Chapter 6 - Lily's Experiment

"Snape! Snaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape!"

"WhhaaaAAAAT?"

"There's some Gryffie girl out here pounding on our door!"

Severus Snape gasped. His newly-found acquaintance (his one and only true friend at Hogwarts had recently transferred to Beauxbatons) was already proving to be as good as her word.

"Come on! Let's go!" Lily Evans shouted. "We don't want to be late!"

Sev came tumbling out the Slytherin door, shoes untied and hair unbrushed. Two of his textbooks fell on the floor at her feet, spilling a fan of folded and ragged parchments.

"Looks like we had a late start this morning!" Lily remarked, scooping up the volumes.

"I'm not very organized," he replied, tripping over his shoelace and stumbling into her. He blushed bright scarlet. "Pardon," he murmured.

"Here," she said, shoving the books into his hands. "Let's go!" Grabbing Severus by his Slytherin tie, she yanked him out the door, nearly asphyxiating him.

Two Slytherin classmates watched with puzzled looks on their faces. "When did the Headmaster get Sev a keeper?" one asked the other.

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"Can't you hurry?" Lily cried, dragging her charge into the Great Hall. "The House Elves will be taking this food off the tables in a few minutes!" She flung Sev in the direction of the Slytherin table, where the remains of the meal vanished as he watched.

"Wait!" Severus yelled, pouncing on a roll.

"Quick!" Lily shouted, pointing. "Eat that! You need to keep up your strength!"

Snape gagged down half a roll and two swallows of milk before Lily dragged him bodily down a corridor and pushed him through the door and into his first class. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was the Slytherin/Gryffindor Potions Lab.

Quite unintentionally, both interrupted Professor Sartoris' introductory remarks to the class. Sheepishly apologizing, Severus first tripped over his shoelace, then stumbled over to a lab desk, grasping it for dear life.

"NO! Sit over here with me," Lily hissed.

"What a total spaz," Sirius Black muttered.

"Sit here!" Lily commanded.

"Leave off!" Severus hissed back.

"I told you I'd partner you! Don't be such a baby! I promised your mother I'd look after you, and I intend to do it!"

"What about his mother?" said one Slytherin.

"Did she just call Snips her baby?" said another.

There was a horrified silence from the assembled Gryffindor students. Lily had committed a ghastly breach of etiquette by choosing a Slytherin as her partner.

"What the deuce is Evans doing with Snivelly?" an aghast James Potter asked Remus Lupin.

"The Dark Arts Tango?"

"Very funny."

"Well, how the deuce should I know?"

"So much for your big alleged love life, Prongs," Sirius Black whispered. "Looks like Evans will have splinters under her fingernails from scraping the bottom of the barrel."

"Oh, shut up," James spat. "Can't be! It's too hideous!"

"Just look at him," Sirius said with a high-voltage sneer. "As attractive as a rotten toadstool. Utterly pathetic."

Lily turned on Sirius, snarling. She then glanced at Severus, noting that Greta Bulstrode was angling toward him. "Sorry. Excuse me," she said, elbowing the girl out of her way and taking her place next to the bewildered Slytherin boy.

"Excuse you nothing," Greta blustered. She was quite a lot bigger than Lily, and wanted Severus as her lab partner because he was particularly gifted at Potions and didn't mind doing most of the work. "Sev is my partner."

Lily bared her teeth at her. "Back off, you cow," she growled, perhaps more loudly than she intended. Professor Sartoris came over to see what was wrong.

"Is there a problem?" he asked.

"No sir," said Severus. "It's just that I have a new lab partner today." Greta shot him a look full of hurt. Severus didn't care if she gazed at him crosseyed for an hour; she rather scared him, anyway. "That's all right, isn't it?"

Professor Sartoris was somewhat mystified, but smiled and nodded. "It's unusual to have a Gryffindor/Slytherin partnership -- but certainly!" The Potions Master was a sweet-natured man who didn't take House rivalries too seriously anyway.

Greta picked up her books and slammed them down next to Seth McElwain, who jumped. "I didn't fancy Snape as a lab partner anyways," she hissed loud enough for everyone to hear. "I don't want my report to be soaked in grease."

Severus ducked his head at the insult. Lily did not, turning on Greta like an avenging fury. "Look here," she said, getting right under the big girl's moon face. "There's no need for that! You're a great lumpy thing yourself, you know."

"Let's get started," Sartoris announced, intending to douse this conflagration before it engulfed his dungeons.

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Both James Potter and his lab partner Sirius Black continued to stand transfixed, spending most of the class period analyzing the bizarre new liaison between Greasehead and Lovely Lily.

"What do you make of it?" James said.

"Dunno, but it makes my skin crawl," Black replied.

"Let's get to work," Professor Sartoris announced.

"Yes, sir. Hey Prongs."

"What, Pads?"

"I see something sliiiiiiiiiimy."

Lily, who had overheard this unkind remark about Severus, turned to tell off Sirius Black when she realized he had just spoken through a proboscis.

There was a muted sound of laughter from the Slytherins.

"Sev! Did you do that?" Lily hissed into her lab partner's ear.

"Do what?" he replied, tossing his hair from his face. "Get busy with those boomslang skins!"

In the meantime, the other Marauders had seen what had happened to their compatriot's face and nearly laughed themselves into spasms.

"Lookatcherfacemate!" James managed to whisper, convulsed.

"Sev, teacher is looking!" hissed Morgana Waite, Slytherin. "Do change it back!"

With a hardly-noticeable wave of his left hand, Severus restored Black's face the way it had been, a trace of a smirk on his own.

*Humor? Severus? Is such a thing possible?* Lily thought.

"Hee haw," said Sirius Black to his lab assistant.

"Oh gods, Sev!" shrieked Morgana Waite, elbowing him in exasperation. "Will you just STOP it! We'll just lose some more House points!"

"It doesn't really matter now, does it?" Severus said rather loudly. "The Gryffs are dead last."

"Only because we -- " James began.

Lily whirled, turning on him with a vengeance, accusing finger pointed dead at his heart. "James Potter, don't you DARE say anything about what happened the other day!"

"Evans!" he gasped, wounded.

"One word -- only half a word -- and I'll never speak to you again!"

"HEEEEE haw," Black repeated, horrified.

Another chorus of titters from the Slytherins.

"Is there a problem, Mr. Snape?" asked the Potions Master.

"Not at all, sir," Severus replied, the epitome of manners. "If Black's making sounds like an ass, it's not my doing," he announced calmly.

It was too much for his lab partner, who clapped her hand over her mouth so hard she nearly knocked herself reeling, strangling her own laughter into severely distorted squeaks.

"That's ten points from Gryffindor," Professor Sartoris noted. "And ten points from Slytherin, while I'm at it."

"Hee haw," said Sirius Black.

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Severus had restored Black's voice after forcing Potter to ask "pretty please with sugar on it." The lab proceeded pretty much as it usually did for the last twenty minutes of class.

"That's just disturbing, Padfoot," James said, crushed. "Look! She's even smiling at the greasy git!"

"Too right she is," Greta Bulstrode added, commiserating him. "Want to partner me, next lab?"

"No."

Sirius Black wore a cagey expression. Dumbledore's edict still stood; he would have to be careful. All of a sudden, his face regained its confident smile. Class having been dismissed, Black and James pushed through the group of students leaving the Potions Lab.

"Have a nice day, girls," Black said to Snape and Lily.

"Don't, Sev!" the redhead warned, lowering his wand hand with her own. "Don't take the bait."

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Lily first suspected, but then knew for a certainty, that Severus was trying to distance himself from her.

"Wait, Sev!"

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not your charity case."

"Nobody said you were!"

He suddenly stopped short, turning on Lily with an expression of exasperation. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I told your mum I'd look after you!"

"I don't need looking after!"

"I beg to differ."

"Differ if you like. Do you know how embarrassing this is for me?"

"Yes, but I don't care."

"Obviously. Lily, I don't need you hanging around me."

"You most certainly do," she retorted. "You stay by yourself far too much."

"And you think if you hung out with me, I'd fit in more -- "

"Yes."

"I'd be happier, get along better -- "

"That's right!"

He whirled around, his face only inches from hers."Then you're a bigger fool than I ever dreamed possible, Lily Evans. Don't waste your time. Go back to your Gryffie friends. That way you can all make fun of me like you did as far back as -- um, when was it? Yesterday?"

She saw a liquid shimmer in his dark eyes and recognized them as incipient tears before he strode off in the opposite direction.

For the next few minutes, she felt like crying herself.

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Lily didn't see Severus again until dinner. He came in toward the end, bookbag still looped around his shoulder. His hair was tangled, and one sock hung dispiritedly around an ankle. His face was unreadable, as it usually was.

"Why were you being nice to that creep today, Lily?" asked Waleia Wanyee.

"He's not a creep, Waleia."

"Of course he is, Lily. Are you doing charity work for extra House points?"

"Why don't you shut your head, Waleia?"

The girl's mouth closed with a snap. With a little exclamation of disgust, she turned away from Lily.

"All right there, Evans?" James Potter ventured.

"Shove it, Potty," she replied.

She looked up when she didn't get the response she anticipated. Potter and Black were looking across the dining hall with odd expressions on their faces. Oh --

no --

!!!!!!!!!!!

There was a loud explosion. The students shrieked. The teachers all rose at the same moment. Lily's hands flew to her mouth.

" -- over at Slytherin's -- " one of Lily's classmates exclaimed.

How did she know exactly where to turn, exactly who to look for?

The Headmaster and three other professors now hurried to the Slytherin table, their facial expressions an odd mix of anger and pity.

Was that Severus they ran toward? Of course it was. Lily knew it would be, somehow.

The teachers backed away, pushed back by something unseen. Lily stood on her bench, trying to see around all the heads, all the arms, all the bodies who stretched out between her and Severus Snape.

She saw him now, in the middle of that invisible circle. His shirt was nearly burned off, his face smudged with carbon. He had his wand in his hand --

NO SEVERUS! Lily screamed as loudly as she could --

The tattered form of the dark and damaged Slytherin child seemed to radiate a force of its own.

WHAT THE HELL??? another Gryffindor shrieked.

Lily turned on James and Sirius. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM, YOU BASTARD? Lily screamed, pointing her finger, her accusing finger, right at the heart of Sirius Black.

Everyone fell silent to hear the spell that came from Snape's bleeding mouth, just as they knew it would --

Anál nathrach

orth' bháis's bethad

do chél dénmha

The amorphous shape streaming from his wand and congealing above his head looked black and poisonous. Students now poured toward the huge double doors, fists pounding against it and their voices crying out when they would not open. A subaural growl issued from what served the demon as a head. Static electricity puffed out the hair of everyone within a hundred feet before the first bolt hit, that fire-red bolt that had sizzled the air it had passed through in a flaming arc, hit near Lily, hit right across from Lily, hitting the bench where Sirius Black and James Potter had been sitting only temporal moments before. It blew apart into a thousand splinters.

Lily could no longer see Severus. She was instead looking -- all looked -- at the horror he had managed to conjure up from that secret store of Dark magic he kept locked a heart as battered as his body.

BEGONE

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dumbledore screamed, his own wand pulsing white energy into the thing, scalding it, hurting it, causing it to shriek in an ungodly roar. The White Wizard's voice soared above every other sound in the Great Hall, echoing from every surface and rebounding again and again until one word seemed to blend into the next.

INTO THE PIT I CAST YE FORTH

I CAST YE INTO THE PIT OF THE DAMNED

I CAST YE INTO THE CIRCLE OF FLAMES

I CAST YE INTO THE ABYSS

I CAST YE OUT

A sudden implosion deafened everyone in the Great Hall. Hogwarts students collapsed on the floors, collapsed on top of each other, clutching their ears, crying out in their confusion and pain and fear.

When the silence finally fell, as everyone knew it would, only one voice still cried.

Lily instinctively knew whose it was, just as surely as she knew that Albus Dumbledore had enfolded its owner in the protection and safety of his arms.