Title: Frog Prince
Author: LizBee
Summary: Snape and Lily have a reluctant conversation in their sixth year potions class.
Rated: PG-13
Warnings: Gratuitous tentacles.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Spoilers: Half-Blood Prince
Disclaimer: JK Rowling. Me. Pick the real owner. Three guesses, and the first two don't count.
Notes: I started this, oh, a day after I finished HBP. Took me a while to find an ending.
Email: liz.barr (@) gmail.com

Frog Prince
By the Lizbee

"'This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince'."

Lily's eyes glittered with ill-concealed amusement. Snape slammed the book shut and scowled at her.

"So that's you, is it? The 'Half-Blood Prince'."

"Shut it, Mudblood."

"Language, Severus." She turned her attention to her cauldron for a few moments. "I'd say you were giving yourself airs above your station, but I thought you liked to pass yourself off as a pureblood."

She was thankfully interrupted by the approach of Slughorn, who praised her potion - as usual - and lingered to remind her that his door was always open, should she wish to discuss her options after leaving Hogwarts next year. Evans's reply was noncommittal.

Snape concentrated on his potion and meditated on all the ways he was superior to Lily Evans. Jumped up Mudblood with a cheeky mouth and a bit of skill with a wand and cauldron. Slughorn fawning all over her. Practically dribbling in his efforts to get into her knickers. Like Potter. Blood traitors, all of them. Slughorn had no wizarding pride: he'd fall all over any bit of rubbish that looked useful. It wasn't Slytherin ambition and cunning at work, it was just pathetic, and he, Severus, wanted no part of the so-called Slug Club.

Nor did he have any interest in Evans's knickers, which probably made him the only male in the school who could say that.

Slughorn moved on at last, making a perfunctory attempt at examining Snape's potion. "Competent as always, young Severus," he said. "Are those blowfly wings?"

"Yes, sir. They're rather more effective than common houseflies."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Evans shudder. Mudbloods, he thought. In the end, they never had the stomach for this kind of work.

When Slughorn was gone, Evans whispered, "So. What else have you written in there? Claimed a few more titles, or just written the great wizarding novel?"

"Nothing."

"Liar, you're always scribbling in there. That's an old book, too, that's school property. I could report you for defacing it."

"Stuck up Mudblood cow."

"You know," she said in a conversational tone, "if you hear a word often enough, it rather loses its power. Actually, after a summer with my sister, it almost sounds friendly."

He said nothing.

"We could meet in the old Charms classroom," Lily pursued, "or somewhere where, you know, people won't bother us." She glanced over at the other table, where Potter and Black were doing something highly amusing to a rat spleen. "You always seem to know loads more than me, and you never even look at your textbook. Except when you're correcting it."

It occurred to Snape that a girl was not only paying him a compliment, but inviting him to meet her privately. And not just any girl, but Lily Evans, who claimed she'd never met a boy she found more interesting than her Charms textbook. Lily Evans, in whom Snape had no interest whatsoever.

"My mother taught me," he said suddenly. He dropped three mint leaves into his cauldron. "She knew a lot of alternative recipes."

"Is she dead?" It sounded like Evans was on the verge of feeling sorry for him, but she mistook the reason behind his disbelieving stare and said, "sorry, that's an awful thing to say…"

"She's not dead." Snape's voice was barely audible over the noise of the cauldrons. He almost said, She just doesn't do magic anymore, but he caught himself in time. He wasn't about to share the events of the summer with anyone, let alone the Mudblood.

(Wand smashed, jaw broken; he waited until his father had left, then took her to a Muggle hospital. She wouldn't let him take her to St. Mungo's. And that was the end of her magic, the pathetic cow. Sometimes, he despised her almost as much as he hated his father.)

"Is she a Muggle-born?"

Snape stared at her. "What do you think?" he asked roughly.

"Well," she said, "you're a Half-blood, aren't you?"

"She's a Pureblood," he snapped. "A fine old family. Magic through and through." Reluctantly he added, "My father's a Muggle."

Lily laughed.

"Poor Snape," she said. "Poor little Snivellus. Explains a lot, though."

"Going to run and tell Potter, then?" He gave his cauldron a vicious stir.

"Don't be stupid, Snape. That would involve speaking to him."

On the other side of the room, Potter and Black were throwing ingredients at each other. A tentacle hung from Potter's glasses.

Snape's eyes met Evans's in a moment of understanding.

"Your potion would be more effective if you used raw sugar instead of that refined stuff," he muttered.

"Really? I'd have thought that the more refined-"

"Strips all the magic out."

"Right. Thanks."

Without asking, she took a scoop of raw sugar from his own ingredients and added it to her cauldron.

"Don't go taking all the credit when Slughorn tries to give you an Order of Merlin for it," he warned.

"I'll try to restrain my raging ambition." She stirred her mixture three times, long hair falling into her face as she concentrated. "I won't call you 'Your Highness', though," she warned. "You're on your own in this prince business."

Snape had no idea how to respond; he wasn't even sure if a response was expected. Daft Mudblood, he thought, but he said nothing.

But perhaps she knew what he was thinking, because she gave him a look that mingled annoyance and amusement.

"So," she said as the class came to an end, "are you going to share your secrets, or do I have to spend the next two years hassling you?"

Snape put the book in his bag, carefully double-checking that the clasps were tightly closed.

"Tomorrow afternoon. The old Charms room." He watched his feet as he walked, knowing that the hair falling into his face would conceal his moving lips. "If you tell anyone, I'll hex you so your guts turn putrid inside you, and all your children wind up in Hufflepuff."

"Fortunately for all of us," said Lily gravely, "and probably for Hufflepuff, I'm not planning to have children. And it's not like I'm going to tell the world, anyway."

"Don't even understand why you bother asking."

"That's quite all right. Neither do I."

Walking together-but-separately, they had reached the fork in the corridor that led to the Slytherin common room in one direction, and the stairs up to the main castle in the other. As Lily ascended the staircase, Snape checked for lingering Gryffindors. No one else was about, so he looked up and called, "And I'm not interested in your knickers, either."

He wasn't sure, but he thought he heard a giggle, and then Lily's voice floated down, "That's quite all right, Snape. It will be a nice change."

end