5. Great Hall

(Author's Note: I completely forgot to reference Wizard Angst in the last chapter! Full credit goes to Potter Puppet Pals for the line about the drunken Filch!)

As everybody filed into the Great Hall for breakfast, Lily spotted James Potter already sitting down with Sirius Black and the other two boys whom she had learned were named Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. James was watching Severus as he went to sit down with his fellow Slytherins, but his eyes left the Slytherins when he saw Lily. She sat down near him for lack of other places to sit, and when she did, he called out,

"Hey Evans!" with a stupid, trying-to-be-charming grin on his face. "How's everything?" Lily turned around and answered him politely.

"Just fine, thank you." And then she turned back around to talk to the girl on her other side, Kate. Looking slightly put out, James turned back to his friends and they began to talk about who would be on the Quidditch team this year.

Meanwhile, Severus was sitting next to Lucius Malfoy, who was quietly explaining different things about Hogwarts to him. Severus nodded and blinked as a ray of sun hit Lucius' blonde head and threatened to blind him.

"As you may already know, the Gryffindors are our enemies in every way. They bring it upon themselves, you know. They're brave and true, oh yes, but you'd think they all had rocks for brains the way they behave. Especially that Potter. I'd like to show him a thing or two about how my school is run." Lucius drawled. Then, with a quick glance up to the staff table, he whipped his wand out of his cloak pocket and focused on the back of James Potter's head. He flicked the wand upwards with a slight movement of his forefinger and thumb, and then suddenly Potter's hair had caught fire.

"Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh! Somebody! Put it out! PUT IT OUT!!!" James started screaming as he began to feel his hair burn to a crisp. Lily looked up from her breakfast and smiled in complete delight, in spite of the fact that this was her housemate. She subtley looked over at the Slytherin table and noticed that Lucius Malfoy and Severus were looking around innocently, Severus holding back a laugh. Lily snorted when she saw his face, and then silently began to laugh as James started frantically smacking his head to put out the monstrous flames. Sirius Black was standing at his side, his hand hesitatingly moving toward James' head, then snapping back. Armando Dippet, the Headmaster, turned and looked towards the ruckus from the staff table. He gasped, and then stood up while quickly taking his wand from his deep robe pocket. He flicked his wand in Potter's direction, and the fire burned out with a sizzle. The entire hall was silent for a split second as Dippet sat back down, but then, the crowd broke out into a tumultous roar of laughter. One boy at the Hufflepuff table stood up and began to dance, imitating Potter's strange movements of the moment before, which only made the laughter louder. The only one's not laughing were sitting at the staff table or at the Gryffindor table. Lily had jumped up to get a better view of the Hufflepuff boy.

"SILENCE!" Dippet suddenly shouted, his booming voice echoing off the walls. The noise quelled. Lily ran back to her seat, along with about fifty other Slytherins, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws. James Potter looked at the Headmaster gratefully.

"And that, my dear First Year, is how my school is run. Any questions?" Lucius drawled, a smug grin creeping on to his face. Severus wiped the remaining tears of laughter from his cheeks. He hadn't laughed that hard since he had first met Lily's sister Petunia.

"Just one. Do you do that sort of thing often?" Severus asked, looking up at him hopefully.

"You see, young Severus, I have a sort of system that I developed with my close friends Crabbe and Goyle in our third year here. It's simple, yet it amuses nearly everybody who is not a Gryffindor. Every year, we find the biggest prat in Gryffindor house, and we humiliate him whenever possible. I think you may agree that Potter is the ultimate prat this year, even if it his his first year. I think this will put him in his place, don't you?" Lucius said.

"Yes, I do," said Severus simply, and then they both went back to eating their breakfasts.

Lily and Severus did end up having a few classes together. They had not known before that they would not have the same classes every day, and that each time they had a class it would not necessarily be with the same house. They weren't sure how the system worked, but they weren't about to try and figure it out, so they discussed the classes they had had separately at the end of the day. There wasn't really a good place for students of different houses to see each other outside of the Great Hall, so the two went to the same place they had talked the night before. It was not comfortable like their Common Rooms, but it would have to do.

"So what did you think of Defense Against the Dark Arts?" Lily asked Severus.

"That Slughorn guy asked me if I wanted to be in this club thing. He called it the 'Slug Club'," Severus said with an air of amusement.

"Hey, me too! We've got to join so we can be together more often!" Lily said excitedly. Severus blushed and smiled.

"I told him I would think about it."

"I did, too. That was before I knew you got invited, though. I wonder why he picked us?" Lily asked.

"Probably because we're the only students here who aren't completely insane, stupid, or obsessed with ourselves. This bloke in Slytherin, Lucius is his name, well, he's great and all, but bloody Hell! He went on and on about the 'pure blood' thing at breakfast this morning until someone told him to pass the kippers. It was mental!"

"Well, I for one am getting rather sick of hearing about whether people are pure-blood of half'-blood or muggle-born. I mean, who really cares?"

"I think certain people do care," said Severus quietly. Lily didn't respond.

They changed the subject after that, because neither of them had anything else to say about it. They went to bed a little while later, but Severus was troubled and couldn't sleep. He was thinking about something Lucius had said earlier that day. Something that had gotten wild approval from many of the other Slytherins.

"Personally, I think the mudbloods are like weeds in our garden. They should be yanked out. Or rather, we should get rid of them before they multiply. But that's another event for another day, preferably in the near future, right boys?" At least ten other Slytherins had cheered in agreement. Severus has smiled, as if he had also agreed with Lucius, when he was really completely stricken with horror. Only one thought dominated his head that night. Only one thing stopped his eyes from falling shut and his mind from resting.

Lily is a muggle-born.