See chapter one for all disclaimers.

AN: Maria Welteislehre is my own character. (I got Welteislehre, by the way, from the Welteislehre who hypothesized that the moon was made of solid ice. Nazi leaders promoted this idea when they were in power.)

 Maria Welteislehre is my own character. (I got Welteislehre, by the way, from the Welteislehre who hypothesized that the moon was made of solid ice. Nazi leaders promoted this idea when they were in power.)

I'll try to update this at least once a week, on Mondays or Fridays and – if I have a chapter to spare – both.

Thanks, Sabriel41, for your great review! It was very encouraging.

chapter two

There was only one person at Hogwarts Severus truly considered a friend, or as close to a friend as anyone had ever become, anyway. Her name was Maria, and this was her last year as a student. She seemed glad to see Severus; vaguely so, as usual, but what was to be expected of a girl her age with friends like hers? The upper Slytherins were the elite of their house, regardless of skill or personal traits. Generally, the younger years didn't associate with the older ones, and Maria's exception for him—the spidery, mordant, antisocial boy whom even his own housemates shunned—was abnormal indeed. Then again, Maria was an abnormal sort of girl; she was, after all, the only true half-blood in the past century and a half to have been sorted into Slytherin. Her mother had been the black sheep of a highly revered pureblood family in the wizarding community. Not only had she been the first member of the all-Slytherin family to be sorted a Gryffindor, but she also had the gall to go marry a Muggle man from a neighboring town. Maria had always told Severus that the only reason her mother had married a Muggle was to spite her parents.

Severus exchanged a few words with her in the common room before trudging off down the staircase to the boys' dormitories. He was exhausted for no natural reason he could fathom; he only guessed that a mild soporific potion of some sort was mixed with the feast. He changed into his pajamas without ceremony, barely pausing to fling his robes over the back of a nearby chair before collapsing into his bed and pulling the curtains shut around him.

He rose early the next morning, feeling as if someone, during the night, had taken his brain out of his skull and dusted away the cobwebs and given it a rinse for good measure before putting it back. He took a brief, brisk shower, dressed in his black academic robes, and headed back for his dormitory to check his schedule and get his books together.

He frowned as he noted that the first class of the school year was to be Transfiguration. He hated Transfiguration. For one thing, most of it was ridiculous, turning unlikely objects into even more unlikely objects—honestly, who wanted or needed a teapot that might change back into a tortoise at any point in time? For another, it wasn't one of his better subjects. That is to say, he was rather terrible at it. Professor McGonagall despaired of him, to tell the truth, and she had told him so on several occasions.

Well, good moods never lasted long with Severus Snape. He got his books together and walked up to breakfast scowling.

"Oh yay," Lily said as she examined her schedule. "Charms this morning. What a wonderful way to start the year."

"Joy," said Cordelia. "What's after that?"

"Um… special class. Arithmancy, for me."

"Don't see how you can understand any of that," Cordelia frowned. "I've seen those charts of yours. They're impossible."

"That is because you, as a wizard-born witch, do not have the advantage of a Muggle education, which involves, among many other useful things, maths. Arithmancy is all adding and subtracting, and it's a lot easier than it looks."

"Brag away, Muggle-born," said Cordelia, getting out her own schedule. "Muggle studies," she said at last.

"You'd think you'd get enough of that from me," said Lily.

"Professor Frame teaches from a wizard's point of view. I can't understand half of what you're saying most of the time."

Lily chuckled. "Well, if you need help with something, you know I'm more than willing to help you out."

"Yeah, thanks, Evans. Oh, look; there's Eliza."

Cordelia waved the other girl over, and the two commenced to chatter about Care of Magical Creatures, speculating what body part their accident-prone Professor Kettleburn would lose this year. The man already had a hook and the last year he had lost two fingers in addition to the usual scrapes and bumps that were inevitably accumulated each lesson.

Lily finished her eggs and toast quickly, and scurried up to the Charms classroom, where Professor Flitwick was writing a few notes on the board. Flitwick always outlined the lesson on the blackboard, not for the student's benefit, as some assumed, but for his. He was an enthusiastic lecturer, and tended to wander and forget what he was supposed to be talking about when he got too excited, so he always had the major points of the lesson noted where he could see them. Lily loved this. Flitwick was by far her favorite professor, though Professor Sprout ranked a close second.

"Miss Evans!" Flitwick beamed as she came into the classroom. "Good to see you again! I trust you had a good summer?"

"Yes, wonderful, but it's good to be back, Professor," Lily smiled.

"You know, class doesn't start for another ten minutes," said Flitwick.

"I know, I just wanted to get here a little early. Get a good seat, you know. Do you need help with anything?"

Flitwick directed her to place sheets of parchment at each seat while he finished summarizing his lesson on the board.

Lily finished with the parchment and went to take a seat near the door. She got out her Charms text and skimmed over the first few chapters for good measure, and by the time she had finished with the third chapter her classmates were coming in.

The lesson was an enjoyable one, as usual. Flitwick taught them how to animate the sheets of parchment to fold themselves into simple origami shapes, which was interesting in itself, but James and Sirius eventually got bored with the easily-mastered charm and when James enchanted his self-folded paper airplane to zoom about the room, the lesson was basically over. Sirius ripped his and Peter's parchments into fourths and made a fleet of little paper airplanes that dive-bombed the other students until Flitwick cast inflagreo on them in midair and they burst into flames.

Lily had to resist the urge to hex James for ruining—well, disrupting, anyway—their first class. She left the Charms classroom in a mood almost as bad as Snape's as he left his Transfiguration. So much for enjoying the first day back.

The rest of the day wasn't as tortuous as it could have been, but it was close. In Arithmancy she ended up paired with Auster Wilkes, a Slytherin boy even nastier than Snape, but for very different reasons. Snape was at least honest in his unpleasantness; he didn't hide it beneath a mask of narcissistic courtesy and sour charm like Wilkes did. Snape made his dislike for her obviously clear, whereas Wilkes spoke to her in a condescending, oily sort of way that made her skin crawl.

Transfiguration was better. The boys always behaved better in Transfiguration because they knew as well as everybody else that Professor McGonagall cut nobody slack, and she was possibly harder on her own students than those of other houses.

At lunch she picked at her meat pie over a potions text, and during History of Magic she tried to pay attention but the notes she was trying to take ended up dribbling off into doodles of cubes, stars, swirls and crosshatching. Herbology was muddy, as usual, and when Lily finally trudged up to her dormitory to put away her books, she was grubby, sweaty and bedraggled-looking. She changed out of her robes into jeans and a t-shirt and washed her face before heading out to the grounds for a walk. It was cool and clear out, a perfect September day, and Lily was glad she could finally enjoy it.

"Glad to hear your holiday wasn't any better than mine," she said, scratching the back of her neck with the chiseled tip of her quill.

"I'm not complaining," Severus said.

"No, but I am. Pass the teapot."

He did, and she filled her cup to the brim.

"So," she said as she lifted her cup to her lips and blew across the dark surface of the liquid, "did you get any new and unusual ingredients for experimenting with this year?"

"A few," Severus replied, hunching his shoulders in what passed for a shrug.

"Any really interesting ones?"

"They won't sell me those ones," said Severus. Maria snorted.

"No, I suppose not. Any plans for this year?"

"Not really. The usual." He shrugged again. "Keep up in my studies. Stay out of trouble."

Maria quirked a smile. "What about keeping the pearl of the family name free of tarnish?"

Severus smiled grimly. "Not this year, apparently."

Maria set her teacup down and gave a careful sort of cough. "Is that good or bad?"

"Can't you tell from the look on my face?"

Maria shook her head. "No."

Severus closed his eyes and sipped his tea. "Good."

Maria apparently decided not to press the issue and changed the subject. "So," she said; "any suggestion for what I should do once I leave school?"

Severus opened his eyes. "I thought you were going to Salem," he said.

Maria snorted. "That was my mother talking," she said. "She wants me as far away from the Dark Lord as possible. As if any witch or wizard could run from him." She rolled her eyes. "She thinks I can just leave the country and wait until it blows over. As if it actually will blow over. I have a feeling that this will be a long-term campaign, and that if I went to Salem to wait it out I'd be waiting until the next century."

Severus hesitated. "There's… talk of him in the dormitories."

The girl smirked. "Take what you've heard and multiply it by about a dozen and you'll come close to what I've been hearing. The uppers are in a rage about him. Those that haven't already decided to join him are seriously considering it. Even me."

Severus leaned back in his chair. "You—you have?"

Maria chuckled and leaned over the table, bracing herself on her elbows. "Think about it, Snape. Power you never dreamed of. He needs great minds to achieve this great plan. From what I've heard…. Well. One could be revered."

Severus studied his teacup, running one finger around the rim. "Maria…."

"You're only fourteen, Snape, and you already know more about potions than I do, and they've been my best subject for close to seven damn years. Can you even imagine how valuable you could be to him?"

Severus opened his mouth to speak, but Maria shushed him, making a fretful gesture with her cup. Tea sloshed over the brim. "No, don't answer now. I know how you are. You say something and then later realize you were wrong but you'll keep to what you said before because you don't want to admit you were wrong. Don't say anything. Just think about it, will you? I know you're pretty young; you shouldn't get mixed up in something this deep just yet. But consider it. For later, you know."

Maria sat up straight again, wiping tea off of her hand with a napkin. "Anyway," she sighed, "you really should go. I've got a load of stuff to do and I'm sure you do, too."

Severus drained his teacup and set it on the table. "Thank you for the tea."

"Any time. Or, rather," she corrected herself, "any time I'm available and feel like drinking half a pot of tea. See you later, Snape."

Severus left the study alcove, deep in thought. Maria's words sentiments concerning the Dark Lord were disturbing, not because they were particularly alarming but because they so closely echoed his own daydreams. He hadn't really considered joining the Dark Lord; for one thing, he had never thought of himself as passionately against Mudbloods and Muggles—he wasn't really passionate about anything at all except for potions—and for another, he was simply too young to embroil himself in this ripening thundercloud of war.

Severus didn't approve of daydreams. They were too indistinct, too vague. If he wanted something, he worked at getting it. This, though, hadn't been something he considered worth striving for. It was just too risky. A Master's degree in potions was one thing. It was assured. It was tangible. It relied only upon his skills as a potions brewer to achieve, and those he knew he had.

But achieving fame and glory amongst the ranks of the Dark Lord's supporters? What was there to say that the Ministry wouldn't flush this campaign out in two or three years? What was there to say that he wouldn't get caught? The Ministry had been arresting people as of late on mere suggestions of sympathizing with the Dark Lord. He didn't want to get caught up with that.

Then there was the part of him that rejected the idea completely. The way Wilkes and the others talked about it was almost sickening. They lusted after the fame and glory the Dark Lord promised like dogs slavering for a meaty bone, and Severus liked to think he was above that kind of thing. What would he be but a hypocrite if he suddenly tipped the scale of his indecision and joined them? He didn't think he could respect himself if he did that.

And he wondered about Maria. As his surrogate big sister, he looked up to her in a way he hadn't looked up to anyone else. Her opinion mattered to him probably more than she would ever know. Of course, he wasn't going to rush out and join the Dark Lord just because she thought it was a good idea, but it gave him cause to speculate, and speculate some more.