Their new timetable had the Slytherins and Gryffindors in Astronomy together late on the first day. Sev was - perhaps surprised was too strong a word - mildly intrigued to see that Professor Cephus had still not turned up. Instead, the class was 'graced' with the presence of Professor Alomancia.

Professor Alomancia taught Divination to the upper years, and was, like most Divination teachers, widely considered to be a mad old bat. Gazing into the future was a fairly difficult endeavour, and most people who indulged in it full time tended to become a little... altered.

Cracked she might be, but she was also amiable and none too strict. The dull old boredom of plotting stars was abandoned in favour of students pestering her about what their patterns predicted. Even a number of the Slytherins got involved, although of course not Malfoy's little cadre.

Sev wanted to hear the official line on Professor Cephus' absence, but it would have been out of 'character' for him to ask, and to his frustration nobody else bothered to. How was he supposed to gather information if everyone around him was too stupid to ask the most basic questions?

Finally, he decided he would have to hang back at the end of the class and just ask himself. Professor Alomancia was hardly likely to have any contact with anyone who would care Sev was asking about a teacher, and she was nutty enough that he could deny everything.

So, right at the end of the lesson, he conveniently knocked over his astrolabe. The Gryffindors all laughed, naturally, causing Malfoy to snarl and shoot a minor curse their way. It reflected off one of the telescopes, and everybody grabbed their stuff and ran for the door.

Sadly, though, Sev was not left alone to pick up his scattered equipment. Lily had also decided to hang behind. This wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that since their adventure at the end of last year, she and James appeared to have become magnetically attached.

"Professor, I just wanted to ask about Divination next year-"

"Ah, Lily, isn't it?" The Professor smiled at her cheerfully.

"I was just wondering if you could recommend some books? I wanted to get some reading done in advance."

How like Lily, Sev reflected, staying unobtrusively crouched under his desk. How like him, really. He personally had little interest in Divination, but he was still as well-read as any seventh-year on the subject.

"Don't worry my dear," said Professor Alomanicia fondly. "I foresee a great future for you in Divination. I-"

She broke off abruptly, and Sev looked up from under the desk to see her face abruptly slacken. James, lurking by the door, ran back inside. "Professor? Are you-?"

She began to speak, in a cold voice wholly unlike the friendly tones she had just employed. "Choose wisely and well, for your doom will come too quickly. Love will not save you, but that which is most precious will survive. Beware; you think you see him, but the colours he wears are not his, and the face you know now is not the true one. He will betray you!"

Lily and James stood frozen, almost afraid to breathe. After a moment, Professor Alomancia blinked, and shook her head as if to clear it. "I'm sorry... did I drift off for a moment? It's these astral tides, you know. I'm terribly unfocused. What was it you wanted, dear?"

"Uh... never mind," decided Lily. She grabbed James by the arm and started to drag him off. As she hustled him out, her eyes briefly met Sev's, and there was a strange look in them.

Sev knew what she was thinking. ...the colours he wears are not his... More than once last year, she had said to Sev that he was in the wrong house; that he wasn't really what the Gryffindors considered a 'true' Slytherin. She'd even made a comment about green not being his colour.

Professor Alomancia's words had the ring of a true prophecy about them. If that was true, was he destined to betray Lily and James in some way?

Anybody else might have shrugged such an idea off with a quick 'I would never do that'. Sev considered the prophecy more dispassionately. He knew that he had no intention of causing harm to Lily, and though he liked James less well, not him either. However, there were many kinds of betrayal, and should he find the need to practise one of them to further his campaign to get in with Malfoy... well, that was not too much of a stretch.

However, Sev was at heart a creature of logic. The prophecy was strongly-worded, but still vague. He had no doubt at all that he would come to unravel its meaning - just as soon as the events it predicted were over. Such was the nature of Divination.

Nonetheless, it was another nugget of information to squirrel away, and there could never be too many of those. Sadly, this one was bought with the loss of another. He never did get that opportunity to ask about Professor Cephus.


That evening, Malfoy launched the first phase of 'Operation Get Josh Matthews'.

Perhaps the operation wasn't named, but it was still planned with military precision. Malfoy was smart enough to know that division in the Slytherin ranks could only reduce his reputation. He was currently the commander of his own private little army in a kind of 'us against the world' scenario. Let the other houses know that not all his 'followers' were truly his, and suddenly his power fragmented and he was just another bully.

In classes, Josh was never in any way bullied, or even spoken harshly to. Malfoy never dissed his gang in public, however he might snap and snarl at them in private. Josh's isolation was not noticeable to the outside world; there were other Slytherins who weren't really Malfoy's creatures, and they would sit with him or share study notes. You wouldn't know that they weren't really what you could call 'friends' until you saw the way they quickly peeled away from him as soon as they hit Malfoy's home territory.

It started small; but in a shared dorm where nobody was your friend, small could be unbearable. Josh's socks would disappear a few minutes before it was time to go to lessons. His underwear would be magicked pink, or his bed would be enchanted to throw him off in the middle of the night. The ink he wrote his homework in would fade into nothing after he'd finished writing, and the pages of his textbooks would be blanked.

Josh bore all this with stoic silence. He wasn't stupid enough to try and report it to the teachers; all that would bring would be a few warnings and maybe some deducted points, and then the bullying would just become more fiendishly subtle. Nor could he make himself some new friends; the houses were fairly insular at the best of times, and though some friendships crossed boundaries, Slytherin had always stood alone.

Josh's only link to the rest of his world was his little brother, and that was a fairly tenuous one. They couldn't sit together at meals, because of the house tables, and they couldn't enter each other's common rooms. Josh took to spending all his spare time in the library, and Lewis would meet him there - but not too frequently. Lewis was a bouncy, active boy who had quickly been accepted by the Gryffindors, and he didn't want to be stuck in the library at all hours.

So Josh was alone. And unlike Sev's self-imposed solitude, it obviously pained him to be that way.

Sev, with his sharp skills of observation, missed nothing. He also did nothing. Befriending people was not his style in any case, and he could only harm his own position with Malfoy without helping Josh's. Josh would have to deal with it on his own terms.

Meanwhile, Sev was busy trying to ascertain what had happened to Professor Cephus. A few usefully overheard conversations - his invisibility cloak, he had found, was a very handy thing around the staff - let him know that he wasn't the only one in the dark. Most of the staff seemed to think she'd just got bored teaching and done a runner; many of them added half-serious wishes that they could do the same thing. Dumbledore was the only one who seemed truly concerned.

"It's just not like her, Carnus," he observed to Professor Malachite. Malachite was the one with whom the headmaster talked most about his worries. Though Professor Fractalis was the deputy head, in many ways Malachite was more senior. He had been with the Ministry of Magic for a decade before taking the Defence Against the Dark Arts appointment, and he cut a far more impressive figure than poor nervous Fractalis. No one was sure why he hadn't been made deputy instead, although there was a rumour going around that he'd been asked and refused the position.

Whatever the reason, he still had Dumbledore's ear in many things, and provided a sounding board for ideas the headmaster didn't like to share with the more excitable members of his staff.

"Auriga would never just wander off like this," said the headmaster worriedly. "Yes, she was absentminded, but you know she always had a keen sense of duty. Leave Hogwarts, without so much as giving notice? Preposterous."

"You think something may have happened to her?" asked Malachite with a frown.

"In these dark days? Almost certainly." The stormy look on Dumbledore's face was a strong contrast to the twinkly-eyed persona he usually presented.

"Now, Albus," his fellow teacher calmed him, "not every disappearance marks a plot. Something may have happened to her, but that doesn't mean it's something somebody else has done to her. Even wizards and witches have accidents, you know."

Dumbledore's frown failed to clear. "True, true... but there have been entirely too many disappearances for my liking, lately. People from the Ministry..." He shook off his dark mood with a visible effort. "Still, surely not Auriga Cephus, hmm? I can't quite see her being a danger to anybody."

"Quite," agreed Malachite with a nod. "What about her classes?" he asked, changing the subject.

"I'm not keen to appoint a replacement just yet," the headmaster admitted. "It seems a little too... final for my tastes. For the next month or so, at least, I'd like to keep using substitutes. Fortunately, Astronomy is a subject most of our staff are qualified to teach."

"Did you hear about Hepatosa?" asked Malachite.

"Had another vision in the middle of a class?" Dumbledore agreed, with a pensive frown.

"Well, at the end of one, fortunately." Malachite shook his head. "Lord knows that would have caused a panic. We're lucky she spouted off in front of a sensible pair like James and Lily."

"I'm not sure if 'lucky' is quite the right word," chided Dumbledore gently. "Apparently she warned them both that somebody they knew was going to betray them."

"Really? How charmingly vague of her," said Malachite snidely. "I don't suppose she saw fit to furnish them with a name, or even a time?"

"No; although I think Lily has a suspicion about who it might be. Not that she saw fit to share it, of course. A very independent girl, that Lily," he said fondly.

"Hmm. How's James taking it?"

"Lightly, as I could have predicted." Dumbledore shook his head. "I fear for those boys, Carnus. James Potter and Sirius Black still think they're invincible. I only pray they don't have to find out the hard way that they're wrong."

"My, we're gloomy today," Malachite observed, and Dumbledore nodded wryly.

"Yes, I'm hardly the font of cheerfulness, am I? Still, this with Auriga, coming on top of what happened last year... I rather hoped Hogwarts had left this kind of darkness behind thirty years ago."

"What happened thirty years ago?" asked the younger man with a frown.

"Things which should never have been allowed to." The headmaster shook his head darkly. "I sometimes feel as if the world has never been the same since then. That was my rude awakening," he said, almost to himself. "I thought I could see the darkness in everybody... I was wrong."

"You're only human, Albus," Malachite supplied comfortingly. Dumbledore smiled, and his dark mood was abruptly broken.

"Yes. Let's just hope the students never find out, hmm?" They smiled, and went their separate ways, leaving Snape to sneak back to his dorm with more questions than answers.

A quick check of Hogwarts histories confirmed what he had already been pretty sure of; there was no mention of anything out of the ordinary happening at Hogwarts three decades ago. In fact, the books were suspiciously quiet on those years altogether.

Books were not the only sources, however. Being Sev, he thought to go down to the trophy room and check for anything unusual awarded in that time period. The only thing he found was an Award For Special Services to the School, made out to one Tom Riddle. However, given that Riddle was also on the roll of Head Boys and had received a Medal For Magical Merit as well, it could have been for purely academic reasons.

The only teacher who had been around to give a personal account of those years was Dumbledore, and Sev wasn't foolish enough to try and pry information out of him. Sev avoided the headmaster as much as possible, recognising a kindred spirit when it came to seeing through people. He was smart enough to recognise his own limitations, and Dumbledore wasn't somebody he was prepared to try and outwit. He might be able to cross mental swords fairly successfully, but not without giving too much of his private self away.

Coming to dead ends in all his research avenues, Sev fell back instead on the old standby of people-watching. However, right now that was little more rewarding. He had hoped to get Malfoy to open up more about this 'new order' he had hinted was coming, but the other boy was entirely too occupied making Joshua's life a misery.

Malfoy was the kind of bully who wasn't happy unless he could hear the cries of pain. It didn't matter that Josh was surely suffering - he was doing it silently, and that didn't suit Lucius Malfoy at all. The cruel 'practical jokes' continued, but Malfoy also opened up another avenue of approach.

Namely, Lewis Matthews.

The impressionable new first year Slytherins had quickly fallen under Malfoy's charismatic spell. Two of his most zealous followers were Colin's friend Goyle, and a thoroughly nasty piece of work called Alexander Nott.

Malfoy gave these two junior thugs a new mission in life. As miserable as Josh was being made, it was to be nothing on how Lewis should be feeling.

Nott and Goyle had a great deal more freedom than Malfoy in this regard. They didn't have to put up two different faces in public and private. No, they could haunt Lewis's footsteps any time they wanted, and launch attacks at every opportunity.

Goyle was a simple thug, but Nott had that kind of flair for deviousness truly unpleasant schoolboys learn to use. He was the kind who could be twisting arms one minute, and angelically presenting a piece of perfect homework the next. None of the teachers saw through his mask any better than they did Malfoy's, and his pursuit of Lewis was practically unchallenged.

Lewis, on the occasions Sev happened to pass him in the corridors, was developing a truly haunted expression. He took the bullying far worse than his older brother, despite the fact that he had friends to back him up. He clung to Josh whenever he could, but his big brother couldn't be there when lessons started.

Things were escalating dangerously, and Sev knew Josh cared about his brother too much to let it slide the way he had when it was him alone. He would have to seek help from somewhere. Unfortunately, he chose to do so from the one place Snape really would have preferred him not to.

"Sev, can I talk to you a moment?" Josh asked, one day when they happened to have the library to themselves. Snape didn't answer, but the sandy-haired boy continued anyway. "Listen, I- I know this is nothing to do with you, but I really need your help. There's no one else I can ask. You gotta help me."

Sev, as much as he felt anything, felt sympathy for Josh. He was no fan of Lucius Malfoy, and Josh was by nature quiet and thoughtful - traits he could identify with.

He had no wish to see Josh and Lewis suffer more - but he couldn't help, either. He had got through thus far by being deliberately disinterested, neither joining nor attempting to stop the others' bullying. But now, Josh had tipped his hand, and he was going have to come down on one side or the other.

Should he help Josh and betray his true loyalties, or go even further in his quest to gain Malfoy's trust?