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"One more wand confiscation, Jamie, and your nickname will be cemented in stone. Oh, and the rhyme was a killer. How did it start... Quick Jimmie w..."
"MMHAAAAAAARHH-! I DIDN'T HEAR YOU! DIDN'T HEAR YOUUUUU!"
The three boys exchanged glances, effectively ignoring James who was covering his ears and yelling once again. Finally, one of the boys spoke up.
"I'm in favor. I think we should give that creep a good, hard kick in the ass. Kick him out of school, or at least make sure he doesn't dare look us in the eye."
Remus blinked. It was unexpected to hear his friend, Sirius, the most aristocratic of them all, indifferent to almost everything in the world, being so aggressive.
Of course, Sirius had been playing pranks on Snape as often as James had, but it was a mere pastime. For him, it was a way of relieving the tedium of uninteresting school days, not something that needed to be so... purposeful.
"...Uh, why, are you really going to help Jamie hook up with Evans?"
Sirius narrowed his elegant silver-gray eyes. "If Jamie doesn't cool off, he would be able to take Evans eventually. I don't mind that. But whether it leads to anything or not, if that Slytherin snitch comes within ten paces of me because of it, I might kill him in a fit of grossness."
"Ooh, aren't you a bitch?"
Sirius quirked one side of his lips. "That bastard hasn't been looking at you very nicely lately, Remy; I saw him giving you a nasty eye when you were called to Peverell's office."
Remus's eyes flickered in alarm, uneasy at the thought that Snape might be aware of the 'project' he'd been told about by Professor Peverell the other day when he'd stopped by the Slytherin Deputy Head's office.
The spiteful boy would surely spread the word around the school as soon as he found out; and then no amount of Dumbledore's efforts would save him from expulsion...
Seeing Remus' pale face only made Sirius more furious. He gritted his teeth.
"A creepy asshole," Sirius said through clenched teeth, "I felt so when I first saw him in the first year, and I was right, as his eyes turn more and more disgusting since he's been put into Slytherin and getting on years."
The creep had those dark, malicious eyes, the ones that reeked of inferiority and ambition, the ones that would sacrifice anything to get ahead.
It didn't matter that he was poor. Remus had once told him that after the unfortunate accident, his parents had spent their entire fortune trying to cure him, so much so that they couldn't even afford the paltry tuition of Hogwarts. And they were as good friends as ever.
No. It wasn't Snape's poverty or humble origins that Sirius found the problem with; it was the insatiable greed of one who was never satisfied with what he had, who was habitually jealous of others, and who wanted to climb the ladder somehow and anyhow. The snobbishness of looking on those who are better than him and rolling his eyes always searching for gain.
It was that Slytherin-ness.
Sirius pondered.
Evans, she's not from the best of backgrounds, either. But her eyes aren't bad. Confident and cool, with the calm nonchalance of someone who doesn't seem to care, or even notice, about the hierarchy in Hogwarts. Perhaps Jamie's attraction to her is due in part to those sassy, yet grave, green eyes that treat the heir of prestigious Potter family like a piece of dog poop.
Yup, the gray-eyed boy decided, if it's Evans, he wouldn't mind if Jamie dated her and even married her.
Lord Fleamont Potter is a mushiest daddy for Jamie so he would welcome a muggleborn daughter-in-law without any trouble. On the other hand, the Blacks, those darned old Slytherins, would undoubtedly shudder in disgust at the news of a pureblood heir marrying a dirty mudblood.
The thought of that scene was enough to made him want to jump up and cheer thrice for Jamie's first crush coming to fruition.
The Black heir's handsome mouth curled into a faint smile.
James and Lily Potter. Hmm.
They're both smart, good-looking, and they both have a great potential of magic. Their personalities are also well-suited to each other, with Evans being cool and nonchalant, and Jamie being generous and bold. So, a great pair they would make.
Sirius grinned. I can't wait to see the fawn Evans would give birth to. How cute and adorable it would be! Whether it's a boy or a girl, the combination of their parents' personalities and talents will make for one hell of a wizard or witch.
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Outside Hogwarts Library, on an October day.
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Severus waved to Lily in the hallway leading to the library, where he saw her waiting at the door, with a short Gryffindor girl alongside her. She smiled at him and raised the book in her hand, indicating that she had successfully checked out the book he had requested earlier.
The boy grinned widely when he saw it. Even though the existence of a girl (not the "Stickyshit" one) next to her was unwelcome, after the humiliating price Lily had forced him to pay last month, Severus had become socially adept enough to shrug and pretend to not notice the presence of Gryffindor pals around Lily.
That was after his adamant assurances were overturned spectacularly. By age-old agreement, "I'll eat my socks" was a pretty serious wager. Lily's face was beaming with accomplishment as she demanded a ruthless price from Severus.
With a cruel glint in her green eyes and an evil grin on her lips, Lily ordered Severus to write a letter of apology to her friend, in person. Severus's hands shook with shame, but he consoled himself that it was better than the humiliation of a face-to-face apology, so he wrote a four-line apology and sent it through Lily.
It was a gritted teeth apology, but the letter, written according to the etiquette of the pureblood society, passed Lily's preliminary inspection. Surprisingly, it seemed to mollify the 'Stickyshit' girl's anger, and when she passed him in class the next day, the hostility in her eyes was much less pronounced.
So far so good; but to his dismay, what he found out a few days later was that the bitch had circulated Severus' apology letter among Lily's friends!
Upon learning of this, Severus took up his wand and went to the Gryffindor tower to challenge the bitch to a duel to the death, but Lily begged him off ("Sev, please, she didn't mean any harm, Mary just needed to talk to the friends to get her anger out!"); and they settled with taking his letter back from the girl and tearing it up.
After that, strangely enough, the way Lily's Gryffindor friends looked at Severus softened a bit.
That is, instead of glancing at him like he was a half-eaten cockroach, they just gave him a quick snort and walked past him, like he was a mutt that had just rolled in the mud.
For Severus, he reminded himself of his handwritten apology (which, as is the courtesy, included the phrase "sincere effort to prevent a recurrence") and, as much as he hated to admit it, of Peverell's spine-chilling lecture about one's tongue being a sword to oneself, so he kept his mouth shut and turned away when he saw girls next to Lily, instead of snapping and spewing venom about Gryffindorks.
So it was an improvement, of a sort.
Severus paused in his walk, his eyes fixed solely on Lily. A half-dozen girls had passed him in the corridor and were talking to her. Judging by the colour of their ties, they were Hufflepuffs.
It made him want to vomit, being stopped just before meeting Lily, but she had friends in every other house but Slytherin, so he had no choice. Severus leaned against the corridor wall and waited for the conversation to end.
After a few minutes of waiting, Severus narrowed his eyes. It didn't sound like a friendly chat.
Severus briskly walked over. As he got closer, the shrill voices became clearer and clearer.
"-Isn't it a fact that muggleborns come into our society and get a free ride without contributing anything?"
"Free riders, now they're demanding the right to drive the bus. Aww, that's not a nice thing to hear."
"Equal status? Is that really what you want, Miss Evans? After getting a free ticket to Hogwarts without contributing anything to the wizarding community, is that really what you want? Wow, I wonder where's your social conscience?"
"Oh, come on, don't be so hard on them. Maybe in their oh-so-fair Muggle society, they don't care about things like birth or origin, and treat even the immigrants and foreign labors so equally."
"Right, of course they would! By the way, how many Indian-born Prime Ministers have you had in your Muggle British government? Four, five? No offense, but I'm genuinely curious. Haven't people from India contributed to Britain long enough to no longer be considered immigrants?"
"-Oh, please, Miss Muggleborn. We've never begged you to come into our society, while we're perfectly willing to throw you a big farewell party if you're leaving for good!"
Oh, bloody hell. She'd been picked up by bullies.
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