"It's- it's Lewis," Josh began a little unsteadily. "My brother."
"I know who Lewis is," Sev pointed out expressionlessly.
"Yeah. Yeah, of course you do. I mean-" Josh shook his head. "It was okay, before. Well, it wasn't okay, you know, but I could live with it, when it was just me. But Lewis... Hell, he's just a kid."
It occurred to Sev that the gap between eleven and twelve wasn't really enough to call anybody 'just a kid', but he didn't point that out to Josh.
"What makes you think I can help you?" he asked bluntly. Why play around with verbal dances? Josh would get to his point regardless.
Josh seemed momentarily taken back, but rallied quickly. "I- I've seen you with the others. You're not an outcast, not like me... but you're not exactly one of them, either, are you?"
Sev blinked slowly, and chose not to comment on that. "And you think I'd help?"
"Somebody's got to," said Josh, with mounting desperation.
"What could I possibly do?" he asked; not accusing or bitter, just his customary neutral. Giving nothing of his emotions away whatsoever. Together with his naturally soft voice, it unsettled staff and students twice as much as the deliberately vitriolic tone he used in baiting James and Sirius. Josh, however, was too distressed to really care.
He let out an explosive sigh and slumped down next to Sev. "I don't know, I don't know," he said bitterly. "Can't you do something? Malfoy listens to you. You could say something-"
"Yes. And then not only would he continue doing what he's doing, he'd also stop listening to me."
"So you won't even try?"
"It won't help."
"You know, sometimes that's really not the point," snapped Josh. In that instant, Sev thought he sounded very like Lily. She wouldn't approve of this at all. But then, she didn't see the world through the coolly logical filter he did.
"That's always the point. It won't make things better for you. It won't make things better for Lewis. It will make things worse for me. That's not help."
Josh shook his head in disbelief. "Are you alive in there? Is there blood running through your veins, or are you just powered by clockwork? Do you have feelings?"
"When you let feelings overtake logic, you're in trouble," Sev said coolly.
Josh blinked at him for a moment, then shook his head and turned away. "You know, I think you got that backwards," he snapped, storming out of the library.
Sev watched him disappear down the corridor for a moment, then went back to his Dark Arts essay.
A few days later, when Lily was making one of her regular attempts to corner him, he let her catch him.
They were down in the Potions lab in the dungeons; a fairly quiet part of the school at the best of times. Sev was very familiar with the place owing to the secret midnight Potions lessons he'd been giving Lily last year. Those had stopped, of course, but Professor Ephemeria was a much more patient tutor than Fennel, and Lily was no longer struggling.
Professor Ephemeria had pulled off the difficult trick of earning the undying love of students of all houses. This, she had achieved by allowing people to leave class a few minutes early if they finished quickly. Sev tried as a matter of habit not to be first to finish, but he was usually second or third.
This particular day, they happened to be making Cheering Charms. Lily's natural knack for Charm work cancelled her difficulty with Potions, and as Severus excused himself and left early, she was right on his tail.
"Severus Snape! You just try and run away from me, and I swear I'll hit you with the Full-Body Bind," she threatened from down the corridor.
Shooting her a disdainful look, he leaned against the dungeon wall and waited for her to catch up.
Somewhat surprised, Lily skittered to a halt and frowned at him. "Okay - what do you want?" she demanded.
Sev raised an expressive eyebrow. "What do I want? Who just chased who down the corridor?"
"Yeah, but you let me catch you," she said quizzically. He smiled internally. Surprisingly little got past Lily.
"I was floored by the force of your magnetic personality," he said perfectly dryly.
"Heh. Good for you. Why did you let me catch you?" she demanded.
Sev shot her a look, allowing his eyes to flickered pointedly back to the classroom whose occupants would be spilling out at any moment. "What did you want, Lily?"
He could see that the idea of her attempts to corner him succeeding hadn't really occurred to her. "Um... the usual?" she tried. "Explanation? Apology? Admission that I was right and you were wrong? A little bowing down and kissing of feet would probably not go amiss, either."
"You already know why I'm doing what I'm doing," he said, with half a shrug.
"And you already know that I think you're wrong."
"Yes, well. You're not alone in that," he remarked. In anybody else, that might have been considered a brief aside, half to himself - but Sev never said anything without thinking about it.
"What does that mean?" Lily seized on his words quickly. Maybe her time apart from him had been long enough for her to forget quite how calculated his conversation was, or maybe it just went against her open nature to believe it. Either way, it didn't seem to occur to her that he was quite casually steering the conversation the way he wanted it to go.
"Exactly what it says. You're not the only one who seems to disagree with my tactics. This, of course, having a great impact on my attitude," he added dryly.
"Who else knows?" Lily asked with a frown.
"Nobody knows," Sev told her. "Not even you." Lily might have the greatest insight of anybody into the workings of his brain, but not even she knew the whole story. Severus Snape's private thoughts were nobody's but his own. "But other people have noticed that I'm not as fully committed to death and destruction as the rest of Malfoy's friends. Joshua Matthews seems to have picked up the idea that I might be able to help with his problem."
"Josh..." Unlike her friends James and Sirius, Lily could put a name to those Slytherins who weren't actively hostile, though it took her a moment. Once the name was matched with a face, she frowned. "What problem?"
Sev clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "Ah, Lily, Lily. You Gryffindors really don't see much outside your own house, do you?"
"Well, I could say worse things about the Slytherins, but you've heard them already," she snapped back, riled.
"Yes. You do so love to tar us with Malfoy's brush, don't you? Josh Matthews is the same as Lucius Malfoy, yes? Just like Peter Pettigrew is the same as James Potter."
"Hey! Leave Peter alone," she frowned. "So what if he's not school hero? I like him."
"No you don't, you feel sorry for him," he corrected her. "You 'nice' people have trouble telling the difference sometimes."
Lily should know his talents by now, but the fact that she knew he was pushing her buttons didn't make it unsuccessful. "If you're getting near a point, make it," she suggested icily.
"If you could possibly see beyond your narrow definitions of Gryffindor and Slytherin, you might notice that Joshua Matthews has very few of those qualities you so despise in us. Malfoy certainly has."
She chewed at her lower lip. "Malfoy picks on him? I've never seen him do it."
"And you never will. What is this obsession you have with 'us' and 'them'? Is it something to do with these Muggle movies you're all so caught up in? Why do you automatically assume that because Lucius is cruel, he must be stupid?"
"Because how could anybody who acts like that not be?" she tossed back at him angrily. "Okay, he might be cunning-"
"Ah, cunning," nodded Snape dryly. "A good word that. I think you'll find it means 'just as smart as one of us, but if we use a different word we can pretend it's not the same'."
Lily made a face. "So you're saying Malfoy's bullying Josh? And he came to you?" She arched her eyebrows disbelievingly. "Must've been pretty desperate."
"Oh, he is," Sev told her coolly. "Of course, it's not about him anymore. He does have a little brother, after all. And he's one of yours. But I don't suppose you high and mighty Gryffindors have noticed him, either?" He smiled thinly, as the rest of the class started to pour out, and joined the crowd as it flowed away.
Whether Lily ever knew their conversation had an ulterior motive, he could only guess. Perhaps she thought he was just taunting her with how much he saw and she didn't. Perhaps she thought it had been a clever way to deflect her attention. Perhaps she had wondered if he might be looking out for Josh, and then dismissed it as too illogical for him.
Sev was not in the slightest bit interested. As he had explained to the unhappy Josh, it was only results that mattered - not how things looked to others.
The results were not immediately apparent. Josh was still deeply miserable. Malfoy was still vindictive. Lewis was still looking haunted.
Then, one time, Nott and Goyle had leapt out on Lewis only to find James Potter happened to be walking with him. A few days later, a sneak attack had been foiled by Sirius Black. The corridors around Lewis Matthews had started mysteriously sprouting second-year Gryffindors whenever his enemies were near.
Malfoy would ordinarily have been quick to notice this, but he had other things on his mind. Rather like ninety-nine percent of the other Hogwarts students.
The time for Quidditch tryouts had come around again; and this time, they were all old enough to enter.
First years were not prohibited from trying out, exactly, but none had been on a house team for decades. The current flying teacher, Jagred Swift, had coached professionally, and the teams he turned out were so good no novice flyer would dare to try and get in.
All the houses except Ravenclaw had lost their captains when the seventh years had left. All of them had at least two places to fill, and there was certainly no shortage of applicants.
"Aiming for the team, Sev?" Malfoy asked him one day in the common room.
Severus was, as it happened, an excellent flyer, and with his quick thinking and ability to keep track of things, he'd probably make a great Keeper. However, being on the Quidditch pitch didn't quite fit in with his desire to remain low-profile.
He gave another of his thin smiles. "I prefer to get my enjoyment of the game... off the pitch."
Malfoy snickered appreciatively, no doubt remembering Audley Fletcher's near-deadly drop from his broomstick last year. It had actually been Fennel who had put the curse on him, and Sev's sick-making potion had saved his life, but he and Lily were the only ones who knew that. However, if Malfoy chose to believe Sev got his kicks from sabotaging players, that suited him just fine.
Malfoy, of course, was talking as if he'd already been appointed captain. His parents had bought him the very latest in brooms, a Cleansweep 2. Most of the actual team players only had Silver Arrows.
There was one other Cleansweep 2 in the school, and that belonged to one of Malfoy's arch-enemies - Sirius Black. Black, not exactly hard up for cash, had gone out and bought himself one over the summer; no doubt in response to seeing Malfoy on his.
Malfoy, of course, was deeply disparaging about Black's flagrant copying. And truth to tell, on evenly matched brooms he was probably the better flyer. Sirius wasn't bad, but he was heavy-handed, and he placed too much emphasis on speed. Malfoy was truly skilled, and in most years he would have been the best with no contest.
Most years, of course, did not contain James Potter.
James only rode the old-model Cleansweep, a generation behind Black's and Malfoy's. Sev didn't have to have been privy to their private conversations to know that Sirius had offered to buy him a better broom, and James had acted proud and refused. Study people closely enough, and it was easy to predict how they would act in any given situation.
You didn't have to be Sev's level of genius to predict what Quidditch tryouts did to the atmosphere in the classroom. The teachers, all ex-Hogwarts themselves and closely tied to their old houses, were near as excited as the students, and lessons were chaotic and loud.
Astronomy was particularly explosive. The lack of a regular teacher, plus the usual bad mistake of Gryffindor and Slytherin in the same room, had competitiveness written all over it. If only because more accurate terms for the atmosphere would probably be unprintable.
It was the latest boast from the Gryffindor tables, however, that had Malfoy and his cronies howling with laughter.
"You?" he demanded disbelievingly. "You, on a Quidditch team? Oh, you're killing me."
"I wish," said Lily icily. She placed her hands on her hips. "Mind telling me why, exactly?"
"I really have to spell it out for you, honey?" Malfoy wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. "Oh, you're so delusional!" He cackled gleefully.
"Girls can't play Quidditch?" asked Lily dangerously.
If Sev was Malfoy, he would have been backing away at speed right then. But Malfoy's view of the universe, of course, wouldn't let him accept that Lily could be a threat.
"One, girls can't play Quidditch," he agreed smarmily. "Two, you call that a broom? It's a stick with bristles!" Sev had to admit, Malfoy had a fair point. Lily's parents had refused point blank to spring for any magical gear that wasn't mandatory, and she'd been forced to pick up a second-hand Comet. It was at least five years old, and she had to struggle mightily to make it go in a straight line.
"Third," said Malfoy, leaning in closer and lowering his voice, "you're a mudblood. And unless you zap them with a levitation curse, Muggles can't fly."
That was roughly the point when the air exploded with so many hexes half the class ended up in the infirmary.
Quidditch tryouts took place the following weekend. Despite Malfoy's often and loudly expressed disbelief, Lily did turn up and she did fly. Her broom was misbehaving, but she wrestled with it masterfully, and won herself a place on the reserves. Nobody was laughing, because it was rare for a second year to do better than that, and she was the first girl to get anywhere near a place on a Quidditch team. Reserves seldom got any chance to play at school level - not when you had magical healing on demand - but it near guaranteed her a place in the squad the following year.
Sirius Black flew with frenetic enthusiasm, and won himself a place as a Beater. It was a position he was well suited to, zooming about the place thwacking Bludgers with a club. When it came to Gryffindor vs. Slytherin, Sev suspected there were going to be a lot of Slytherin heads getting 'mistaken' for Bludgers.
Malfoy was heard to remark snarkily that they'd only put him on the team because he had a good broom.
"Oh, is that why you bought yours?" Lily asked in passing. She gave him a sweetly triumphant smile that reduced him to a quivering rage.
Reigning in his fury, Malfoy flew quite excellently, and when he was awarded a place as a Chaser there were more than just Slytherins applauding. Though there were three Chasers on the team, it was a skilled position, and one that usually went to at least third or fourth years.
Malfoy was well pleased with that, opining that even if Potter got in, he'd still have won. "I got there first. Even if they pity him enough to pick him, I got there first."
James Potter, however, wasn't content to merely get in. He put on a blinding display of aerial acrobatics - juggling Quaffles, flying with one hand, flying upside down... When he finally touched down, he received a standing ovation from everybody but Malfoy's cadre of Slytherins. Josh and several of Malfoy's other non-supporters practically had to sit on their hands to stop themselves from joining in.
The applause redoubled when James' new position was announced... that of Seeker, the most coveted spot in the game. Almost no one made it to Seeker without at least a year in another position under their belt.
Malfoy led the Slytherins back to their common room spitting and snarling. "Bloody tryouts are a bloody joke! Mudbloods and morons. And that show-off Potter - that's not flying, that's bloody circus tricks. As if juggling proves you'd be any good at catching the Snitch! It's a setup."
He snapped the password at the guardian statue so sharply that it practically leapt out of the way, a nervous look in its stony eyes. Malfoy threw his very expensive broomstick to the floor with a thud. "How much d'you reckon Black paid to get him and his friends on the team, huh?" he snarled. "I wouldn't take him for a thousand Galleons!"
"Oh, shut up, Malfoy!" burst out Josh angrily. There was a sudden dead silence.
"Got a problem, friend?" said Malfoy icily, turning towards him and moving straight up into his personal space. Everybody else got out of the way, rapidly. When Malfoy was snapping and snarling, you cringed and looked obedient if you wanted to survive. When he called you 'friend' and gave that certain dead-eyed smile, you didn't stop to pack.
Josh, however, had been simmering too long, and he'd passed the point of no return. "Grow up, Malfoy! Nobody cheated, and nobody fixed anything. You just lost. You just lost, and you know why? Because they're better than you."
Aside from Josh, who was going red and panting with long-suppressed anger, nobody in the room seemed to be breathing. The assembled Slytherins were all holding their breath, and Malfoy had gone perfectly, perfectly still.
"Better?" he asked very quietly. Sev recognised the tone; it was a variation on his own best cold voice. Except he used it when he was trying to psyche people out of picking a fight... and that wasn't what Malfoy was using it for.
"Yeah, better," snarled Josh, arrogant in the face of the inevitable. "Way better."
"You like James Potter, hmm? I suppose you'd rather be with him. Rather be with your Gryffindor friends, yes?"
"Well, I don't see how they could be any worse than you," sneered Josh darkly.
The two of them stood framed there for a moment. Malfoy was a good half-head shorter, but something in the way he stood made that seem very unimportant. The time stretched out longer and longer... and then Malfoy suddenly pulled away to regard his audience. The deceptively gentle smile on his face was such that several of them took a step backwards.
"It seems we have a traitor among us," he observed lightly. He pulled an exaggeratedly thoughtful expression. "Now, what do we do with traitors?" he asked rhetorically, tapping his chin. "Ah, yes." He turned back to Josh. "I do believe we make an example of them."
His smile widened, until it looked something like a tiger's.
