Author's Note: Thanks to my beta, aberrantstrain, as always, for her words of encouragement. Thanks to yobadself and Guest for reviewing the last chapter. Please review! Unless any of you feel strongly otherwise, I may go to updating every week instead of twice a week. I'm thinking every Tuesday from now on, but I'll see.

Also, I am cross-posting this to AOx3 with supplementary info and multimedia for each chapter. There is also a fairly in-depth discussion of class structure in 1970s UK in the comments. Check it out if you are interested!

Chapter 6: Girl Talk vs. Boy Talk

It was the first night back at Hogwarts, and up in Gryffindor tower, Lily sat cross legged opposite Mary MacDonald (1) on Mary's four-poster bed. Marlene Moody (2), Charlotte McKinnon and Diana Fawley were still downstairs, playing exploding snap with the boys. Mary had just finished breathlessly recounting her holiday to Paris, and now it was Lily's turn to yammer on endlessly as only teenage girls can do.

"You have to tell me everything! But please, Lily, for once in your life, spare me the play by play of the Sev and Lily show."

Lily's face fell.

Mary noticed the change. "What?"

"It's just…we — I — he — sort of…kissed me," Lily mumbled to the floor, dreading Mary's reaction to the news.

Mary didn't disappoint her. "You what?" she screeched. "Did you kiss him back?"

Lily nodded, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. Mary didn't exactly approve of Sev, or of Lily's friendship with him. Lily knew this because Mary was crap at keeping her thoughts to herself. As in, she had a big mouth. Sure enough, Lily cringed as Mary opened said big mouth and began to speak.

"I don't even know why you hang around with him. What do you see in him anyway? You know what Sirius says? He says Snape is up to his eyeballs in the Dark Arts, always has been…knew more curses as a first year than all the seventh years combined…"

Lily leaped up from the bed, fists clenched at her sides so tight that she could feel her nails digging into her palms. "Sev's not like that! He just reads a lot, that's all. He doesn't go around hexing people for fun, which is more than I can say for Sirius Black. And anyway, there's no such thing as dark magic, that's just a term the Ministry made up for any kind of magic that they up and decide should be illegal or controlled…"

Mary leaped to her feet as well, taking a step toward Lily with her hands on her hips. "Is that what he told you?"

Lily opened her mouth, ready to get into it proper with Mary, then shut it again, her gaze drifting to the far wall. What could she say? After all, Sev had, in fact, been the one to tell her that.

"You're always defending him, Lily…if he was really as good as you make him out to be, you wouldn't need to defend him all the time, would you?"

Tears sprang to Lily's eyes, unbidden. "You don't understand Mary! Sev made me special. I owe everything I am to him."

"What do you mean?"

Mary sounded genuinely curious, so Lily wiped her eyes and tried, for the first time, to explain in earnest to her friend the entirety of what Sev meant to her.

"He's the one who told me that I was a witch. He — he had seen me doing magic. I was eight years old. I was playing in the park with my sister when all of a sudden this boy comes up to me and tells me that I'm special, that I'm a witch. That I can do magic just like him. He…he discovered me. I was nothing before Sev came into my life."

Mary sat back on her bed and looked up at Lily with a sympathetic sort of confusion in her eyes. "Lily, I get that he means a lot to you, but…he just told you that you were a witch…he didn't make you into a witch. He didn't give you your magic. You were born with that. You still would have come to Hogwarts if you had never met him."

Lily paced back and forth in front of Mary's bed in agitation, swiping at her eyes. "I know that! But for the first time in my life, I felt special. He did that. He told me that I was special." Mary continued to look up at her in bemusement, and Lily huffed a frustrated breath. How could she possibly make her understand? "You don't know what it's like, growing up in Cokeworth. It's where magic goes to die. It's a hell hole and everyone just wants to bloody well get out of there but nobody ever does. Sev showed me a whole new world beyond Cokeworth. He make me believe that I would leave there one day. He gave me hope," Lily finished with a sniffle.

"Oh Lily…" Mary patted the space beside her. "Come sit down and tell me all about it, then. How did he kiss you?"

Lily joined her friend on the bed, her lips tugging into a weak smile. She had been bursting with excitement over Sev, and was so glad to have someone to confide in about him.

"Well…he was over at my house on Christmas Eve, and we were out alone in the yard…" She trailed off, suddenly bashful.

"Go on."

"I was complaining about how we didn't have a White Christmas this year. So, he told me to close my eyes and made it snow."

"He made it snow?"

"Yeah…wandless magic. You don't know him Mary, he really is brilliant," she said at her friend's incredulous look.

"Okay…what next? Get to the kissing part," Mary said excitedly, her dislike for Sev apparently forgotten in the quest for teenage gossip.

"I looked up and saw a shooting star, and I told Sev to make a wish. And then I asked him what he wished for."

"Lily! You can't ask people what they wished for! Then it won't happen. Everyone knows that."

"Yeah, but this time it did," said Lily with a dreamy smile.

"What do you mean?"

"When I asked him what he wished for, he pulled me close and kissed me, right there under the stars, and he answered 'this.'"

Mary sighed dreamily, leaning back onto her elbows. "That's so romantic. Who knew Snape had it in him? It's like something out of a Hollywood film."

One of the reasons Mary was such a close friend was that her muggle born background allowed her to trade muggle references back and forth with Lily, just as Lily did with Sev.

She fixed a gimlet eye on Lily, "So, are you two dating now?"

"Well, I suppose so," said Lily slowly. "Why wouldn't we be?"

"Well, he kissed you, but did he ask you to be his girlfriend?"

There was a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. "…No, not exactly."

"Well then, it was just a kiss. A kiss on its own doesn't mean that you're dating," she said glumly, and Lily knew her friend was basing that observation on her disappointing experience with Sirius Black.

"We, er, did more than just kiss, though."

"What?" Mary shrieked, bouncing up from her where she was still perched on her elbows. "Tell me! Tell me everything. I want all the details." She was practically vibrating with excitement.

Lily proceeded to give her friend a recap of the early hours of New Year's day so explicit that it would make a teenage boy blush.

"So, let me get this straight," said Mary with a frown. "You were alone in bed together, the entire house to yourselves, and all you did was talk dirty to each other while you groped his belly and he groped your arm?"

Lily buried her flaming face in a pillow, then straightened and lobbed the pillow at Mary. "You make it sound so weird!"

"It is weird! Your hand was down there anyway, all you needed to do was move it six inches lower!" she declared, demonstrating the cupping motion on the corner of the pillow.

"Mary!" she gasped, surprised by her friend's brisk turn around. One minute she didn't want her talking to Sev at all, the next minute she was encouraging her to, well —

Mary rolled her eyes. "You are such a prude."

"I'm not!" Lily insisted, "You definitely wouldn't call me a prude if you heard the things I was whispering in his ear that night."

Mary wrinkled her nose. "Ew, that's vile."

"Who's the prude now?" crowed Lily with a smug grin. They dissolved into a shared fit of shrieking giggles.

Mary was the first of them to sober down. "No, but seriously, Lily, have you considered that maybe he wants to keep it a secret?"

Lily's heart sank. She hadn't considered it. They hadn't talked about it at all. Come to think of it, he had acted quite reserved with her on the train ride back to Hogwarts. He hadn't even held her hand. Sure, Sev could be shy, but…

Mary folded the pillow over in her lap, leaning over it to peer closely into Lily's face. "I mean, his friends already tease him about you. So do Black and Potter. Maybe he doesn't want to invite any more of that."

Lily bit her lip, studying the coverlet intently. She must have appeared quite wretched, because Mary rushed to soothe her: "Maybe it's for the best, anyway."

"How's that?" Lily said tonelessly.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Lily, but you could do better." Lily made to jump in, but Mary held up a hand and she fell silent. "Come on, you have to know that's true. I mean, even if Snape really does care for you, let's be honest. He's not exactly the best looking bloke in the school, is he? And you…you're Lily Evans…you could have any boy you want. And…and you know Potter's got it bad for you." Lily scoffed at that. "No listen — hear me out — you can't tell me you don't enjoy the attention, even if he is a toerag. You think he's still going to chase after you if he knows you're with Snape?"

Lily had never considered that Potter might stop paying attention to her. He had fancied her for so long, that she couldn't even imagine what her life would look like without his ubiquitous amorous presence in it. Not that it would bother her if he stopped chasing after her. Why would it? She didn't even like the prat. Why would she miss his regard?

But a disquiet had creeped into her chest; it now had Lily's heart within its clutches, and she couldn't quite shake it off.

She felt herself become inexplicably angry at Mary for even bringing up the possibility of Potter no longer fancying her. "What are you saying?" she said indignantly, "That I should keep my relationship with Sev a secret so that I can keep stringing Potter along? Even though I have no intention of ever going out with him?"

"All I am saying," answered Mary in a conciliatory tone, "is that maybe you should hold off on telling other people for now…just until you're sure about Snape."

At that moment, Charlotte, Marlene, and Diana burst into the room in a whirlwind of girlish chatter, and Lily was saved the difficulty of formulating a counter argument. She hopped off Mary's bed and dragged herself disconsolately over to her own. She crawled under the covers and closed the bed hangings, shutting out the happy chatter of her room mates.

It was going to be a long winter term.

Back in the Slytherin dormitories, Severus unpacked his trunk. His best mate, Evan Rosier, did the same next to him. Max Mulciber and Nathan Avery were still down in the common room, hastily scribbling away at unfinished holiday homework, and Damian Wilkes was taking a shower (and a wank, no doubt, given how long he'd been in there).

"Good Holiday?" asked Evan around a mouthful of Drooble's Best.

"Pretty good, yeah. I kissed Lily," Severus replied into his trunk, unsure how his friend would take the news.

Evan held the opinion that there was room for only one good looking red head in Severus's life, and it wasn't Lily as far as he was concerned. Severus knew this because Evan was crap at keeping his thoughts to himself, which was unfortunate when your roommate was a born legilimens. Severus also knew that Evan intended the sentiment in an entirely platonic way, his heterosexuality affirmed by all the pornographic fantasies about a certain Miss Shacklebolt (3) that Evan also couldn't keep to himself, much to Severus's perpetual dismay. Somebody really needed to teach the poor sod some semblance of occlumency one of these days.

The bubble that Evan had been blowing popped in his face. He peeled it off with one hand. "She kiss you back?"

"…Yep," he said, popping the 'p'.

Evan turned to him, brow furrowed. There was still some Drooble's stuck to his left cheek. He turned back to his trunk. "So, you and Evans, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"She make you happy?"

"Yeah."

"Good for you, mate."

"But the others…"

Evan shrugged one shoulder in that nonchalant way of his that Severus quite admired. "Fuck the others," he said.

Severus resolved to take his advice.

Lily went to sleep that night feeling decidedly glum. For a moment there she had really thought that she had finally gotten through to Mary. It was clear to her now that Mary would never understand her relationship with Sev. She would never approve. None of her friends ever would. She hadn't thought that their approval was so important to her. But if it wasn't, why was she so down about the prospect of not having it?

If only they could see in Sev what she saw in him.

Severus Snape was not a classically handsome bloke. Lily had to admit that even to herself. In certain lights and from certain angles, he was almost…beautiful in a striking sort of way, with his paler than pale skin, sharply defined cheekbones and jaw line, and thin but delicately curved lips. Nevertheless, he was nothing like the rugged blokes pictured in Witch Weekly or the objectively perfect looking boys at Hogwarts (Sirius Black immediately sprang to mind) that all the girls seemed to swoon over. But there was something…something about him. Some undefinable…sexual magnetism, for lack of a better term.

Severus was all angles and planes, and not just in his appearance, but also in his movement, his speech, and his gaze. It was really something about his posture and the way that he carried himself that exuded raw sexuality, and Lily felt certain that he wasn't even aware of it. There was a tautness in his muscles, in his furrowed brow and the rigid set of his jaw. He was like a tightly coiled spring; a dark, vital potential energy barely contained beneath the surface of his skin.

Lily loved the way that he walked, with his shoulders drawn up and in, arms held straight and hands in his pockets, chest ever so slightly angled forward, head tilted down and dark eyes warily surveying his surroundings from beneath his acutely angled brows, his entire body tense as he took long purposeful strides, a sharp bounce in his every step. His gait reminded Lily of a jungle cat…a feral, caged jungle cat, poised to pounce on you at any moment.

Everything about him was sharp and precise, the very opposite of James Potter's artlessly relaxed, languid sprawl. Severus was never smooth in his mannerisms. His movements were simultaneously jerky yet graceful, if such a thing were even possible. But Sev had always been a sublime mess of contradictions, and somehow he managed to pull it off anyway.

And Merlin, his eyes. Sev had the most expressive eyes that Lily had ever seen, and all that tightly wound intensity seemed to concentrate in his piercing gaze. The synergy of those eyes and that voice was enough to steal her breath away. At times, she thought that he was hypnotizing her, like a cobra mesmerizing its prey just before it strikes.

There was just such an intensity about him that had always thrilled her, even as a little girl. A quiet, introverted confidence without a touch of boastful arrogance. He was comfortable in his own skin, you could tell, but he preferred to hang back in the shadows. Yet, instead of melting into the background, he possessed a presence that instantly shifted the energy of any room into which he walked. It was subtle yet powerful, and made her shiver involuntarily every time he came near.

When Lily thought of Severus, she was reminded of that Walt Whitman poem…"I sing the body electric" (4). She often thought it could have been written about him.

"But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,

It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him,

The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side."

No, Sev was not a classically handsome bloke, but Lily was sure that she wanted him.

Footnotes:

1 – Mary MacDonald is the future Mary Cattermole.

2 – Marlene Moody is the future Marlene McKinnon.

3 – Miss Shacklebolt is the future Mrs. Zabini.

4 – I obviously did not write and do not own this poem.