Tension

Before long, loud, unpleasant voices from the hallway brought her out of her reverie. The Hufflepuffs had interrupted their chatter and were turning nervously towards the open door, where Mulciber and Avery were standing, watching her and Sev with unfriendly faces.

"We finally found you, Snape," said the first. "Were you hiding?"

Lily turned to Sev, he didn't seem startled, from which she deduced that he hadn't gotten to sleep. He looked at the Slytherins with an impassive expression, his features hardening again.

"Of course, Mulciber," this was Avery. "Don't you see he's with the mudblood again?"

The insult slipped away from Lily, and even more so coming from them, it wasn't the first time they had dedicated it to her. But they had never done it in Sev's presence. She feared his reaction, because his eyes had turned into two slits of deep contempt, and without changing his position and very slowly, he was putting his hand in his robe pocket, after his wand. Lily did the same, fearing conflict.

Meanwhile, the poor badgers had lowered their eyes to the ground, clearly frightened, knowing they were between two fires. But Sev answered the snakes by going off on a tangent, his tone sharp and full of menace. "I was sleeping and you woke me up, get out of here if you don't want me to curse you."

The Slytherins looked at him suspiciously, but had lost their initial poise. "Well, well, it's not to get like that either, we just came to say hello. Find us when you wake up from your nap," Avery said with a tinkle on the last word.

And casting a scornful look at Lily, they both disappeared down the hall, leaving the door open, which one of the Hufflepuffs hurriedly closed.

Although the danger had apparently passed, the environment was charged with tension. The two badgers, leaning toward each other, whispered a few inaudible phrases, then got up, loaded their trunks, and walked away with a polite goodbye, leaving them alone.

Sev had sat up straight in his seat, his body turned rigid toward the door, his face an angry rictus that distorted his mouth, revealing clenched teeth. In his hand, resting on his thigh, he wielded his wand, pointing it at the compartment entrance, from which he never averted his gaze except to glance uneasily at Lily.

She did not dare to speak. She was more scared at that moment than she was in the presence of the snakes. In front of them, Sev had remained cool and confident and commanding, but now she realized that it had been a facade to hide the real danger he sensed.

It didn't take long for him to tell her, gently but authoritatively. "Lily, you should go with those of your house."

She opened her mouth to reply, she didn't want to separate from him, but she closed it without saying anything, because she understood that he was right. Sev had already got up, holding out his wandless hand, and heading for the door he said, "Come on, I'll go with you."

He peeked out before they both left, forgetting the trunks, and he preceded her down the corridor without letting go of her hand. 'What a fool I am, in this situation and me thinking about how warm and firm his touch is,' she thought.

Sev paused before passing each compartment and peered inside. Towards the end of the car he stood with his back to one of the doors, blocking her view of the interior, and made her pass through the narrow space between the wall and his body, lightly brushing against him.

"Now you go ahead of me," he whispered as he pushed gently her back.

She kept walking, turning from time to time to look at him. He followed a few steps behind her and sometimes she caught him turning to check if they were being followed.

When they reached the car where the Gryffindors were, almost at the other end of the train, the tables turned, and now it was Lily who feared for him. She stopped to wait for him and said, "I'm going on alone, I don't want you to meet Potter and company."

A flash of hatred flashed through Sev's eyes as he heard the name of his enemy. He thought about it for a moment. "Okay, but when you return to change your clothes, don't go alone."

Lily nodded, and Sev turned to leave, but she held his hand, still uneasy about him. "Sev… will you be alright?"

He gave her a firm squeeze and responded with a half smirk, his tone laden with confidence and irony. "Don't worry about me, Lily. I know how to take care of myself."

Lily continued on her way, looking for an empty compartment. She was afraid of bumping into Potter, at the moment she felt capable of hexing him, and she was too flustered to meet the girls.

In the end she decided to get into one occupied by three children, who must have been first-years, opened the door and asked their permission to enter. The kids interrupted their chat surprised that an older girl wanted to sit with them, but they nodded without saying a word.

As she stepped into it she turned in the direction Sev had gone and saw him standing at the back of the car, facing her. If she had been closer she would have caught a glimpse of that look in her eyes. He immediately turned and left the car.

Lily sank heavily into a seat by the door. She felt exhausted from the tension. They had not yet set foot in the school and already the two enemy houses had been hostile.

She closed her eyes and leaned back, trying to relax. The excited voices of the children helped her, they reminded her of her first trip to Hogwarts, with Sev, so different from this one. Already at that time they were harassed by Potter and Black, but they managed to stick together.

'Damn Sorting Hat! Why the hell did he put us in different houses, precisely in the eternal enemies of lions and snakes?'

The candy cart arrived and the screaming of the excited little ones snapped her out of her thoughts. She didn't have the body to eat anything, so she only asked for a bottle of water.

She had already calmed down a bit and she decided that the time had come to coldly analyze everything that had happened during their trip.

The Gryffindor quartet was clear. Except for Remus, they were typical schoolyard bullies who harrassed one between several to strut their stuff. But with regard to Potter's special animosity towards Sev, it was clear that behind the accusations of being a dark wizard there were other motivations, since they never attacked the rest of Slytherin. The 'glasses' was jealous, and would continue to harass him as long as she was close to him.

On the other hand, Mulciber had hit the nail on the head when he said that Sev was hiding in the back of the train, and besides, he hadn't chosen an empty compartment, as if he was somehow protecting himself as well. Whose? Of the Gryffindors? Of the Slytherins? Of herself?

She remembered how he had avoided her in the summer and the subtle changes in his attitude, but on the other hand, he had been attentive and friendly, they had talked as in the good old days, and in the face of the threat of the snakes, although he had not defended her directly from the insult, he had protected her by leading them away and escorting her through the train to a safe area.

Of course! She now understood why he had made her pass before that compartment hiding her. He had shielded her with his body preventing the Slytherins of their year, who must have been inside it, from seeing her. And then he had covered her back, in case they had seen him and thought to follow them.

And now he would have returned with them, with whom he said, "They were his friends who protected him." But she had seen the contempt in his eyes when he confronted them and understood that he didn't consider them his friends at all, and that they also caused him trouble for being with her.

They were in a monumental mess. It seemed to her to be living through a Shakespearean tragedy. Walking along a tightrope stretched between two pits of beasts, in one lions, in the other snakes, and the ultimate cause of everything was their friendship.

At last she understood why he was being distant. The solution to all the problems was the same. They had to separate to stop being the target of hostilities.

When she came to this conclusion she felt faint. She turned her face against the wall so the children wouldn't see her and cried as quietly as she could, for a long time.

How was she going to give him up, now that she loved him and he loved her too? Because with the protection he had given her on the journey down the hall, he had told her everything.

And even if it wasn't like this, she was his only friend! If only Sev had a decent family to hold on to. She could not be with him, but neither would she abandon him, she should to find a way to walk the tightrope, between her apparent indifference and her secret dedication. She knew that it was not going to be easy, she was unable to hide her feelings, without the cunning necessary to swim between two waters.

She should let herself be leaded by him, who was a master of dissimulation and stealth, and she too would find her own subterfuges. But the most important thing she had to do, above all else, was to stay true to her own feelings, to resist against all odds.