Part 36 – Bridging the Gap
"Stupid muggle tradition," Severus muttered to himself as he turned round to walk back the way that he had come in the face of seeing yet another couple of students getting an early start on the Valentine Day celebrations. It was only when he turned round he saw that Lily had been trying to get his attention from the far side of the hallway where she was waiting for the staircase to decide which way it was going to move.
He wondered whether to simply carry on his way back to the library where he was planning on looking up whether there was any history of a student changing houses at Hogwarts. A glance around the hall confirmed that there were no Slytherins about and he decided to risk waiting for Lily.
"I've been looking all over for you," Lily said as she hopped off the staircase and greeted him with a wide smile. "I wanted you to know I'd noticed how much you're trying to rise above the pettiness by making friends with James and Sirius. I think that you're doing the right thing by not sinking to their level. I think you could all be really good friends. You three are the smartest students in the year."
Severus remained quiet, silently wondering whether she would be so gushingly proud of him if she knew the real reason he was tolerating the company of Potter and his gang.
"Remus told me how much you're trying to make friends with them all," Lily continued.
Severus frowned slightly as he thought about Remus. He'd returned to the school looking rather ill, although he had at least got some colour to his face when he'd appeared in the Great Hall for breakfast this morning. There was something odd about Remus but Severus simply couldn't figure out what it was that made him different from the other students.
The only thing he had managed to figure out was that whatever it was that Remus was hiding, he was hiding it from Potter and Black too, and that made him even more determined to figure out what it was.
Severus arrived at the library and turned to say farewell to Lily before realising that she was going to join him.
"Are you going to work on your Defence Against the Dark Arts essay?" Lily asked, having noticed that Severus took far more time over those assignments than any of the others and it would not have been the first time he had been re-writing or adding to the essay on the morning of the day it was due to be handed in.
"No, I did that on Sunday. I wanted to look something up about the school itself," Severus replied as he looked about for Madam Pince and spotted her returning books to the shelves over in the Herbology section.
"What are you looking up?" Lily asked curiously. "I looked up a lot of stuff as soon as I got here so I'd know as much as you did about Hogwarts. I read loads of books from Flourish and Blotts too. My parents took me during the Christmas holidays. I didn't like not knowing things that everyone else did."
Severus wondered, not for the first time, what it would have been like not to have known all his life that that he was a wizard and to find out just before attending the school. Although he would not have dared say anything in front of the Slytherins he knew that it must have been difficult for all the muggle-born students to learn such a thing about themselves. He could not begin to imagine how it would be to be hurried off to the school and then be treated like a second class citizen when the transition would have been hard enough in the first place.
He knew it had been hard for Lily, even with everything he had told her, and regretted once more that they were not in the same house so that he could have helped her more.
"I wanted to look up whether any students have ever swapped houses after being sorted," Severus said with a shrug as he waited for Madam Pince to return to her desk.
"You are?" Lily asked in surprise. "I know you're not happy in Slytherin but I didn't think things were that bad for you."
Severus realised instantly that Lily had come to the wrong conclusion but also knew that there was nothing he could do to correct her assumption without revealing that he was only pretending to be friends with Sirius and the others. Despite the fact that he knew it shouldn't matter to him, he wanted her to think the best of him rather than knowing the truth. He assured himself that if he only kept quiet it wouldn't really be lying.
He was saved from answering however by the return of Madam Pince who directed him to a couple of books of historical records of the school for him to check through. Gathering the books he needed Severus turned to see that Lily had settled down at one of the tables where Remus was catching up on his work.
"I'm sure Professor Knott-Bolt would give you an extension," Severus said as he sat down at the table and basked in Lily's bright smile of encouragement. "In the circumstances…"
Remus flushed, confirming Severus's suspicions that he was hiding something, but he didn't give anything away.
"I'd rather get it done and handed in," Remus muttered. "Best to keep on top of things like this and I don't want to fall too far behind."
"You have missed quite a bit of school, haven't you?" Severus said in a contemplative voice, for all the world sounding as if he had only just realised the fact, and not noticed each and every time the other boy had been missing from class.
"A bit," Remus muttered as he continued to scribble on the parchment, referring periodically to the large textbook lying on the desk before him.
"Well you know we're here for you, if you want to talk," Lily said encouragingly. "That's what friends are for."
"There's nothing to talk about," Remus answered, finally looking up and giving Severus and Lily a bright smile that Severus knew was as fake as the rubber wand James and slipped to an unsuspecting Hufflepuff girl who had been practising her Charms in the Great Hall the previous evening.
"Do you need a hand with the essay?" Severus asked, seeing that Remus was clearly not going to be forthcoming with his secret any time soon.
"I'm just struggling with finding the reference to underwater creatures," Remus said with a frown. "I know I saw it somewhere but I lost the page while looking up a counterhex."
"I think it's somewhere near middle of the book," Severus said, reaching across the table and flicking through the pages to try to find what he was looking for.
"Can't you get your own book?" the voice of James Potter rang through the quiet library.
"Or your own table?" Peter asked as he sank down into an empty seat and pulled out his own parchment and proceeded to work on his own essay. Severus spotted him casually looking at what Remus was writing before realising that Remus was working on his Defence paper and not the Transfiguration paper that he was hurrying to finish before their class that morning. He snickered quietly to himself before turning back to his own book.
"What you looking for?" James asked from where he had seated himself directly opposite Severus. Severus looked up and realised that James was genuinely curious about what he was doing. He must be really bored this morning.
"I'm trying to find out if it's possible to change houses once you've been sorted," Severus replied in an offhand manner that he hoped gave the impression of casual curiosity.
"You'd be better off looking up school transfers," Sirius suggested with a smirk. Severus glared at him without thinking before he remembered that Lily was sitting at the table. He looked in her direction and saw that she too was glaring at Sirius and had missed his own look of venom. James however had seen it and he could tell that he was not going to be fooled by his continued pretence at friendship.
"We'll be late for class," Lily said as she stood up. Severus remained seated, thankful that the Gryffindors shared their Transfiguration class with Ravenclaw while he was about to enjoy a free period that was entirely free of not only lectures but of James Potter and his gang.
Lily was the last to leave and before she departed she whispered a few words of encouragement to him. "Keep trying, they'll come around, especially if you find a way to get transferred into Gryffindor."
Severus nodded. The odd thing was that she was right and if he had been sorted into Gryffindor perhaps things wouldn't have been so bad. If he had been in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff it would have been better. It was only because he was in Slytherin that they were determined to make his life miserable.
Two hours later and Severus had worked his way through the books Madam Pince had recommended and found nothing at all about any student ever being transferred between houses. There were long passages about the Sorting Hat and many pages devoted to analysing its yearly songs but nothing on whether it had ever got things wrong. Nothing to give him any hope that Dumbledore would allow Sirius to switch houses, even if he were to persuade him to leave his friends and join the house he clearly despised.
