" Potter asked roughly, brown eyes flashing under his untamed shock of black hair.
"James," Lily called weakly, "we're only out for a wal-"
"A walk?" James burst out, "a walk alone in the dark with a Slytherin? Are you blind and deaf, Lily? Don't you know your position?"
"My position?" Lily drew herself to her full height and looked James straight in the eye. "Will you elaborate, please, Mr. Potter?"
Potter shook his head dismissively. "It doesn't matter. You're going in right now, Lily. And you," he said, turning to Snape, "are going to explain yourself."
Severus had never seen Lily so outraged. Her eyes glittered and her face was pale as she faced a startled Potter. "I do not take orders from you!" She cried. "And neither does Severus."
"So it's Severus now, is it?" It was hard to tell from the voice just what Potter was feeling--fear for her, anger, dislike, bewilderment, or something else entirely. "Lily, don't you know this snake? What would he want from you, except to-"
"Harm her?" Snape said in a dangerously soft voice. "Is that what you truly fear? Is is possible that the great James Potter is starting to find out he cannot both attend all his social needs with his admirers and keep his girlfriend hanging at his heels all the time?"
"You--" James lunged forward, and both he and Snape had their wands out in a flash. Both had been itching for an excuse to use them on each other anyway.
"Expelliarmus!" Lily's voice came steady and clear in the night air, and both James' and Severus' wands flew out into Lily's hand.
"Lily, you stay out of this," James snarled.
"Stay out of this? Oh, of course, James--I am nothing but your lowly girlfriend." She laughed sarcastically without mirth, something Severus had never seen her do. She tossed James' wand back to him and turned toward the castle. "Come on, Severus. It's time to get back and work on that Arithmancy essay."
Once they entered the school she kept walking faster and faster, then broke into a run. It was all Severus could do to keep up with her. "Lily! Wait! You'll hurt yourself." As if on cue, she tripped and pitched forward, and Severus only just managed to catch her before she fell. He helped her steady herself against a wall and stood next to her protectively.
She stood leaning against the wall unsteadily, her body racked with sobs. "Thanks," she managed to say through her tears, and took out a handkerchief with shaking hands. After several more minutes of weeping she raised her tear-stained face and asked shakily, "why did you follow me? You should be back in your common room."
"Well, for one thing, you still have my wand," Severus pointed out.
Lily made a choking sound that was half a laugh and half a sob, and handed him back his wand.
"Lily," Severus began now that the ice was broken, "I know this is between you and James--but could you tell me what's wrong? I know you've been having problems, but-"
"It's-it's like what you said to him--out in the grounds," Lily took a deep, shuddering breath. "He thinks after all his Quidditch practices, after all his hours with other friends, when he turns around I should be there waiting for him. And it's like he thinks he'll make up for all the times we didn't spend together by trying to run my life for me." She had stopped crying by now, and looked relieved to have gotten that off her chest.
"I know he loves me," she continued, "and I love him right back, but I'm just--just not docile enough for him, I guess. I just don't see how our relationship can go on this way. And there are plenty of other girls slavering for his attention," she added with a hint of spite.
Not that he pays the slightest attention to any of them, Severus added silently, but did not say so to Lily, knowing it was beside the point. Unlike the wildly flirtatious Black, everyone knew Potter had his eyes on one girl and one only--ironically, another reason for girls to find him attractive.
There was a long silence in the hallway, broken only by the occasional sputtering from a torch. Severus suddenly realized he was starving--the clenching feeling in his stomach had gone away, and he had eaten next to nothing for dinner.
"Say, Lily," he said, "what do you say we sneak down to the kitchens for food? I'm famished, and I bet you didn't get much to eat yourself, since you came up to the library so soon after I did."
"I am hungry," Lily admitted slowly.
"Oh, only-" Severus said, suddenly feeling very stupid indeed, "I don't know where the kitchens are."
"I do," said Lily. "I've been there scores of times with Remus and Sirius and--James," she said, her face darkening.
"Well, then! What are we waiting for? Let's get going!"
"But Severus, if we get caught we'll be in so much trouble! Slytherin might lose even more points!"
"What's fifty more points if I can bring Gryffindor down with me?" Grinned Severus.
Lily actually smiled at that. "You've got a point there."
Severus looked at her suspiciously. "Lame pun?"
"You might say that. Come on!"
Forgetting all thoughts of darkness, rivalry, and of the complexities of human relationships, the two sped down the suddenly cheery corridors laughing and bantering.