Chapter Fifteen: Feathers, Mushrooms and a Willow

****

If he and Lily earned top marks for brewing Veritaserum for their final project, Severus knew that they would earn them, for he, at any rate, was starting from scratch. Veritaserum was one potion he had never seen Mother make. Perhaps she had never wanted the unvarnished truth from Tobias.

Lily and Severus's first stop was the school library.

"There's nothing on Veritaserum here. That includes the Restricted Section, so don't ask about that, either," said Madam Pince with a satisfied smile.

Severus gritted his teeth. Lily smiled brightly. "Do you know where we could find some information on it, then? We're brewing it for our final project, and we want to get it exactly right."

Pince's own smile grew broader. "In the libraries of the Ministry for Magic. But you can't check out any of the materials unless you're a Ministry employee."

"What are we supposed to do, then?" said Severus. "We can't spend all our time at the Ministry libraries! We're going to school here!"

"Well, that's your problem, isn't it?" said Pince in as pleasant a voice as Severus had ever heard her use.

"But other people besides Ministry employees brew Veritaserum," said Lily. "I've heard Professor Slughorn keeps a fresh supply made up for the Headmaster."

Pince frowned. "I don't know where you can have heard anything like that."

Lily smiled sweetly in reply. "You wouldn't know where I might find the name and address of the Ministry's head librarian, would you?"

The furrow deepened between Madam Pince's brows. She surveyed Lily suspiciously. Severus boiled with rising frustration, but Lily kept the smile pasted on her face.

Finally Pince jabbed a knobby finger at a nearby bookshelf.

"Thank you!" said Lily.

They turned away, and Severus heard Pince mutter, "Veritaserum! What's Slughorn think he's playing at! Or Dumbledore, for that matter!"

The shelf Pince had indicated was full of directories giving information on all kinds of people, from the Elders of the Wizengamot to the officers of the Quidditch Union for the Administration and Betterment of the British League and its Endeavours.

"Ah, here it is," said Lily. She took from the shelf a doorstopper of a directory entitled Museums, Libraries and Educational Institutions of the Wizarding World and lugged it to the nearest table. She opened it and flipped through its pages. "There!" she said.

Severus followed her pointing finger to the address in London of the Ministry for Magic Reference Libraries, Malvina Kelly, Head Librarian.

"We'll write to her and ask her if we can borrow a copy of the recipe for Veritaserum," said Lily.

Severus looked at her in frank disbelief.

"I'll sprinkle Dumbledore's name all over the letter. I'll bet he knows her. He knows everybody. Come on, we're supposed to act independently, aren't we?" Lily said when Severus didn't reply. "Besides, how else are we going to get it?"

She had a point. "I suppose it couldn't hurt," Severus allowed.

Lily returned the directory to its shelf, and she and Severus went their separate ways.

****

Severus didn't see Lily again until she came over to the Slytherin table while he was eating breakfast with Olaus Ruskin and Maddy Urquhart. Ruskin's brows rose infinitesimally when he laid eyes on Lily, and Severus immediately felt the heat crawl into his face.

Lily, her own cheeks flushed with excitement, laid a letter next to Severus's plate. "Look what Madam Kelly sent me!"

Severus opened it and read:

6 May, 1976

Dear Miss Evans,

I am pleased to be able to grant your request for a copy of the Ministry Library's recipe for Veritaserum. As you indicated he would do, Professor Dumbledore has indeed confirmed that your N.E.W.T.s class are undertaking projects as advanced as the brewing of Veritaserum. He further recommended you to me as a young lady responsible and discreet enough to be placed in possession of all the information needed to brew Veritaserum.

You will be assisted in your endeavour, I hope, by two additional volumes I am sending by separate owl: Phases of the Moon in Potioning, by Hesper Starkey and An Auror's Guide to Truth Serums, by Calendula Wright.

Allow me to congratulate you for taking on this ambitious project.

Sincerely,

Malvina Kelly, Head Librarian, Ministry for Magic Reference Libraries

"What's that, Lily?" Ruskin said in his most affable tone. "A summer job offer?"

"Nothing so easy to get as that," said Lily. "It's the recipe for Veritaserum from the Ministry Libraries. Severus and I are making it for our end-of-term Potions project."

Ruskin looked honestly surprised. "Really? I'm impressed."

"Thanks! See you in class, Sev."

"'Sev,'" Ruskin repeated after Lily had left. "From a Mudblood girl?"

Maddy sniggered, and Severus burned hotter than ever with humiliation.

Ignoring all that, Ruskin gave Severus an appraising look. "Veritaserum. Her idea or yours?"

"Mine," said Severus.

"Really?" Ruskin said it more slowly and softly than he'd said it to Lily. "I do expect great things from you someday. Really."

****

Lily agreed with Severus that they'd never be left in peace to discuss their project if they met in the Slytherin or the Gryffindor common room, and Pince would never allow them to talk at length in the library, so they got permission from Professor Slughorn to meet in the Potions classroom after hours. Thus evening found them in the classroom, going over the recipe for Veritaserum.

"We ought to be able to send to the Diagon Alley Apothecary for most of the ingredients," said Lily, peering at the notes at the bottom of the recipe, "but we'll have to collect the jobberknoll feathers and the moon-shifting mushrooms ourselves. The jobberknoll feathers are 'most efficacious when added to the potion by the hand of the wizard who has taken them,' and the moon-shifting mushrooms have to be collected at twilight on the night of the full moon and added 'when the sky is black and the full moon is high.'" She looked up. "We'll have to get busy. The full moon is next Thursday, so we'll have to start brewing the Veritaserum then if we expect to have it mature by the end of term."

****

The jobberknolls of Hogwarts lived at the edges of the Forbidden Forest, and early the next morning the permission came down from Professor Dumbledore for Severus and Lily to enter the forest as needed to collect jobberknoll feathers for their Potions project.

"I asked Circe Clearwater," Lily said as they trudged across the lawns toward the forest. "She's going for her N.E.W.T. in Care of Magical Creatures. She said the jobberknolls are nesting now. The hen sits on the eggs and tends the chicks while the cock hunts small insects and brings them back to the nest for the others to eat. They're very tiny birds, but I suppose we could get some feathers from the hen...." Her voice trailed off. She looked worried.

"What's the matter?" said Severus. "You Petrify the bird, pluck a few feathers and you're done."

Lily sighed. "It's not that easy. Circe says that whenever a spell touches a jobberknoll, it secretes a humour sort of like a natural Shield Charm, that makes it immune to magical effects. The humour saturates the bird's entire body, so any feathers we take after hitting a jobberknoll with a spell won't work in the Veritaserum. Even if we meant to cast the spell on something else, if it hits the jobberknoll, we're sunk."

Severus's stomach sank toward his toes. "Oh. I didn't know that."

"Neither did I," muttered Lily. "I hope we're not in over our heads." She bit her lip, and determination appeared on her face. "No. We're not going to be in over our heads, because you were right: we'll earn top marks in Potions if we brew a good Veritaserum. So we're going to get those jobberknoll feathers."

"From a nesting bird? I'm no tree climber."

"Well, I am. Or I was. My sister and I spent so much time in the trees when we were kids that my dad built us a tree house--" She broke off and looked away. Severus didn't wonder at it. She was probably afraid of embarrassing herself. Tree houses were a very Muggle sort of thing, something to help them feel secure among the branches. Wizards wouldn't need them.

They reached the edge of the Forbidden Forest, arriving at an untended meadow very like the one in which Severus had shown Lestrange and Ruskin how to cast Firewhip and Sectumsempra. This one, however, was not thick with half-frozen, dying grasses, but dewily abloom with bugle, buttercups and numerous other spring flowers. Around the flowers buzzed clouds of tiny bees and wasps.

"Just what jobberknolls like to eat," said Lily, eying the humming insects. Squinting in the bright morning sunlight, she scanned the treetops at the edge of the forest. "I'll bet you anything there's a nest up there--aha, see?"

It took Severus some moments of squinting and peering to find what Lily was pointing at: a tiny bundle of twigs near the end of a pine branch that extended over the meadow's edge.

"A jobberknoll nest!" said Lily.

They moved quietly toward the tree. When they reached the base of the trunk, Lily looked up into the branches. Severus followed her gaze to the jobberknoll's nest. Perched on the nest was a small, brilliantly blue bird dotted with tiny silver speckles. With its head tucked under one wing, it appeared to be fast asleep.

"A nesting mother," whispered Lily. "She won't fly away, even if she sees us. She'll want to protect her eggs. Or her chicks, if they're hatched, though Circe says it's early for that...." She gazed into the branches and scanned the surrounding sky. "I don't see the cock. Good. Circe says, even though they're tiny, these birds can peck."

Lifting her foot to a protruding knob, Lily scrabbled up the tree trunk and swung herself into the lowest branch. She looked up at the sleeping jobberknoll. "With any luck, this won't take too long."

Severus believed the story about the tree house. Lily climbed the tree easily and wriggled fearlessly out on the limb that held the jobberknoll nest. Sunlight fell upon her where she clung to the branch high above the meadow, brightening her face and gilding her hair. She stretched out along the limb, extending her hand toward the sleeping jobberknoll, her legs wrapped tightly around the thick part of the branch, close to the trunk.

His heart pounding, Severus looked away, into the sky. There, circling above the meadow, was a bird with broad, dun-coloured wings, a hooked beak and burning amber eyes which were fixed on the sleeping jobberknoll.

This bird Severus recognised: it was an eagle-eyed hawk. He looked back at Lily, whose fingers were within inches of the jobberknoll's tail and directly in the hawk's sights. "Lily, watch out!" he shouted.

The hawk uttered a harsh, cawing cry. At the same moment, Lily plucked three feathers from the jobberknoll's tail. Startled awake, the jobberknoll shot into the air, its wings beating in a blue blur against the paler blue of the sky. Then it whirled around, ready to dive-bomb Lily's offending hand, which was still close to its nest.

Any other bird would have been twittering angrily, but the jobberknoll remained eerily silent. And just as Severus was noting this, he saw the eagle-eyed hawk fold its wings close to its body and stoop.

Still clutching the feathers, Lily jerked back her hand. The eagle-eyed hawk fell upon the jobberknoll and curled its claws around the small bird's body. At that, the jobberknoll began to sing.

Then it chirped, croaked, growled and peeped. It gave a raucous cry not unlike that of the hawk which gripped it in its claws. It sighed like the wind in the trees. It kept making sound after varied sound until with a soaring turn the hawk carried it away. The last thing Severus heard from the tiny blue bird was a yell of triumph in a young male voice, the sort of sound a Quidditch chaser might make upon scoring a goal.

Severus stared in astonishment at the hawk receding into the sky, until he could hardly make out the jobberknoll hanging limply in its talons. Then he looked at Lily. She had, incredibly, wriggled even further out along the branch and was gazing with dismay into the jobberknoll's nest.

"Don't break the branch!" Severus said sharply.

He needn't have worried. Lily scooped up the jobberknoll nest, slid to the base of the branch and shimmied down the tree trunk, holding the nest aloft.

"What was that racket?" asked Severus when she reached the ground.

Lily cupped the nest in her hands and looked at it. "What racket?"

"That bird bellowed like--like a human being!"

"The jobberknoll?" Lily did not raise her eyes. "Jobberknolls are silent until they're about to die. Then they sing back in reverse order every sound they've ever heard. She knew she was about to die. So she sang."

There was a silence while Severus took that in and Lily looked intently at the jobberknoll nest. "They're hatching," she said softly.

"Hatching?"

"The baby jobberknolls."

Severus peered into the nest. A newly-hatched chick, its feathers still wet, blinked up at him. Another chick was busily parting a shell with its egg tooth. A third egg, jiggling a bit, had a hairline crack spreading over its surface.

Lily frowned worriedly at the nest, then looked at the sky in the direction toward which the eagle-eyed hawk had flown. But the hawk and its prey had disappeared.

"You've still got the feathers, haven't you?" asked Severus.

Silently Lily drew three feathers from her pocket. They rested in her palm, bright blue, dotted with silver specks that glittered in the sunlight like stars.

"Good!" said Severus. He pulled out his watch. "We'd better get going, or we'll be late for Potions. We can stow the feathers in our ingredients cupboard after."

"But what about the chicks?" asked Lily. "It's my fault they haven't got a mother. Sort of. I mean, if I hadn't scared the hen away from her nest, the hawk wouldn't have caught her."

Severus shrugged. "Isn't there a cock? Put the nest back into the tree and let him take care of them."

Craning its neck and opening its beak, the hatchling cheeped. In comparison to its shrivelled-looking body, its mouth was a yawning chasm. "Circe says the cock abandons the nest if the hen dies," said Lily.

"Well, there's nothing to be done about it then."

Severus began to turn away. "I'll take them to Hagrid," Lily said suddenly. "He'll know what to do."

Severus jerked back around. "Hagrid! We don't have time for him! We're nearly late as it is!"

Lily frowned. "I didn't say you had to come." She tucked the jobberknoll nest into the sleeve of her robe and ran off toward the game-keeper's hut.

He watched her for a bit. Her knees pumped, her robe flapped and her long red hair flew behind her. She was surely too far away to hear him by the time he called, "Just don't lose the jobberknoll feathers!"

Again Severus turned away. He started for the school. It was all very well for Lily to be late. Slughorn wouldn't take points from her. It would be quite another story if he walked in the classroom after nine o'clock.

****

Next came the problem of the moon-shifting mushrooms. After lessons that day, Severus and Lily turned to the attack. They discovered a reference to the mushrooms in one of the books Lily had received from the Ministry library: Hesper Starkey's Phases of the Moon in Potion-Making. Severus read it aloud:

"In potions such as Veritaserum and the Defences-Downdraught, which work mainly by weakening mental barriers, the moon-shifting mushroom, fungus lunamutabilis, is an essential ingredient. Both the common and the botanical names refer to the fluidity of the mushroom's magical properties, which makes the timing of its collection and preparation of paramount importance."

Skipping over the references to the Defences-Downdraught, Severus read aloud the instructions for harvesting and preparing moon-shifting mushrooms for use in Veritaserum:

"Fungus lunamutabilis reaches its highest potency for addition to Veritaserum at twilight on the evening of the full moon. If any part of the ball of the sun can be seen over the horizon, it is too early to take your moon-shifting mushrooms. Once night has fallen, you are too late. Thus it is best to be by your chosen fairy-rings at sunset, as you will have at most forty minutes to harvest your mushrooms.

"About two pounds of mushroom caps will supply sufficient virtue to your Veritaserum to effect a weakening of the mental resolve and magical capacity to resist questioning...."

Lily looked a little queasy. "But that's what Veritaserum's for!" said Severus. She gave a shrug and a small, embarrassed smile, and Severus went on:

"Once you have gathered your mushroom caps, first mince them with a silver-bladed potions knife, then powder them and add them to your cauldron in the dark of night. You must add the mushrooms to your Veritaserum on the same night you collect them, for once the moon sets, your mushrooms will lose all potency. They will then be useless in the formulation of any potion."

Severus closed the book. "There you have it. I only hope moon-shifting mushrooms grow around Hogwarts. It'll be a pain getting permission to go somewhere else to collect them."

"Don't worry. Professor Slughorn said the school grounds are full of them. But they're only visible between sunset and nightfall at the full moon."

Severus raised his brows. "When did he tell you all this?"

"As soon as I got the book. I'd never heard of moon-shifting mushrooms before, so I asked him about them."

"It would have been a tad more helpful of him to fill us in before now."

Lily laughed at his exasperation. "If you want something, sometimes you have to ask for it. Besides, Slughorn said he wasn't going to make it easy, remember?"

Not for most people. But for Lily Evans... "I am so glad we're working together on this project!" said Severus fervently.

Looking pleased and surprised, Lily smiled at him. "So am I!"

****

One thing that did turn out to be easy was getting permission from Slughorn to remain outside of the castle after sunset. He understood their need, for he'd made Veritaserum himself. And, as he seemed to intimate, it didn't hurt that Severus had been partnered with Lily Evans so often that year.

"She's been a good influence on you," said Slughorn, eying Severus thoughtfully. "You've grown."

"Thank you, Professor," said Severus.

He had been quite willing to take whatever approval from Slughorn that he could get. In a very few months, he would be in his seventh year. He would be asking Professor Slughorn, Potions Master of Hogwarts and his Head of House, for a letter of recommendation to the Head of the Apothecary Programme at St Mungo's Hospital.

After dinner on the evening of the full moon, Lily led Severus into the grounds, to a knoll which gave them a view of the Forbidden Forest, the Hogwarts greenhouses and (at a safe distance) the Whomping Willow. The sun was sinking beneath the tree tops.

"Professor Slughorn said he's seen as many as five fairy rings of moon-shifting mushrooms on this spot," said Lily. "That should be plenty." She looked at the ground as she spoke, but no mushrooms had yet appeared.

Severus understood the attraction, though. He too stared at the ground, waiting for the mushrooms to shift into visibility.

"Oh, and could you keep an eye out for some Fading Ferns while we're here?" asked Lily.

Veritaserum didn't require Fading Ferns. "Why?" said Severus.

"I'm collecting them for Remus. He and James Potter are making Duration Disillusionment Powder. Pretty demanding stuff, I must say--that's an Auror Programme-level formulation."

Severus had no doubt about that, for Mother had sometimes made Duration Disillusionment Powder to rub on his wand, schoolbooks and cauldron over the holidays. Sometimes it had been easier just to keep those things out of Tobias's sight, and, unlike a Disillusionment Charm, which needed to be renewed every few days, the powder kept working for weeks.

"Why can't Lupin collect the ferns himself?" The answer slotted into place in Severus's brain the moment he asked the question, and it was all he could do to keep his voice from trailing off. He waited with bated breath for Lily's reply.

"His mother got sick again and he had to go home. So he asked me to look for some Fading Ferns for him while we were collecting our mushrooms."

Severus didn't answer at once. He had been preoccupied with his end-of-year Potions project and with his project partner, Lily. She looked up from the ground now and again as she spoke, meeting his eyes with her startlingly bright green gaze. Severus loved her eyes, though they were far from the only part of her which had engaged his attention since they'd begun working together on Veritaserum. And so, except for its significance in the collection of moon-shifting mushrooms, he hadn't thought about the full moon for some time. Nor about Remus Lupin.

"Why won't Lupin's friend help him?" asked Severus.

"I'm his friend," said Lily.

"I mean Potter. He's Lupin's project partner. Why won't he help him?"

"Remus said James is doing all the distilling and brewing, plus he has Quidditch practice every night for the next two weeks. Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw in a fortnight, and Slytherin wins the Cup if Gryffindor loses. Erm, you did know that, didn't you?" Lily asked, looking amused. "Or have you been buried under a rock with our Potions project?"

"Maybe I have," said Severus, a bit miffed. It certainly didn't seem to trouble her much that she was doing Potter's work as well as her own. "I want good marks in school so that I can get a good job when I leave school. What's a stupid Quidditch match next to that?"

"Nothing at all, I reckon, Severus Sobersides!" Lily said with a laugh. "Nothing unless you're obsessed with Quidditch, the way everybody else at Hogwarts is at the moment! You've got a point, though. It's fine for Potter to let his life revolve around Quidditch. We can't."

Severus knew exactly what she meant. Potter was rich enough to do as he pleased. Lily, who came from a comfortable but hardly wealthy family and he, who came from a poor one, were not.

"Here they are," said Lily softly. Her eyes were fixed on the ground again, and her voice was full of the Muggle-born's wonder at the revelation of a new magic. Severus looked down too.

The last rays of the sun were disappearing into a peach and lavender twilight, and the moon-shifting mushrooms were beginning to appear. Peering with Lily into the growing gloom, Severus saw toadstools popping out of the earth all around him. Their cloud-grey caps, covered with fuzzy down, would have been practically imperceptible in the gloaming, if it were not for the markings, like thin veins of silver fire, that streaked across them. As he'd never known they grew at Hogwarts--much less in such profusion--Severus looked at them all around him with a wonder matching Lily's.

But then he got down to business, for the moon-shifting mushrooms, as plentiful and perfectly visible as they were now, would disappear completely once darkness fell.

"Your silver-bladed knife, don't forget," Severus said, pulling out his own.

"I remember," said Lily. She held up her knife, whose blade gleamed as brightly as the silver veins in the mushroom caps.

She had sent for it to the Diagon Alley Apothecary on Severus's advice. He'd been surprised when he'd found out she had actually taken his counsel, for silver-bladed potioner's knives didn't come cheap. Severus was lucky that Mother owned two: one that she'd got from her own mother and one that she'd bought while she was still at Hogwarts, with access to the money of an old pure-blood family and the dreams of a young pure-blood witch. She would have been an apothecary in the clinical research department at St Mungo's, Mother had told Severus once, if she had not fallen in love with his father.

Mother's marriage to Tobias had relieved her of the need for two potioner's knives, so Severus had for nothing what it must have cost Lily Galleons to own. It was proof, in cold, hard gold spent to purchase a knife that no one else in the class but Severus possessed, that Lily took both Potions and Severus very seriously.

Severus liked being taken seriously: especially by Lily. He watched her kneel down to harvest the mushroom caps, slicing the stems quickly and methodically and placing the caps gently into her collections bag. Severus knelt down beside her, and though he began collecting as methodically and carefully as Lily did, he was not as quick. Lily herself slowed him down.

Stopped him, actually. Severus's fingers slackened so that his knife nearly slipped from his grasp as he watched Lily's smooth, soft-looking hands, her agile fingers efficiently at work. She had rolled up the sleeves of her robe, so nothing stopped his eyes from travelling up her forearms. They were slender and supple, with fine, pale hairs just visible in the dwindling light. He could think of work for his own fingers now, encircling Lily's wrist tightly enough so that he could feel her pulse beating against them, like a bird's heart.

Severus had looked from Lily stretched along the tree branch, when she'd reached for the jobberknoll's tail. This time, he did not turn his eyes away. She bent slightly, her eyes on the mushroom caps as she cut them from the stems. Her breasts hung a bit, swelling against the fabric of her robe. She had breasts, Severus thought with faint wonder. She hadn't only a year ago, by the lake after O.W.L.s. Now Lily's breasts, if she knelt over him as she was kneeling over the fairy-ring, might have filled his cupped hands.

His eyes wandered upward, lingered on her face. Lily's hair was bound back in a plait that lay between her shoulders. The dusk was not yet deep. Severus could still see the small depression beneath her jaw, where the bone met her neck. Could it possibly feel as soft there as it looked? He wanted to--

She looked up. "Severus, why aren't you picking mushrooms...?" Her voice trailed off, but their eyes were locked together for another long and silent moment before Lily jerked hers away.

She understood him. And he unbalanced her, stole her easygoing poise. "We--we'd better get back to work," she said, her eyes still averted. "We haven't got all night."

She was flustered. But was that good or bad? Severus pondered the question unsuccessfully as he harvested moon-shifting mushrooms at Lily's side. Presently he said, "I don't know if you noticed--maybe when you were putting the jobberknoll feathers into the storage cupboard?--but it doesn't look as though we'll have enough Solution Stabiliser to last out the Veritaserum's maturation cycle."

"I suppose we could send away to London for it," Lily said without looking up.

"It's pretty common stuff," said Severus, his voice carefully casual. "The sell it at Bobbin's, in Hogsmeade. I checked. As it's a Hogsmeade weekend, maybe we could go in on Saturday and pick some up."

"Yes. I could arrange to meet you there."

"Arrange to meet me?" said Severus. "No need to go to all that trouble, is there? We could walk into Hogsmeade together, go to Bobbin's and then, after that--I was wondering--would you like to have lunch at the Three Broomsticks?" Though perhaps that was too much to ask for at first. "Or maybe just a quick butterbeer, if we're too early for lunch."

Lily finished harvesting her fairy-ring before she finally looked up. Severus was close enough to see the flush darkening her cheeks and the pity and embarrassment in her eyes.

"Erm, no. Thank you. I mean, we can meet at Bobbin's. But the rest of it--I'm sorry. I can't." She was practically stammering. "Someone else has already asked me. I'm, ah, going to Hogsmeade with someone else."

Someone else? But she wasn't going out with anyone. She spent all her spare time with him, on the Potions project. She sat with her Gryffindor girlfriends at mealtimes. Mary MacDonald, Alice Aylsworth. Severus had seen them with her. No one, boy or girl, had ever accompanied her to the Potions classroom after hours, where she and Severus had met to plan their brewing of Veritaserum. Severus knew it, he'd made sure, he'd watched her.

"Who?" His voice rang out in the twilit silence.

Her embarrassment turned to dismay, while her pity, hateful to him, grew stronger.

"Severus, I had no idea--"

"Who?"

"James--"

"Oh, so that's it!" Severus leaped to his feet, his fists clenched. "That's it, is it?"

Lily, startled, backed away on her knees. Then she jumped up too, and her hand strayed toward her pocket.

"Oh, yes, you know he fancies you!" Severus cried. "How many times has he asked you out, just this year! I thought you were different--"

"Different from what?"

"--but you're just like the rest of them, aren't you? Except you've got one thing over them: he fancies you!"

Lily's eyes narrowed. "What in hell--"

"You're as shallow as every other girl who wants to be seen with the Quidditch hero!" spat Severus. "And you're a climber, like the rest of your kind. You think if you get with Potter, his money and his impeccably pure blood will raise you to the upper crust of society. Well, it doesn't work that way. You'll be the blood traitors' pet, but there aren't that many of them, are there? And the true pure-bloods will always cut you. Always!"

He panted harshly, breathless with rage. But he'd struck home: Lily's face had turned from red to white.

"Are you finished?" she asked softly.

"Yes," he hissed through gritted teeth.

"Then let me clear up a misunderstanding you seem to have. I'm not going to Hogsmeade with James Potter. I'm going with James Sloper."

Severus stared at her.

"Who I suppose is a Quidditch hero," Lily continued, "if you call a reasonably talented Keeper a hero. But he's only a half-blood from a middle-income family, so he'd be no help to a social-climbing Mudblood like me."

Severus's stomach knotted sickeningly. "I--I never said--"

"But you meant it!" Lily cried. "So go ahead and say it, just like the rest of your Slytherin friends! You lied when you apologised to me! You haven't changed one bit since last year! And now you don't even have the excuse that someone's bullying you! James Potter's nowhere in sight! You're the one who's like the rest of them--the foul-mouthed, bigoted Slytherin bastards!"

Lily paused to catch her breath. Severus, his jaw slack with shock, did not break the silence.

In a quieter, occasionally tremulous voice, Lily went on. "What I don't understand is why. That I'm a climber who'd manipulate somebody's affections to get ahead--that's the sort of thing they'd say. Why do you say it? You're not pure-blooded and you're not rich. In their eyes, you're not much better than I am. And no amount of snide laughter about Mudbloods in the Slytherin common room is ever going to change that."

"You said James...I thought you meant..."

"Well, I didn't. I don't much like James Potter, for the same reasons you don't like him." She looked at him oddly. "But--for God's sake, Severus, I don't obsess over him like you do. I don't let my hatred of James Potter consume every waking moment of my day."

What had he done? Severus moved his lips, trying to form words of apology and explanation. But, as if a Silencing Charm had been cast upon him, not a sound came out of his mouth.

"It'll be dark soon," said Lily shortly. "You can finish collecting the moon-shifting mushrooms. I'm going back to the classroom to start the Veritaserum." She turned her back on him, then looked around. "Oh, and don't worry about the Fading Ferns--I'll find some on the way back. Wouldn't want you helping somebody whose mother's sick, if it might mean helping Potter too." She strode off toward the castle, her plait bouncing against her back.

"Lily...wait...." Severus finally found his voice, faint though it was. Then louder, "Lily, I'm sorry! Please...."

She did not turn, and her angry, hurrying figure soon blended with the dusk.

"Lily, I didn't mean..." Severus said, too softly for her to hear unless she had been quite close, not far away from him as she was now, perhaps halfway to the castle.

He hadn't meant it, he hadn't meant it...he hadn't said it! She had! She'd said Mudblood, not he!

Severus turned around sharply. He only just stopped himself from dumping his mushrooms onto the ground and grinding them beneath his heel. It was almost worth it to ruin his own project, if it meant ruining hers as well.

Almost, but not quite. He settled for kicking the caps off the rest of the mushrooms in his fairy-ring. When he was finished, he wandered off to find more of them to kick.

Why hadn't she heard him out? Why didn't she--why didn't anyone--listen to him? Severus had thought she was different--well, she was different--Sloper, though he wasn't as unpopular as Severus (no one was, not that he cared), was no Potter.

If not Potter, then why not me? She was different from other girls, she'd treated him decently, he'd thought she liked him, she was so beautiful--Why not me?

"I didn't call her a Mudblood!" said Severus aloud.

Was that true? Or was "your kind" the polite cover for a coarser term?

Severus answered by aiming a kick at the mushrooms in the new ring he had found. But he was frustrated even in that. The silvery veining in the mushroom caps ran and faded like ink in rain, and one by one the moon-shifting mushrooms began to disappear.

Severus looked up. The eastern sky was the deep blue colour of the lupins in Professor Sprout's flower beds. The moon had risen, but its light was not yet bright enough to strike the earth. His angry and distracted wanderings had brought Severus within easy sight of the Whomping Willow, but the Whomping Willow was not all that he saw. Heading toward the Willow from the direction of Hogwarts castle were Madam Pomfrey and Remus Lupin.

Severus didn't believe his eyes at first. Hadn't Lily said she was collecting Fading Ferns for Lupin because he'd gone home to his mother? But after Severus had blinked a few times, Madam Pomfrey and Lupin were still there, close enough now to set the Willow's branches swirling.

They stopped. Then Madam Pomfrey waved her wand, and she and Lupin disappeared.

Severus's mind went blank with astonishment, until he realised that Madam Pomfrey must have Disillusioned them both. He stared at the spot in front of the Willow where they had melted from sight. His mind, far from blank now, felt as though it had burst into flame.

Lupin wasn't supposed to be here. Lupin was supposed to be at home, at his sick mother's bedside. That was why Lily was collecting Fading Ferns for him. So why was he at Hogwarts, being led to the Whomping Willow at dusk by the school matron?

Severus didn't know what the Willow had to do with this. But if Madam Pomfrey was going about with Remus Lupin after curfew on the full moon, then Headmaster Dumbledore had to know about it. He had to approve. For full moon night was the most dangerous night of the month to be abroad after dark, even here at Hogwarts. The teachers had always warned, hadn't they, that werewolves roamed the Forbidden Forest on the night of the full moon?

Speaking of werewolves, Lupin obviously lied when he claimed he went home to tend his mother on full moon nights. Just as obviously, Madam Pomfrey, Professor Dumbledore, the teachers and Potter's gang all knew the truth. Whatever the truth might be.

What was the truth? That, if Remus Lupin's mother wasn't a werewolf, then Remus Lupin...was?

It couldn't be...it couldn't be.... Professor Dumbledore wouldn't dare let a werewolf into Hogwarts...would he?

No. The teachers, the Governors, if they suspected, the parents, if any of them found out...someone would rebel, would rise up and have Lupin expelled, Dumbledore sacked...wouldn't they?

Severus stared at the Whomping Willow. He did not know how much time passed before he actually saw it again. But when he did, the sky was black, the light of the full moon touched the blades of grass around his feet, all the moon-shifting mushrooms had disappeared....

And the werewolves had transformed.

Whatever the truth was, Professor Dumbledore knew it, the teachers knew it and Potter's gang knew it. James Potter. Sirius Black. Peter Pettigrew. And--of course--Remus Lupin.

Severus looked for another moment at the Whomping Willow. Its branches remained still. Madam Pomfrey and Remus Lupin did not reappear.

Severus slowly turned his steps toward Hogwarts castle, to resume work on the Potions project with Lily Evans. Perhaps he should have considered how he was going to manage that after the things they had said to each other. But his mind was too full of what he had just seen at the Whomping Willow to admit another thought.