Somehow, against my most ardent predictions, that night at the astronomy tower was not the last I saw of Sevreus and Lily. Despite being older than me and more confident at everything than I was, they invited me to not only join them in their studies, but also just to 'hang out'. Often we'd be doing nothing, just sitting and chatting about whatever topic by the Hogwart's lake. Sometimes it would be more serious. Times were starting to change for dark wizards with the rise of an alleged 'Lord Voldemort' whose reputation made it so that others feared even saying his name. We speculated on which students and even professors would join him, and who had already joined his legions.

I still kept from them my legilimency abilities, so little did they know that I knew far more about which young wizards would run straight to the Dark Lord upon graduation, and I even knew which professors already had branded themselves loyal cohorts.

"Even as the Defense teacher, do you think Slughorn is on the right side?" Lily asked one afternoon.

"He seems good enough," Severus pondered.

I knew myself that he was on the right side, but sometimes deep down he wondered how it would be like to switch alliances. He was a Slytherin after all. When the going gets rough, the Slytherins get going to where they think they are most likely to save their own skins.

"If you guys want to worry about Professors, you really should be keeping an eye on the Potions Professor, Raffles. He can't wait to join him as soon as things start looking bad for the good wizards."

"How do you know?" Severus asked.

"I guess I just have a feeling," I mumbled, twirling a blade of grass between my fingers. I could feel their suspicion.

"Do you have a feeling about anyone else?" Lily asked.

"Not about the teachers. As for students, I'm confident that at least two thirds of the Slytherins know where they're going. Not sure about the others."

"Things are starting to look awfully grim, aren't they?" Lily sighed.

"We still have time to figure out what to do," Severus tried to assure.

Things turned more light-hearted when Lily asked who the giant squid would take as its mate, Sirius or James. I laughed and said that it desired qualities found in both of them, though it couldn't really contend with the combined narcissism so it would just end up eating them both.

The rest of my first year passed somewhat uneventfully for me. At some point, Severus became obsessed when he learned about the nightly outings of the maurderers every full moon. I didn't tell him that I knew his suspicions were correct. While Remus Lupin was a mauderer himself, he never really participated in humiliating Severus and he was overall a nice person, so I didn't immerse myself in his own vendetta. I tried to stop him when I learned it was getting too far.

"I know about your plan to go to the Shrieking Shack tonight, Severus," I confronted him on a full moon in November.

"H-how?" He stuttered, disbelieving.

I shook my head. "It doesn't matter. Please, just don't do it. Don't go there. It's dangerous, you know you could get killed."

He turned around. "I know, but I have to find out what's going on there."

"No, you don't. It really has nothing to do with you. Let those stupid Gryffindor menaces carry out whatever their ruckus may be and leave it at that."

"I have to go, Reg, don't try to stop me. I'm going to expose those imbeciles for what they really are. "

I sighed. "Alright, at least let me go with you. I can keep guard or something."

"It's dangerous, I can't let you go, you're only a first year."

"Let me go with you or don't go at all," I said, finally.

Severus conceded and allowed me to go with him. A sense of dread enveloped me as we walked down there late at night. I had the distinct fear of mortality at that moment and it didn't get any better as we walked down to the screams of agony coming from the shack. Whatever Lupin was experiencing wasn't pretty. I felt sorry for him having to go through with it every month.

"Ok, I'm going in," Severus said when we got to the door.

"This is a very bad idea, Sev," I still wasn't giving up on trying to convince him to stop. "There is nothing I can do to convince you to just go back?"

He shook his head. "You stay here. If something goes wrong, you run back right away and immediately notify the headmaster."

I sighed. "Alright." It didn't take long at all for something to go wrong. After 5 minutes, I felt immense dread from Severus that permeated the shack's thin walls. After hearing him scream, I forgot all about his instructions to run back to Hogwarts and instead I ran to him. I found him on the ground, surrounded by James, Sirius, and Peter.

Their eyes bore at me when I entered the room.

"What are you doing here, runt?" Sirius glared at me.

"It looks like your little brother is now Snivelus's right hand man," James hooted. "Sorry, runt, you came too late and missed out on the action. Looks like Sniv here is indebted to me for saving his neck."

Severus glared at him. "Only on an attempt to save yours!"

"Just take him and get out of here," Sirius said.

I helped him up and lead him away.

Do you think Snivelus really is your friend? Remember, no one likes you, no one wants to do anything but use you. That's all he's doing. That's all he knows how to do.

I glared at him and turned crimson. I couldn't say anything to him, and he knew that.

We walked back to the dorms in silence. His emotions made it clear as to what happened. James really did save him. That must have offended Severus the most.

"So I take it no more late night visits to the shrieking shack?" I asked when we got into bed.

"Good night, Reg," he growled as he threw the covers over his head.

I smiled. "Good night, Sev."

The rest of the year went off without a hitch. Sometimes I was cornered by Mulciber and his gang, but Severus had some kind of uncanny intuition to save me in time. I can't say it was the same for him and the Mauderers. Lily stuck by Severus' side at most times, but always when she'd be away from something, James or Sirius would pop out of nowhere, immediately slamming some kind of jinx on him and all I could do was to help get him to the infirmary or try my hand at the counter jinx. More often or not, they would double their efforts and include me in the torture.

I was not looking forward to summer vacation. Severus didn't talk much about his family and the few times the subject came up, I felt some kind of intense inward anguish that he kept private. At least he had Lily to be with. I had my dreary mother and tormenting brother to contend with all summer.

At some point, noticing my impending gloom, Lily asked what was wrong. "I guess I just don't really want to go home for the summer. I don't really like it there."

"Poor Reg," Severus said, sympathetically. "He has to deal with that twat of an older brother all summer long."

"I'm hoping he'll spend most of the summer away with James or at least in his room so I don't' have to deal with him," I admitted.

"We'll write to you, Reg," Lily said, smiling and putting her hand on my shoulder. "Maybe that will help the time go by."

"Really?" I looked at her.

"I promise."

"I will too," Severus concurred.

"Thanks guys," I smiled. Maybe my summer wouldn't be so bad after all.

Summer vacation actually did end up fairly uneventful. I distracted myself from my dreary household by starting the Hogwarts text books early on. It would be good to have a heads-up on things, especially subjects that didn't come easily to me, such as Herbology. There were just so many plant species to memorize and it seemed to double from last year.

Sirius managed to stay out of my way most of the summer. He convinced James and his family to let him stay there for a good part of vacation and the rest of the time he was either hiding in his room, listening to muggle music, or doing whatever else to annoy our mother.

Lily and Severus kept their promise to me and sent me letters every week. I looked forward to reading about their summer them and sent them long responses, even though mine was nowhere as interesting as theirs was. They talked about lots of muggle activities that seemed very foreign to me. Going to the beach, swimming, sunbathing(though that one Severus didn't enjoy much), taking walks in the forest… the list of activities continued. I was envious that I wasn't born into a muggle family. Lily's family sounded very nice. During one of her last letters, Lily said that next year she would invite me over and we could do things with the three of us. She said that her family would love to meet me. I was really surprised. Friends invited each other over to their houses, didn't they? The only time Lily acknowledged that they were friends was the first day they'd met, and then she'd said it only as a joke. Maybe it was something implicit that irrevocably existed between people. I didn't really understand it, I never had friends before.

I was happy to go back to school. Even Sirius's mood uplifted when time was drawing closer. I read through the herbology textbook and made sure to memorize as many plant species as possible. Though I was most looking forward to potions. It seemed like second years would be brewing more interesting things. Supposedly even a love potion was on the agenda, not that I'd really have any use for an aphrodisiac.

After saying goodbye to mother, I quickly raced aboard the train where I found Lily and Severus. I really missed them after a long summer.

"Hi!" I said, out of breath, when I found them.

"Regulus!" Lily squeaked, enveloping me into a tight hug. The immense feeling of joy and delight at seeing me made me just as ecstatic to see them. "I missed you, Reg!" she said, taking my arm and leading me to a private compartment.

"I missed you guys too," I said, grinning. "I'm really happy to see you again and go back to school."

"So your summer didn't seem as awful as you thought, right?" Severus asked.

"Yeah, it was fine. Sirius and I managed to stay away from each other the entire summer. It was just quite dull. Not like your summer."

"Next year, you're invited to have fun with us," Lily reminded.

"Thanks, I'm already looking forward to it."

I was happy to return to the normalcy of life at Hogwarts. The mauderers were still finding ways to get to Severus, but they found other ways of scheming that didn't involve us. Something unprecedented happened within the first 3 months of school that would lead to a rift starting to form between Lily and Severus. As the Mauderers usually found us unprepared for their attack, one day in the garden Sirius and James snuck up on Severus and I and threw us to the ground. They didn't even need to use an expelliarmus charm as the wand flew out of our hands. Soon we found ourselves wandless with James and Sirius.

"I should have seen these idiots coming," Severus growled.

"The problem, my dear Snivelus, is that you never do," Sirius laughed.

"So looks like we have our slimy serpentine friends in a tight spot again," James taunted, walking around us.

"What shall we have them do today?" He pondered.

"I dunno, James, but it was pretty funny when we put the tarantallegra curse on them that one time," Sirius said.

I groaned as I remembered the time the mauderers made us dance badly in front of a crowd of Gryffindors before Lily showed up and put a stop to it.

James laughed, "Yeah that was so great! But seeing as we're missing an audience this time, I have something even better," his eyes bore into mine and a feeling of great dread over took me.

Suddenly, from nowhere I hear a booming expelliarmus from behind us. James and Sirius didn't know what hit them as instantly they were the ones compromised and without wands.

I quickly looked behind to see Mulciber, Avery, and Dreg pointing their wands at James and Sirius, who were knocked to the ground.

"These Gryffindor horklumps bothering you, Severus?" Mulciber asked as Avery helped us up.

"Thanks," Severus said, dumbfounded at the rescue.

"Hey there, plimpies," Mulciber said. "If I see you bothering Slytherins again, the next time you meet us will be far worse."

"Severus, let us have the honor this time," Avery said.

"Sometimes we think it's best to handle things the way those muggles do," Mulciber said, grinning as the three of them proceeded to use their fists for vengeance. Sirius and James didn't stand a chance as they were clobbered by the boys twice their size. I still couldn't watch as they both experienced the most excruciating moments of their lives. They were soon rolling on the ground, groaning and clutching their stomachs. They were full of cuts and bruises. Madame Pomfry would have her hands full tonight.

Mulciber put his arm around Severus as they walked back to the Slytherin dungeon. "Slytherins got to watch out for each other," he said. Though I knew he had an ulterior motive. Slytherins didn't do anything just for the sake of 'watching out for each other'. He knew that Severus was skilled in Dark Arts. He spent hours developing his talents, managing to keep it secret from Lily, who disapproved of dark magic.

"That was really great, what you did," Severus said. "You really saved our necks."

"No problem, any time those Gryffindors give you trouble, just come find us, we'll take care of it."

Severus nodded. "We will."

"You know, Severus, there are some things you can do to help us out a bit…" Mulciber started.

"Oh?"

"I hear that you're quite skilled in the dark arts. You know, defense stuff."

"I suppose I am," he said, slowly.

"Would you mind tutoring us a bit in that?" Mucliber asked. "You know, so we can better protect ourselves."

Bollocks to 'protection', I thought. They didn't need any protection. They were the most feared kids in the whole school. No one would dare even try to oppose them. They wanted Severus to help them just so they can use the curses against the defenseless or so that they could impress the Dark Lord after they graduated.

"Sure, I think I can do that," Severus said.

Mulciber clapped his hands. "Excellent!" he exclaimed.

I tried to catch Severus' eye and let him know that this was a bad idea, but he was too caught up in Mulciber and his gang's attention to notice me.

I suppose the only good thing that came out of Severus' new alliance is that it was both the last time Mulciber and his gang tried to pick on me as well as the last time James and Sirius managed to get at me, though somehow even though that huge beating, leaving Severus alone didn't sink into their thick skulls until later.