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Severus

“Snape, Severus!”

Severus looked over at Lily.

She was talking to James Potter.

A strange feeling swept through Severus, like his intestines were being twisted like a balloon animal inside of him. He grit his teeth and balled his fists and walked up the steps to the little stool, his heart threatening to crack down the middle. A very sinister part of him wanted to shock them all and be sorted Gryffindor - family tradition and expectation be damned, at that moment all he wanted was an excuse to go over to that table and take back Lily’s attention.

He sat and Professor McGonagall dropped the hat upon his head. There was no conversation, no debate, no hesitation on the part of the hat. It landed, thought for about twelve seconds, and bellowed out it’s decision, “SLYTHERIN!”

Severus didn’t even look over at the Gryffindor table as he climbed off the stool and rushed down the steps. If she cared about him she’d have been watching when he walked up the steps to begin with! He’d always known, from day one, that there was a possibility of her being swallowed up into one of the other houses - a possibility that was more likely than not given that she was muggle born, but he’d been in denial. He just hadn’t ever wanted to imagine his life without Lily in it everyday. Being in separate houses might as well have been different planets. Especially Gryffindor and Slytherin! If she’d only been sorted to Ravenclaw, it would’ve been a bit easier to mingle more often but it had to be the dead opposites, the greatest opponents of the whole school.

And she had to have been sorted into the same house as Sirius Black and James Potter.

“Welcome to Slytherin, Severus,” Lucius Malfoy, one of Severus’s cousins, said, greeting him with a firm handshake. “Mother said we might see the son of Eileen Prince come today.” He held his chin level with the floor, staring down his angular cheekbones at Severus as he spoke. He waved a hand to the bench for Severus to sit down.

“Yeah,” Severus nodded, “We heard you got Head Boy.”

“Yes,” Lucius reached up and polished his badge with the sleeve of his robe.

“Luce,” hissed a black haired boy beside Lucius, nudging him with his elbow, “Did you get a load of Bilius Weasley’s hair? What happened, he stick his hand in an electric socket then?” The boy sniggered.

Lucius leaned to look around the head of the witch seated across from him at a squat boy with flaming red hair at the Gryffindor table. His hair was wildly sticking up in every direction and his old, second hand robes were an odd color, not quite black and not quite brown, just something in between. “Pathetic,” Lucius murmured with a smirk.

“Isn’t that your cousin next to him?” the other boy asked.

Lucius glared at Sirius Black. “Yes…” he murmured.

“Why’s he in Gryffindor of all places?”

Lucius shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest.”

“He was talking big on the train,” Severus spoke up, “With that Potter boy next to him, boasting how he wanted to be the one to break the tradition of the family being sorted to Slytherin.”

Lucius snorted. “Figures.”

“Who’s that other kid with him over there? He looks familiar.”

“That’s Lyall Lupin’s son,” Lucius answered.

“I thought Lupin’s kid died?”

“No, Mulciber,” Lucius answered, “Obviously. He’s right there.” He rolled his eyes.

“Well obviously I know that now, didn’t think he was a ghost or nothin’! I’m just sayin’ I ain’t never seen Lupin’s kid before. Have you?” Mulciber demanded.

Lucius’s voice was icy. “Why would I have?” he asked. “It’s not as though I go hanging about with blood traitors all the time. Falling in love with a muggle woman.” Lucius made a face, his upper lip bent into a sneer as he watched Remus, James and Sirius goofing off with one another across the hall, “Their son’s a filthy mudblood. Look at him - he just looks filthy and pathetic.”

It was true. There was a scrawny, strange sort of look to him, as though he were sickly or something. “Looks like he’s ill or something. Doesn’t look like he’ll make it through the term,” snickered Mulciber.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll do him in,” Lucius laughed. “That’s the sort of filth that a Slytherin headmaster never would have let in. Even in Armando Dippet’s time the policy hadn’t changed much from when Phineas Nigellis was headmaster... It’s this newest headmaster Hogwarts has gone and appointed. Albus Dumbledore.” He rolled his eyes. “Three years of the student body slowly turning to filth.” Lucius shook his head. “It’s too bad Voldemort didn’t get the teaching position he was after -- that would have revolutionized the school, for sure.”

Severus made a face, “Who is Voldemort?” he asked.

Lucius turned around to face Severus, “The greatest Dark Wizard there ever was,” he said in a reverend voice. Up front of the hall, Albus Dumbledore had gotten up and traversed to the front of the staff table where a podium stood, but neither Lucius nor Severus turned to look. Lucius’s voice lowered. “He’s so powerful, immortal they say - and he’s only getting stronger. Mother and Father were friends with him back in school, and they’re devoted followers of his, on his inner circle. He trusts them. When he’s taken power… they’ll be greatly rewarded. And so shall I. I’ve already joined up for when I leave here in the Spring.” Lucius looked around and rolled up his robe’s sleeve. On his left arm was a crisp new tattoo of a skull with a winding snake coming from it’s mouth. The skin around the tattoo was rippled and Severus realized that it wasn’t there from inking it was burned into the skin, like a branding. His stomach rolled because it seemed like it must’ve been a terribly painful thing to experience - being branded like that so powerfully that the mark would be so clear, so dark. Lucius rolled his sleeve back down. “It’s his way to communicate with his followers, see,” he explained. “The Dark Mark burns when he touches any of his followers marks and we know then to apparate to him immediately.” Lucius looked quite self important. “Obviously, I’m exempted from responding, being as I’m in school.”

Severus nodded because he wasn’t sure what else to say.

Up at the front of the Hall, Dumbledore was clearing his throat. Apparently Lucius and Severus were not the only two that hadn’t silenced at his arrival to the podium. Slowly, a hush went over the Great Hall and most of the eyes in the room were turned to Dumbledore. Lucius had leaned over to talk to the witch across from him while Mulciber turned to another rather large boy on his other side.

Severus looked across the hall at Lily. She was staring quite attentively up at Dumbledore, her eyes wide with anticipation of what he would say. Even the boys around her had stopped their horsing around to pay attention.

“Welcome to the start of term feast,” Dumbledore said in a wobbly sort of voice. He smiled around at them, his palms stretched out to his sides. Dumbledore’s half-moon spectacles reflected the students upturned faces. “I’m sure we are all very, very hungry, and so I will not prattle on just yet, but let the house elves present us with what is rumored to be one of their best works of culinary masterpieces… Kip, kip!” He clapped his hands and with a many pop-pop-pops, the tables were suddenly populated by a host of plates and mouthwatering foods.

Severus’s eyes widened as he looked it over, his stomach felt full just looking at it. He looked up at Lucius. “Is this all for us?” he asked, astonished.

“Haven’t you ever seen food before?” Lucius asked coldly. The girl across from him cackled.

Severus didn’t bother to reply, he just started snatching food to his plate hungrily. He took hold of a roll from one of the plates and split it open and smelled it. The warmth of the bread was yeasty and buttery smelling and just the scent of it made him groan with pleasure. It had been ages since he’d had anything resembling warm bread, usually it was whatever his mother could conjure up and it wasn’t very good. Usually the bread was hard and stale when they could get it. Severus took a bite and the fibers of it seemed to melt on his mouth. He closed his eyes in a sort of food ecstasy, then turned to the rest of his plate which was piled high with turkey and a pork chop and a potato jacket with all of the fixings and beans and snow peas in gravy. He eagerly began to devour the food as though he were afraid it would disappear.

“You know, Lucius,” said the girl across from him, “Perhaps he hasn’t seen food before.” She pointed with her fork at Severus.

Lucius looked over and snapped, “Slow down. You look disgusting eating like that. Are you an animal, Severus?”

“No,” Severus answered, stopping eating to mop off his face with a napkin beside him.

“Then please refrain from eating as though you are one,” Lucius responded. “Anyway - as I was saying, Narcissa --” and Lucius launched back into a conversation with the witch about his experiences with the Dark Lord in a lowered voice.

Severus chewed slower on the pork chop as he watched Lily Evans again. She was picking at her potato jacket, staring down at it, looking so very out of place over at the Gryffindor table. Severus wished he could go over and talk to her, he hated seeing her alone like that, poking the potato’s skin sadly with a fork. He glanced up at the old hat still sitting on it’s stool at the front of the Hall and wondered why in the world it couldn’t have just sent her to Slytherin and made all this quite a lot easier than it had turned out to be.

After they’d had their fill of the dinner foods they suddenly disappeared to be replaced by sweets of every kind. Mountains of magically unmelting ice creams and fondue with little cookies on tiny plates all around. Cakes and treacle tarts and pumpkin pasties and even a bowl of chocolate frogs. Severus grabbed several chocolate frogs and shoved them into his pockets for later, and ate at least two pieces of treacle tart before he couldn’t put another bite into his mouth. He couldn’t ever remember having felt as full as he did then.

Dumbledore stood up once the clinking and clattering of flatware against plates had ceased and with another clap of his hands the food and plates were gone and the tables were bare. He walked up to the podium again and said, “Well, that certainly was everything that it has been built up to be - a generous thank you to the elves who prepared it.” He smiled and applauded, though no elves were anywhere to be seen in the Great Hall. A couple of hesitant, confused sounding claps mimicked his around the tables. Dumbledore smiled, “Now, I just have a few words for you and then it’ll be off to bed with you… First of all, I must announce that our fine gamekeeper, Rubeus Hagrid, has assisted our Herbology instructor, Professor Eureka Viridi, in obtaining a very unique addition to the greenery at Hogwarts. It is a tree that has been planted on the grounds called a Whomping Willow. Now, I am aware that trees are rather inviting and setting beneath one while doing your revisions is most delightful, but I must implore all of you to please give this Whomping Willow a respectful berth as the tree is young and quite violent and though Madam Pomfrey, our new maladies nurse in the ward, is most talented, the blows of the Whomping Willow are quite painful and the skele-gro potion is not a drink to aid in having a pleasurable evening.” He smiled merrily about at them before continuing.

“Next, as always, the Forbidden Forest shall remain to live up to it’s name as it is forbidden. Our caretaker, Argus Filch, has requested I inform everyone that his cat, Mrs. Norris, is not to be teased, kicked, or in anyway abused as she is still recovering from having her tail set on fire last term by a misaimed Filibuster Firework. Remember students, if you are to play with such things as Filibuster’s Fireworks - which Mr. Filch has kindly requested time and again you do not - at least know the aguamenti charm to put them out once they have set fire to any of the Hogwarts property or, most especially, any students or creatures that may catch flame as well.

Last but not least, I do want to remind us all that we are one family of Hogwarts residents. These are questionable times politically, not that I wish to trouble any of you with the world that brews around us when you are so blissfully young and unaware of the way such things work. It is important, however, in such times, that the divisions between us be forgotten and the things which unite us become more important than ever before. We are all magical beings, with a past and a future and stories that weave throughout the very fabrics of time. Respect each other’s stories.” He smiled warmly. “Now… off to bed, the lot of you, it is very late and tomorrow is going to be a very busy day of falling asleep in warm classrooms. Goodnight!”