Lennox Mulciber stretched dramatically as though he'd had a long life of hard labour. "Nice!" He sighed. "I love Thursdays. Nothing, nothing, herbology, herbology, nothing. And no Gryffindors. At least Ravenclaws seem to know when to wind their necks in."

Severus was trailing behind the rest of the Slytherin first years as they made their way from the greenhouses to the castle, half listening to their conversation. Thursdays were dull. They had no lessons all morning, and unless he ran into her in the corridors after class, he wouldn't see Lily. He usually spent the day hidden away in the Slytherin common room reading, doing homework or eavesdropping.

The conversations always led back to the same road, whether they started on Quidditch or toad eyes. Blood status. Usually it was Rabastan that would steer the talk there, but most others were happy to jump on board along the way. Severus presumed that Rabastan, Lennox, Evan and William had all experienced similar upbringings - after all, they were all purebloods. Severus wasn't the only half blood in the first year group (and he imagined there might even be a muggle born somewhere, but they had the sense not to speak up) and though the talk often upset some of the other students and resulted in small spats, he generally allowed it to wash over him.

It was of no concern to him. They weren't interested in him, and he wasn't interested in them. He wasn't part of their world and he was used to that. Just like the boys from The City that he'd passed when they'd gone in to get his mother's funeral dress. Their life was so removed from his, like those boys, they wouldn't even see him.

Until Easter.

Somehow, Rabastan had heard that Severus had attempted to pull off a stupify and it seemed like his eyes had been opened to the quiet, isolated boy who shared their dorm. A few days after lessons resumed, Rabastan had cornered him in the morning before he managed to slip away for breakfast by putting his arm out and blocking the dormitory door. Unwilling to risk the argument that pushing past him might incur, Severus had allowed himself to be questioned.

Where did you find the spell ? Did you get him ? Did you win the duel ? Was it hard to pull off ? Reckon you could teach me ? Severus had looked bemusedly at him and simply told him where to find the library book. He wasn't able to resist confirming that he had, in fact, won the duel and that Potter had had to half-carry Black away.

Rabastan had clapped him on the shoulder delightedly and had been strangely chummy with him ever since.

And now, whenever the talk turned to taking down another house in a Quidditch match, "sorting out" a student who had wronged them or showing Gryffindor what they were "up against", Severus would be dragged into the conversation as though he were some kind of duelling champion. On the one hand, perhaps the perception would have been different if they knew he hadn't performed the spell to completion. On the other hand, it was oddly nice to be recognised as a force to be reckoned with. All too often, Potter and Black seemed to bounce back, undeterred, and Lily was a fool if she thought he was going to tattle on them. It wasn't as though an adult was about to start defending him now.

Severus had to admit, it was incredibly useful to have the other three boys invested in his life to an extent. Though he found it annoying that he was occasionally expected to talk to them in the common room, or sit with them at meals and forgo Lily's company, they were formidable allies against Black and Potter. No longer was it two on one. Lennox was more than willing to test out spells he had read about in gruesome books, and Evan had a sharp tongue on him to match Black. It was a shame that Lily disapproved of them, but she would have to let this one go. If she wasn't willing to give up going around with Lupin and Pettigrew, she would just have to accept that occasionally she'd have to interact with Evan, Rabastan, William and Lennox.

Unfortunately, when they were forced into each others' proximity, the conversation was often steered back to Rabastan's favourite topic. After walking back through the grounds and having the misfortune to pass the Gryffindors on their way back from flying, Lily was on Rabastan's mind. As soon as the common room wall sealed itself behind them, he started.

"Snape, your mudblood, is she going around with McKinnon?"

Severus didn't even bother to look up. He threw his bag down onto a nearby table and started pulling out parchment and ink. He heard Lennox and William jogging up the dormitory stairs to drop off their gloves and cloaks and wished he'd done the same so he could escape this interrogation.

"Suppose. They share a dorm."

Rabastan pulled out a chair to sit opposite him, leaning casually on the table.

"She should know better. McKinnon, I mean. Reckon we should speak to her, Evan?"

Evan was already comfortable in an armchair a few feet away, looking unlikely to start pulling out Herbology homework any time soon. "What're ye on about now?" he asked, rolling his eyes at Rabastan.

"I'm saying, we should speak to McKinnon. It's a decent family, they're powerful. She must have no idea what's on, if her parents are letting her go around talking to mudbloods."

Evan fixed Severus with a pointed stare. "'Stan, I don't care about McKinnon and whatever mudblood she's talking to. What're ye even hoping to achieve? That she'll join the Dark Lord?"

Severus jerked in his seat, his attention fully on Evan, now. The Dark Lord. It kept coming up, whispers here and there. He seemed certain that Malfoy, the prefect, had 'joined' - whatever that really meant - and he knew from Rabastan's constant bragging that his family were in on the action.

"Shut up, obviously not. I'm just saying, she's in a nice position, why ruin it just to make friends with a mudblood?"

Lennox, who had returned just in time to make sure that Severus' whole afternoon would be locked into this conversation, pointed out; "Well, Snape is," as though he were merely providing a fair piece of evidence.

Evan sat up in his armchair, suddenly much more interested.

"Yeah, Snape, you know you're going to have to choose sides, don't you?" He asked, a careful smirk on his pale lips. "Sooner or later, the mudblood has to go."

Severus met his gaze, carefully. He wanted to know. He wanted to be in on the conversation, for once, but he was always hesitant.

Hesitant to be told that it was shameful to not just know, and be ostracised. Hesitant to find out that it was something truly terrible, that he couldn't bring himself to agree with.

He could hardly ask Lucius. It would have to be them.

"What sides?" his voice was quiet, but even, an unexpected excitement was building in him. "What is all this about the Dark Lord? Who is he?"

Lennox opened his mouth to answer, but Rabastan beat him to it. He leaned forward, closing the distance between them at the small table, hushed and excited.

"He's incredible. This wizard who just came up out of nowhere and is doing what the Ministry is too chicken to do. My older brother's going to join him, once he's done his OWLs. It's like an uprising. Or, it's going to be, if he gets enough followers. He's got the right idea - wizards are more powerful than muggles, we shouldn't have to answer to them. We shouldn't have to be held back, or go about in secret. We should have the right to rule." Evan's eyebrows were raised, but he did not object.

Rabastan continued. "And my parents have been saying for years that something needs to be done about the mudbloods. They're just a different breed altogether. And if we're to have any hope of getting rid of the Statute of Secrecy, they can't be part of it. They're like muggles. They're just different. Rodolphus says there's more to being a wizard than doing magic, and he's right. You can't just go and buy a wand and turn up at Hogwarts and pretend you're part of our world. It's not right."

Rabastan's face was flushed with excitement, bright eyes locked with Severus'. He glanced at Evan, the question obvious.

"Half bloods are an interesting one. After all, it's not your fault your dad is a muggle." Evan said, evenly. Severus clenched his teeth.

"I hate him, anyway."

"Well, good."

"I've not heard of a Snape before, so it makes sense your dad is a muggle." Lennox was thoughtful. "Maybe the Dark Lord would consider it, I mean, it's like Evan says. Plus, if you're a good wizard, it just goes to show you're more magic than muggle, doesn't it? Not like Pettigrew-"

Evan snorted and covered his face, looking embarrassed. Lennox continued, with a wide smile.

"I mean, imagine having such a tragic bloodline that all your parents are magical and you give birth to three squibs! No wonder they kept popping them out!"

"I think my mother would have offed herself," Rabastan said, quite seriously.

Severus was reeling. He'd heard that Pettigrew was a pure blood, but he had gotten the impression very early on that it meant little to the Slytherins.

"Is that true? He has three squib brothers? I thought squibs were really rare?"

Evan was still openly laughing, trying his best not to keep snorting. "Yeah, they are! That's what's mad about it! Honestly shocked that they even sent him t' school - imagine if he's useless? Jesus, I'd be so embarrassed. If I were him, I'd rather stay at home."

Severus wondered how his life would have been different if he'd been a squib. Perhaps his father would have been a little less miserable? It was impossible to tell.

"So, what's the Dark Lord got to say about squibs, then?" He asked, genuinely curious. After all, if he was all about pure bloodlines, what would he say to one of the sacred 28 if they produced a squib?

"I'm not certain," Rabastan said, thoughtfully. "I'll ask my brother when I see him next, maybe he'll know for sure. But there's an idea that squibs come from having muggle mixing way down in your bloodline - so I suppose he'd say if purity mattered to wizards like it should, then squibs would never happen. Like, it's a sign of dirty blood. That's why we have the Sacred Twenty-eight in the first place."

Severus supposed that made a sort of sense. And it was pleasant to believe it. After all, if a pureblood family giving birth to three squibs meant that muggle influence earlier in their family ran strong, then perhaps him being magical despite his aggressively muggle father meant that he was extra-magic.

"This is what Lucius is into, isn't it?" he asked, nodding his head over at Malfoy and Narcissa, tangled together as usual in a far corner of the common room. "I heard him, Nott and Narcissa talking about it over Christmas. Black tried to make out like he was talking rubbish, but it was only because she knew I was listening."

Lennox rolled his eyes. "Black can wind her neck in. She'd be joining Malfoy if she knew what was good for her. Bet she's too scared though. She'll kiss up to Malfoy and she'll say she's with him if it all goes well for the Dark Lord. Coward."

Lennox's wide smile was gone and his blue eyes were cold and hard. Severus had seen the look on his face before, but never about a fellow Slytherin. He caught Evan give Lennox a strange side-ways glance and he couldn't quite figure out what his strange expression meant. Rabastan saved them.

"Anyway, you're no coward, are you, Snape? What do you say? Stand up to those filthy muggles?"

It was an easy answer, if he thought of that large, miserable man. That large miserable man and the small, cowering woman his mother had become. But what about the others? What about the Evans?

Well, what about them? Lily was a perfectly capable witch, and she was brilliant. Something magical must have shone through and blessed her. Whatever it was hadn't so much as grazed Petunia, as far as he was concerned. She was just as dull and unimaginative as the rest of them. And the parents could go, too. How was it fair that they would live up the hill, where the sun hit them first, and have that bright house with the blue door and the smiling mother waiting to come home. It really wasn't fair.

"Sounds good." he said, resolutely.

And it was different again. Severus had been otherwise unphased by his pledge, willing to carry on just as he had before, but the other boys saw things differently. He would have thought that it was because they could finally be themselves around him, but that wasn't quite right. After all, they hadn't bothered to be secretive about it before. Certainly not within the walls of the Slytherin common room.

But there was something different. A kind of camaraderie? They would wait for him, before leaving breakfast for classes, or occasionally move to pair up with him in potions, leaving Lily to team up with one of the Gryffindors. There was something nice about it. In the same way that he was filled with pride when they would turn to him for talk of hexes, or back him up in a deserted corridor with Potter and Black, he had a sick sort of giddiness when Evan would laugh at an underhand comment he made, or William would lock eyes with him when Lennox was being too much.

It felt almost like those secret days with Lily, back in Cokeworth. Just him, his friends, and a secret world to share.

Him and his friends.

What a bizarre thought.

"Surita was talking to me," Lily whispered to him over the clattering of equipment and muttering of the potions classroom.

"Who?" He was much more focussed on carefully dividing their ingredients based on order that they would add them to their forgetfulness potion. He was happy to have been paired with Lily, since they were practising the potion which would be on their end of year exam and she was a much more reliable partner than Lennox.

"Oh for goodness' sake!" she hissed, elbowing him. "She's in our year. She's in your house."

Severus thought for a moment, running through the students that joined them in class. He didn't bother to speak to many of the other Slytherins. He had no reason to. He didn't need help with school work, and he could entertain himself. If Malfoy, Nott or his dorm mates wanted to talk with him, that was their business. He knew there were three Slytherin girls but even after a year, he couldn't honestly say for certain which was which.

"She's over on the desk in the front left. Next to Alice."

Severus cast a quick look over and saw the back of the heads of two Slytherin girls. One had long, thick dark hair and the other shoulder length auburn coils.

"Surita is the one with the dark hair?" he asked. No doubt Lily rolled her eyes - he didn't bother to look.

" Yes. Anyway, she was saying your lot, the boys in your dorm, were going on about muggleborns."

Severus busied himself in measuring out two "drops" of Leith River water into a pipette. He should have known Lily would find out about this somehow, and would have something to say about it.

"What of it, they can go on about muggleborns if they want," Severus offered, evasively. Lily wasn't having it.

"Not they, you, Sev. You as well. She was saying to me and Marlene that you lot are all going on about muggleborns and calling them mudbloods." She whispered the word even lower, as though it would sting if delivered at full force.

"You shouldn't say that word," he muttered, still staring down at the table in front of him.

"Don't tell me what I can and can't say," she said, her voice bitling. Severus huffed.

"Well then don't tell me and my friends what we can say."

There was a moment of silence between them and it pulled Severus' gaze up to meet her green eyes.

"Friends?" Lily asked, all venom gone. She looked genuinely confused. Severus understood why, of course. He had never really bothered with anyone besides her and though the other boys had seemingly grown closer to him in the past few weeks, he had never treated them with the same familiarity as he did her. He understood. But a bitter part of him wanted to pretend he didn't. A bitter part of him wanted to throw it back at her. It rose up inside of him, some kind of spiteful dragon.

"Yes, friends. Or are you the only one who's allowed to have other friends?"

He stared at her hard and watched her pale, freckled face intently. Watching for the injury. But her usual fiery temper seemed to be on a short chain. She met his stare resolutely and then turned back to their ingredients, a sticky silence between them.

They worked through the rest of the potion without a word and took their "outstanding" from Professor Slughorn without comment. The class began to file out and Severus joined his housemates in their line back to the Slytherin dorms to drop off their bags before lunch. He could feel her eyes on him, but he resisted the urge to look back and quickened his step to as to be swallowed up by the group of his fellow Slytherins.

—-

Okay, big thanks to Alex0 for beta-reading this chap (and the last few!) and thank you all so much for reading (I see you, in the stats, being sneaky lol) and I hope you've been enjoying the story so far. This is the penultimate chapter! Can you believe it! 2016-2024! Madness. We'll be on to next academic year in a few weeks!

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