"Pick your feet up, greaseball, what've you been doing, drinking Torpor-Tonic?"

"Careful acting so friendly there, you'll blow our cover," said Sev sardonically. Lily laughed and elbowed him in the ribs.

"Can you move it, please? I don't want to miss the Quidditch."

"You don't want to miss your boyfriend showing off."

She gave him a look.

"I notice the sudden disappearance of the 'he's not my boyfriend' defence," he added.

"Watch it, you."

"The only thing to watch around here is your laughable insistence on bolting the barn door after the horse is not just gone but launching full page advertisements in the Daily Prophet to tell everyone where it's been."

"Okay, that's either a mixed metaphor you got there or a very talented horse."

"It can't be both?"

Lily arched her eyebrows at him. "Tell me, have you ever considered a brief spell in St. Mungos?"

"Frequently, but how would I get them to take you away?"

They both fell silent and deliberately glared at each other as a third year boy scurried past on his way to festivities. As soon as he was gone, Lily started to giggle. Snape affected a look of mild disdain.

"You're really not cut out for a life of espionage, you know that?"

"Why would I be?" she shrugged. "I'm seventeen!"

"So am I," he shrugged back.

"No you're not, you're forty-five. You're a forty-five-year-old who's made himself some potion to look like a kid and infiltrated the school."

"Yes, because if I'd invented the Elixir of Youth I'd much rather be spending quality time with Malfoy and his friends than marketing it and raking in the millions."

"Well, why are you spending quality time with Malfoy?" Sev shot her an exasperated look.

"You know why."

"No," she corrected, "I know what you're doing, and how you're trying to do it. I still don't really understand why."

"Preserving the future of wizardry isn't enough?"

This time it was Lily who gave him the look. "For me, maybe; not for you."

"I'm the most suitable person for the job."

"And that's, like, the whole reason you chose to do it?"

"It's only logical."

She pulled a face. "You are sooo Spock."

"I'm what?"

"It's a Muggle thing. And I'm not telling you what it means."

"I don't care."

"You don't care about anything."

"And yet you never take the hint."

"Well, shut up, 'cause you're stuck with me." She stopped walking. "What've we got to do now, again?"

"We have to check in with Professor Alomancia." Sev rolled his eyes. "Can't you remember the simplest little thing?" He was arguing largely for the sake of it, but it was actually an honest question. He found it genuinely difficult to understand why other people's minds and memories didn't work the way his own did.

"I have a great memory! I'm just not... freakishly freakish like you."

"Thank you." They skirted the big crowd at the Quidditch pitch to go down to the tent where the Divination professor was setting up.

"Ah! Lily, Severus." She beamed at the pair of them. Unlike most of the staff they'd already seen that morning, she didn't look surprised that they hadn't yet torn each other's throats out. In common with most future-gazing wizards and witches, Professor Alomancia was largely oblivious to what was going on in the world of the present.

"Everything set up, Professor?" asked Lily brightly. They had adopted an unofficial attack plan of Lily being chirpy and friendly, and Sev looking equal parts disgusted and bored - poses neither one of them found particularly taxing.

"Oh, yes indeed, yes indeed." She looked up at the sky, although Sev couldn't see that there was much to be read from it when it was blue and cloudless. "It surely is a most auspicious day for the revelation of secrets." Sev supposed that could be taken as a sign for his mission, but didn't take it particularly to heart; Professor Alomancia might indeed have a genuine talent, but it was more than buried in a sea of meaningless blather.

"Severus!" She turned to him. "Would you like to know your destiny?"

"I rather think not," he said dryly. There was nothing she could tell him that couldn't be read more clearly by his own perceptiveness.

The teacher shrugged, unoffended, and turned to Lily. "Lily? How about you? Would you care to know what the tides of time have in store for you?"

"Um..." Lily glanced towards the Quidditch team. "I think the match is about to start-"

"And you wouldn't want to miss a second of your boyfriend in flight, now would you?" jabbed Snape.

"Ah, yes. Young James," said the teacher, with a faint smile. "The astral tides strongly favour the two of you, you know," she said in confidential tones.

Lily looked as if she couldn't decide whether to scowl or be faintly pleased. She settled for staring down Sev's smirk and quickly extending a hand to the professor. "Go ahead, do a reading. I'm not in any hurry."

"Excellent." Apparently clueless as to the undercurrents behind the simple exchange, the Divination teacher took Lily's hand and examined it closely. "Ah yes, strong lines, strong lines. I see much health, love and happiness in your future, and-"

Abruptly she cut off speaking and her whole body went slack. Sev stopped rolling his eyes and watched her more closely. He'd seen her do this once before; the prelude to giving a true-spoken prophecy. The bits and pieces of lore she tagged together at other times might be close to worthless, but the words she spoke in this near trance-state would come true.

Sev focused his attention on her intently - but not so intently that he didn't have time to process the thought that her last true prophecy had also been delivered to Lily.

Professor Alomancia began to speak, in a cold, sharp voice that wasn't her own. "The hidden snake shall fight the lion. The wolf will carry the fawn. Dog shall be rat and rat shall be snake, and death given freely is the greatest gift. The mighty will fall, the weak will rise, and the dark is brought down by a child."

She snapped out of it abruptly, and gave Lily a vaguely bemused smile. "Are you quite okay there, dear? The reading's finished."

Lily shook her head and pulled away. "Oh yeah, I'm sorry, I guess I zoned out for a minute. Thinking about the future, I guess. Thanks, Professor." She turned to Sev. "Come on, Snape. We've got work to do."

"Did you hear that?" she asked, as soon as they were out of earshot.

"No, I've mysteriously gone selectively deaf."

"Oh, give it a rest, would you?" Lily frowned, biting her lower lip. "That's the second time she's done that to me! What d'you think it means?"

"Anything. Nothing." Sev shrugged. "It's prophecy. It's all very enlightening... after the fact."

"No - let me think a minute." Lily perched on the low wall beside them, Quidditch match abruptly forgotten. "The hidden snake will fight the lion... d'you think that's about you and James, last year?"

Sev shrugged again. "I wouldn't have called it much of a fight, but who can tell with prophecy?"

"The wolf will carry the fawn... That's gotta be Remus, natch, but what's a fawn got to do with anything?" Sev had never in as many words stated to Lily that he knew Lupin's secret, but she just assumed he did anyway. Lily knew full well he seldom missed such things.

"Then there was a load of crap about dogs and rats that I didn't get at all... and death as a gift - which I guess means somebody dying for their cause." She looked at him. "No offence, but that doesn't really sound like you."

"It doesn't," agreed Sev neutrally. Heroic sacrifices really weren't his raison d'être.

"...and the dark brought down by a child - that could be you, though."

"As you've already pointed out, I'm really not much of a child, either."

Lily nodded, and hugged her knees, looking frustrated. "Dammit, I hate this! Why tell me anything at all, if it's not gonna make the slightest bit of sense?"

"It's prophecy," he reminded her dryly. "That's what it's for."

Lily refused to be beaten. "She gave me another one, in the... second year? I never got that, either. I can't even remember it now."

"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." Sev reeled it all off in a flat monotone.

"Oh, and where were you when I was taking my History of Magic OWL?" she demanded.

"Sitting in the back, desperately looking for any question where I could believably drop a few marks."

"Yeah, well. Anyway... I don't know what that one was all about, either. I thought it was about you, first off. But now I don't think so."

"You don't think I'm likely to betray you?" he asked, eyebrows raised.

"I think if you were going to betray me, you'd totally tell me you were doing it and really not care what I thought."

"Pretty much," Sev agreed amiably.

Lily frowned for a long moment, and then just shook her head and giggled. "So, according to Professor out-of-her-tree Alomancia, I'm either gonna have health, love and happiness, or death, pain and betrayal in my future. Place your bets now, please."

"Married to James Potter, you'd probably get both."

Lily pulled a disbelieving face and punched him in the shoulder, hard. "Married?"

"Oh, as if you're not going to," he taunted her. "You could marry him tomorrow, if your parents said you could."

"Oh, like they would!"

Sev smirked triumphantly. "Oh, but you would if they'd let you?"

She pummelled him again, and he put up his arms to fend her off. Just then, Professor Vitae came charging up. "What's going on here?" she demanded.

Sev quickly twisted amusement into sullen contempt. "She hit me."

"He started it!"

The Charms Professor glared at them, or rather glared at Snape and pretended it encompassed Lily too. "Stop it, both of you. Don't you have places to be?"

"Yes, Professor," agreed Lily quickly.

"Whatever," said Snape, looking disinterested.

Professor Vitae shook her head and marched off in the direction of the Hogwarts building - and then abruptly turned, and shouted back "And ten points off Slytherin!"

"Okay, that was completely your fault," Sev told Lily when she'd gone.

"Hey, it's your stupid cover story." She looked up to where a few small shapes were already zooming about the skyline. "Hey, come on! The Quidditch's already started!"

"I can barely contain my excitement," said Snape dryly, trailing along behind her.

Sev slipped away from Lily to sit with his fellow Slytherins for the Quidditch. They all commiserated with him over the indignity of having to drag a mudblood around after him.

"She's an annoyance - nothing more," he shrugged boredly. "Like the buzzing of a fly."

"Flies only buzz until you pull their wings off," observed Simon mildly. The others laughed, although perhaps a little uneasily. Even junior Death Eaters weren't totally sure how to take somebody like Simon Lestrange.

Malfoy was of course Quidditch captain and team Seeker, and Avery was a Chaser. Colin and his younger friend Graham Goyle were both Beaters, smacking the Bludgers with such enthusiasm that Sev suspected they were picturing them to be their opponents' heads.

The line-up of the Gryffindor team had changed since James Potter was first made their Seeker. Once it had been a weak team with him their only big gun; now he'd built it up into powerhouse. In a fairly played match, no other house could stand against them. Of course, Gryffindor vs. Slytherin was rarely a fairly played match.

The staff had been sensible enough to start the mini tournament with Hufflepuff vs. Gryffindor, and then Ravenclaw vs. Slytherin. It stopped the final from being a foregone conclusion, although the other two houses got hammered in the playoffs. Then came the main event.

"Wish me luck," said Malfoy dryly as he got up to take his place after the brief break. The others all laughed. 'Luck' was the last thing the Slytherin team were going to be relying on.

It started off small... and got nasty very quickly. A few deliberately aimed Bludgers became pushing, shoving and grabbing, physical fouls became magical ones, curses started flying... There was a whistle blowing every couple of seconds, or so it seemed, but nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention.

Actual possession of the balls took second place to smashing your opponents into little pieces. The Slytherins had come packing ammunition, but the Gryffindors were expecting trouble and had a few spells of their own up their sleeves.

Play had to be stopped three times for the young nurse Poppy Pomfrey to run on and shift people back into their original shapes. Halfway through, after a particularly lucky goal, Gryffindor Chaser Michael Bell got rammed by Crabbe and Goyle and had to be taken off. He was replaced by the substitute... Lily.

The point when there was a girl and mudblood on the pitch was when it got really nasty. It was impossible to keep track of all the fouls without Omnioculars, because there were always three or four going on at the same time.

Lily, however, sailed through it beautifully - largely because James left off the aerial acrobatics to appoint himself personal bodyguard. Nobody had the chance to get near her, and she even sunk a couple of Quaffles. Malfoy was not going to be a happy camper.

The pattern was abruptly shattered as James peeled away and started spiralling upwards. Malfoy twigged immediately and zoomed after him, but he just didn't have the acceleration to catch up. Potter had the Golden Snitch, and Gryffindor the match.

As the cheers of the other three houses drowned out Slytherin's groans, Sev got to his feet. High above, Malfoy gave him a subtle nod. A moment later, the whole crowd was crying out in shock and - depending on house allegiance - either glee or dismay at the storm of coordinated curses surging towards James Potter.

Nobody was watching Snape as he slipped away back towards the school.