"If you wanted to come back you could stay at mine," suggested Lily, "I'm sure it's not too late if you ask Professor Slughorn."

"What? With your sister?" sneered Severus.

"Don't talk about her like that," said Lily, "we may not be getting along so well at the moment but she's still my sister."

"I just meant that she doesn't exactly like me does she?"

"Well that's not all her fault Sev, I mean, I don't really blame her for not liking either of us at the moment. But if you came and stayed… well, we could all play games together and talk and have fun and I'm sure she'd get used to you, we'd just have to make more of an effort to include her you know?"

"But why should you have to make the effort Lily? You're better than her you're…"

"I'm not better than her Sev, just because I'm a witch doesn't mean…"

"I didn't mean that!" said Severus quickly, "I just meant you're a nicer person than her. You don't… have to go home you know… I mean, if you want to then it's fine but… well Christmas at Hogwarts is meant to be amazing."

Lily smiled sympathetically at Severus.

"I'm sorry Sev," she said, "but my mum and dad really want to me to come home. And I really have got to sort out this fight with Tuney. You know what it's like, the longer you leave things the harder it is to fix them. But next year I promise I'll stay at Hogwarts with you okay? And besides, it's only a few weeks. And you have friends in your House."

"They're not… proper friends though."

"You can have more friends than just me Severus. I mean, I've got friends in Gryffindor now, sure they think it's weird that I'm friends with you, but we get on just fine anyway. You don't have to choose between us."

"You're better than them Lily, you don't need to stupid pig-headed Gryffindors as friends."

"They're not all pig-headed," said Lily fairly, "only about half of them," she added with a chuckle, "it's just… well, , I thought it'd be different here because they'd be witches like me but now I'm the odd one out cause I'm best friends with you, and obviously I wouldn't swap that for anything, but it's just ridiculous isn't it? All this stupid politics about who you're friends with. But I don't mind though, being friends with them isn't like being friends with you. I mean, the girls at least are all sort of just like the girls in primary schoo,l they've all got best friends and they laugh at stupid things that aren't funny and talk about good looking boys all the time. And the boys… well," she looked over to her right, where James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew we engaged in a mock duel, bumping into people as they made their way down to the carriages.

"We are best friends though," said Severus, "right?"

"'Course," said Lily as they drew up to one of the carriages, "I don't mind being the odd one out, my mum and dad always said you should be proud of what makes you different, I just didn't think I would be different here that's all. But I'd much rather have you as a best friend than any of them…"

Lily trailed off, her mind drifting off into some unknown land.

"What's wrong?" asked Severus.

"Nothing, it's just… I just wish that they could get along with you and you could get along with Tuney so that I wouldn't have to constantly be running between you all, does that make sense?"

"Yes," said Severus.

He did not say that he wished she could be friends with the Slytherins. He did not say that he wished they didn't call her 'mudblood' when Slughorn favoured her over students in his own House. He didn't say that he wished they could both have just been born pureblood, that way everything would be simpler, and they would both be in Slytherin, and Lily wouldn't even be upset over her stupid jealous sister, unless she turned out to be a squib of course.

Instead he just said goodbye, and accepted Lily's hug and her promise to write and waved to her until she vanished out of sight over the brow of the hill. Then he trudged back up to school. All the Slytherins in his year were going home for Christmas, to loving families were magic was something to be proud of not something that caused fights. When people teased him about having a muggle father he took it on the chin, but inside he hated his father, and sometimes he even hated his mother for ever marrying him.

Hate. Lily would have said that he couldn't really hate him, but Lily was different, hate confused Lily because Lily didn't have the capacity for hate. Lily didn't understand why Gryffindors hated Slytherins or purebloods hated mudbloods or muggles hates witches and wizards. And in her position her inability to understand that hate was dangerous. She spoke about just wanting everyone to get along so that she could drift freely between each world she belonged to, not realising that that wasn't the way it worked, you had to choose, you had to pick a side. He only hoped that when she finally realised that it wouldn't already be too late. If she left it too long then no side would want her. Lily had got through life so far with only her wits and her kindness, she made friends everywhere she went, even if she constantly found herself being pulled away from them by one thing or another. If Severus had Lily's power over people then he would be exploiting it to it's full advantage right now. Lily didn't even realise the kind of friends she could have if she only stopped wasting time of people who didn't deserve her.

A few years ago Severus's worst fear had been his father. But now he had two worst fears. The first was that Lily would never choose a side, that everyone was so carelessly kind to would turn on her and he would lose her. The second, and equally frightening, was that she would choose a side, but that she was side against him, with her sister, with her friends in Gryffindor, that she would use her powers of wit and kindness to conjure the adoration she deserved from those people, and that they would steal her away from him.