Into the Fold

SEPTEMBER, 1975

Potions was Severus Snape's first lesson of the autumn term and the first N.E.W.T.s lesson of his life, so he decided to arrive early. He wanted to be there in time to take a table in the middle of the row furthest from the door, not so far forward that he couldn't keep an eye on what was happening around him, nor so far back that he wouldn't be noticed. He also wanted to be in his seat when Professor Slughorn arrived, with his cauldron set up and his textbook and parchment and sharpened quill ready to hand. And if he could accomplish all this without having to run the gauntlet of James Potter's gang of Gryffindors, well, that would be best of all.

By keeping his goals in the forefront of his mind, Severus not only arrived early, he arrived first. He took his favourite seat and watched the door.

Evan Rosier came in next, attended as usual by a retinue. This time, his followers were Fordon Avery, Douglas Wilkes and Vera Vaisey. Wilkes and Vaisey were clever enough, but Severus had no idea how Fordon Avery had attained the Exceeds Expectations on his Potions O.W.L. which Slughorn required for his N.E.W.T.s class. The four of them took the table in front of Severus, Vaisey managing to slide into the seat next to Rosier.

They nodded to Severus and said their helloes. Then they turned their backs on him. Avery compared lessons schedules with Wilkes. Vaisey chattered with Rosier about Quidditch just as though she knew or cared anything about the sport.

They noticed him just enough, Severus thought, so that he'd have no good reason to resent them later if they asked for his help with a difficult brewing.

More students came in, some Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, who gathered into their own House cliques and chose their tables accordingly.

Then a commotion in the corridor--laughter and the pounding of running feet--overwhelmed the low-voiced conversation and quiet giggling of a class waiting for their teacher.

A voice outside the door rose above the racket:

"If I hadn't yanked the sheet out from under you, Potter, you'd still be snoring away in bed! Ripping the blankets off you wasn't enough! Was it, Peter?"

Sirius Black. Pettigrew's shrill laughter answered him.

"No!" said Pettigrew. "I tried, didn't I? Didn't I try?"

"You ripped those blankets as good as anybody could," Black agreed.

"Bloody prats." James Potter burst into the Potions classroom, running his hand through his hair. "God." He yawned hugely. "Is nine o'clock really daytime?"

Black, Pettigrew and Lupin clattered noisily in after Potter. So all four of them, Severus noted sourly, had qualified for N.E.W.T.s Potions.

"Has to be, if Sluggy can think so," said Black.

"True," said Lupin. "He doesn't strike me as somebody who enjoys greeting the dawn."

Potter led his gang toward his own preferred spot, at the back of the classroom. Black, bringing up the rear, suddenly pulled his wand out of his robes. Severus bristled instinctively, but Black didn't seem to have noticed him. Holding his wand vertically, he was watching its tip. A bluebell flame appeared there and, rather like a prodded caterpillar, curled itself into a tight, gleaming ball.

Black flicked the ball in Potter's direction. "Oy, Potter, wake up!"

Potter whirled around, his wand at the ready. He twitched it and sent the ball back toward Black. Soon they were engaged in something like a high-speed game of tennis, the ball of bluebell-flame whizzing back and forth between their wands, faster and faster, until it was no more than a bright blur.

Pettigrew whooped and clapped his hands.

"You idiots!" Lupin said, laughing. "If one of you misses, this classroom'll go up in smoke!"

"He's right, you know?" Black said, flinging the bluebell-flame ball back at Potter.

Potter stopped it in mid-air. "Better do something about it, I reckon." Keeping his wand trained on the ball, he stared at it for a second or two. It began to bob and dart about in the air. Then it turned from blue to shimmering gold and grew a pair of wings.

Several of the girls gasped and twittered in admiration. "A Snitch!" cried Pettigrew. "That's brilliant!"

Lupin said nothing, but his eyes as they followed the Golden Snitch were full of wonder.

"Not bad," Black allowed. "You took over my magic. 'Course I wasn't trying to hold the flame in form."

"Show-off," said Rosier in a low, clear voice. "Just listen to the birds cooing over him. But Slughorn should be walking in any minute now. Maybe this time he'll catch Potty breaking the rules."

Potter answered only with a smirk. He took neither his eyes nor his wand off the Snitch. Slowly it enlarged. When it was about the size of a cricket ball, Potter whirled and said, "Catch, Snivelly!"

What flew in Severus's direction was not a swollen Snitch, but a Bogey Curse--a disgusting mass of goo with threads of mucus flying behind it like the tail of a comet. Just in time, Severus ducked. As he did so, he felt the passage of a spell raise the hairs on the nape of his neck. Then he heard the wet, squelchy slap of the giant bogey hitting the wall behind him.

In another moment, Severus was up with his wand aimed at Potter. He was just in time to deflect Potter's Jelly-Legs Jinx. In the next second he had his wand trained on Potter's head.

"Radeo!" Severus said, and a girl snapped, "Potter! What are you doing? Put that wand away!"

The girl was Lily Evans. Startled by the sound of her voice, Potter turned. At the same time, his hair vanished from his head, leaving him as bald as an egg.

Alice Aylsworth, who had come in with Lily, started to laugh. Rosier and the Slytherins at his table roared. Severus merely smiled.

"No fighting!" Lily shouted above the tumult. "Especially in a classroom, with magic! You know that's not allowed!" She glared at Potter, yet Severus saw her lips twitch.

Potter touched his bald pate with a look of dismay. "Come on, Evans, give me a break! I think I got the worst of it here!"

Lupin cocked an ear toward the classroom door while they were speaking and waved his wand at the blob of mucus on the wall behind Severus. "Evanesco!" he said, and the bogey disappeared.

"If you're going to be such a perfect prefect," said Potter, "what about Snivellus? He's the one who--"

Finally Lily gave in. Holding her stomach and pointing at Potter's head, she drowned Potter out with gales of laughter. Just as she was uttering a particularly shrill whoop, Professor Slughorn appeared in the classroom doorway.

Slughorn looked taken aback, until he saw it was Lily Evans who was laughing. Then his face relaxed in an avuncular smile.

"Well, Miss Evans. I hope you will always find N.EW.T.s Potions as entertaining as you do today."

Lily straightened and turned. Her cheeks were pink, yet she gave Slughorn an impudent grin. "I think I can count on doing so, sir, as long as Potter's in the class."

"Now, Lily, was that nice?" Professor Slughorn chortled. He looked at Potter. "I don't suppose I'd better ask what happened?"

"No, Professor," the scarlet-faced Potter said.

Potter was too proud to tattle to a teacher, especially in front of a classroom full of students who had just witnessed his humiliation. If he ran true to form, he'd look for revenge later, when he and Severus were out of sight of the teachers.

"That's all right," Slughorn said to Potter. "Your common or garden Instant Scalping Hex, of insufficient gravity, shall we say, to be part of a school curriculum, but sorted out easily enough." With a flourish of his wand, he restored Potter's hair. To Severus it looked much neater than usual.

Slughorn, his belly jiggling slightly under a brocade waistcoat, strode to the front of the dungeon and stationed himself behind the lectern. "Settle down, everyone! To your seats!" Everyone who hadn't yet seated themselves scattered to various tables. Potter and his gang went to the rear table, while Lily and Alice Aylsworth sat in the middle of the classroom, next to Severus's table.

"Now, then!" said Slughorn. "You all have your textbooks, Borage, Advanced Potion-Making?" There were nods and murmurs in the affirmative. "Good! But don't open it yet," he said, beaming at Circe Clearwater, a Ravenclaw who had opened her book and was flipping through its pages. She looked up, snapped the book shut and laid it at the far corner of her table.

"You see," Slughorn continued, "I always enjoy discovering how well-informed my new N.E.W.T.s students are about some of the more useful potions. One of these potions," he said, turning and writing on the blackboard, "is an Antisomnia Infusion. Can anyone tell me the chief uses of an Antisomnia Infusion?"

Severus and Lily raised their hands.

"You drink it when you need to pull an all-nighter before an exam?" suggested Black.

A couple of the girls giggled shrilly. "Stupid berk," muttered Potter, stifling a snort of laughter.

"I'd say you were partly right, Mr Black, if I noticed students who didn't raise their hands," Slughorn said. "Miss Evans?"

"Well, you can use it for studying, if you don't mind not being able to sleep for a week," Lily said. "But it's usually used to rouse people out of states of reduced sensibility--anything from lethargy to coma. You can also use it to ameliorate the after-effects of a particularly hard Stunning Spell."

"Very good, Miss Evans!" Slughorn said. "Five points to Gryffindor! Now, can anyone give me the chief active ingredient of an Antisomnia Infusion?"

Severus raised his hand. Lily shot hers up again, and he felt his lips tighten.

"Surely there's someone besides Lily who knows the answer?" Slughorn asked. But, smiling indulgently at Lily, he didn't look for any other raised hands.

Rosier watched Slughorn and Lily with a look of amused contempt. "Severus here seems to know it," he said.

Lily looked at Severus for the first time. Her hand lowered an inch.

Slughorn didn't look as though he had heard Rosier. "Oh, very well, Miss Evans, since no one here wishes to steal your thunder!" he said. "The chief ingredient of an Antisomnia Infusion is--?"

Severus pulled his hand down and closed it in a fist on the top of his table.

"Miss Evans?"

"Oh--er, yes. The chief active ingredient of an Antisomnia Infusion is a double-strength infusion of Caffea leaves."

"Very good! Five more points to Gryffindor! You'll win your House the Cup at this rate, Miss Evans!" Slughorn said. "Very well, then! Divide into pairs, and we shall all brew an Antisomnia Infusion. The recipe's in Borage, on page eleven." He turned to the blackboard and began writing down ingredients and measurements. "But you might want to keep your textbook a good distance from your cauldron, as this potion can be rather messy."

The students gravitated toward partners, except for Vera Vaisey, who didn't gravitate but practically leaped on Rosier. Avery and Wilkes, who always acted like some old couple who had been together twenty years, bent their heads over Wilkes's cauldron.

So none of the Slytherins wanted Severus as a partner. He looked around, wondering whether there was anybody else in the room he could endure for the next two hours.

"Severus?"

Starting, Severus turned. Lily was standing beside his chair.

"Be my partner?" she asked.

Severus stared at Lily without answering. Rosier eyed her languidly. "These are the Slytherin tables," he said. "Your kind aren't wanted here."

Lily returned Rosier's look with a glare. "I don't recall asking you."

Where was Aylsworth? Hadn't she been sitting with Lily? Severus looked around. Alice Aylsworth was measuring pomegranate juice at Circe Clearwater's table. They'd already started their potion.

And Lily was still standing at his table, her cauldron and textbook under her arm. "Well, Severus?"

Before, in Slytherin and Gryffindor Double Potions, she'd never had to ask. Then came a sunny day by the lake in June, after the Defence Against the Dark Arts O.W.L.

"I'd wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus."

And a dark night in the corridor before the Fat Lady's portrait.

"You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."

Not to mention the street outside Lily's house last summer. Severus had hung about there sometimes, staring up at her bedroom window, trying to work up the nerve to knock on the door, to ask for her, to try again to apologise, until one day the lump her Muggle sister called a boyfriend had stridden out spewing threats. He'd got off easy. Severus's hand had strayed perilously close to his wand. But then he'd seen Lily at the bedroom window, pale, expressionless, colder than she'd been in the corridor before the portrait-hole. The heart had gone right out of him then. He'd slunk home to his mother and the other Muggle, and he'd never gone back.

"Why?" Severus asked Lily suspiciously.

"Because I intend to do well in Potions," said Lily. "And you're the best Potions student in our year. So I want to partner with you."

"The best Potions student?" Severus's suspicion grew. He tilted his head toward Slughorn. "Not according to him."

Avery, Wilkes and Vera Vaisey had joined Rosier in staring malevolently at Evans. She didn't appear to notice.

"All right, second-best. But still, the best person in the room I could have as my partner."

Severus looked at her, startled again, thrown quite off-balance. It was like the old days, the contests between them over who'd get the better mark in this brewing, on that exam. "Second-best, am I? We'll see about that." he pulled out the chair beside him. "Sit down."

****

"Where are the night-owl's eyes?" Severus demanded.

He and Lily Evans had their Advanced Potion-Making textbooks open to the recipe for the Antisomnia Infusion.

"What?" said Lily.

"This book is wrong, as usual!" Severus jabbed it with his forefinger. "Unless you add two dried ground night-owl's eyes thirty minutes into the simmering, an Antisomnia Infusion isn't good for much more than waking a baby from its afternoon nap!"

"How do you know that?"

"I know," Severus said. "I know Horace Slughorn is an idiot for not revising these potions before trying to teach them to us."

"I wouldn't tell him that if I were you," Lily advised.

Severus scanned the rest of the recipe. "And it needs betony root. The leaves lengthen the brewing by forty-five minutes."

"Really? Where did you learn that? Your mum?"

Lily had hardly ever seen or spoken to Severus's "mum;" her parents never let her come to his house. "None of your business!" he snapped.

"Fine!" Lily snapped back. "I don't care where you learned it. I just hope what you learned is right!"

Severus heard sniggering from Rosier's table. "It's right. I'm going up front to get the ingredients. You light the cauldron."

"Yes, sir."

"Erm--please," said Severus.

Vera Vaisey choked with laughter. Lily took her wand out and let it drop with an ominous clack! on the tabletop. "And then maybe I'll cast a Throat-clearing Charm on Vera," she said.

Severus made his escape. He headed for the storage cupboard behind Slughorn's desk. But when he reached it, he found he had to stand in line behind Lupin and Pettigrew, who were both foraging in the tiny, neatly-labelled drawers for ingredients.

Lupin looked up and smiled. "Hello, Severus."

"Lupin," Severus answered shortly. Lupin was far from being Severus's friend, so why was he always trying to force chat out of him? Pettigrew, on the other hand, gave him a wary glance, grabbed a phial from the drawer labelled Peppermint Oil, added it to the bags and bottles he was clutching to his chest and quickly left.

Lupin took a small cloth bag from the drawer labelled Betony Leaves. "Peter's got the rest of our ingredients, so I'll leave you to it," he said cheerfully, just as if they were concluding a pleasant conversation.

Severus sourly watched Lupin's retreating back. He preferred Pettigrew's attitude of cautious dislike. At least he knew Pettigrew was sincere.

Severus turned to the rows of drawers, scanning their labels. He reached the row of ingredients whose names began with the letter N: Nasturtium; Nettle; Newt, eye of; Nightshade, black...

There were no night-owl's eyes.

Severus sighed. Perhaps Slughorn kept dried night-owl's eyes in his locked stores; he'd have to ask. But he might as well get the rest of the ingredients first. He went to the B's. There was betony root. He took the small glass jar out of the drawer, uncorked it and removed two dried roots.

"Betony root, Severus, m'boy? Doesn't the recipe call for betony leaves?"

Severus gritted his teeth and turned around. There was Professor Slughorn, smiling brightly.

"Yes, it does," Severus said evenly. "But you can cut forty-five minutes off the brewing time if you add two chopped betony roots forty minutes after the potion comes to a boil."

"Really? I think I may say I know my Borage inside and out. I don't recall seeing any alternative methods or substitutions for making an Antisomnia Infusion."

"That's because Borage didn't put them in," said Severus. "Oh, and I was going to ask you, sir, if you happened to have two dried night-owl's eyes on hand?"

Slughorn's smile thinned a bit. "Why do you want night-owl's eyes?"

"To add to the potion. They'll make it much more efficacious." Severus paused. "As you must know, sir."

The smile faded away. "Yes, I do." Slughorn looked oddly at Severus. "They also make it much more difficult to brew. It takes a wizard of a certain magical capacity--not to mention one possessed of a very high degree of potioning skill--to brew an Antisomnia Infusion using night-owl's eyes. I happen to believe it's beyond the capabilities of a sixth-year, which is one reason I don't teach that version of the potion. In fact," he said, looking even more narrowly at Severus, "I'm surprised you know about that version at all."

"I read about it in a book I picked up in Diagon Alley," Severus lied.

"Did you?" Slughorn asked. "Well, I do happen to have two dried night-owl's eyes in my locked cupboard. But you don't have to make the potion that way, you know. Borage's version is perfectly acceptable to me, or I wouldn't teach it. It's perfectly acceptable to the N.E.W.T.s examiners too, if that's what you're worried about."

"But it isn't right," Severus said. "The Antisomnia Infusion can be a very powerful potion if you brew it properly. I want to learn how to make it right."

"Obviously you think you already know how to make it right. Very well. Wait here." Slughorn left the classroom and returned in a couple of minutes with a small linen bag, tied neatly and tightly at the top. "Two dried night-owl's eyes." He handed the bag to Severus and fixed him with a protuberant eye. "You're making this assignment much harder than it needs to be. I repeat that night-owl's eyes are very difficult to work with. And I must warn you that if you botch this potion, I can't give you extra points for attempting more than is expected of a sixth-year student. In potioning, it's very dangerous to form the habit of reaching beyond your grasp."

"Yes, sir," Severus said. He refrained from adding, "Would you have said the same thing to Lily Evans if I'd sent her up for the night-owl's eyes?" He already knew the answer to that.

****

After collecting the rest of his ingredients, Severus made his way back to his seat, the memory of Slughorn's doubt egging him on to brew the best Antisomnia Infusion that dungeon had ever seen. Lily was leaning over the table when he arrived, wand poised above their cauldron, her hair shining like an ember in a shaft of sunlight that fell through one of the high dungeon windows. She was checking the cauldron's internal temperature.

It was a useful step that no other student in the room bothered to take, but then Lily was brighter than the rest of them.

Severus had sat down and was arranging the potion ingredients beside the cauldron when a noxious odour assailed his nostrils. Looking up, he saw a sickly-green vapour rising from Lupin's and Pettigrew's cauldron. Pettigrew looked as green as the vapour. Lupin was anxiously riffling through the pages of his textbook.

Beside them, Potter's and Black's cauldron wasn't even lit. Black, tilted idly back in his chair, grinned over the cauldron at Potter. Potter glared across the room at Lily Evans.

He must have heard what had happened last term, after O.W.L.s, after the lake, after Severus had all but crawled to the Fat Lady's portrait and lain in the corridor beneath it, waiting for--longing for--Lily to come out to him. How Potter must have laughed! He must have believed he'd won her at last. Until today, as he looked on the one thing he wanted least to see: Lily Evans fallen back into her old ways, sitting next to Severus Snape.

No one would expect James Potter's friend to sit next to Severus Snape. For to James Potter, friendship meant doing things James Potter's way. You had to like those whom he liked, hate those whom he hated, admire what he did, do as he said--in short, you had to toe his line or risk being chased down the corridors by his hexes and jinxes for the entire school year.

Perhaps Potter had better not expect the same submission from Lily Evans that he got from the rest of Gryffindor House. Perhaps in Lily Evans, Potter would find he'd met his match. She was one of the very few Gryffindor girls who didn't swoon every time he passed by, and she was every bit as clever and powerful as he was.

So perhaps Severus would fall back into his own old ways and ask Lily to partner with him in future Potions assignments. He might then at least be treated to some entertaining duels.

****

Lily's wand turned red-gold at its tip, indicating that the inside of the cauldron had reached the proper temperature. She opened her potions kit, removed a bottle of inert base and poured it in.

Then she looked at the linen bag which Severus had placed at the centre of the table. "What did Slughorn say when you asked for the eyes of a night-owl?" she asked.

"That he would fail us if we botched the potion."

"I was afraid of that," Lily said gloomily. She began to measure and weigh the potion ingredients. "The recipe says to add everything else after the base has simmered for twenty minutes. That includes the betony leaves."

Severus took out his silver-bladed knife and chopped the betony root. "The root doesn't go in for forty minutes."

Twenty minutes passed, and Lily added the ingredients she had prepared. She gave the little linen bag a tentative poke. "What about those things?"

"Those 'things' need delicate treatment and proper timing" Severus slid the chopped betony root into a paper, which he placed next to the cauldron. He took a chamois cloth from his potions kit. After wiping the blade clean, he handed his knife to Lily, for she was a better hand at chopping and cutting than he was. Then he pulled his watch out of his pocket, his mortar and pestle from his kit and placed both on the table.

"In exactly three minutes and twelve seconds," he announced, "you will begin to cut the night-owl's eyes on a ten-degree angle into slices the width of three human hairs."

Lily stared at him. "Ten deg--three human hairs--how am I supposed to do that?"

''That's your problem," said Severus, recalling how very cold and hard the flagged floor in front of the Fat Lady's portrait had been last year.

"You think so?" Lily tossed Severus's knife on the table in front of him. "Well, you're wrong. It's your problem, because you're going to do it."

This time, there was no sniggering from the table in front of them. Avery and Wilkes were waving their wands desperately, trying to put a stop to the black sludge bubbling over the side of their cauldron. Rosier and Vera Vaisey, nervously glancing at their own watches, had only begun to infuse their Caffea leaves.

"I can't," Severus said. "I won't have the time. I have to begin grinding each slice within one and a quarter seconds after it's cut." He pushed his watch closer to Lily. "And you have to begin in exactly two minutes, sixteen seconds. If you don't do your part properly, the ingredients won't meld into a potion, no matter what I do. So we'll fail the assignment, and it will be your fault."

Lily pressed her lips into a thin line. She opened the bag and took out the dried eyes, which were wrinkled and somewhat flattened. She looked at them with distaste, then, setting her jaw, plucked three dark red hairs from her head. She bound and stiffened them with charms until they looked like what they needed to be: a precise and delicate measuring instrument. She laid the three hairs crosswise against one of the eyes and murmured an Arithmancer's formula over it. Tiny marks appeared on the eye, distanced from one another by the width of three human hairs and slanted at an angle of ten degrees.

Lily performed the same magic on the other eye. Then, sitting with her knife poised over the eyes, she nudged Severus's watch back toward him. "You watch the time, and tell me when to start," she said.

She'd prepared the eyes with thirty seconds to spare. Not bad, Severus thought. Not bad at all.

****

But Severus was every bit as handy with a pestle as Lily was with a knife. Furthermore, he'd charmed the mortar to ring like an alarm clock when he had ground the eye-slices to a powder of exactly the right consistency, so that he could pour the powder without any damaging delay into the bubbling Antisomnia Infusion.

He emptied the last mortar of powder into the cauldron and said, "There! The hardest part's done."

In five minutes a shimmering silver mist arose from the cauldron. It had the scent and the nostril-pinching effect of a cold winter wind.

"Excellent!" said Severus. "The potion's coming along perfectly."

"By the book," said Lily, who was reading the recipe. "Thirty minutes into the brewing time, we're supposed to be getting 'a silver steam which has an effect on the breathing passages as of freezing air.'"

Rosier turned in his seat. "You don't have any more of those eyes, do you?" His and Vaisey's potion was giving off a dirty-looking yellow vapour that smelled like sulphur. Avery and Wilkes had moved to another table after the sludge overflowing from their cauldron had burned a hole in the table top.

"Sorry, no," said Severus.

"You're too late anyway," Lily said, wrinkling her nose at the sulphurous stench. "Even if we did have any more owl eyes, and even if we did want to give them to you."

Rosier didn't answer but stared at Lily coldly before turning back to his potion. She was wise enough to wait until then to give him a taunting smile.

Ten more minutes saw the betony root added to the Antisomnia Infusion. After that, Severus sat back. "Six minutes of simmering and we're done." He gestured around the room. "The rest of these poor sods have forty-five minutes' work ahead of them."

Once again, Lily had her nose in the textbook. "Just simmering? No turning up and down of the heat, no clockwise and anticlockwise stirring?"

"Yes, no, and no. Our work is done."

"Hmph!" said Lily. "Well, how about that!" It was clear from the look on her face that she hadn't had complete faith in Severus before this.

She'd have it now. And so, surely, would Slughorn. At the moment he was bent over Lupin's and Pettigrew's potion. Green fumes rose around his head and his moustache quivered with disgust.

"But, Mr Pettigrew, didn't you read the recipe?" Slughorn said. "It says three drops of Peppermint Oil, not five!"

"I didn't mean to, sir, it was an accident; those droppers aren't very easy to use!"

Not for clumsy dolts, they weren't, Severus thought.

It was no less satisfying to see Black biting his lip in concentration as he stirred his potion anticlockwise, while Potter, throwing out suggestions from time to time, scoured Borage for hints that Severus could have told him weren't there.

Slughorn went from table to table, his expression for the most part registering varying levels of dismay.

"Well, well," he kept saying in tones of doubtful reassurance, "there's no denying the Antisomnia Infusion is a difficult brew the first time around...."

And yet, though his and Lily's potion was perking along nicely, only three minutes short of completion when the teacher arrived at their table, Severus did not think Slughorn looked pleased with them.

Or rather with him. Slughorn, of course, had words of praise for Lily Evans, though they weren't as effusive as usual.

"Lily, my dear," Slughorn said soberly, "this potion is perfect."

Lily beamed. There wasn't much she liked better than the praise teachers were always giving her. "Thank you, Professor. But it was Severus's idea, you know, to use the night-owl's eyes. And since he thought to add betony root instead of the leaves, we were able to skip practically an hour's worth of stirring and simmering."

"I know," said Slughorn. He sounded almost sad. He looked regretfully at Severus for a moment, then proceeded to Rosier's table.

There, tutting and fretting, he seemed himself again. "Oh, dear, the table's ruined, I'm afraid; there's no magic to repair the hole Mr Avery and Mr Wilkes made. Evan, why don't you add another dram of pomegranate juice to your potion; that should improve the odour, at least...."

"You were brilliant, Severus." Lily leaned back in her chair with her hands behind her head, looking the picture of relaxation. "We could take a nap for the next half-hour, and we'd still be on our way to full marks, how much do you want to bet?"

"We'll see," said Severus. Still, Lily had to be right. In spite of Slughorn's inexplicable displeasure, she had better be right.

****

Lily read her Charms textbook while she waited for the rest of the class to finish their Antisomnia Infusions. Severus looked around the room for a while, enjoying the envy and discomfiture of those students who met his eyes. While Black industriously stirred their potion, Potter, Severus noted, spent a good deal of his time staring at Lily. His eyes were hard and the skin around his lips had a pinched, pale look.

Fortunately, she didn't notice. Or maybe it wasn't so fortunate, since there was no doubt she was in for it later from Potter.

"Time's up!" Professor Slughorn called. "Books closed and wands away! Douse the fires beneath your cauldrons. Take a sample of your potions and we'll test each one on an unconscious subject."

Everyone looked around uneasily, as if they wondered whom among them Slughorn intended to knock unconscious.

Slughorn laughed. "Don't worry! My owl is in my office. I'll bring him here. He's sleeping anyway. Let's have him sleep a little more deeply for us."

In a few minutes, Slughorn returned with a Ural owl perched on his wrist. He held it over his desk and waved his wand twice across its eyes. The owl blinked, then keeled over on to the desk top.

"There!" said Slughorn. "Hector is now in a magical sleep, which is a species of coma quite sufficient for the testing of our potions. He's not breathing, as you see, and is, in fact, practically in suspended animation." Slughorn looked around. "If he's not breathing, however, he's unable to swallow our potions. What do we do about that?"

Up went Lily Evans's hand.

"Miss Evans?"

"We cast a Carmenoris Charm on him, so that the muscles of his mouth and throat will work even though he's unconscious."

"Very good, very good! You'll learn that charm as a Healer, Lily, but as it can also be cast on conscious subjects against their will, you won't be learning it at Hogwarts. The use of Carmenoris is strictly regulated by the Ministry of Magic. However, since we shan't be able to wake poor Hector without it--" here Slughorn waved his wand over his comatose owl. "There! Who would like to be the first to test his or her potion on Hector?" He didn't wait for a response before saying, "Miss Clearwater and Miss Aylsworth?"

Clearwater and Aylsworth had successfully brewed the Antisomnia Infusion from Borage's recipe, so Slughorn, Severus reasoned, wanted to use their potion to demonstrate the conventionally expected results. He watched with interest, since he'd never seen Mother give Borage's Infusion to Tobias.

Slughorn took Clearwater's phial, pried open Hector's beak and poured a few drops into the owl's mouth. A minute or so passed before Hector's eyes slowly opened. Slughorn helped the bird to a perch on his wrist, where it blinked in apparent befuddlement and uttered a couple of soft, drowsy hoots.

"Very good!" Slughorn said. "Full marks for Miss Aylsworth and Miss Clearwater!" He cast his owl back into a magical sleep and said, "Next?"

Lily raised her hand eagerly, but, for the very first time in Severus's memory, Slughorn overlooked her. He selected Lupin and Pettigrew instead, and, somewhat to Severus's surprise, their potion aroused Hector as effectively as Clearwater and Aylsworth's had done.

"Excellent, Mr Lupin, excellent!" said Slughorn, beaming with genuine pleasure. "That combination of cinnamon powder and extract of Kola saved the day for your potion. And, Mr Pettigrew, ten points to Gryffindor for having faith in your partner's idea and the presence of mind to follow his instructions to the letter! Full marks for both of you!"

Slughorn was unusually generous today, handing out high marks to everyone whose potion made the owl so much as flutter its eyelids. The only failures were Avery and Wilkes, and that was only because Slughorn, probably fearing their black sludge would kill Hector, refused to feed him their potion.

Stranger still was Slughorn's neglect of Lily Evans, who eventually gave up raising her hand. Severus's and Lily's potion was the very last to be tested, and most of the students were already packing their cauldrons and books into their bags when Slughorn administered two drops of their Antisomnia Infusion to Hector.

Hector swallowed the Infusion under the influence of Carmenoris. His chest heaved suddenly and his eyes popped open. He was lying flat as before, but this time Slughorn did not have to help him to a perch on his wrist. He lifted straight off from his back into full flight and began to swoop around the dungeon, whizzing at top speed over the heads of the students.

"Oy, look!" voices exclaimed in surprise. "Whose potion did that?"

"We're done, aren't we?" said Potter. "Professor Slughorn must have revived him."

"No, he didn't," said Lily, smiling triumphantly. "That's our potion."

"Ah, yes," said Slughorn, watching in amazement as Hector circled the ceiling. "That's Miss Evans's and Mr. Snape's potion." Suddenly Hector zoomed straight for a window, which Slughorn opened with his wand just before the owl crashed into it head-first. Hector flew through the window and out of sight.

Slughorn stared after Hector. "He obviously has some energy he needs to work off," he said. He turned to Lily. "Well, Miss Evans. It looks as though your potion has earned you full marks. Along with--"

"Thank you, sir, but it was Severus's potion. I'd have just brewed the one in the book, and that's not the one that made Hector fly."

"I know, Lily," Slughorn said quietly. "Along with Mr Snape, as I was about to say. Full marks for both of you." He didn't look at Severus as he spoke, and turned quickly away when he was done.

"What's wrong with him?" Lily asked as she and Severus returned to their table to pack up their books and their potions kits.

"Wrong?" Severus asked bitterly, shoving his cauldron into his bag. "You think there's something wrong with being Slughorn's pet? That's a first."

"Now, just one minute--"

"Excuse me, everyone," Slughorn said in a loud voice. "Don't leave just yet! I'd like to ask a few people to stop by my office after lessons today. Mr Black, Mr Potter..."

Severus stopped and pricked up his ears. The annual Slug Club invitations.

Slughorn continued to reel off names. "Mr Rosier, Miss Aylsworth, Miss Evans and--" his eyes went to Lupin and lingered on him speculatively. Lupin looked back directly, though with a rather strange expression on his face.

"--Mr Lupin," Slughorn said. "That's all, then! Class dismissed!"

That was all, then. That was, as ever, all Severus could expect, after brewing the most effective Antisomnia Infusion he wagered Slughorn had ever seen. To be passed over for a shy, sickly creature like Lupin. To be swept out with the Averys and the Pettigrews, the failures and the dunces.

He crammed Borage, that book full of claptrap, into his bag and snapped it shut. He strode out of the classroom, shoving Wilkes out of his way.

"Oy, Snape, what's got into you now!" said Wilkes in an aggrieved voice.

Severus ignored him. And he ignored Lily, too, though she called his name a couple of times before he was halfway down the corridor and out of earshot.