A/N: As usual, thank you to everyone who took the time to review. Slightly off-topic: I saw Star Trek last night and spent most of the movie comparing Kirk and Spock to James and Severus. But surely you've already noticed these similarities? Alright, alright, on with the story...
Knock. Knock.
Dumbledore looked up at the sound of someone pounding feebly against the vast door that led to his office. He knew it couldn't be a teacher, for they had ditched the knocking habit ages ago. All of the students were supposed to be in their classes at the moment, but things at Hogwarts were always so unpredictable that he knew to expect the unexpected.
"Enter."
Much to his surprise, it was Mr. Snape, the strangely Slytherin-like Gryffindor boy. And he looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes as though he hadn't slept in a century, and his mind was so fuzzy that he could barely walk in a straight line up to the headmaster's desk.
"Shouldn't you be in your Defense Against the Dark Arts class right now, Mr. Snape?" Dumbledore asked quietly as the boy stumbled up to him like a wasted drunkard.
The pale boy looked up; his eyes were yellowed and bloodshot. Dear Merlin, what had happened to him?
The truth was, Severus hadn't gotten any sleep in over forty hours. Ever since they released Malfoy, he had been trailing the boy— underneath the Invisibility Cloak— all over the castle until this very moment when he deviated from the path and ran all the way to Dumbledore's office. Severus knew Malfoy would be up here shortly to tell the old headmaster all about the Gryffindors' "attack" on him the night before. Ensuring that Severus made it to Dumbledore first was the only way he could even hope to avoid severe punishment. While Severus was hesitant to trust the old man, he really didn't have a choice. He couldn't stand the possibility of Lucius Malfoy sneakily turning their plot against them, so Dumbledore was their only hope left.
"I need to talk to you, Professor," Severus croaked, his throat dry and stomach growling rather thunderously. He had been so busy preparing his ambush on Malfoy yesterday that he had completely forgotten all about lunch and dinner, and since the prefect had ditched breakfast, Severus was forced to go hungry again in order to keep a close eye on him.
Dumbledore regarded him carefully. What could the poor, beaten-up boy possibly have to say to him? Dumbledore had a hunch that he was attacked, but he didn't dare draw conclusions yet.
"Go ahead, Mr. Snape."
xXxXxXxXx
Knock. Knock.
Darcy Umbridge's angry hazel slits looked up from the book she was force-feeding into her young students' impressionable minds and glared at the door. How dare someone interrupt her class. If it was Filch again, she swore she would have the Minister dispel him from Hogwarts and throw him in Azkaban within a week.
"What now?!" she shrieked, flicking her wand at the door impatiently.
"Good morning Professor."
Umbridge immediately calmed herself and beamed at the sight of one of her favourite students, Lucius Malfoy, standing in the doorway.
"Oh hello Mr. Malfoy," she gushed appreciatively, as though he had come in here solely for the purpose of visiting her. "What brings you to my classroom so early?"
Lucius' eyes gazed over the rows of students sitting in terrified silence behind Umbridge; apparently she had second year Gryffindors and Slytherins at the moment. Curiously, the Snape boy wasn't present. Oh, this would make things so much easier…
"I need to speak with Lily Evans," Lucius replied softly, settling his gaze on Lily herself, who looked presently surprised to be called upon. Meanwhile, Snape's three friends, Black, Potter, and Lupin, were watching him suspiciously, wondering if he was really going to keep his word. Lucius smirked innocently in their direction, trying to come across as though he was going to follow through with their demands, when he was really double-crossing them. He couldn't help but appreciate the naïveté of Gryffindors. For all of their supposed 'bravery,' they were a rather idiotic lot. For him personally, Lucius definitely preferred the Slytherin method of solving problems, rather than charging at the issue head-on without any sort of stable— or sane— plan as Gryffindors often did. Handling such matters privately was going to work to his advantage, while it appeared as though he was compliant with their orders, thus making them believe they were still winning this war.
Umbridge automatically released Lily; being a Slytherin supporter herself, Umbridge took a liking to the shy girl, and had recently assumed the duty of eliminating any of her sympathies towards Gryffindor.
"Is there something wrong?" Lily asked once they were alone.
Lucius had led her into an empty classroom down the hallway from Umbridge's classroom to ensure total privacy. The last thing he needed was Snape showing up and listening to what he was going to tell Lily. Although he had no idea how Snape acquired the information about him and the locket, he was certain he could convince Lily to keep this conversation entirely to herself.
"Your friend…Severus is it? He seems to think I have a negative influence on you," Lucius said quietly, staring right into Lily's shocking green eyes. Her smile dissolved into a frown at once.
"Yes," she whispered. "I'm sorry, he gets irrational about some things and—"
"Do you believe him? Do you think that I would try to hurt you?" Lucius pressed her further.
"Of course not! You see, that's why I think Sev's just overreacting. I think he can't stand the fact that I'm in Slytherin and he's not."
Inwardly, Lily felt her stomach clench up a bit, knowing that the problem was really her upset with the fact that she was in Slytherin and he wasn't. Oh, why couldn't the blasted hat just put them in the same house?
"Right you are," Lucius nodded approvingly, which made Lily smile gratefully for his support. He smiled back, but only to keep from laughing at how ridiculously easy it was to manipulate her. Had it been any other Slytherin, he would have had a hell of a time getting through their stubborn minds, but his effect on Lily's mind could rival that of an Obliviating Spell. In just a simple conversation, he could make her forget things he wanted her to dismiss from her mind, he could implant new ideas effortlessly, and he was even gaining control over her ever-growing prejudice against other houses. It was a magnificent feeling to have so much power over someone's thoughts.
"I mean," Lily continued, looking a little angered now; thinking back on some things Severus had said to her about her friends. "He's so quick to jump to crazy conclusions. Look at the whole locket thing: he blamed you for everything! Can you believe that?"
"Yes," Lucius replied in a barely audible whisper.
"What?"
This caught Lily off-guard. She was expecting Lucius to go along with it, but then why did he just…
"Oh Lily, believe me, it was not I who harmed you last year," Lucius added calmly. "But the locket is indeed mine. And…I need it back."
Lily's eyes narrowed, though it was more in concentration than suspicion. "Why?"
Lucius sighed. "Dumbledore taking that locket from whoever pried it off of you is the reason my parents are dead."
Lily gasped. "Really? Oh…oh Lucius, I'm…I'm so sorry…"
He hung his head low; hopefully showing how completely devastated he was by this loss. Lily had many weak spots, but emotional distress was by far the easiest to trigger. Of course, Lucius didn't give a damn about his dead parents, but this was the least complicated path to getting Lily to help him.
"There's something worse, though, Lily," he said, raising his head and forcing his facial features to appear grievous. "If I don't get that back…the Dark Lord will have my sister and I murdered before the end of the month."
Lily's eyes widened in terror. The thought of losing Laika…and Lucius…it was too much to bear! She couldn't imagine both of them gone; Laika was one of her best friends, and Lucius had always been so helpful to her. She barely acknowledged who he said would be committing the murders; she was more concerned with saving her friends from a highly undesirable fate.
"What can I do to help?"
Lucius smiled grimly. "We need to get the locket back. It's hidden somewhere in Dumbledore's office, and we need to get to it as soon as possible.
Lucius paused and watched as Lily's anxious face soaked up every word he spoke. Even though he already knew what her answer would be, he asked: "Do you think you could help us?"
"Yes."
xXxXxXxXx
Knock. Knock.
At the sound of someone at the door— quite possibly another student— Severus jumped. He had been in a long conversation with Dumbledore, something he would have normally avoided at all costs but found it necessary this time in order to protect himself and his friends. Looking up at the eccentric clock on Dumbledore's desk, he realized it was nearly lunchtime. His stomach was screaming for sustenance by now, and his job was nearly done anyway.
Smiling serenely at Severus' panicked reaction, Dumbledore looked up at the door.
"Enter."
What a surprise. It was Lucius Malfoy. He was looking pretty haughty about something and walked right past Severus' chair as though he wasn't even there.
"Headmaster, I regret I couldn't come sooner, but I am here to report three Gryffindors. And, if I might add, I have ample evidence for you to snap their wands and expel them from Hogwarts!"
Dumbledore smiled. "I know."
"And…you what?" Lucius' facial expression went from one of utmost contempt to utter bafflement in the blink of an eye. Severus, sitting in the background, smirked to himself. He had a feeling that Malfoy was going to betray their agreement, and he was finally glad that he had stayed up all night trailing the prefect on his night watch. It was worth it. The funny thing was that Malfoy didn't even realize he was in the room yet…
"I know," Dumbledore repeated.
"But I was attacked Professor!"
"By what spells, Mr. Malfoy?"
Lucius looked livid. "I was Disarmed and viciously attacked without any proper defence—"
"And yet you have failed to answer my question, Lucius," Dumbledore interrupted quietly, using his first name to get his attention. "What spells did the boys use on you?"
"Disarming and Body-Binding," Lucius growled fiercely. Severus noticed that his clenched fists were shaking in fury and the back of his neck was flushed from the effort of controlling his anger. If he didn't care about retaining the element of surprise, he would have laughed at him.
"Mr. Malfoy, as a prefect, you must realize we do not expel students for such simple spells."
"But…they attacked me," Lucius repeated. "And they were out of bed after curfew—"
"— for which they'll each receive a detention—"
"— and threatened me with Veritaserum!" Lucius hissed, trying to add on as many horrible deeds as he possibly could in order to knock some sense into the old man and get him to rid the school of the trio of troublemakers.
"You mean this?" Severus came out from hiding— much to Lucius' shock— and held up the vial of clear liquid in which he had terrorized Lucius with the night before.
"You!" Lucius gawked between Dumbledore and Severus, unable to believe what was going on. "Headmaster, you must punish him…see? He even admits he was going to poison me with that potion!"
"You mean water?"
"It's not water…you told me it was Veritaserum!"
"It is indeed water, Mr. Malfoy, I have tasted it myself," said Dumbledore, winking at Severus as he spoke.
Upon this new revelation, Lucius whirled around to face Severus head-on. "You switched them. You can't fool me, there must be a duplicate you little liar…"
"Oh please, I wouldn't go to that much work just for you," Severus sneered. "The only potion in the room last night was made of hydrogen and oxygen—" at Lucius' bewildered expression, he added, "it's a Muggle formula for water. You know…the stuff you bathe in? And I'm a second year, how in the world would someone as young as me be able to make something as powerful as Veritaserum?"
Lucius was speechless. He wanted to kill the big-nosed twit for his skilful lying, but instead he settled for a murderous glare.
So neither side's plan worked: Lily wasn't told what Severus wanted her to hear, and from the looks of it, Dumbledore was letting his precious Gryffindors off the hook…as usual. The most infuriating aspect of this was that the greasy git had outsmarted him. He had actually gone ahead and taken the risk by telling Dumbledore the truth before he had managed to get there. It was both pitifully simple and frustratingly brilliant.
"I think we're done here," Dumbledore murmured softly after several moments of heated glaring contests between the two boys. Turning to Severus, he added: "Mr. Snape, I do intend to keep my promise that you and your friends will receive detentions for being out of bed after curfew."
Severus nodded, unable to contain his excitement. His plan had worked, as far as he knew. Lucius had given his word that he'd tell Lily about last year and was therefore bound to an invisible moral contract, but neither side had pledged they would not to go to Dumbledore over the matter, so Severus was free to do whatever he pleased, as was Lucius. Severus had ditched class to be the first one to do so, but Dumbledore had already agreed to grant him a reprieve from class, seeing that their meeting was a rather serious matter. Umbridge wouldn't be happy, but he didn't care.
Walking out of Dumbledore's vast office together, Lucius hissed: "Why'd you do that?"
Severus walked up ahead of him and paused to think for a moment before turning around to respond.
"I dunno…I think the Muggle saying of 'honesty is the best policy' would fit. You should try it sometime."
xXxXxXxXx
"Are you certain it's 'swish and flick'?" Regulus asked Lily as the two walked out of the library together. Normally she spent her studying time with Severus, but seeing that he was being a bit of a jerk at the moment, she decided to go with Regulus, who needed help on his levitation charms.
"For the twentieth time, yes. Your wrist isn't very flexible yet, but if you practice more, I'm sure you'll get it eventually," Lily smiled at him.
Although Regulus was very quiet— much like Severus— Lily found his company to be very enjoyable. Coming from a pureblooded family, he knew loads of magic and had numerous stories about his brother in which Lily planned on humiliating Sirius with later on. Not only that, but he didn't criticize Lily's friends as Severus so often did. For once, Lily could talk freely about her friends without having to listen to Severus' sarcastic insults and rude assumptions. Regulus was a good friend of the Malfoys as well, and he was keen to hear about the task Lucius had given her.
"How are you going to do it?"
Lily sighed. "I don't know yet…I really don't want to let them down…no, I can't let them down…but I'm terribly unimaginative when it comes to solving problems."
"We'll think of something."
Lily grinned. It was hard to believe such a sweet boy could be related to an arrogant prat like Sirius. They were complete opposites, yet they came from the same two parents and were raised in the same environment. It was bizarre.
Just before Lily and Regulus made it to the common room entrance, they heard a horrible wail coming from the old Potions dungeons. Glancing at each other nervously, they instinctively set off for the source of the tortured girl's screams, desperately praying that it wasn't Laika or Narcissa.
"In here!"
Lily skidded to a stop and followed Regulus through the darkened corridor that led to one of the abandoned Potions labs that hadn't been used in decades. It was a rather frightening place; slime in varying degrees of brown and green trickled underfoot and there were spiders everywhere. It grew steadily chillier the deeper they ran into the bowels of the dungeons and at one point, Lily wondered if there were dementors down here.
"Reg, I can't go on," Lily whispered fearfully after the light from the tip of her wand landed on a particularly enormous spider, which spat vile chunks of plasmatic goo at her until she moved the light away. Her second worst fear came in the form of the greasy rats with worm-like tails and beady golden eyes that glared at her from all directions in this narrow passage. Her panicked shrieks did nothing to halt their progress as they nibbled at the hems of her robes, and it was only when Regulus expertly Stupefied them away from her that she could move again. The cold was too much to bear at this point and the ghostly screams had been muffled into low moans of pain. It would be terribly foolish to continue onward: they were young students with limited magical abilities and if something bad happened down here, they were doomed.
"Come on," Regulus said impatiently as he pulled a very reluctant Lily forward. Perhaps he was more like his brother than she had initially believed…
Still, she didn't want to look like a coward in front of him; after all, she had one full year of magical education under her belt, while he was still a newbie at this. Judging by the pitch of the noises, they were growing closer, but with every step, Lily's sense of dread grew to alarmingly high levels. They were deeply within the base of the castle by now, and it was no wonder they stopped using these dungeons as classrooms: no student would ever get to class on time if they had to walk this far!
"There you go," Regulus murmured reassuringly as he helped her down a particularly steep and slippery step. Lily paused and smiled faintly at him; he was much more confident than she had originally perceived him to be, and in this situation, she was immensely grateful for that because she felt no trace of self-confidence whatsoever at the moment.
Finally, the passageway gave out to a large room. There were no windows in here, nor was there any source of light besides their wands. Ancient rotting desks lay upturned everywhere they could see, and judging by the black marks on the walls, there had been quite a few explosions in here in the past. The light layer of mist that rested just above the ground gave the room a very ominous aura, and Lily felt chills shooting up her spine as her mind absorbed her new surroundings. It was like that Muggle haunted house the neighbours once built, except this was fifty times scarier because Lily knew this room was the real deal.
"Hello?" Regulus called out, holding his lit wand higher as he took a few cautious steps forward into the room. Lily, not wanting to remain more than a couple feet away from Regulus, quickly followed. She held a death grip on her wand, so at the first sign of an attack, at least she would be ready, no matter how inadequate her duelling skills might be.
Suddenly, a single, ear-splitting shriek echoed across the room, making both of the kids jump. Lily could feel Regulus trembling as much as she was, and once they were in the middle of the room, she realized that she couldn't remember where the passageway in which they had come through was. Darkness had engulfed every inch of the room, save for the small area in which the two were occupying.
"You reckon there's a dementor in here?" Regulus whispered, his teeth chattering as he spoke.
"Maybe," Lily murmured, trying to concentrate on the strangled breathing sounds coming from her left. Her heart was literally launching itself against her chest with every beat, and she was waiting for the horrible moment where the monster or dementor or whatever it was would jump out at them and attack.
"This was a bloody awful idea," Lily hissed angrily, though she wasn't really mad at him for wanting to come down here, since it was both of their ideas to find out what the mysterious wails were. All of a sudden, for some inexplicable reason, tears sprang to her eyes and she felt an overwhelming desire to cry out in despair. It was more from the fear of awaiting their doom, rather than the fear of the thing itself, because every passing minute seemed like a lifetime, and the darkness grew thicker the longer they were in here.
"We should go," Regulus said in a scared voice. Gone was the confident boy whom had encouraged her to keep moving down the steps just a short while ago: Regulus was now more freaked out than Lily was.
"I agree…let's go—"
Just as Lily said the word 'go,' and turned around to leave, her foot struck something soft and squishy. She looked into Regulus' eyes for a long time to avoid looking down to see what it was, but after a while, something warm and sticky began seeping into her shoes, and the odour was positively horrendous.
I've smelled that before, Lily realized with a fresh wave of trepidation coming over her.
Biting her lip and closing her eyes, Lily lowered her wand and held it there for a very long time. Her eyelids seemed to have been glued shut temporarily, but she just had to look. Her head dropped first, and then she opened her eyes…and screamed.
It was a human body completely covered in a layer of glistening blood. Dead or alive, neither of them could tell.
A/N: Severus and Dumbledore make a pretty good team, don't they? If you think the boys got off too easily, just look at how Dumbledore punishes Gryffindors in canon. I mean, Sirius nearly killed Severus and didn't get expelled or anything horrible like that. Favouritism much?
And I apologize in advance if the next chapter seems rushed. I'm dying to get to the part where Lily executes her plan to get the locket back...it's a funny idea, in my opinion...any speculations?
As for the Lily & Regulus scene, I'm in the middle of rereading Chamber of Secrets and I initially had about two more paragraphs solely describing the creepiness of the spiders in the dungeons, but cut that out for the sake of progression. I hope you all have good imaginations, because mine went wild with that last scene.
As usual, any comments are appreciated! :)