Chapter 5

Severus Snape

Being bullied at school was changing Lily. Her friends and family could tell. She was becoming quieter, less confident and subdued. At home she no longer felt compelled to tell everyone about her day over dinner, and her friends noticed how she hardly talked with them anymore.

As the summer holidays approached Lily spent less and less time playing outside with her friends and more time reading in her room. Her mother began to worry about her, discussing with her father whether Lily should go to a different senior school to the majority of her class. Petunia was already set on going to the local senior school, but Mrs Evans thought that it would be best to send Lily to the grammar school in the middle of the city.

She hadn't mentioned it to her daughter as yet as she wanted to research the school a little more before she sent her daughter there.

The other thing that was getting to Lily was her sister. Petunia and Lily got on really well, and that was the problem. This next year was going to be the first year that they had ever gone to different schools. The girls didn't interact that often at school but Lily always felt more confident knowing that her big sister was there, able to come to the rescue if she was needed. Lily was going to lose that protection. Her sister was leaving her. And Petunia seemed excited about it.

Lily lay on her bed despondently. She didn't want to read; she'd just finished her book and didn't feel like starting a new one. She had just come upstairs from finishing lunch and had the whole day ahead of her. She didn't really want to do anything. She wished things could go back to how they had been before, before all of this had started. Before she had known she was a witch. Before she had known Severus Snape.

Ever since he had told her that she was a witch things had begun to go wrong. Tuney had argued with her the second time she had met Severus, and Matt and Alex had got annoyed when she had been talking about Severus to Tom Derk. All of Lily's problems came back to that boy. And she hardly knew him.

That was when Lily decided what she would do. She was going to go and find Severus Snape and he was going to tell her how to put it all right again. Then she would be able to make friends with Lucy again and everything would be back to how it all was before. Yes she was going to find Severus Snape and make him make it right.

Determinedly, Lily pushed herself off her bed and marched down the stairs. Finding her parents in the kitchen, she asked them if she could go for a bike ride. Her mother seemed so happy that Lily wasn't cooping herself up in her room that she said yes before Lily needed to explain where she was going. Her father however warned her that she had to be back before it started to get dark, the usual rule.

Lily wasn't exactly sure where Severus Snape lived. All she had were the vague instructions of Tom Derk from three months ago. She hadn't acted on them straight away for a few reasons; both Matt, Alex and her sister had warned her to stay away from him, as well as Tom Derk saying that he was strange and not wanting to talk much about him, and also that Lily herself, wasn't very sure that he seemed a very nice person. She was worried that he had been making up that she was a witch as a joke, yet Lily yearned for it to be true. She didn't want her dreams flattened in front of her by a boy she barely knew. So Lily had not acted on the information she had wheedled out of Tom Derk, but kept it in her head, where it could do no damage, where she could imagine the perfect outcome of the situation.

But now, it had been too long. She had to know the truth and she had to put everything back together. She needed to make it right again. And Severus Snape was going to help her to do it.

Lily free wheeled her bicycle down the slope towards the river, as it came into sight she started to worry that she wouldn't be able to find Severus's house. She ran over the instructions in her mind, as she had done countless times in the months since she had heard them 'They live down Spinner's End by the river', 'half way down, I don't know the number, but it's the really shabby one.'

She checked the road names as she rolled past them, but she was sure that it would be the last one. The one closest to the river. Where the poorest people in the neighbourhood lived. In the dank, dark brick houses constantly overlooked by the tumbling down mill which was no longer disguised amongst the cops of trees that surrounded it, as it was from further up the hill.

'Why do you build me up, build me up, Buttercup, baby,

'Just to let me down, let me down, and mess me around,' Lily hummed to herself as she searched for the street name. Finally, as she had expected, she got to the last turning of the road and there it was, Spinner's End. Leaning on her bike she turned down the road, slowing so that she could look at each house, comparing them. To her they all looked similar, shabby and tattered. About halfway along the street, as Tom Derk had said, there was a very dilapidated house. Lily stopped, suddenly unsure. Should she really be here? What was she supposed to say? What was she supposed to do? She hovered, undecided on the pavement, all at once hesitant to whether she should knock or just leave. If he wanted to talk to her then he would come and find her. Lily took a deep breath. But he had come and found her, twice. It was her turn to take the plunge. Leaving her bike propped against the crumbling brick wall she walked the three yards along the path to the front door. She had raised her hand to knock on the door when a voice stopped her.

'I wouldn't do that.'

Lily spun around on the spot.

Severus Snape was sat on the wall, his back to her, admiring her bicycle. He was dressed in the same cloths that he had been when she had first seen him in the park last year. He looked upset she thought, but he was trying not to show it.

'I … I …' Lily started; she had no idea how he had got there. She had heard nothing; he had had no time in which to move to there either. 'How did you get there?' she blurted out, then instantly realised how rude that sounded, it was his house after all. But Severus simply smirked in reply. 'I ... I mean … I … I believe you.' Lily told him, talking an unsure step towards him. Severus's eyebrows lowered, and Lily didn't know whether the look was that of confusion or that he didn't understand why she wouldn't believe him in the first place. Then he shrugged,

'So what do you want to do?' he asked brusquely

'What?' Lily asked confused

'Well what did you come over for?'

'I want you to tell me about being a witch, I suppose.' Lily answered still confused, sure that this conversation was not going the way that she wanted it to. Severus, however, seemed quite happy and stood up expecting her to follow him, but to Lily's confusion he didn't walk towards his house but in the opposite direction, down the street, in the direction that Lily had come from.

'Where are you going?' Lily asked,

'Well we're not going in there,' Severus gestured towards the house, 'My Dad would go ballistic.' As if that clarified everything he carried on walking down the road. Lily hurriedly grabbed her bike and followed after him.

He led her to the small thicket of trees where Lily had played Jungle Book themed games with Matt and Alex nearly a whole year ago. Severus stopped at a spot where Lily was just able to glimpse the sunlit river glittering through their trunks. The shadows cast by the trees made a basin of cool, green shade. The two children sat facing each other, cross legged on the ground. Snape had removed his large coat; his odd smock looked less peculiar in the half light.

'So what do you want to know?' Severus asked.

'Everything.' Lily answered, beginning to become exited, she really was a witch, he wasn't joking, she was sure. 'How did you know I was a witch, and what it means and everything!' she said

He smiled at her. It was a genuine smile and was so large that it made Lily giggle a little.

'The first one is easy,' he boasted, 'you were doing magic there in the park and I'd seen you do stuff before.'

'And only witches and wizards can do magic?' Lily questioned. He rolled his eyes,

'Of course. And what it means, well it means everything. You're part of our world now, well you always have been but now you know you are I s'pose.'

'Part of which world?' Lily asked

'Our world, the wizarding world.' He said as if it should have been obvious.

'Oh,' Lily said in wonder, 'Tell me everything.' She asked again.

'Well …' Severus started unsure of what to say for a while. Eventually he began to speek again, starting with the basics about magic and how it was different to magic that muggles (non-magical people) thought it was, about magic wands and how they would get them when they were eleven from Diagon Ally and then onto Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But he had not got far into explaining about Hogwarts when Lily noticed the time. After promising that she would meet him in this exact spot at two o'clock the next day Lily cycled back home up the hill.

As she left, Lily was sure that Severus looked a little happier than he had been when he had been sitting on the wall outside his house.

Lily spent as much time as she could with Severus. The stories that he told her kept her fascinated. What did it matter that she was bullied and called a freak at school if she could cycle down to the woods every day and meet Severus and he could tell her the tail of The Wizard and the Hopping Pot or explain why it was that she could make the branch above them suddenly cover itself in pure white blossom.

And Lily's parents were glad that now she was spending so much time out of the house coming back so full of life and rosy cheeked and they were so pleased in the change from the despondent self-confined child to the girl bouncing with energy and enthusiasm before them.

Before Lily knew it the summer holidays were upon them and she could spend much more time with Severus. She felt like she had a lot to learn, and Severus always had an answer for every question that she could think of. Lily wanted a way to repay him for everything that he was telling her, but when she offered to tell him a muggle fairy tale, or explain how muggles had come up with way to solve their problems instead of using magic, he would sneer at her.

'Why would I want to listen to one of their stories?' he had said 'Our world is so much better than anything muggles can think up.'

They began to vary where they met. Severus knew the area incredibly well from all the time he spent as far away from his arguing parents as he could. Lily, he claimed was the only person he had ever shown any of them to. Lily's favourite place was down by the river, but Severus often chose the rundown mill as were he wanted to spend the day. He enjoyed the lonely forgotten feel of the place.

Lily had never been to the mill before. Petunia said that it looked scary so both girls had kept their distance. But Severus admired the mill for reasons that Lily never could quite understand. It was after spending the day in the woods around the mill two weeks into the holidays that Lily discovered how her sister had been coping without her.

It was coming up to six o'clock and Lily knew that it would be coming up to dinner time at home and her parents would be annoyed if she was late home, so she was taking a short cut along an alleyway between the houses two streets away from her house. She had the song 'In the Summertime' by Mungo Jerry in her head and was humming along to it as she cycled.

'In the summer time when the weather is high
You can stretch right up and touch the sky
When the weather's fine' she mumbled to herself

She was peddling in time to the song, but began to speed up when she noticed a figure at the other end of the cut through. As she got closer she realised that it was in fact two people, kissing.

Tom Derk had her sister pinned up against the wall, his hands either side of her, and seemed to be trying to stick his tongue down Petunia's throat. It looked disgusting, really uncomfortable. Lily had no idea what she was meant to do. Should she just try and pretend that she couldn't see them, or hear the awful slurping noises, and cycle strait past. But that was her sister, and ignoring her felt wrong.

Luckily, Lily did not have to make that decision. As she drew close to them the couple jumped apart.

'Lily!' cried Petunia, 'What are you doing here?'

'Going home. What were you doing?' Lily countered. Petunia turned bright red,

'I … I was just … saying goodbye to Tom.'

'Just not using that many words.' Said Lily. 'Shall I tell mum you're coming?'

'If you dare-' Petunia began

'Whoa, don't worry.' Lily cut across her. 'I'm not going to say nothing.'

'You better.' Petunia threatened turning back to Tom Derk.

Lily pulled a face of disgust and peddled off. She knew that her sister was older than her, and that apparently kissing was a thing that people enjoyed when they got older. But she thought that her sister didn't look like she was enjoying it. Maybe it was just because Lily was too young to understand.

As the holidays were coming to a close Lily began to worry about school. She was going to be without Tuney. But whenever she mentioned it to Severus he'd remind her that all those people were muggles, he was sure about that, so she didn't have to worry about them. They didn't matter, they weren't part of their world, the magical world.

This did comfort Lily a little, knowing that next year she would not have to go to school with any of them. This time next year she would be at Hogwarts, in a place where she belonged, with the people she should be with, other magical people. It did worry her that maybe she wouldn't fit in with the magical people either. Maybe she was more muggle than magical.

She was sitting with Severus down by the river thinking about this a week before term started. Severus was explaining what happened if you did magic outside school or in front of muggles.

'But I have done magic outside school!' Lily suddenly realised, what if they wouldn't let her into Hogwarts and she would be banished to a life not belonging to either world.

'We're alright. We haven't got wands yet.' Severus reassured her. 'They let you off when you're a kid and you can't help it. But once you're eleven,' he nodded importantly, 'and they start training you, then you've got to be careful.'

There was a little silence. Lily picked up a fallen twig and twirled it in the air, pretending that she could magic the trees around her into beautiful things in a beautiful palace. Then she dropped the twig, leaned in towards Severus, and said 'It is real, isn't it? It's not a joke? Petunia says you're lying to me. Petunia says there isn't a Hogwarts. It is real, isn't it?'

'It's real for us,' said Severus. 'Not for her. But we'll get the letter, you and me.'

'Really' whispered Lily, even now after more than six weeks of hearing all his stories about the magical world, sometimes she found it difficult to belie that it really all was going to happen.

'Defiantly,' said Severus, and even with his poorly cut hair and his odd cloths, he struck an oddly impressive figure sprawled in front of her, brimful of confidence in his destiny.

'And it will really come by owl?' Lily whispered, after a moment of silence.

'Normally,' said Severus. 'But you're Muggle-born, so someone from the school will have to come and explain to your parents.'

'Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?' Lily asked, voicing one of her biggest fears

Severus hesitated, and the fear built up inside Lily, but after less than a second's hesitation,

'No,' he said, 'it doesn't make any difference.' Relived Lily relaxed,

'Good,' she mumbled relived and elated that she was going to find a place where she really did fit in. it was going to be amazing. Just how she had imagined it all during that dark time in the summer term at school last year.

'You've got loads of magic,' said Severus, changing the subject. 'I saw that, all the time I was watching you …'

His voice trailed away into embarrassment, but Lily was not strictly listening. She stretched herself out, looking up at the canopy of leaves overhead, imagining life as a witch at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

'How are things at your house?' Lily asked after some time.

A little crease appeared between his eyes.

'Fine,' he said.

'They're not arguing anymore?'

'Oh, yes, they're arguing,' said Severus. He picked up a fistful of leaves and begun tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. 'But it won't be that long and I'll be gone.'

'Doesn't your dad like magic?' Lily asked carefully, Severus rarely talked about his family life, and when he did it was always vague and made him angry or upset so Lily rarely pushed him.

'He doesn't like anything much,' Severus answered eventually.

'Severus?' Lily asked understanding and not wanting to push him too far,

'Yeah?'

'Tell me about the Dementors again.' She knew that he liked talking about them, he just liked the things that gave her shivers. His favourite Beadle story was the Warlocks Hairy Heart, and Lily was sure it was because of the gruesome ending.

'What do you want to know about them for?' He turned on her, she hated it when he became moody like this.

'If I use magic outside school –' she tried to cover and link it back to their conversation.

'They wouldn't give you to the Dementors for that! Dementors are for people who do really bad stuff. They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban. You're not going to end up in Azkaban, you're too –' he broke off, turning red, shredding more leaves. Then a small rustling noise behind them made both children turn: Petunia, hiding behind a tree had lost her footing.

'Tuney!' cried Lily, surprise and welcome in her voice, but Severus had jumped to his feet.

'Who's spying now?' he shouted. 'What do you want?'

Petunia was breathless, alarmed at being caught. Lily could see her struggling for something hurtful to say to Severus, but Lily's mind was blank with shock and she could think of no way to stop her.

'What's that you're wearing' Tuney said pointing at Severus's chest. 'Your mum's blouse?'

There was a crack: a branch over Petunia's head had fallen. Lily screamed, sure that Petunia would be seriously hurt. The branch caught Petunia on the shoulder and she staggered backwards and burst into tears.

'Tuney!' Lily yelped, reaching out towards her sister.

But Petunia was running away. Lily rounded on Severus.

'Did you make that happen?'

'No.' he looked both defiant and scared. And Lily knew.

'You did!' she started to back away from him. 'You did! You hurt her!'

'No – no I didn't' he tried to convince her. But Lily, after one last burning look, ran from the thicket, off after her sister leaving Severus on his own confused at how he had done everything wrong.

Lily didn't see Severus for the rest of the week. She knew that he would be too proud to come round to her house; he would see that as admitting his mistake. But Lily didn't go around to his house strait away. Not because of her pride, but because she wanted Severus to realise that what he had done was wrong, and that she was upset and he should feel upset as well.

Lily also had to convince Petunia not to tell their parents who Lily had been with. Lily had never specifically lied to her parents, but she had let them assume that she was spending all this time out with Matt and Alex. Which she had been, some of the time, just mostly she hadn't. Lily didn't know how to explain to her parents about being a witch. Where would she start? So Lily hadn't told them about Severus or any of it. And now she had to make Petunia promise that she wouldn't give it all away.

Also, as if this wasn't enough for Lily to deal with all at once, Petunia was starting at her new school. Tuney was exited at this new prospect, seeing it as a marker, showing how old she was now, reminding Lily that she was the younger sister, the little one.

Aggravated Lily shut herself up in her room and turned on the radio, not wanting to read. She lay on her bed contemplating how difficult her life felt. She just couldn't wait until she could go to Hogwarts. Severus was right, family life was too complicated.

This chapter owes at least part of its existence to:

Harry Potter by J K Rowling

The Tails of Beadle the Bard by J K Rowling

Build me up Buttercup by The Foundations

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry