The End

"Lily didn't save him."

Lin Er corrected them, startling the classmates gathered around her.

"What? Didn't you say Lily came over and stopped them?"

The classmates couldn't accept it. Wait, they had thought the story ended perfectly, with the friends making up, but it just hadn't been finished?

Lin Er thought back to where she had left off and didn't argue.

"Yes, she came over and stopped them. She used words to make the Marauders stop bullying him. The spell wore off, and Snape could finally get his wand. He fought back and James got hurt, but he was hung upside down again.

"His robes fell over his head, exposing his skin-and-bones legs and shabby underwear. Like I said before, he had a hard childhood and was very poor."

Lin Er took a moment to steady herself, her face almost expressionless.

Many of the classmates around her frowned. A fight was one thing, but that was humiliating. It was an awful thing to do.

"What about his friend, that Lily?"

Lu Xiaoyun couldn't quite understand. After Lin Er bit him for taking sides in the fight earlier, he had decided not to speak to her.

Lin Er had only just remembered that he came from the poorest family in their class. Every year, when poverty grants were handed out, they were the only two in the class who got them year after year.

Lin Er's family was poor, but the main reason she got a grant all three years was that the teachers could see how she ate and dressed, especially after they learned she was one of three children and the youngest was a boy.

They were probably afraid her family wouldn't let her stay in school.

Lu Xiaoyun had it a little harder. At first, he was a left-behind child. Later, his mother ran off and his father died, so he was raised by his grandmother, who was in her sixties or seventies.

He received the maximum grant every year, the school gave him special meals for free, and the government regularly sent him supplies and clothes.

If he hadn't had to explain his circumstances to receive the grant, judging by his food, clothes, housing and transportation, he lived better than most of the class.

That was why he cared a lot about his friends. He was the type to blindly follow them into a fight. Once, a fight got so serious that the school nearly revoked his grant. His grandmother came to the school and apologized several times before they decided not to punish him.

After that, though, everyone knew about his situation. He gradually grew quiet at school, and in the end, nobody knew where he went to high school.

Perhaps that was also why he couldn't accept someone being a friend but not helping one.

Lin Er straightened the new school uniform she had received yesterday and spread it over her desk so she could put her head down on it and sleep later.

"She smiled."

"What?"

"Damn!"

"That's a friend?"

All around her, people swore in disbelief and incomprehension.

Lin Er had felt the same way when she first read it. She had wanted to reach into the book and shake her. Stop talking all the time! Where's your wand?!

Later, she came to understand. Over those five years, they had developed serious differences. One side couldn't persuade the other, and it was plain to see they would eventually go their separate ways.

The other side was always pursuing her and trying to please her, and they listened to her too. At least when she told them to stop, they really did, didn't they?

With those two sides fighting, how could she possibly pull out her wand and point it at one of them right away?

It was just heartbreaking from Snape's perspective, because his only friend didn't take his side without reservation.

"Right? She also wanted Snape to return to the right path and was always trying to persuade him to stop studying Dark Magic. Whenever she saw Snape being bullied, she would also tell the Marauders to stop. She just didn't stand beside Snape and help him fight back."

Some of the classmates around her were persuaded by that explanation, while others still couldn't understand. Things were that black-and-white when you were a student. They watched Young and Dangerous and followed non-mainstream trends.

Never mind principles; at the very least, you had to distinguish between those close to you and those who weren't.

If you sided with reason over family and friends, you just weren't close enough. If someone was truly your best friend, never mind them being bullied-even if they were going to beat someone up, you'd fight first and ask why afterward.

How could you watch your friend being humiliated?

"She stopped them again. It's just that she smiled."

That was why Lin Er still didn't like Lily, even though she had tried to understand after reading countless comments saying Snape was wrong and Lily was the embodiment of truth, goodness, and beauty.

"She was amused by the scene, and only the anger she felt at her friend being bullied kept her from fully laughing. Then she stopped the Marauders.

"James agreed and lifted the spell, letting him fall to the ground. But Snape didn't run away. He tried to fight back again, and Black petrified him in the end.

"This time, Lily drew her wand and stood in front of him. The Marauders lifted the curse because of Lily. As they mocked him one last time and told him to leave, Snape broke down and insulted Lily."

Some people said Snape had said something so unforgivable here, yet his fans brushed it aside and still felt sorry for him, while Lily was accused of not being the embodiment of truth, goodness, and beauty just because she looked like she wanted to smile.

But being humiliated in public in front of the person he liked most, of course he would break down.

Still, he really wasn't a good person. At least Lily had helped him, but the moment he broke down, he saw even her help as a humiliation and, without thinking, used the harshest word he could against the person he knew best.

Imagine it: you were humiliated again and again in front of the girl you liked, and then the people humiliating you finally said, "We'll let you off for her sake. Get lost!"

Would you take it out on the person you liked?

If she were just a girl he secretly liked and they had no other relationship, he wouldn't take it out on her. He might even feel that the girl he liked had saved him, or it might stir his fighting spirit and make him charge at them, ready to die to wash away the humiliation.

But she wasn't just someone he liked and had no other relationship with. She was also his best friend, the friend who hadn't stood by him and helped him fight back when he was being humiliated.

The friend who, while he was being humiliated, had nearly been amused by his predicament.

The classmates fell silent for a moment. They didn't know whether, in his situation, they would still be able to appreciate their friend's well-meant help.

"What did he call her?"

Liu Yi nudged Lu Xiaoyun, making him move over a little, and leaned in to speak.

"Mudblood."

"In the Wizarding World, it's a really insulting word, like calling someone trash, I guess. It's discrimination based on blood. Wizards are divided into Pure-bloods, Half-bloods, and Muggle-borns.

"Pure-bloods have nothing but wizards for ancestors, at least that's what they say publicly. Half-bloods have one parent who isn't a wizard, and Muggle-borns are wizards born into ordinary families who suddenly awaken magic.

"Those Pure-bloods who consider their blood noble look down on the other two. Mudblood is an insulting name they came up with to discriminate against Muggle-born wizards.

"It's a bit like white foreigners calling us yellow monkeys."

"Fuck, serves him right!"

"Exactly."

Lin Er's comparison was too much for them to accept. Shi Meng gave her a complicated look. The others might not know, but she had heard Lin Er say with her own ears that she was a Snape fan.

"Then Lily mocked his underwear and called him the nickname the Marauders had given him."

"What was it?"

Some people were curious about what happened next, so naturally there was someone to prompt her.

Lin Er went on.

"Snivellus. After calling him that, she called James an arrogant jerk and ran off. Snape was hung upside down again, and James even said that if anyone wanted to see, he'd take off his underwear."

Everyone had mixed feelings. He wasn't a good person, that was true, but he was also genuinely pitiable.

If they had gone through all that, leaving everything else aside, they definitely wouldn't have been able to stay at school. They would have been too cowardly even to take revenge on society.