They Didn't Know We Were Seeds

It may have been a couple of weeks since Wilkes and Crabbe ruined Severus's back-to-school shopping trip, but he's not forgotten and his anger hasn't cooled in the slightest. When he steps into the Slytherin's common room, he tucks away his worries with Rookwood, and Lily and Cresswell away for later consideration and starts to enact his plan. He will be able to carry it out himself on Wilkes with little trouble, seeing as they are roommates, but Crabbe is another beast altogether. She is a girl and he cannot get pasts the wards on her dorm. For her, he will need help. Severus doesn't yet know who he's going to ask, but he does have a few ideas. Unfortunately, it is too early to talk business just yet.

Most of Slytherin is still awake and they fill the common room to the brim. Younger students sit by the windows, staring out of them hoping for a glimpse into Black Lake's inhabitants' lives as they chat with one another. Some of the older ones take up the sofas by the fireplace and brag about their summers while others sit at the tables usually used for studying to play games of Exploding Snaps and Wizard Chess.

Slytherin isn't usually a jovial place, but Severus has found over his years as a student and professor the first couple of nights back at Hogwarts the Slytherin common room holds a celebratory air. They are happy to be back, even if it's only for a little while.

Severus scans the room for Sage, but when he doesn't find him, he isn't surprised. His brother is likely on prefect duties for the evening. It's typical for the Slytherin prefects to bully the youngest pair into doing the first round of nightly tasks so the older ones can enjoy the first night back with their friends. So, instead, he joins Scabior over at the tables and plays a couple of rounds of chess with him. When the boy starts to get frustrated with losing so much, Severus waves over another third year to play with Scabior and joins Regulus and his friends by the fire to talk.

Unsurprisingly, Wilkes is among Regulus's group. Severus spends a lot of his time staring at the other, so much so, Wilkes starts to fidget. At this point, Severus pulls out a book from his robe and starts to read, only occasionally looking up and, mostly, at Wilkes. About an hour later, his dormmate decides to call it a night and goes to bed. Severus isn't worried. Whatever wards Wilkes puts on his bed to keep others out won't stop him.

Over the next couple of hours, the rest of the group disperses as well and finally, between yawns, Regulus asks, "Aren't you going to bed now too, Severus?"

He waves the boy off. "After I finish this chapter," he tells him.

With a wave, the Black spare leaves him. A little over a quarter of an hour later, Sage and Magda Pucey appear. "Hey!" Sage calls as the redhead trudges past them and up to her dorm.

Severus puts his book down. "Hello," he returns. "How was your first night as a prefect?"

His brother smiles and shrugs. "Not too bad. Magda and I whinged a bit about the Transfiguration essay we had to write over the summer, otherwise, we didn't have much to talk about and it was rather dull."

"That essay was a pain," Severus agrees.

Sage chuckles. "I know!" Turning towards their dorm, he says, "I'm knackered. How about you?"

He lifts the book he's been reading. "Just a chapter more and I suspect I will be," he replies.

His brother nods. "Okay. I'll see you at breakfast, all right?"

"Yes, okay. Good night, Sage."

"Night, Severus!"

For the next ten minutes, Severus flips through the pages of his book. He then looks up to see that only two other students are left in the common room. He's only marginally surprised to see it's Posey Duffield and Andrew Mulciber. Duffield sits on Mulciber's lap and has her face tucked into his thick neck while Mulciber has hidden one of his hands beneath Duffield's skirt.

As the two shift a little for better access to one another, Mulciber notices his looking. Severus raises an eyebrow. Mulciber sneers at him, but all the same, pulls his hand out from where he's had it and brusquely detaches himself from Duffield. Standing up, he leaves the other teenager blinking at him with a baffled expression as he straightens out his clothes.

Hardly even giving her a glance, Mulciber leaves Duffield behind and takes the steps to his dorm two at a time. Severus turns his gaze on Duffield. The teenager's freckled-face is set in an expression of disgruntlement.

"You," she growls.

He stays silent.

Standing up herself, Duffield readjusts her skirt and shirt collar as she snaps, "What're you lookin' at you pervert!"

This time, Severus scoffs. "Please. Like I'd ever be interested in you."

Duffield bares her teeth. "Oh, that's right, you like Mudbloods."

Severus doesn't hesitate and not even a second later, Duffield is spitting out suds and trying to rid the taste of soap from her mouth by wiping her tongue on her sleeve. Firmly, he tells her, "I will not have that word used in my presence."

"Oh, fuck you," she hisses. "Everyone knows your not as pious as you like to pretend to be!"

He rolls his eyes. "I've never tried to pretend to be anything less than what I am," Severus says (at least he hasn't in this way). "Just because I'm a Slytherin who believes Muggleborns deserve better than to be treated like the muck on our boots doesn't mean I'm two-faced." He crosses his arms. "You really ought to say away from Mulciber. He's—"

"—I know exactly what he is and I don't care. His family's got money and that's all that matters to me."

Severus stares at the teenager, a feeling of disgust welling in him. So Duffield is one of them. One of the girls who'll happily marry a sadistic killer if it'll improve their status. In her case, however, he can't see Mulciber marrying her. Duffield is a little too much of a mongrel for anyone from an even slightly fanatic family to touch. "He's not going to marry you," Severus says finally.

She laughs. "I don't need him too." Eyes predatory, she tells Severus, "All I need him to do is get me up the duff. Then he'll pay me a nice little sum to keep my mouth shut and then I'll be able to leave this bloody place and never have to look back."

"Leave?" he echoes, confused.

"So you don't know everything!" Duffield jeers. "You've seen the Scabiors. They're a bunch of leeches and the few who aren't, like my mother, are the ones they suck on. One of these days, they're going to kill her and they won't even care because they're a bunch of blood-suckers." The determination in her tone mixing with excitement as she goes on, the teenager explains, "I'm not goin' to stick around to become their next cow when they kill my mother. I'm leavin' and that's it. The best way I know how is to get Mulciber or somebody with a bit of money who thinks they're too good to have me for a wife to get me in the family way."

He shakes his head. Severus understands Duffield's urge to run away, but it sounds like she is playing a very risky game. One she's far more likely to lose than win. Mulicber may pay her, but he might just as quickly curse her to miscarry, or obliviate their relationship from her memories. Even if everything goes according to her plan, what will she do with the baby? Keep it? That would be quite the mistake after all the trouble she plans to go through to become independent from her family.

Now, though, is not the time to start trying to dissuade her from her path. Right now Severus needs to convince her to help him with his revenge against Crabbe.

"Cheers, I suppose," he finally tells her. "I hope you get what you want."

Duffield narrows her eyes. "Oh really? You want me to abandon my family?"

"I don't think it's my place to tell you how terrible your idea is, that's all."

"You're damn right it's not!" she affirms with great vehemence.

He lets silence fall between them a moment. Then, he asks, "How would you like to learn a new spell?"

"In exchange for what?"

Severus grins. "Casting it on Lilith Crabbe for me, seeing as I cannot get into the girls' dorm myself."

She eyes him first, then demands, "Show me it first."

-o-O-o-

The Great Hall is abuzz with laughter and rabbiting when Wilkes walks in the next morning. Wilkes keeps his head down and tries to make himself smaller, but it does nothing to hide his new rainbow plumage as he walks over to the Slytherin table to take a seat. Severus feels even more pleased that he made a point of hiding the other fifth-year's robes so he couldn't cover the worst of his feathers behind his hood.

"Did a spell backfire on you, Wilkes?" Severus asks as the other sits down a few spots away from him. Their housemates laugh at his question and then even louder when the fifth-year's feathers puff out from his anger at the question.

When the teenager finally looks over at Severus, his eyes are poisonous. Severus doesn't bother to hide his mirth and smirks at the other. He has a feeling Wilkes might try and get him back for this, but he's going to fail. Severus grew up fending off the Marauders and taught the Weasley twins. Severus knows more prank-jinxes and hexes than any person has a right to. Whatever Wilkes tries, Severus will know how to counter – if he ever manages to catch him off guard in the first place.

Their staring contest is cut short when a new wave of guffaws and cackles fill the air. They both look towards the entrance to see Crabbe walking in on shaky, coltish giraffe legs. She holds her arms out to help balance herself as she walks to their table. When she reaches it, she stares at the benches for a moment before resignedly transfiguring a plate into a stool and placing it at the far end of the table so she can sit down and eat – albeit a little uncomfortably. Crabbe doesn't look up even once as she fills her plate and starts to eat.

Severus starts to contemplate saying something to her like he did Wilkes when Duffield, just arriving for breakfast herself, purposefully bumps into one of Crabbe's legs. She gasps with great exaggeration when the leg slips forward, hitting the edge of the table hard, causing Crabbe to wince. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" she apologizes. Duffield looks at Crabbe's breakfast plate and remarks cuttingly, "Working on making your new legs as fat as your old ones, eh, Crabbe?"

The younger teenager turns bright red as those sitting nearby start to snicker. Now wearing a smirk, Duffield winks at Severus as she goes to take her usual place among the sixth and seventh-year group she is friends with.

"Why did Duffield just wink at you?" Sage asks in a whisper.

Severus turns his head and tells his brother, "She helped me with getting back at Crabbe for the shit she and Wilkes pulled during the summer."

"Really? Wow. I thought after how awful she was to her cousins she'd be… I don't know, not so helpful."

He eats a spoonful of his porridge and shrugs his shoulders. "I made helping me worth her time; she got to learn a new spell for her troubles."

"How long are those spells supposed to last anyway? I'm surprised they aren't in the infirmary having Madam Pomfrey fuss over them."

Severus grins at Sage. "They'll be back to normal a little after lunch. The spells aren't long-lasting, which I reckon Madam Pomfrey figured out quite quickly. There's really no reason for them to stay in the infirmary and miss out on classes because of some slight physical changes either."

Sage laughs. "You're right. If Madam Pomfrey allowed that, people would be constantly transfiguring their arms into tentacles or turning their skin into scales to get out of quizzes and exams, wouldn't they?"

He nods, chuckling himself now. "Exactly."

-o-O-o-

In near-silence Severus, Lily, and Cresswell settle in beneath the staircase leading to the Ravenclaw's dorm. Drawing out his wand as Lily and Cresswell take out parchment and quills, he puts up a mild deterrent charm to keep people from immediately noticing them beneath the stairs. When done, he takes out his own parchment and quill and starts to write. When he's just finished with his list of possible spells that could be on the faucet in the first-floor girl's lavatory, the lanky Ravenclaw to Severus's right shifts his satchel beneath his bum and grumbles, "Remind me, why are we doing this here?"

Severus puts away his quill and sighs. "Because Rookwood isn't a team player."

"That's really not an answer," sulkily replies Cresswell. He looks down at his list after a moment, only to frown and scribble what Severus assumes is another spell.

"Oh, it definitely is," he says, glaring at the Ravenclaw.

Cresswell quickly returns the look, but before he can saying anything more, Lily sticks her head between them and blocks each other's view. "Enough of that you two," she orders. "Are you done with your lists?" asks his girlfriend, waving her list in the air, she tells them, "I am!"

"Nearly."

"Yes."

Severus and Cresswell answer together.

With a jeering edge to his tone, Severus tells the other boy, "Hurry up then Cresswell."

"I am!" he snaps, returning his attention to his list. A moment later, with brows furrowed, he writes yet another spell down. Then, he shoves it at Severus. "Alright, done," he says, "here."

Severus compares the lists, Lily's list holds eight spells, his twelve, and Cresswell's has thirteen. He then crosses out six on Lily's that are the same on his own and Cresswell's, then two on his list that Cresswell's list already includes. Then, he flips over Lily's parchment and writes down the twenty-five remaining password spells on it. Finally, he reads over it once more and ends up crossing out two that came from Cresswell's list, explaining as he does so, "I know for a fact these two were invented in the last century. We need to check the rest and see when they were created if possible. If they aren't as old or older than the founders it's highly unlikely they are the spells used on the faucet."

"Do we know the counters for any of these already?" Lily asks, leaning in on her elbows to get a better look at the list.

He nods. "Yes," he replies before writing the counters to five next to their spells. Then, he circles another three and says, "I know they have them, but I do not remember them off the top of my head."

Cresswell reaches over and points at the third to last spell. "This one doesn't really have a counter, but you can trick it into thinking you're giving it the password by saying its incantation to it backward."

Severus writes this down. Then he pulls his parchment out from beneath Lily's and divides the remaining seventeen into three columns. Then cutting the paper up with his wand, he hands them out to Lily and Cresswell. "Each of you is responsible for researching the spells on this list and reorganizing them in order of most likely to be the spell Salazar used to least likely."

Cresswell takes his list none-too-gently. "This is dumb," he grumbles. "He probably used the same spell that's used on the portraits and the Headmaster's gargoyles."

Severus scoffs. "Yes, he used the most basic passcode spell on the faucet that leads to his Chamber of Secrets."

"Why not?" argues the Ravenclaw. "It's not as if anyone speaks parseltongue and it's so simple that everyone trying to break into his Chambers would think it's any spell under the sun but that one!"

He doesn't bother to hide how much of a dunderhead he thinks Cresswell is. "Do you really believe over thousands of years not one person has figured this out until you?"

Cresswell flushes. "Well…"

"There's no harm in at least trying later, is there?" Lily pipes up.

Severus sees a warmness overcome the Ravenclaw's eyes before he looks to his girlfriend. Her face is gentle and focused on Cresswell, not him. Severus tamps down on feelings of hurt and jealousy. He's sure Lily isn't intentionally giving Cresswell doe eyes. "No," he concedes, "there is not. I just think it is extremely unlikely to be that spell. It is why everyone must do their proper research so we aren't wasting time when it comes time to break into the chambers."

"See, Dirk? Severus isn't saying it's not possible. He just has doubts." Lily glances at him, a reproving set to her brows as she says, "Though, I admit he could say it a little more nicely."

Severus starts to gather up his things and tucks his list of spells that he's in charge of snappily between the pages of one of his potions texts. Briefly, he sneers at Lily. "When lives are at risk there's no time for niceness," he tells her while getting to his feet. As she gapes, Severus briskly readjusts his robe. Finally, he concludes, "I'll see you tomorrow in potions, Lily. Do your research, Cresswell. We can regroup Saturday."

As he stalks away, his girlfriend calls, "Sev!"

He ignores her.

How did you all like the chapter? Learning a little more about Posey (and the Scabiors)? The prank on Lilith Crabbe and William Wilkes? Then the last scene with Lily, Severus, and Cresswell?

Thank you for reading!

Edited: 12/27/19