Remus had done it without realising; whatever it was he had been expecting Lily to say, it was not even close to what she had asked. He hadn’t been able to help the way he had started, knocking the neat pile of textbooks onto the floor with an almighty thud. They all turned to look at him and he could feel their eyes upon him still as he made his apologies and sunk to his knees between the beds to gather the books to him. As he stood and placed the books on the bedside table, he tried desperately to avoid the eyes of the one person he knew for certain had heard that name before. He had no idea whether or not Sirius had told James what he had told Remus; he didn’t have a clue whether or not Sirius had intended to ever speak again about what had happened to him when he had returned to Grimmauld Place. Yet despite this, Remus was certain that Lily’s question could not go unanswered and, after a few minutes of no-one saying anything, Remus took a deep breath and prepared himself to speak.
“He used to be a student here…” Remus’ mouth snapped shut as Peter broke the silence.
Lily was staring intently at Peter, waiting for him to continue, but Sirius started forward, perhaps forgetting how much his friends knew, as he asked briskly, “How on earth do you know that?”
Peter paled and shrugged, and Lily, perhaps sensing that Sirius was maybe not best suited to asking the questions, took the opportunity to say, “Where did you hear that, Peter?”
Peter still did not reply; he seemed to be concentrating on the pattern on his blankets. Remus watched the way the corner of his mouth began to twitch as his mind processed all possible replies. Finally it seemed he had settled on response, and he managed an unconvincing smile as he stammered, “I just know…I mean…I heard it from somewhere…”
Sirius still seemed sceptical, his eyes remained fixed on Peter’s face as Remus spoke, trying to protect Peter from Sirius’ unpredictable temper.“I don’t understand what this has to do with Snape…”
Lily leant against one of the posts of Remus’ bed as she looked up at the ceiling of the room. Sirius had forgotten Peter’s comment and was now staring at Remus as he said through gritted teeth, “Don’t you?”
Lily looked down and Sirius seemed to suddenly realise the connotations of what he had just said and, in an attempt to avoid Lily’s questions, he turned his back on them both. He was not quick enough. Lily was no fool - she had heard what Sirius had said - and now she quickly moved to block Sirius’ path to his bed.
“I know you know something, Sirius.” Sirius said nothing as he attempted to move her out of his way. Lily stood firm as if her feet were rooted to the floor, and her voice was determined as she demanded, “You have to tell me!”
“I don’t have to tell you anything!” Sirius snapped, resigning himself to defeat and turning back to sit on Remus’ bed.
“But maybe…maybe she has a point…” James began tentatively. Sirius had obviously told him, too.
Sirius looked at James. “Don’t you dare take her side over mine.”
“It has nothing to do with taking sides!” Lily pulled her hair back and out of her face as she began to walk towards Remus’ bed. “This is about something much bigger and darker than anything any of us has ever known before. This isn’t just some petty divide between the pure-bloods and the half-bloods and the Muggle-borns…”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Sirius barked, looking to be making every effort to remain seated. “You don’t have to tell me how serious it is, I already know. It has everything to do with taking sides!”
“Well then, help me to understand what’s happening with Severus…” Lily’s voice had lost some of its fury and she had now crouched down, bringing herself to Sirius’ level on the bed. Sirius said nothing. No-one moved. Peter been quiet since his initial comment, and James seemed to have frozen in the middle of the room. Remus sat in silence, waiting for Sirius to speak.
“What is happening to Snape?”
Lily smiled and patted Sirius’ knee: a little gesture of thanks for the trust he was about to show. Lily stood up and crossed the room to sit on James’ bed, kicking off her shoes before pulling her knees up under her chin, finally noticing that one of her socks had slid down, and, as she pulled it up, beginning, “It’s odd, really…at first I thought I might have been imagining things…these little remarks he would sort of casually drop into conversation. I’m used to some of the things he says, but all of a sudden it seemed like…” Lily paused and indicated that James should sit, too. “It was almost as if his comments had more meaning, more purpose. He would be more specific in what he would say about power. It almost began to sound like he was making threats.”
Remus recalled the incident in the corridor at the beginning of the school year, and once again he heard Snape: you should really be more careful in choosing your targets from now on. Those who are powerless do not always remain so.’The confrontation had seemed so different to all the ones that had come before. Snape had never been a willing victim, but Remus had never known him to be quite so angry after a run-in with the Marauders. His eyes had grown black with a new kind of hatred; a hatred that was powerful and dangerous. And it seemed that James, too, had been reminded of the incident, as he suddenly said, “He threatened us that time. Do you remember? Back in the autumn term?”
“Are you sure you didn’t deserve it?” Lily retorted, quick as a flash. James smiled serenely in response. “No…you’re right…” Lily amended, and James looked shocked that she was agreeing with him. “He has been different; disappearing after Potions, not bothering to study with me when I’ve asked him to.” Remus noted the way James tensed with jealously at that but, somehow, managed to remain silent as Lily pressed on, “He disappears off for hours upon end and I can’t find him anywhere, no matter how I hard I look…”
“What do you mean, ‘disappears’?” Remus asked, intrigued. Lily seemed to be struggling with how best to answer this question as she said, “Well, I don’t know. But this is the thing I’m worried about. All these comments and veiled threats, and now him disappearing for hours on end; they can’t all be coincidence, can they?”
“The map!” Sirius suddenly cried without thinking, throwing his hands up in the air in inspiration. Sirius was smiling, but it disappeared as he turned and saw Remus staring at him, open-mouthed. The rest of the Marauders were staring, too; how could Sirius just forget that Lily was there and mention the map?
“What map do you mean?” Lily asked, but Sirius ignored her question entirely as he said to Remus, “Don’t you remember, before Christmas, what I said about Snape? I couldn’t find him anywhere and yet he had been there, on the seventh floor, the whole time?”
Remus could not speak; how was it that Sirius was still talking? But James suddenly seemed to understand what Sirius was saying. “I remember! But I don’t get what that has to do with…”
“Lily,” Sirius asked, eager and completely oblivious to what he might have revealed about himself and the group, “is there anything on the seventh floor that shouldn’t be there? What I mean is, is there anywhere there where Snape would want to go?”
It was then that Remus realised why Sirius had been unable to find Snape on the Marauder’s Map, and why it was that he had suddenly reappeared on the seventh floor. He knew, almost before Lily had answered the question, where it was that Snape was going to, and as she said the words, Remus cursed himself for not realising before. The Room of Requirement.
“But…” Lily was confused, shaking her head as if this would help her to better understand what was being said. “But what would Severus want to do in the Room of Requirement?”
Sirius was shifting excitedly on the bed beside Remus as all the pieces came together. Sirius had lost Snape on the map, and yet he had suddenly reappeared on the seventh floor. It now made perfect sense; Snape had been there on the seventh floor all along, but the Marauder’s Map didn’t show the Room of Requirement.
“When you first came in, you said…” Sirius paused and for a moment Remus didn’t expect him to continue. But whatever doubt he had been suffering under disappeared and, after a few seconds of silence, Sirius continued, “You asked us if we knew anything about Voldemort…” Lily shivered and avoided Sirius’ eyes. “But you never said what you knew…”
Sirius, of course, was right. Remus hadn’t even thought that for Lily to be asking these questions in the first place, she would have to know something about Voldemort herself. Before Sirius had returned from Grimmauld Place, Remus had never heard that name before, yet now it seemed as if everyone was familiar with this wizard. There had to be some connection between all the things that had been said and were happening; something that connected the Marauders with Lily, Lily with Snape, Sirius with the family that had now disowned him. It could be no accident that all these things had been happening alongside one another. There had to be some reasoning behind it. There had been whispers in the papers and glances in the corridors and now, as they sat together in the dormitory, it very slowly seemed to be making some kind of sense.
“He started mentioning him months ago; a little comment here and there “ Severus, I mean. At first it didn’t happen very often and I thought that it was just…well…we’ve seen pure-blood fanatics come and go before, haven’t we?” Sirius nodded and Lily continued hesitantly, “But this Voldemort seems different somehow. It’s just the way he talks about him; it frightens me. It seems organised, planned, controlled. I don’t think this is just a case of being anti-Muggle-born. I know that can be…quite common…” Lily trailed off, the hurt still lingering in her eyes. Remus had witnessed, on more occasions than he cared to remember, malicious Slytherins calling “Mudblood” at Lily as she passed. Of course, Professor Dumbledore had always been hard on anything of that sort at Hogwarts, yet it always seemed to Remus that even though every step was taken to stop that sort of thing, there would always be those who ignored the rules.
Sirius was staring at nothing, his eyes drawn out of the window to the darkening sky outside. It felt as though they had been sitting talking for hours; forgotten were the jokes of earlier. Remus watched Sirius thinking, deciding what to say, how much to reveal. There was no doubt in Remus’ mind that Sirius was about to help Lily better understand what was happening to Snape, yet he would find it hard. Although Sirius had been disowned, he was proud and fiercely loyal by nature, and as Sirius watched the black outlines of birds flit against the purple sky in the moments before he spoke, Remus considered how difficult it would be to talk about this.
“I think we need to keep an eye on this from now on…I don’t mean just an eye on Snape and other over-enthusiastic Slytherins, I mean on everything.” Lily nodded in agreement. Sirius looked at the faces of his friends and suddenly it seemed to Remus that he was not looking at the boy he knew, but on a strange shadow of a man he was perhaps yet to know. His voice had lost all the joking optimism of this morning; the light seemed to have died in his eyes. “We have to start really reading the Daily Prophet; looking out for anything that refers to this Voldemort. And we have to listen out for any conversations that people are having that seem a little odd…”
“Don’t you think that the Ministry already have people to do all this, Sirius?” James asked. “Do you really think it should be something that we should be worrying about? Shouldn’t we just leave it all to someone else?”
“I think Sirius is right,” Remus said, more to his own surprise than that of anyone else. He had not expected to agree and yet what Sirius was saying seemed to make so much sense. They had all recognised what was slowly beginning to happen; the changes that were being made to the world that they were a part of. It affected them, affected all of them, and they had noticed what was going on. James still looked unsure as Remus continued, “Certain things have been happening that we can’t ignore. Perhaps there is already some division of the Ministry set up to deal with this Voldemort, but it wouldn’t do any harm to try and do our bit here, would it?”
James shrugged, still not persuaded, and Lily took her turn to try and convince him. She turned so she was directly facing him and, without thinking about the animosity that supposedly existed between them, she laid both of her hands on his knees as she said, “James, please understand that I wouldn’t have come here…I wouldn’t have told you any of this if I wasn’t worried about what was happening, if I didn’t think it was important. I don’t mind telling you, as much as you may use it against me in the future,” she added. James smiled. “I don’t mind admitting that I’m afraid. And it’s not just because I’m Muggle-born and I think it will just affect me personally. I know Severus and I’m telling you now that the man he’s turning into is not the person I know. It scares me, James, and if we don’t start trying to do something now, it will all get horribly out of hand.”
Remus knew that James was convinced - if not by what Lily was saying, by the love he had for her and the desire Remus now knew he felt to protect her from anything that scared her this much. He nodded and Lily thanked him with a smile. James turned to Sirius and Remus and said, “So, what should we do first?”
“I think that we should try and find out what Snape is doing in the Room of Requirement. When we know that, it might give us a better idea of how big this problem is getting.”
Lily agreed with Remus; nodding, she said, “I could try and find out if you like.”
“But wouldn’t it be best if we kept a watch on the seventh floor, too? Just to be safe?”
James was a little too worried and Lily noticed; her eyes narrowed with suspicion and she said, “Don’t think that all this makes you some sort of knight in shining armour…I still think you’re vile, Potter.” Remus smiled; like James, he did not believe a word Lily had just said.
“I’ll see if I can talk to my brother…” Remus thought he had imagined it, yet Sirius was still looking solemnly at them all; it seemed that he, more than any of them, wanted to find out what was going on.
Remus’ stomach had lurched when Sirius spoke, and now he was tentative as he said, “Are you sure you can do that?”
Sirius laughed shortly and gave an almost predatory smile as he said, “Who would know more about this whole bloody sordid business than that darling little brother of mine?”
Remus nodded and smiled to himself, noticing for the first time just how dark it had become. The fires had yet to be lit, and outside, the ground and air were already freezing. Looking over to Peter’s bed, Remus saw that Peter was not there; he must have left some time ago, while they were talking, and Remus hadn’t even heard him go. It seemed odd to Remus that a day that had started so light-heartedly should end on such a serious note - it was almost sad to lose the laughter of earlier and to gain this new sense of solemnity.
Yet all was not completely lost, it seemed; James could still be relied upon and in the silence that had descended between them, he suddenly turned to Lily and said, “Does this actually mean we’re becoming friends now, Evans?”
Lily looked first at James and then Sirius then, after flashing Remus a mischievous grin, she stretched her arms above her head and yawned before saying, “With friends like you lot, who needs enemies?”
Without you, I'm nothing by Clare Mansfield
Chapter Notes: The Marauder's and Lily confide in one another about their fears, the growing influence of a wizard called Voldemort, the part the can play in the future - and, in the process, the Marauder's begin to discover Snape's secret.