Rose had skipped dinner. After a few gruelling hours with Madam Pomfrey trying to get all the blood out of her clothes and her hair, she had not been in the mood, and had quietly stolen away to the Slytherin common room. There was a small nook in the far east corner, next to the window under the lake, hidden behind a thick emerald curtain. There was a small armchair there and a bookshelf, which Rose was certain no one knew about but her. She moved the armchair in front of the fireplace, but decided to keep the little bookshelf. Then, with very little fuss and ceremony (she didn't have enough time for that), she carried the mattress from her dormitory that had laid peacefully underneath her for her first two years in the school all the way to the nook, and installed it there. Then she returned for her pillows, duvet, and trunk, all of which managed to take up exactly the space that the nook provided. It was as if it was fate had intended her to make her mark there. All in all, it felt quite cosy, and she had curled up with a book helpfully given by the shelf.

Her tension had heightened again when she heard the first tell-tale signs of the Slytherins returning from their feast, but she remained undisturbed. It seemed her assumption about the secrecy of the nook had been true. After a while, the last voices died out, and she felt safe at last to fall into a fitful, but much needed sleep.

Everything was going perfectly until, the next morning, she was rudely awoken by the curtain being ripped open to let in the ghoulish morning light that filtered through the lake to reach their common room. The voice that accompanied the wake-up call was even ruder.

"What are you doing, Prewett?"

She couldn't immediately recognise the silhouette of her visitor as her eyes adjusted to the daylight, but she would know those dulcet tones anywhere.

"Snape? What are you doing in my nook?"

"I think you mean, what are you doing in my reading corner?"

Rose squinted at him crossly. "It's not your reading corner. It's in the common room, anyone can use it."

"Then why exactly have you filled up this public space with your bed?" he scowled. "Was the four-poster bed in your dormitory not good enough for you?"

She sat up at last, rubbing her eyes. Her hair was sticking up at odd angles, and Snape felt a bizarre urge to laugh which he immediately buried.

"Oh, shove it. No one even knew about this place, except whoever put that armchair here hundreds of years ago. No one's going to notice."

"Well that would be a good theory if it wasn't for the fact that I put that armchair here."

Rose, who was still rubbing her eyes, suddenly stopped. She peered up at her classmate, making eye contact for the first time. "You? You're the one who made my reading nook?"

Snape crossed his arms. "You keep saying my, as if you have any claim to it."

"Well, I brought half of the books here!" she bristled. "I swiped them from the library myself!"

"And I brought the other half!"

They stared at each other. Both of them had treated this little corner of Hogwarts as a safe space. Both had seen the armchair and bookshelf, which seemed to magically refill every month or so, as a gift from some anonymous magician who had left something small for his fellow Slytherins. They had both viewed this figure as a somewhat friend, only to realise now that that friend had been an enemy all along. It was decidedly uncomfortable.

"Well, I'm not moving."

Snape sneered. "You'll have to at some point, to use the bathroom, and then I'll return this place as it was."

Her face turned bright red. He persisted.

"What's the point of all this, anyway? You're just going to have to go back to the dormitory to shower."

She turned even redder, which Snape hadn't thought possible. "I was going to use the Prefect's bathroom. I overheard Caro talking about it with her friends."

"Caro Greengrass? Isn't she your cousin? Why not just ask her?"

"If you hadn't noticed, no one's really talking to me at the moment," she hissed.

Snape was shocked. He had expected Delilah and Yelena to turn their backs on the girl, but her own cousin? He knew fraternising with Muggleborns and blood traitors was frowned upon, but the Weasleys were one of the oldest wizarding families out there. If they felt that Rose's connection to Arthur Weasley was so wrong, what on earth would they say about his friendship with Lily? He thought about what Avery and Mulciber had done to her on the train station. He considered those boys his friends – would they abandon him so quickly? Here was the most popular girl in his year, so frightened of her classmates that she would climb five floors just to use the toilet. It was embarrassing, and also terrifying.

"Don't bother with the Prefect's bathroom," he said brusquely. "Slughorn has a private one down in the dungeons in case he gets caught between classes, so he doesn't have to climb all the way to the staff ones on the third floor. He leaves it unlocked and it's next to the door to his office. I think it even has a shower."

He expected her to ask how he knew that – he had once accidentally stumbled in there looking for the store cupboard in his first year – but she just looked at him in confusion.

"If you go now, you'll get back before everyone else wakes up."

With that, he closed the curtain and plunged Rose once more into darkness.

Slughorn's bathroom was just where Snape had described, and decidedly more luxurious than the student equivalent. Rose managed a pleasant, if anxious, shower before slipping back to the common room to get dressed. When she opened her curtain, she half expected to find all her things gone and the armchair returned. But it turned out that Snape was not so true to his word – instead, there was simply a scrap of parchment with something scribbled in spidery handwriting – Muffliato: for privacy. She tested it out, but it seemed to have no effect. Perhaps it was another trick, but somehow Rose didn't think so. For whatever reason, her antagonist seemed to have had a change of heart.

Once she was in her uniform, and had tamed her hair somewhat so that it sat in its normal, loose curls, she slipped out into the common room. There were a few people now, sat about on the leather sofas and chairs, but they were small enough in number that Rose was able to slip past unnoticed. As she passed two fifth year boys, she heard one of them comment to the other, "Do you hear that buzzing noise?"

As she climbed the stairs out of the dungeon towards the great hall, she couldn't help but feel ever so slightly sick. This was the first time that she was deliberately putting herself out in the open in front of her peers, and thus inviting them to make fun of her. Was she being stupid? Maybe she should just go down to the kitchens instead…

Before she could change her mind and take the turning that would lead her in the direction of the Hufflepuff common room, she heard a voice from behind her.

"Rose!"

She flinched at the sound of her name, and turned around in fear, only to see Leah Leibowitz coming up the stairs to meet her. She was panting with the effort, but other than that she seemed relatively pleased that they had run into each other. "Wait up! I'll come eat dinner with you."

Rose blinked. "But… aren't you worried that people will… that they'll make fun of you?"

Leah, who had at last caught up with her classmate, just rolled her eyes. "Prewett, I'm a Muggleborn Jew in Slytherin House at Hogwarts. Being friends with you is just the tip of the iceberg."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess." Rose felt herself tear up, but did her best to push it down. More than ever, she wished she'd made more of an attempt to stand up for Leah when it had counted. She had never felt like more of a coward.

"Do you know what they're serving today? I could really go for some scrambled eggs right now."

Rose didn't trust herself to speak without crying, so they walked into the hall in an amicable silence. There were a few early birds who had already made it to breakfast, and they hushed their conversations to mutter about Rose as the two of them walked to their table, but aside from that, things seemed almost normal. The two girls sat down and, much to Leah's delight, there were scrambled eggs on offer. Rose then listened in relative quiet to Leah wax lyrical about the superiority of scrambled to boiled, and only jumped in briefly to offer her opinion that nothing could beat poached. It was, all in all, very peaceful and much needed.

Of course, this eye of the storm could not last forever, and soon enough more and more people began making their way into the hall to eat. With each gaggle of new students came more hisses and stares thrown in their direction, until it culminated in the arrival of the two girls Rose had feared to meet the most – Yelena and Delilah.

Delilah spotted them first, her big pale eyes widening when they landed on her old best friend. She surreptitiously tugged at Dolohov's arm, trying to drag her in the direction of some spare seats further away, but too late. Yelena had seen who was sat ahead for herself, and never missed an opportunity to diminish those she saw as lesser. She sauntered over, Delilah dawdling unhappily behind.

"Ah, Prewett," said Dolohov, sneering. "Good to see you've found company more acceptable to your family. I thought I saw a dog going into the forbidden forest the other day – he'd make a good third party."

The second years next to Leah and Rose tittered at the joke. Rose just stared stoically into her eggs, hoping Dolohov would move away of her own accord. Sadly she did not.

"What's wrong? Mudblood got your tongue?"

Rose was mortified on Leah's behalf, and looked up expecting to see her companion flinch. But Leah did nothing of the sort – instead she simply put her fork down and asked Rose, very calmly, "Would you like to come to the library with me? I'm about done here."

Rose was only about halfway through her meal, but wasn't about to argue. "Sure."

They got up and walked out of the hall together, leaving Yelena in shock and with a sour look on her face. Delilah, on the other hand, seemed oddly relieved. When they got into the corridor, Leah shot Rose an apologetic look.

"Sorry about that. It just seemed the best way to get out of a bad situation."

Rose nodded. "No, it was great! Did you really want to go to the library?" she asked shyly. "Just because I have a free period now and some holiday homework to go over, if you wanted."

"Ah, sorry," said Leah gently, "I've got Arithmancy class right now."

"Arithmancy, eh?" Rose tried not to show her disappointment. "You're a clever clogs then."

She laughed. "Should have been a Ravenclaw." She paused, and then, after some deliberation said, "But I could meet you in the break if you're still there?"

Rose smiled. "I'd like that."

They parted ways at the dungeon steps, when Leah returned to the common room to grab some parchment before class. Rose began walking to the library, thinking about how lucky she was that Leah saw fit to be her friend after all her past mistakes. Perhaps this year wouldn't be so bad, after all. It was this thought that kept her going as she sat down at a desk at the back of the library, ignoring all the looks she was getting from the older students around her, and tuning out their comments and rude remarks.

She continued in this way for quite a while, struggling through the last Transfiguration question which she hadn't been able to face during the holidays, her brow furrowed, and her brain taxed. She almost didn't notice the dark shadow cross her desk – almost.

"Oh," she said abruptly, her eyes falling on a familiar face. "You again."

"Indeed," said Snape. His expression was piercing, and it made her uncomfortable. Usually, she would make fun of him to deflect from the awkwardness that seemed to follow him wherever he went, but after his out of the ordinary kindness that morning it didn't seem right.

"I'm just trying to finish off the Transfiguration homework McGonagall set us for the holidays."

He raised an eyebrow as he read her work upside down. "Not terribly well. That's the least concise explanation of magical deconstructionism I've ever seen."

He knew exactly how to grind her gears, and it took a great amount of effort for her not to snap back in that moment. She swallowed her retort and smiled thinly. "Can I help you with something?"

He watched her curiously for a moment, seemingly deliberating whether or not he was going to say something. Then, after a short while, he said, "Are you free this evening?"

"Free?"

"Yes. Lily Evans is taking me to tea at that oaf Hagrid's hut, and it would be nice to have someone to have an intelligent conversation with while they're yammering on."

Hagrid? Lily Evans? Rose had known that Snape and Evans knew each other on some level, but she assumed it was just an acquaintance from their childhood in the Muggle world. She couldn't imagine two people less alike if she tried. Still, it appeared that they must be reasonably close if they were going to tea at Hagrid's, of all people. She was overwhelmed.

"I – I'm not sure that's a brilliant idea." She backtracked. "I'm sorry, that must seem rude, it was very kind of you to offer but – I really don't think that Evans likes me that much."

Snape shrugged. "No one likes you that much, what difference does that make? And she's more forgiving than most."

He had a point, even if it was said in a terribly unkind way. But Rose was still terribly unsure – between Lily and Leah, she risked making this whole 'blood traitor' situation much worse. Her guilt after she realised what a disgusting thing had just crossed her mind made her feel even more horrible about the whole thing. "Why do you care about all this? Surely it's in your interest to leave me to the dogs?"

"No reason," he said elusively as he sauntered over to the bookshelf opposite and picked up a book. "I'll assume you won't come then – but if you change your mind, it's seven o'clock, after dinner."

She watched with barely concealed surprise as he returned to her table to place the book in front of her. It was a copy of A Younge Sorcerer's Guide to Transfiguratione. "Page 422 – there's a good definition to use there. Just change it up a bit so it doesn't look like plagiarism."

He walked away, disappearing into the many isles of books. Rose stared after him in confusion, before turning to page 422. Sure enough, there was a good explanation of magical deconstructionism there. She couldn't believe her eyes. Was Snape actually being nice?