By the time fifth-year started, Willow and Lily had saved enough money to get everything they'd need for school. Petunia had gotten engaged to her longtime boyfriend Vernon Dursley, the man that had, at first, thought both Lily and he were aberrant. It was fine after he'd gotten to know them, now he was only slightly hesitant to spend time with them.
When Willow had first met the man, he got this gut feeling of disgust, which ruined their first impression because Willow couldn't help but gag when the man offered his hand. Petunia gave both of them a stern talking-to, separately, and they grudgingly started talking. Now, while they still aren't friends (and never will be), they could tolerate each other, for Petunia's sake.
Severus was fidgeting dreadfully on the train to school, his eyes straying to Lily every few minutes before darting away. Willow sighed—he had gotten over his jealousy, knowing that he most likely didn't have a chance with the black haired boy, and had nonverbally told Severus that he should ask his sister out using many hand signs and eye twitches and, once, even smacking the other boy upside the head and pointing at her, during their summer hols. It looked like the boy was finally going to ask her.
"I'll just… go freshen up," Willow told them, making sure his rat was safe behind his stuff so Lily didn't try and hurt him (she still didn't like Scabbers) before leaving the two and winking at Severus. Severus turned red, but straightened and nodded.
"What was that about?" he heard Lily ask as he walked away.
It was weird, not having to worry about Bilius finding him on the train. The older boy had graduated the year before, wishing him and his sister all the luck in the world and telling him not to let anyone take advantage of him or else, "I'm going to have to come back and knock some heads together," Bilius had told him with a laugh.
"Evans," someone spoke, startling him out of his revery, not that he let it show.
"Vanity," Willow intoned back at the Quidditch nut. She was a seventh-year, denoting that this would be her last year attending Hogwarts.
"I'm Head Girl this year, Evans," she told him haughtily, a smirk on her face. Willow gave her a flat look, telling her that in no way did he care. Emma Vanity had always ignored him.
"As Head Girl, I'm here to inform you of your duties. Since you are a prefect for Slytherin house, you are to attend a meeting with the other prefects in the prefects' cabin. Come now," she told him, ignoring his blank look. Willow huffed. He didn't want to be a prefect and had told the headmaster so in a long letter when he first got his badge. He had hoped that ignoring it would make it go away, but it seemed not.
Following the girl, Willow felt a sense of dread and familiarity. He hoped nothing went wrong.
Lily was a prefect for Gryffindor, that much he knew, but he was hoping that she and Severus had talked before she was found and stolen away by her Head-Of-House.
Her red face told him she did.
"Did you know?" she hissed when he sat next to her, both siblings watching the Head Boy speaking to the group—a Hufflepuff with blonde hair and a stout build named Amos Diggory. Another sense of familiarity had hit him when he first saw the boy, but Willow had ignored it in favor of hedging his sister.
Willow stifled his chuckles and nodded at his sister. "Did he ask?" Willow whispered without looking at his sister, eyes trained on the boy before him. He didn't know why the calm look on his face made Willow uneasy.
"Yes," she hissed again, her movements told him that she covered her face.
"And?" Willow prompted, glancing at her before looking back at the head when Vanity started talking.
"And I said yes of course. This Saturday we'll be going out to the lake for a picnic," she told him. Willow smiled, his heart only twinging a little. He was happy for them. He didn't know why it felt shocking; the two of them had been good friends for years and he thinks they'd make a cute couple.
Being a prefect was terrible. He didn't have any time to spend with Severus at all. Every time he had time to spend with his best friend, so did Lily, and the two of them would go on dates, leaving Willow alone.
It was one of these times when Willow found Sirius Black wandering around alone.
"Hey," he called out, unsure as to why. He didn't like the other boy—he was too arrogant for his tastes. But he was handsome so Willow decided to put up with him.
"What do you want?" Black asked between clenched teeth. The boy was carrying a blanket and looked just as secretive as he had been the year before. But this time, neither Potter nor Lupin were with him.
"Why are you sneaking around with a blanket? Are you hiding something?" Willow asked, trying to peek. Black recoiled, hiding the blanket behind his back.
"Nothing," the boy replied hastily, glaring at him.
"Nothing? I don't think 'nothing' answers my question, Black. I asked why you were sneaking around, not what are you hiding. I couldn't actually care less about what you're hiding in that ratty blanket," he told the black-haired boy. He actually looked more attractive with a sneer. He didn't know why, but he imagined an older man with the same coloring and a ratty beard glaring down at him, and it sent shivers down his spine. Though, he could have done without the beard.
"Fine, it's none of your business. Better?" the boy hissed, backing away from him. Willow rolled his eyes before turning around. He'd follow him later. For now, he'd prefer to go back to his dorm and feed his rat. Once there, he'd wait for Severus to come back and give him the details of his date. Willow would listen before threatening to hex him, again, like they did every night.
"He must've gotten stuck, he's still on the map, I just don't know where that is," Willow heard as he walked his patrol late that night. He didn't know what map they were talking about, but he got the impression that it was something powerful, and the person was no doubt the boy that went missing the year before.
"Quiet, someone's coming," Willow heard as he rounded the corner. What he found was three boys huddled next to a pile of blankets with food and a bowl of water next to it.
"What are you doing?" Willow asked, looking at the three boys—Potter, Lupin, and Black—kneeling over the unused blankets.
"None of your business," Black hissed. Willow noted that Potter was looked between the blanket and Willow with a hesitant look on his face while Lupin just looked sadly down at the blanket. Willow felt guilty again, his eyes averting to Black.
"Is this what you were doing yesterday?" Willow asked, glancing quickly at the blankets before looking back to Black. Potter choked, Willow imagined Potter watching him incredulously, but didn't dare look away from Black, the guilt not as bad as when he looked at Lupin or Potter.
"Building a blanket fort, or whatever that is, isn't against school rules you know, I wouldn't have done anything," he told them. It was weird, sure, but not against any school rules. The feeling of building guilt made it taste like ash when he insulted them. He decided the best way to get over the guilt was to try to be nice to them.
"It's not a blanket fort!" Black screeched, turning red in the face and pointing at him in a way that was probably supposed to be menacing. Willow just leveled an unamused look at the boy. Didn't he see that Willow was just trying to understand him better?
"Sorry about him," Lupin interrupted his friend before he could go on a rant. "It's just, well, we've never been on good terms," Lupin stuttered out, his eyes avoiding the other boy. Willow blushed slightly, remembering past threats and taunts they all threw around.
"It's fine," the boy told them before nodding at Lupin and Potter. "I've got to go. If you plan on leaving that there, you should still get permission from your Head-of-House." He grinned unabashedly at Black. "Good luck with nothing," he said, which turned Black's face a burning red color.
Willow felt great when he finished his patrol and traded off with the Hufflepuff who would go over the east side of the castle.
Severus wasn't back—none of his roommates were—when he got to his room, and Willow took this chance to talk to his rat.
"I don't know what's going on Scabbers. At first it was Severus that made my heart beat erratically," Willow said, making the small rat squeak out what sounded like a laugh. Willow ignored it.
"But now, since I gave him my blessing to date Lily," he paused, surprised that he wasn't feeling that pang of hurt shoot through him, "now it's Black." The small rat froze, looking up at Willow in horror.
"Not that Black, pervert rat," Willow muttered, trying not to think about the snotty third year that was in his house, while pulling the small rat into his arms. He cradled it to his chest and sat back in his bed. He had never done this, preferring to keep the rat in the cage since he feared what would happen to him if he escaped into the castle.
"Sirius," he muttered, looking up at his ceiling with a frown. The rat was silent for a minute before it started to squeak and shake. Willow looked at the animal with wide eyes as it convulsed, afraid it was having some kind of heart attack, only to be shocked when the thing turned to look at him with highly intelligent eyes, mirth rolling around in beady black orbs.
"You're a strange rat, Scabbers," Willow commented as he put the rat back into its cage. He was distracted from the intelligent, laughing rat when his roommates started to pile into the room for sleep. Severus, being the last, gave him a whispered detail of the things he did with his sister, only to be threatened with a hexing again.
Willow forgot about it all when he dreamed of the girl with the bushy brown hair and the Potter clone with Lily's eyes.