The Common Room was effectively deserted. This was mainly because the weather was still relatively pleasant, so the majority of the student body was making the most of it and spending the day out of doors. Lily and Severus might well have been doing the same, had they not been given detention and therefore spent their first Saturday morning accidentally transferring many years worth of dust from the Hogwarts Trophy Room onto themselves. The advantage of there being no one in the Common Room meant that there was no one to witness their return, which they were both a little relieved about. Detention and dirt were probably not things to be proud of, so a lack of an audience was a distinct advantage.
"We should shower and change robes," Lily said with a sigh, feeling some dust tickle the back of her throat, "Then meet back out here?"
Severus nodded his agreement to her plan, though he nodded very gently so as to make sure no dirt was accidentally displaced. They separated to head to their respective dormitories, but Lily hesitated in the doorway to her's. She had felt there was something slightly odd about the way Severus had looked around the room, about the way he had been in general. She pulled the door to, but left it open just enough that she could look out into the Common Room. She felt incredibly silly standing there waiting, watching an empty room, but she did it anyway. She reasoned that she would just hover there for a few moments, just for her own peace of mind, then head to the shower.
However, her shower plans were neatly derailed, much as she had vaguely dreaded, as she observed Severus slinking suspiciously from the boys' dormitory towards the communal toilets situated off the Common Room, a towel and robe grasped in his hands. Lily loved the school towels. They were green and fluffy, with silver details, and appeared clean every morning. To her it was the height of luxury. She waited a moment longer, thinking, before following after Severus. She didn't particularly relish the idea of spending more time than necessary in her grimy robes, mainly because she could feel the constant tickle of dust at the back of her throat and nose, but she knew that part of growing up was sometimes doing things that had to be done. She personally felt that she, along with Severus, were remarkably mature in that respect, though Petunia and her mother clearly still regarded them as silly little children.
As far as she was concerned, they had regularly demonstrated responsibility and forward thinking. That spring, they had come to the conclusion that frogs would be a good kind of pet for a young witch and wizard, so they had meticulously made plans. They had quite sensibly decided that Lily's house, which had a proper bathroom with a proper bath, was a better place to keep frogspawn than Severus's. They had conveniently ignored minor issues like whether or not the Evans would want to bathe or not. Lily had worn a cardigan with nice big pockets, and they had waded into the pond to scoop frogspawn out into them. Unfortunately, her mother had caught her dripping her way into the house and had been considerably less impressed with their innovative and mature plan, which meant that they had both started their budding magical careers without pets.
She pushed open the door to the communal toilets and stepped inside. Severus looked up at her, startled, his eyes wide. He was crouched over the sink, seemingly rinsing his hair. They looked at each other for a silent moment, Severus dripping dirty water down the plughole. Lily was no more an expert on washing than she was on cleaning, but she felt certain that a cursory rinse in the sink was not going to be quite enough to deal with the grime both of them had ended up liberally covered in.
"What's wrong with the boys' shower?" she asked, a hazy suspicion drifting into her mind. Severus chewed his lip uncomfortably, still dripping.
"Sev?" she said, when he didn't answer her immediately, a sense of misery setting in.
"…Nowt," he said quietly, his eyes flicking down away from her gaze, before continuing reluctantly, "Mulciber said the showers were for purebloods only…"
"Oh," Lily said sadly, the toilets feeling cold and impersonal, "Oh,"
Severus said nothing. Lily felt a degree of gratitude that the girls she shared a dormitory with, while not being exactly welcoming, were at the very least merely ignoring her. It was a little cold and hurtful, but none of them had been explicitly nasty. She was aware that some people disliked people like her and Severus, whose parents weren't magical and who had been raised in the muggle world, but even Narcissa hadn't expressed it to her face, merely in her hearing.
"Oh," she said again, feeling small and powerless, "The girls didn't say anything like that,"
She wondered if she should have told him that, if maybe that would be nicer not to know, but he smiled weakly.
"That's lucky," he said, and she smiled in relief. She paused, thinking. Slowly, she went back to the door to peer carefully at the Common Room. There was still no one there. Smiling suddenly she turned back to Severus.
"Wait!" she instructed him brightly, before dashing quickly to the girls' dormitory. It too was empty. Delighted, she bounded back to where Severus was frozen, still dripping grey water with a confused expression.
"Come," she told him firmly, grabbing his wet hand and dragging him unceremoniously after her. Lily would later realise that in her enthusiasm they had indeed shed grime in the Common Room as well as Severus leaving a few splashes of dirty water on the floor, but ultimately no one noticed and even if they did no one connected it to them so she felt no particular reason to care. By the next day it had magically disappeared anyway. Impulsively and utterly convinced of the brilliance of her plan, she drew him into the first year girls' dormitory bathroom, where she finally released his hand and turned to beam at him. He looked damp, dirty and lost, staring at her with big, dark eyes. He seemed entirely out of place and completely aware of the fact. He shuffled uncomfortably.
She gestured magnanimously towards the shower. He stayed where he was, still dripping, so she pushed him gently into the cubicle and swished the curtain closed with an air of finality. From the cubicle there was silence.
"Pass your clothes out," Lily said impatiently. She didn't want to explain this to the other girls. They may not have said anything about whether or not non-purebloods were allowed to use the shower, or indeed whether or not boys were allowed, but the boy part at least was sort of implied.
Almost reluctantly, a dirty black robe was pushed out from under the shower curtain. Lily waited, but no further clothes were forthcoming.
"All your clothes, you can't shower in your underwear," she snapped, and was rewarded by a pair of odd socks appearing on top of the robes one at a time. Finally, a pair of ancient pants came forth, to be carefully buried under the dirty robes by Severus's clearly unwilling hand. She waited, feeling that she was being both exceptionally clever and incredibly patient, but there was no further action from behind the shower curtain.
"Severus…" she asked, suddenly wondering, "Have you ever actually had a shower before?"
They didn't exactly talk about washing very much, mainly because it was an incredibly boring topic of conversation compared to virtually anything else available to them. Petunia was possibly the only person Lily knew who would rather discuss bathing habits over magic, but Lily had long since accepted that Petunia was a little odd. Petunia seemed to be under the impression that it was Lily and Severus that were odd, but purely considering the numbers Lily knew that mathematically she and Severus outnumbered Petunia two to one so that put them in the majority and made them normal. She had wisely not told Petunia this, but Severus had agreed wholeheartedly with her assessment. He'd even added the perfectly logical argument that even if you considered height, the two of them together were taller than just Petunia on her own, so they were still in the majority. Their ages too, when combined, gave a number bigger than Petunia's age.
If he answered, it was too quiet for her to hear, but it didn't really matter. Lily had lost her patience, which she admittedly didn't have a huge amount of to start with. Just because she thought that it was a brilliant idea didn't mean that she wasn't also aware that other people might not feel quite the same. She wanted both her and Severus to be washed and out of the bathroom by the time any other girls returned. She had become accustomed to people failing to comprehend her genius, so felt it was best not to risk it. Besides, she was getting fed up of the sensation of grime that covered her skin and ticked at her nostrils, so she tore off her clothing with gusto and entered the shower. Severus yelped in surprise and flinched away from her.
"Oh, stop being such a big girl's blouse," she snapped, turning the water on. It took her a few twiddles of the knobs before she managed to get a good temperature of water, which didn't really affect Severus as he was skulking out of range, watching her with wide, alarmed eyes. In some ways, Lily had always thought Severus was a little like a hedgehog. She rather liked him, but she knew he was mostly prickle. She was potentially the only person who got anything remotely soft from him, and she was by now perfectly used to how to best avoid the worst of his spikes. If he told her that he had eaten slugs, she wouldn't be entirely surprised either. She didn't tell him any of this, as that was an important part of preventing him from metaphorically rolling into a small ball of spikes and viciously stabbing her, which also made the hedgehog analogy somewhat fail. Maybe a hedgehog with a machete was more accurate.
"Come on," she said, standing under the large shower head and allowing the water to turn an unappealing shade of grey. It was a spacious shower, with a generously proportioned head that filled the entire cubicle with warm water and copious amounts of steam. Severus cautiously shuffled under the water, almost as if suspicious it would in some way attack him. Lily wondered if advanced spells might be able to make water into a weapon, because otherwise warm water was fairly unthreatening, especially within the context of a shower.
"It's warm," he said, appearing surprised.
Lily picked up the large contained of shampoo and held it out to him, "Shampoo, for your hair," she said cheerfully. He took it and gingerly sniffed it. He made a gagging sound, and gave it back to her. Lily sniffed it. She didn't gag, but she had to admit that she did agree that it was rather overpoweringly floral in scent. Rebelliously keeping his eyes fixed on her's, he reached his hand slowly towards the bar of soap. He sniffed that cautiously too, and then proceeded to lather it up and through his hair, all the while maintaining a suspicious eye contact. Lily shrugged and used a small amount of the shampoo, as she didn't particularly want to smell like she had marinaded herself in petals. She wasn't his mother, it wasn't her concern what he used to wash his hair. In many ways, she was tempted to try the soap herself but she didn't want to waste unnecessary time.
It was in many ways one of the more stressful showers Lily had ever taken in her life. She hadn't previously ever considered showering to be particularly fun as such, more a necessary task to prevent her mother from yelling at her, but she now accepted that showering while constantly jumping at every slight noise in the fear that it was one of the girls about to catch them made the entire experience one that she would describe as the exact opposite of relaxing. However, while it felt like it lasted forever due to the constant lurking nervousness at the edge of Lily's consciousness, in reality it was over quickly, leaving the two of them wrapped in the fluffy green towels provided to all the Slytherin students. Lily and Severus assumed the other Houses had towels in their House colours, much like they probably also had bedding in House colours. The Common Room decor, which for them was focused around green with elements of silver, was presumably also related to House colours.
Once they'd both hurriedly dried and dressed themselves in fresh black robes, they once more had the task of slinking out of the first year girls' bathroom and back to the Common Room, which was luckily still mostly empty, making the entire operation a success. Severus left her by the lake window, scurrying off to dump his dirty robes in the first year boys' laundry basket. Lily waited patiently, patting at her still damp hair with a towel. She sat down on the floor, her back leaning against the back of a sofa, watching the faint outlines of fish swim in front of her eyes. The sunlight filtered through the waters, casting a glorious green glow over the whole room.
When he returned, hair still dripping slightly and looking far cleaner than Lily could ever remember seeing him before, he was clutching a thick book that looked like it might have previously lost a fight with a wild bear judging by the slightly tattered state of it. He held it out to her, so she could read the title of Hogwarts: A History emblazoned on the cover.
"We should read this," he said, "I took all of mum's books and this was one of them. It might be a bit old but it might have all kinds of information that we could do with,"
Lily wasn't entirely certain if Eileen had given Severus all of her old books or if she was even aware that he'd taken them all, but it really wasn't any of her business so she made no comment. Rather, she took the book gingerly to leaf through and consider. It looked to be quite heavy going in terms of content, but definitely fascinating and worthy of interest. She nodded slowly, biting her lip thoughtful as Severus watched.
"Wait here," she said abruptly, handing the book back to him and rushing off back to the girls' dormitory, leaving him with a puzzled expression on his face. It was clearly a day when she was full of brilliantly inspired ideas.
He was still there when she returned moments later, looking faintly abandoned, still clutching his book. It was probably the safest way of holding the book, given that it was old enough that Lily wouldn't be surprised if the odd page fell out.
"We can't exactly read the same book at the same time," Lily said sensibly. It wasn't entirely true, as they could, it would just be complicated and likely lead to arguments as they each attempted to turn the pages at different speeds. They had attempted it once with one of Petunia's magazines and it had ended in disaster. It had been funny, though for some reason Petunia had been less amused, probably because of the state her magazine had ended up in. Lily hadn't thought it to be much loss to the world, which was just one of the many things she and her sister disagreed on. There seemed to be so many, an ever increasing amount that just grew exponentially.
"So, we can alternate chapters," she waved her book, a considerably smaller novel in considerably better condition, at him. He flinched back just in time to avoid being hit on the nose with it, not because Lily had been attempting to hit him but more because she had misjudged the distance in her enthusiasm. He looked between the two books, considering their vastly different sizes quizzically.
"They may have different length chapters…" he pointed out, taking her book in his hands and flicking through it. It was labelled Charlotte Sometimes and was clearly a lighter read than Hogwarts: A History, as well as weighing a lot less.
"We'll manage," Lily said optimistically, "Because otherwise we'll have to wait until the end of the books to discuss things properly and this cuts out all the waiting,"
Patience had never been one of her virtues. Severus was similarly unlikely to be in the running for an Olympic gold medal in patience. It may not be a particularly normal or sensible solution, but Lily thought as ideas went it was at the very least worth trying.
"We can see," Severus accepted, "Should we go make the most of the good weather?"
The idea being a sensible one allowing them to make the most of the sunlight, they traipsed out to explore and possibly read by the lake. It may not have been the most social thing for them to have done, but given that none of their housemates were lining up to spend time with them, they chose to familiarise themselves with both the castle and the surrounding culture as best they could.
Term continued that way, as the weather grew colder and the nights longer. Once a week Severus would sneak into the girls' shower, carefully orchestrated to a time when the dormitory was empty and the Common Room quiet. It helped that virtually no one in the House seemed at all interested in either him or Lily, choosing to ignore their existence for the most part. It wasn't exactly friendly, but in that respect at least it was a major advantage. Being ignored was at the very least preferable to being singled out for harassment. As winter's frozen fingers tightened their grip on the castle, the other Slytherins took to spending more time in the Common Room, complicating matters, but the lack of interest shown to them proved to be a form of invisibility.
The first year Gryffindor boys had proclaimed themselves to be the Marauders to anyone who would listen, as well as the vast majority of the castle who didn't actually want to listen, a band of brothers who would bravely adventure their way through school and rid the world of evil. Lily got the impression that they had decided to start with her and Severus, which she felt was unfair. She didn't personally think that either her or Severus was evil as such. A bit naughty according to Petunia, who had always been an unbearable little goody-two-shoes, but Lily thought they were ultimately decent people. Even their more naughty moments were acts of creative academic investigation, that had been sadly misunderstood by the adults in their lives.
Their classmates, of all Houses, couldn't detract from their enjoyment of their classes though. While they had both concluded that their Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher was providing a walking, talking demonstration of the word 'useless' in addition to the world's most comprehensive guide on how not to teach, they had managed to find a wide range of books to study from in the library. The librarian, despite being stern and faintly terrifying, didn't appear to care about anyone as long as they were quiet and treated her books with the proper level of respect. She clearly ranked books as far more important than children. As the Marauders appeared to be clinically incapable of being quiet, they rarely entered the library, which suited Lily and Severus just fine. It meant that they could relax and concentrate on the joys of learning magic.
Their system of sharing books was working relatively well too, though it was almost certainly the most inefficient way of reading they could have chosen, with the possible exception of reading aloud together balanced on their heads. They had tried that once, before they had started Hogwarts, and it had ended with Severus falling in the river and Lily losing her shoe, so they were in no hurry to repeat it. They had found it to be relatively fun, but Lily's mother had been distinctly unimpressed when Lily had returned home with a dripping wet boy and only one shoe. Their method was however a pleasant experience, though any time either of them read anything interesting or exciting they had to impatiently wait for the other to finish what they were reading, swap books and wait for them to catch up. As a consequence Lily had lightly hit Severus with the novel a number of times in frustrated impatience, which hadn't made him read any faster, and he'd poked her in the face with her own plait, which had also not made her read any faster.
Charlotte Sometimes gave way to Tom's Midnight Garden as they slowly made their way through Hogwarts: A History. They had both fiddled with their beds to see if there was any way they could magically transport them through time, but had both concluded that it was unlikely, and sworn that they'd always always always be best friends with each other. In comparison to the novels, Hogwarts: A History was not only considerably thicker but also the subject matter was difficult and often required some thinking. It was probably also more useful for their education, but reading something else was still fun. As it was, the excitement of learning magic meant that they were gleefully studying more than they needed for all their classes, eager to learn as much as was possible, impatient to be able to do all the spells they saw the older years casually perform, let alone the understated power present in most of their teachers.
Aside from the library, they had carved out a den for themselves in the Slytherin Common Room where they were left in peace to read or talk quietly amongst themselves. It wasn't exactly something they had set out to do intentionally, but as both of them had been enchanted by the views out of the windows into the murky green waters of the lake, they had automatically gravitated to wherever they could look out them. This, combined with the gradual realisation that their company was, for the most part, not particularly welcome, had lead to them skulking in the corners by the windows. Neither of them particularly minded the floor, so they had simply taken to sitting in a nice, cosy corner by the windows, and no one had objected when they surreptitiously dragged a rug into it. At least they had each other, and the beautiful enchantment of magic, which nothing could ever take away from them.