Chapter 38 – The Dark Mark
As Lily left Professor Slughorn's office, she looked at her watch and was dismayed to find that it was already 8pm. She had only gone down to the dungeons to ask a question about the NEWT practical exam, but Slughorn kept prolonging their conversation until she managed to excuse herself an hour later. She still had homework to finish before bed so she began to hurry back towards Gryffindor tower.
It was a bit spooky walking through the dungeons when so few people were around and not all the torches on the walls were lit. She wondered why they were even called the dungeons at all, when Hogwarts had always been a school, and the thought made her shiver.
She had almost reached the staircase when she heard voices and footsteps coming towards her; Slytherins, she guessed, returning to their common room. When she recognised Snape's voice, she hung back, feeling too tired to deal with him at that moment.
The Slytherins descended the stairs and turned right, talking in low voices and walking away from Lily without even noticing her in the dim light.
"I don't think you realise how important this is," Snape was saying insistently. "We've been chosen to join him."
A feeling of dread rose in Lily's stomach.
"So have loads of other people," another Slytherin replied. "Mulciber and Dolohov joined him as soon as they finished seventh year."
"But only the worthy are given the mark." Snape pulled back the sleeve of his robes, but from behind him Lily couldn't see his arm. "The Dark Lord trusts us."
Lily's blood turned cold. She hadn't heard anyone call Voldemort the Dark Lord before, but who else could Snape mean?
The Slytherins' voices began to fade as they walked further away, but even after they were out of sight Lily couldn't bring herself to move. Snape had joined Voldemort. A little over two years ago he had been her best friend, and now he had joined a man who would happily see muggleborns like her dead.
By the time she returned to her dorm, the shock had worn off and she simply felt hollowed out. Things were already so much worse than she'd thought they were.
She went to bed without speaking to anybody, leaving her homework unfinished. She lay awake for hours before exhaustion settled her mind and sent her to sleep.
Sirius had woken up late. After barely having time to grab a slice of toast from the great hall and tripping down two stairs on his way down to potions, he was convinced he was going to be late for class.
However, when he turned the final corner towards the classroom, he saw people still lingering outside the door, and for a moment though he'd actually made it on time. Then he glanced down at the watch the Potters had given him for his 17th birthday and, as he'd thought, it was almost ten past the hour.
As he moved closer, Sirius noticed that the majority of students outside - three of them - were Slytherins. Professor Slughorn was also there, tugging on the bottom of his beard as he often did when faced with a confrontation. Lastly, Sirius spotted Lily, standing in the middle of the group with a murderous expression as she looked between the Slytherins and Slughorn.
He was still too far away to hear what they were saying, but Sirius saw Lily point angrily to one of the boys - Snape, he realised - and noticed her take a menacing step towards him, before catching herself and standing still.
Sirius felt a smile creeping onto his face - if Lily was actually going to murder Snape he definitely wanted to be around to see it. He shrunk back into the doorway of another classroom to watch, but Slughorn was waving his hands and shaking his head, trying to diffuse the situation. Whatever had happened, he'd clearly had enough of it, and a few minutes later the Slytherins and Lily were being ushered back into the classroom. Feeling slightly disappointed, Sirius followed them.
Slughorn merely sighed at his lateness, not even threatening him with detention. Obviously he'd been put out enough for one morning.
Grabbing the cauldron he'd left on the windowsill to brew since their last lesson, Sirius crossed the room and took his seat beside Remus, who frowned at him as he sat down.
"What?" Sirius said self-consciously, but Remus wasn't paying him any attention. Instead, he was peering around Sirius' body, trying to get a glimpse of Lily, who was sat stony faced at the next table, determinedly ignoring the whispers of the boys behind her.
"What happened?" Sirius asked Remus then, but his boyfriend shook his head.
"I don't really know," he said, "it's not like Lily, but she seemed to be looking for a fight as soon as class started."
"Weird," Sirius replied.
He still hadn't emptied the potions kit out of his bag, and Slughorn was glaring at him, so he thought it best not to comment further.
Lily was usually excellent at potions – much better than either Sirius or Remus – but as the class progressed it became clear that her mind was elsewhere. Half way into the lesson, a putrid smelling grey cloud of smoke started steaming up from her cauldron, which Mary frantically tried to control by adding more asphodel. Lily watched her friend absently, but when the smoke refused to clear, and sniggers began to erupt from other students, she angrily threw down her spoon, spraying the potion across the desk. Then she pointed her wand into determinedly into her cauldron and muttered a spell that cleared the entirety of the liquid away, leaving it empty.
"Lily!" Slughorn called, rushing over. He stared at her empty cauldron in dismay. "What on earth? You've been working on this for three weeks."
"It doesn't matter," Lily replied.
"It doesn't – of course it matters!"
Lily shrugged at him, looking away, and Slughorn, at a loss for what to do next, merely sighed and muttered something about making up time in the evenings. He didn't send her out, or even shout, which was, Sirius though, a testament to how much he must actually understand about her behaviour.
Sirius noticed her half-heartedly restart the potion towards the end of class and dump it onto the windowsill to rest before hurrying out of the classroom ahead of most of the others, who had barely started packing away their equipment. Sirius said a quick goodbye to Remus, who had another class straight after potions, and, on instinct, rushed after her.
"Evans," he called, but she resolutely ignored him. "Lily, wait."
She slipped through a hidden passageway on the way out of the dungeons, but Sirius soon caught up with her on the other side and was relieved when she stopped walking away from him.
"You may be going out with James," he smiled, "but I helped find these shortcuts, you know."
"I'm not really in the mood to talk right now," Lily said.
"I know," Sirius almost reached out to her, but he knew that when he was mad he often didn't want people fussing over him. "It's just, you're obviously upset. And if it's to do with arsehole Slytherins then I have some experience in that area."
He paused, and Lily made no attempt to reply, or move away, so he continued. "If you do want to talk about it, or just shout a bit, then - we could go somewhere with slightly more room than a staircase and you know - do that."
He felt slightly embarrassed, but looked at her expectantly.
Lily's blank expression eventually gave way and Sirius saw how tired she looked, as though she hadn't slept well.
"The arithmancy classroom is usually left unlocked," she said. Sirius nodded and Lily led the way, neither of them speaking until the classroom door was shut behind them. Sirius waited for Lily to speak, and she eventually said, "Did you know Voldemort is recruiting people who are still in school?"
Sirius' expression immediately fell.
"No," he said. "I knew that people were involved somehow - that there was talk."
He thought of his brother, and the fact that his entire family supported the pureblood ideology that Voldemort stood for. He thought of his cousins and their husbands, and the way he'd sometimes seen Regulus look at them - like he admired what they said and did.
"You mean - recruiting them to do what exactly? Fight? Hurt people?"
"I don't know." Lily sat down on one of the desks, her hands gripping the wood hard enough to turn her knuckles white. "I overheard Sev - Snape and his friends talking about it. They all have some sort of mark on their arms that means they've joined him. I don't know what they're doing for him; I just know that they've chosen to be on his side." She looked down, touching her arm where Snape's mark was. In a softer voice, she said, "I know that Snape has said some terrible things, Sirius, and I even think he was probably the one who wrote that graffiti about mudbloods being scum, but even after everything he's done I never imagined that if the world split in two, we'd be on opposite sides. He was the first wizard I even knew, and he was supposed to be my friend."
Sirius watched her look down at the floor, and could tell, even without being able to see her face through her long hair, that she was struggling not to cry. It struck him suddenly, how much he cared about her. She may be James' girlfriend, but she was also his friend, and seeing her like this made him furious at the situation they found themselves in and desperate to quell some of the helplessness they were all feeling.
"You're tired," he said, pushing himself up onto the desk beside her. "I'm tired too."
She looked up at him, unshed tears sticking her eyelashes together in thick clumps. "Yeah?" she asked.
"Yeah. People keep dying and I can't do anything to stop it. I wish I could - because it's people like me causing all this crap, right? Purebloods with stupid ideas of grandeur. Hell, my family are probably right there with Voldemort - you know I saw third years who wouldn't even say his name the other day?"
Lily looked at him, the pain on her face reflecting his. "You're not responsible for what your family does, Sirius. But I know what you mean – I wish we could do something. It all felt so distant until now but I can't stop thinking that the danger is growing we don't know who will be next and we just have to carry on with NEWTS as though everything's normal."
Sirius nodded. "Teachers and parents - they're trying to protect us but they're just making it so we're unprepared - so that we leave school not knowing what's out there. That's not protecting us at all. Clearly, if Voldemort is recruiting kids then shielding us from reality isn't working." His last sentence was heavy with anger, but when he met Lily's eyes he just looked worried. "It's not fair, and I'm scared for you - for muggleborns. I'm scared for Remus and what he'll have to deal with after school. I'm scared that my brother will get himself killed, or that when it comes down to it, he could hurt someone I love. I'm terrified."
"Me too," Lily agreed quietly. "I always thought Hogwarts was safe, that the terrible things happening outside couldn't touch us. But the war is already here, isn't it? Right here in this castle. I never thought that would happen. I never thought I'd have to live with the knowledge that my classmates might want me dead."
"I know I can't understand how scary that must be," he replied, "but… you know that we have each other, right? You have us. All of us, not just James. And things will get better."
"I hope so," Lily said gravely, "because I think we're on the edge of something. And if things don't get better, they're going to get a lot, lot worse."
It was slightly odd to have had such a sombre conversation with Sirius, when for most of her time at school she'd thought of him as an idiot who was more interested in playing pranks than what was actually happening in the world. She didn't know how one person could contain two halves of themselves like that – but maybe they all did. Maybe that was what pain did to them; hiding it turned them into liars. But Lily didn't want to lie anymore. She wanted to yell and curse until people heard the pain that all this hatred was causing. She wanted to do something about it, but she didn't know how to – not yet.