By the second week of June, the library had become less a room for books than a place where children went to discover exactly how much they had forgotten.
Every table was occupied.
Books lay open in overlapping territories. Parchment gathered in untidy drifts around elbows and inkpots. Someone near the windows had been whispering the properties of moonstone to himself for so long that the words had lost all meaning even to Severus, who had not been listening deliberately.
Across the room, a Ravenclaw girl had three fingers stained blue-black with ink and appeared not to have noticed.
Madam Pince had noticed.
She noticed everything that might threaten a book.
What she did not appear to consider threatening was the low, constant misery of forty students revising at once.
Severus had been staring at the same paragraph for four minutes.
He knew this because the boy at the next table had turned four pages in that time, too quickly to have read any of them properly, and because the light falling through the high library windows had moved just enough to catch the edge of Severus's ink bottle.
The paragraph concerned the theoretical limitations of partial transfiguration.
He understood it.
That was the problem.
He had understood it the first time.
Now the words had stopped becoming information and begun sitting on the page in rows.
Across from him, Lily lowered her forehead until it nearly touched her book.
Severus looked up.
She remained there.
A loose strand of red hair had fallen across the margin and was hiding half a sentence.
He waited.
Eventually she said, very quietly, "If I read that paragraph again, I'll know less than when I started."
"That isn't how reading works."
Her forehead stayed where it was.
"It is today."
"No."
"Yes."
"You can't lose information by repeating it."
Lily lifted her head enough to look at him.
"You can if your brain gets annoyed."
"Brains don't get annoyed."
"Mine does."
"That explains several things."
Her eyes narrowed.
For half a second he thought she might throw the quill at him.
Instead she smiled despite herself and sat upright.
The year had made this easier between them.
Not everything. Hogwarts had complicated too many things for that. Routes had to be arranged now. Meals belonged to different tables. Even revision required negotiation between House schedules, lessons, friends, prefects and whatever other machinery the castle invented to keep children from simply going where they wanted.
But some things had become easier.
Lily no longer asked whether he wanted company before sitting down.
Severus no longer pretended surprise when she did.
She turned a page.
"Do you think McGonagall will actually make us do Switching?"
"Yes."
"Properly?"
"Probably."
"That's cruel."
"It's first-year Transfiguration."
"Exactly."
Severus looked back at his notes.
"You've done it before."
"That was one beetle."
"It still worked."
"It had too many legs afterward."
"It started with six."
"It ended with eight."
"Which proves you made more beetle."
Lily stared at him.
He kept his expression still.
Her mouth twitched.
"You are impossible."
"Your beetle was impossible."
That earned him a small kick beneath the table.
Not hard.
He moved his foot anyway.
Madam Pince looked toward them from behind her desk.
Lily immediately bent over her book with exaggerated innocence.
Severus did not.
Madam Pince's eyes moved from Lily, to him, to the book between them, as though judging which of the three presented the greatest threat to library order.
Then she looked away.
Lily waited three seconds.
"Do you think Slughorn will ask about antidotes?"
"Yes."
"You said that about Transfiguration."
"Because they'll both be on the exams."
"You don't know."
"He spent three lessons on antidotes."
"He spent four on cauldrons."
"Because someone melted one."
"That still counts."
"No, it doesn't."
Lily made a mark beside something in her notes.
Severus noticed she had drawn a tiny skull beside antidotes.
He considered telling her skulls were not useful academic notation.
He decided against it.
His own parchment was arranged properly. Potions on one sheet. Transfiguration on another. Charms separately. Defence theory folded underneath. Questions he was uncertain about marked once in the left margin. Questions he suspected professors might ask marked twice.
There were fewer double marks in Potions than anywhere else.
He tried not to feel anything particular about that.
The library door opened.
Three students came in carrying more books than seemed sensible. Someone near the back groaned aloud at the sight of them, as though additional revision material represented a personal attack.
Madam Pince hissed for silence.
The groaning stopped.
Lily closed her book.
Severus looked at it.
"You're finished?"
"For now."
"You've only done half the chapter."
"I've done enough of the chapter to dislike it properly."
"That isn't the same thing."
"It is very nearly the same thing."
She began gathering parchment.
Severus watched her stack it in the wrong order.
"Your Transfiguration notes are under Charms."
"I know."
"Then why—"
"Because I'm going to use them again."
"Then they should be on top."
"They will be once I take them out."
He stared at her.
Lily stared back.
There were some problems no amount of friendship could correct.
She tied the bundle with a bit of string.
"Mary's meeting me by the fourth-floor stairs."
Severus glanced up.
"For what?"
"Revision."
He looked at the pile she had just packed.
"You were revising."
"Different revision."
"How?"
"More people."
"That usually makes it worse."
"Two of them are good at Charms."
"So are you."
"Yes, but they're good at explaining why."
He almost told her that did not make sense.
It did, unfortunately.
Lily stood and shouldered her satchel.
"Are you coming?"
"Where?"
"Out."
"I'm still working."
She looked at the paragraph in front of him.
The same paragraph.
He knew immediately that she knew.
Her expression altered.
Only slightly.
"Right," she said.
He closed the book.
Lily smiled.
He disliked being so easily managed.
They left the library together.
The corridor outside was brighter than the room had been, the late-afternoon sun falling through tall windows and breaking itself into pale rectangles across the floor.
Revision had spread beyond the library.
Two Hufflepuffs sat beneath a window with their books balanced on their knees. A Ravenclaw boy walked past murmuring wand movements under his breath, one hand making tiny motions at his side. Further along, three second-years were arguing over the date of something none of them could agree had actually happened.
June had made the castle restless.
Even the stairs seemed busier.
Severus adjusted his books beneath one arm.
Lily was saying something about Flitwick when he noticed the boys coming toward them.
Not because there was anything unusual about them at first.
Gryffindor robes.
First years.
One dark-haired boy walking forward.
Another walking partly backward.
That was what caught Severus's attention.
The backward one was talking with both hands.
He had glasses and hair that appeared to have been arranged by someone putting a hand through it repeatedly and then deciding the result was intentional.
He was laughing.
Not loudly enough to draw a professor.
Loudly enough that people moved around him.
He did not appear to notice that they did.
The other boy did.
Dark hair too, longer, better behaved despite looking as though its owner had made no effort with it at all. He was listening with an expression that suggested the boy with glasses had already become less interesting than whatever he was looking at beyond him.
Severus shifted half a step to the left.
There was room.
There would have been room.
If the boy with glasses had been looking.
He wasn't.
His shoulder struck Severus squarely.
Books went down.
Parchment scattered.
The ink bottle Severus had forgotten was tucked against the top book hit stone, bounced once without breaking, and rolled directly across one of his revision sheets.
The cork came loose.
A black line spread across the bottom third of the page.
For one second nobody spoke.
Then the boy with glasses turned.
"Oh."
He looked down.
Then at Severus.
"Sorry."
He sounded surprised rather than sorry.
That made a difference.
Severus crouched immediately and caught the ink bottle before it rolled farther.
Lily had already bent for two sheets.
The other Gryffindor boy remained standing.
Watching.
"Didn't see you," the boy with glasses added.
There was almost an apology available in it.
Almost.
He crouched and picked up one of Severus's pages.
His eyes went to the writing before Severus could take it.
"Potions?"
Severus held out his hand.
The boy looked at him, then at the page.
"That's a lot of notes."
"Give it back."
A pause.
Small.
The boy handed it over.
Then his eyes flicked down to Severus's robes.
Green.
Something in his expression shifted into easy recognition.
"Should've known," he said. "You lot do like appearing out of nowhere."
He smiled when he said it.
Not at Severus exactly.
At the line.
As if a sentence becoming funny was sufficient justification for having said it.
Lily straightened.
"James."
The name attached itself at once.
James looked at her.
"Oh, hello, Evans."
There was no surprise that she knew him.
Worse, no surprise that she had used his first name.
Lily held Severus's parchment in one hand.
"You knocked everything down."
"I noticed."
"You were walking backward."
"I was demonstrating something."
The dark-haired boy beside him said, "Badly."
James glanced over his shoulder.
"It worked until someone stood behind me."
"You were going forward."
"Exactly."
Sirius's mouth moved.
Not quite a smile.
James turned back.
"I said sorry."
"You said it while laughing," Lily said.
"I can do both."
Lily's mouth twitched.
Not laughter.
Almost.
Severus saw it.
For some reason, out of everything on the floor—the ink, the dirty edge of one page, James Potter having read a line of his notes without permission—that remained.
A movement at the corner of her mouth.
He reached for the last sheet himself.
James reached at the same time.
Their fingers did not touch.
Severus took the parchment first.
James looked at him properly for perhaps the first time.
Not long.
Long enough.
"Didn't see you," he said again.
Severus slid the page back beneath the others.
"You weren't looking."
James blinked.
The corridor continued around them. Students passing. Voices. A staircase moving somewhere beyond the arch. Sunlight on stone.
"What?"
"You weren't looking."
James frowned slightly, but not angrily.
"Same thing."
"No."
That stopped him.
Not because the answer was impressive.
Because Severus meant it.
There were differences that mattered whether other people respected them or not.
Not seeing was sometimes unavoidable.
Not looking was a choice.
Or carelessness.
Often they produced the same result for the person hit by them.
They were still not the same.
James stared for another second.
Then something like amusement returned.
"Right."
The dark-haired boy beside him spoke for the first time directly.
"Come on, James."
His voice was quieter than Severus expected.
James looked at him.
Then at Severus.
Then at Lily.
"See you, Evans."
Lily made a face.
James grinned and turned away.
The other boy did not move immediately.
His eyes rested on Severus.
Grey, Severus thought.
Or something close to grey.
Not laughing.
Not apologetic either.
Only attentive.
Then he turned and followed James down the corridor.
Within seconds James was speaking again.
Whatever he had been saying before the collision resumed as though the interruption had only misplaced a sentence.
His voice carried back once.
Then disappeared into the crowd.
Severus remained crouched half a second longer than necessary.
Lily handed him the pages she held.
"Here."
He took them.
One corner was bent.
He flattened it with his thumbnail.
The ink had soaked through almost three lines of Transfiguration notes and onto the sheet beneath.
Not ruined.
Repairable.
That should have been enough to settle the matter.
Lily looked down the corridor.
"That's James Potter."
"I gathered."
"And Sirius Black."
Severus's fingers stopped on the parchment.
Black.
He had heard the name before.
Not from Lily.
Not in lessons.
In the Slytherin common room, spoken the way certain names were spoken there—with less need for explanation than Severus possessed.
He looked toward the corridor again, but both boys had disappeared.
"You know them."
Lily shifted the strap of her satchel.
"They're in Gryffindor."
That answered the sentence.
Not the question.
Severus put the damaged sheet between two clean ones.
"Potter's loud."
Lily snorted.
"Yes."
He waited.
He had not meant to.
Lily adjusted a loose bit of string around her parchment.
"He's annoying."
Something eased by a degree.
Then she added, "Sometimes he's funny."
Severus looked down at his notes.
The black ink had reached the word transfiguration and turned half of it into a shape no longer resembling language.
He rubbed at the edge with his thumb.
It only spread.
"Oh, don't do that," Lily said. "You'll make it worse."
"I know."
"You were doing it."
"I stopped."
She crouched beside him again and pulled a scrap of blotting paper from her bag.
Of course she had blotting paper now.
She had forgotten it for most of autumn and then apparently decided to carry enough for emergencies.
She pressed it carefully to the ink.
"Mary'll wonder where I am."
Severus looked up.
Only briefly.
"Go."
Lily glanced at him.
"I can help."
"You have."
A pause.
Then she nodded.
Not hurt.
Not relieved.
Simply accepting the answer for what it was.
"Tomorrow?"
"Yes."
"Library?"
"If you actually read."
She stood.
"No promises."
Then she went in the opposite direction from Potter and Black, toward the stairs where Mary and the others were waiting.
Severus remained by the wall long enough to put his pages back in the correct order.
Only then did he move.
That evening, the Slytherin common room had the particular dimness summer never quite managed to defeat.
The lake beyond the windows remained green-black no matter how long daylight held above the castle.
Revision had occupied this room too.
Books lay open near the fire that was no longer needed for warmth but remained lit because apparently nobody wished to be the first Slytherin to admit June had made it unnecessary.
Severus sat in one of the lower-backed chairs with the damaged parchment across his knee.
The ink stain had dried.
It looked worse dry.
Avery, at the table nearby, glanced over.
"What happened to that?"
"Someone walked into me."
"Who?"
Severus dipped his quill.
"Potter."
A chair creaked by the fire.
An older boy looked round.
"Potter?"
Severus looked up.
The reaction was slight.
Still there.
"James Potter," he said.
The older boy gave a short sound through his nose.
"Gryffindor."
It was not a question.
Avery said, "Of course."
Severus looked between them.
"You know him?"
"Know of him," the older boy said.
Different thing.
Severus recognized the distinction immediately.
The boy turned a page in the book on his lap.
"Potters have been around forever."
"Doing what?"
That earned Severus a glance.
"Being Potters, mostly."
Avery smiled.
The answer irritated Severus because everyone else seemed to understand it.
He looked back at his parchment.
"And Black?" he asked.
This time the room changed more clearly.
Not much.
One boy stopped writing.
Another looked over from the sofa.
The older student by the fire lowered his book.
"Black?"
"Sirius."
There was a pause.
"A Black in Gryffindor," someone said from behind Severus.
The words had an odd shape to them.
Not disbelief exactly.
Disapproval made curious.
The older boy's mouth twisted.
"Apparently."
"His family won't like that."
Avery said, "That's putting it mildly."
Someone laughed.
Not very loudly.
Severus looked at his parchment without reading it.
Potter had entered the room before he had.
So had Black.
Names did that here.
He had learned it in pieces all year without realizing the rule was as consistent as any spell.
Some names arrived carrying money.
Some expectation.
Some embarrassment.
Some doors already open.
Some doors already shut.
The person entered afterward and discovered what the room had decided to know.
"Why?" Severus asked.
Avery glanced at him.
"Why what?"
"Why does Black matter more?"
Another pause.
The older student shrugged.
"Because they're Blacks."
Again.
An answer made entirely from information Severus did not have.
He hated those most.
The conversation moved on without him.
Exams.
House points.
Whether Slughorn would actually mark practical work harder than theory.
Severus copied the ink-damaged lines onto a clean sheet.
But every so often his eyes moved to the surname he had written at the top of the old page while testing the quill.
Not deliberately.
Only because it was there now.
Potter.
He crossed it out.
The word remained readable underneath.
The next morning he saw them again.
He was coming down from breakfast toward Charms when James Potter appeared on the staircase ahead.
Sirius Black beside him.
James was doing something with a folded piece of parchment, trying to balance it on the end of his wand without letting it fall.
It fell.
He caught it.
Said something.
Sirius laughed.
James never looked behind him.
Never looked up.
Never saw Severus at all.
Severus watched them descend.
That should have settled something.
Yesterday had not mattered.
Not to Potter.
It had been a collision. A page. A joke. Then whatever came next.
At the turn of the stairs, Sirius stopped.
Only slightly.
His head turned.
Their eyes met across the moving students.
Severus waited for the smile.
The remark.
Anything.
Nothing came.
Black only looked at him.
One second.
Perhaps two.
Then James said something from below and Sirius turned away.
Severus remained where he was until the stair shifted beneath his feet.
Potter had forgotten.
Black had not.
End of Chapter 66