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Just a Spat


Severus Snape was waiting outside of the Gryffindor common room, arguing with the portrait of the Fat Lady, when Lily and Remus got to the tower. “I’m bloody telling you, I’m her best friend! She would want to see me, if you’d just open up enough I could call her name - she’d come out to talk to me, it’s not like I need to go in their ruddy common room, I don’t want to go in, I want Lily Evans to come out!” Severus was saying.

“I’m sorry, that’s quite impossible!” trilled the Fat Lady, waving a fan at her face as though she were hot, despite the icy air that filled the corridor.

Severus balled his fists, “It’s not impossible!” he snarled, “You’re just too much of a barmy old pig to --”

Severus,” Lily said, angrily.

Severus turned about to see Lily and Remus coming down the hall. His anger only deepened when he saw that she was holding his hand, their fingers laced together intimately.

“See?” the Fat Lady grouched from behind him, “It is impossible for her to come out to speak with you, seeing as she was never in to come out from!” She settled herself into her chair, quite full of herself and pleased with her victory.

Severus steamed. “Where’ve you been?” he demanded, “I looked everywhere for you.”

“Obviously not everywhere,” Lily answered coolly.

Severus grit his teeth. “Lily, we need to talk.”

“I haven’t got anything to say to you.”

“You do, you’re just being impossible about it.”

The Fat Lady cleared her throat.

Severus turned to her, “Stop your gloating! You didn’t know she wasn’t in there until she walked up!”

“Stop yelling at her,” Lily said.

“Thank you, lovie,” said the Fat Lady endearingly to Lily. She stuck out her tongue at Severus.

“If you’re still angry at me over the summer, then you need to let it go already,” Severus said, “I told you, it isn’t my fault that I wasn’t home to lay about the pond with you and talk gibberish. I had things to do - important things.”

Lily was stung by the insinuation that spending time with her was no longer considered important, but she didn’t allow herself to point it out to Severus. Instead, she replied, honestly, “I’m not angry about the summer. I’m angry that you were spying on me and Remus earlier. You won’t be around me, yet you hate letting anybody else be. You can’t have it both ways.”

Severus glowered, “I don’t hate letting anybody else be around you. It’s just them,” he added, waving at Remus, “Him and the rest of those awful Gryffindor boys he hangs about with! Sirius Black and that… Potter,” he said the names with an incredible amount of hatred, “I didn’t mind you hanging about with Alice Bell, did I?”

“No, well she’s dead, isn’t she? Because the Dark Lord killed her,” Lily said hotly.

“The Dark Lord didn’t kill her,” Severus said.

“Yes he did - she’s dead, isn’t she?!”

“The Dark Lord has better things to do than go about killing teenagers!”

Lily felt tears burning her eyes, “What are you, head of his fan club now?”

“No,” Severus replied, “I’m not. But I know a great deal more about what he would and would not do than you do, obviously! You’re being rather stupid about it. And I wasn’t spying on you, I was trying to make sure you were alright - you went running by and I was worried about you! I was just checking in on you - making sure you didn’t need my help. I was being a good friend.”

Lily spat out the words, “Then why didn’t you show yourself, why’d you go lurking in the corners all silent and watching? Maybe if you’d give them a chance, you’d actually like Remus and Sirius.” She left James out of it because, well, even she could hardly stand him half the time.

“We aren’t all bad,” Remus said, smiling sheepishly, speaking up for the first time.

Severus looked at Remus as though he were surprised he was still there, his eyes sweeping over Remus’s dirty robes - there were a few holes in them, even. They looked worse than Severus’s own robes. He wrinkled his nose in disdain, “I promise you, Lily, I wouldn’t.”

Lily was hopping. “Well I do. And lately, they’re a great deal better to me than you’ve been. They wrote to me over the summer --”

“I knew you were still mad about summer!” Severus bellowed.

“I’m not mad about summer!” Lily yelled.

A couple of fourth years were just walking up to the portrait hole as she yelled it, and they looked over at the cluster of second years with curious expressions. “Hullo,” Remus said, “Don’t mind us, just a spat.” They continued on through the portrait hole, whispering the password so the Slytherin in their midst didn’t hear it.

Severus could’ve taken the password from any of them if he’d been willing to stoop so low as that to get in there. He was sure half their minds were full of nothing but lip-color charms and songs from the radio anyway. What did a Gryffindor have to worry about, way up here in their high tower? Surely theirs would be the easiest minds to break into and sift about in until he got what he wanted. Not like the Slytherins, who had a whole revolution to think about, an entire political agenda to contemplate and be a part of. They were involved in something bigger, more important than any of these gits going in and out through the portrait hole did.

Remus turned to look at Severus, “Look,” he said, tiredly, sighing, “You lot shouldn’t be fighting, you’re friends, and from what I understand it goes back a long ways, doesn’t it?”

Lily’s arms were folded over her chest, “You wouldn’t think so the way he is acting.”

“Over two years,” Severus answered. “Three summers ago.” He remembered the very first time he’d ever seen Lily Evans - he remembered the way the entire world had seemed to stand still when he looked into her eyes and they’d looked back. Time had ceased to exist for but a moment, but it seemed to Severus Snape that the clock had reset itself at that moment and a chasm existed, eras that stretched out on either side of that moment. Before and After, his life Without Lily, and now his life With Lily.

Lily looked at him, surprised that he remembered the exact amount of years. She certainly didn’t. For her, there was no chasm. There was no Before and After. There was simply Severus Snape.

“See? That’s a long friendship. It would be silly to end it,” Remus said, a natural mediator.

Severus sighed. Remus was right. The last thing he wanted to do was fight with Lily Evans and drive her further away. She was too far away already. The houses of Hogwarts felt as though they were planets apart, rather than just floors. He nodded. “He’s right,” he ceded.

Lily was surprised to hear Severus say it. It seemed no matter what any of the Gryffindor boys said, Remus would naturally argue it. She hadn’t expected him to give in so easily as that. “Yeah, he is,” she said.

Severus said, “You are alright, then?”

“Yes, I’m alright,” Lily answered. Then, feeling guilty if he really had only meant to check on her and not to spy, she added, “Thank you for asking.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he replied.

“I appreciate that you care,” she added.

Severus chuckled at the irony of her words. “I always care, Lily, I always will.”

She smiled, unsure how she felt about the declaration. “Well, thank you. And I’ll always care for you, too,” she added, “You’re a good friend.” She emphasized friend. She felt she had to because there was an uncomfortable feeling creeping up on her that perhaps Severus had meant it a bit stronger than that, and she didn’t like the way the feeling snaked around her, like a boa constrictor, tightening and squeezing her up.

Severus didn’t say anything else, he turned and walked off down the corridor, disappearing ‘round the bend.

“He’s intense, isn’t it?” Remus murmured when he was certain Severus was out of earshot.

“You have no idea,” Lily replied, sighing. She turned to the Fat Lady and said, “Gobstones.”

The Fat Lady chuckled, “You, my dear, are allowed in anytime you please.” She was still fanning herself as the portrait hole swung open and Lily and Remus climbed through.

The common room looked different, half empty. The fire roared in the hearth and Hagrid or somebody had been by and put up a Christmas tree in one corner, and strung little twinkling fairy lights about the room. A great wreath hung over the notice board, which had been cleared off of old notices, leaving only a photograph memorial of Alice Bell that had been hung up there earlier in the year. Derek Bell was asleep in the chair closest to the fire, his long legs sprawled so that one hung over the arm of the chair and the other lay across the floor before him.

“A lot of people stayed behind this term,” she observed.

Remus nodded, “More than did last year, that’s for certain. It was just me and one other girl last year. The common room was mighty quiet.” He paused and looked her over, “Why did you stay here instead of going home?”

Lily thought of Petunia. The word freak echoed through her mind for the second time that day and she shrugged. “I just didn’t feel like taking the journey, I guess,” she replied.

Remus could tell there was more to it, but he didn’t press the subject.

“Well… I’m very tired,” he told her, “I haven’t really slept.”

“Go get some rest,” she told him. “And put some ointment on those cuts.”

He nodded. There was a little bottle in the drawer of his nightstand that Dumbledore had given him. “I will,” he said.

Lily leaned over and kissed his cheek softly, right over a scar that he’d given himself when he was just a kid. It had faded over time, but it would never properly go away as long as he lived. He saw it every time he looked in the mirror, never letting him forget what he was. “Goodnight, Remus,” she said.

“Goodnight,” he replied.

When he got up stairs to the second year dorms, it was quiet and dark and he lit the lantern and had a look at himself in the mirror that hung on the wall. He touched the scar she’d kissed and his fingers seemed to tingle. He smiled. Perhaps the scar would remind him of other things now, besides his condition. Maybe it would remind him there were good people in the world, people who didn’t care about what he was, but only about who he was.

He turned around and pulled on his pyjamas and stole the blankets from Peter’s bed, since it was very cold in the castle as the wind whipped about the tower outside, and he was about to throw the blankets over his own bed when he spotted a bit of parchment laying in the center with his name scrawled across it in messy handwriting he recognized.

Remus snatched up the note and quickly unfolded it.

Remus - Happy Christmas. I’ll miss you over the holiday. Write me? Forever your friend, Sirius.