Severus Snape looked around the Great Hall at breakfast, guard up. April 1 had come and gone with no disastrous pranks from James Potter and his sycophants, which left him more than a little suspicious.

It’s not like them to pass up an opportunity for mayhem.

He watched them smirking over at the Gryffindor table. Potter himself looked especially smug, and Severus didn’t want to dwell on why.

What if Lily has finally agreed to date him?

The thought made him feel nauseous. He must have looked as though he were about to be ill, because the people around him took notice of his sour expression.

“Pumpkin juice, Snape?” asked one of his fellow Slytherins.

He nodded vaguely in their direction, then lifted the goblet to his lips.

“It tastes off,” he grumbled, setting it back down. “I’ll stick to tea instead.”

He didn’t notice the disappointed looks on the faces of Potter and his friends.

Three hours later, he was sitting in Potions, writing notes in the margins of his textbook.

How is Slughorn still teaching? He barely knows the difference between henbane and hemlock.

Lily giggled across the classroom. He gritted his teeth. She was flirting with Potter — damn her. Why did he even still care? They hadn’t spoken in over a year. He wasn’t even sure if he liked her anymore. Yes, what he’d said had been awful, but did a word spoken out of anger and humiliation — a word that was only in his vocabulary because if he didn’t use it, his housemates would hex him in his sleep — undo a lifetime of friendship?

She knew the pressure he was under as one of the few half-bloods in Slytherin — and the only one with a Muggle parent. She knew he was desperate to save face, not because he cared about popularity, but because he was literally sleeping in a snake pit, and it was dangerous to be different. He was still loyal to her, but she clearly wasn’t loyal to him.

I don’t need someone like that in my life.

And yet he missed her. Missed the way she’d share her Chocolate Frogs with him, the late nights in the library revising, the weekend dinners at the Evans house when they were back in Cokeworth for the holidays. To be shut out of her life so completely when Lily, more than anyone, knew how badly Severus needed someone to stay was just...cruel.

And for her to be on friendly terms with Potter and Black and the werewolf and whatever the fuck their pudgy friend’s name was...it stung.

She’s still fucking gorgeous, though.

He hated admitting it to himself. Hated admitting that he still thought about her in the privacy of his dorm, silencing spell cast around his bed, curtains pulled shut. He didn’t want to think of her every time he had a wank, and yet his thoughts inevitably drifted there. He could almost smell her hair in those moments — that faint trace of Shalimar she wore on special occasions...

Fuck.

Severus had allowed himself to get lost in thought as he stirred his potion, and now he realized his stirring rod wasn’t the only rod that was, well, stirring.

Think of flubberworms. Wet spaghetti. Dumbledore in a kilt.

It was no good. He was sporting a hard-on that refused to go away.

Potter caught his eye, then glanced down at his crotch and smirked. “Are you going camping, Snivellus?” the Head Boy asked. “Because it looks like you’re pitching a tent.”

The classroom burst into laughter as Severus’ face flushed. The noise roused Slughorn from his stupor — not even noon, and he’s already into the mead — “Calm down, class,” he mumbled, before leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes again. Severus grabbed his bag.

Go away, go away, go away.

But his cock was still at full mast. Lily was staring at him. Even through his robes, it was obvious.

“Who knew Snivellus was so well endowed?” sneered Sirius Black. “Seems the family jewels are all in his cock, because Merlin knows they’re not in his Gringotts vault.”

Severus pulled out his wand and aimed it at Black.

“Ooh, now he’s got two wands out!” laughed Potter.

Lily didn’t join in the laughter, but she didn’t stop them either. She just turned back to her potion.

It’s like she doesn’t even see me.

“Petrificus Totalus!” he yelled.

But Potter dodged the hex, and Severus felt his cock grow impossibly harder. What the hell was happening?

“Careful, Snivellus,” warned Potter. “Any magical expenditure might exacerbate your little problem. Think of it like Pinocchio’s nose. But with — ”

He paused, eyeing Severus critically. “Actually, your nose is massive too. Are you sure that’s not the result of some backfiring magic?” He looked entirely too satisfied.

“You!” Severus roared. “I know you have something to do with this.”

“Are you saying I make your cock hard?” Potter shot back. “I’m flattered, really, but you’re just not my type.”

The whole class was gawking now, and Slughorn was snoring softly in his upholstered chair.

“James...” Lily said quietly. “Maybe...maybe that’s enough...”

“I didn’t do anything!” Potter insisted. “Snivellus, if you’re having...uncontrollable urges...perhaps you should see Madame Pomfrey. It’s only natural for a lad your age. Unless...” He smirked. “Maybe it’s the humiliation getting you off? Everyone, look away. Laughing at Snivellus is only helping him along.”

Severus spun on his heel and stormed out of the classroom, slamming the door behind him. Everyone had seen it. Potter. Black. Lupin. Lily. None of the other seventh-year Slytherins were in Advanced Potions — thank Merlin — but the story would be all over the school by dinner.

He ran to the library, to one of the small study rooms in the back reserved for N.E.W.T.-level students. Once inside, he cast a softening charm on himself — and, just as Potter had said, it only made things worse.

It must have been the bloody pumpkin juice. Some sort of...delayed effect.

His prick was massive and aching. Severus fumbled with his trousers beneath his robes and freed it, stroking along its length — not out of desire, but out of sheer desperation to make it stop.

He was so caught up in the motion that he didn’t hear the door open.

“Go away!” he snapped, mid-stroke.

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?!”

Fucking James Potter and his fucking idiot friends.

Waiting until after April Fools' Day had come and gone to pull a prank had been clever, Severus could admit that much.

But a modified fertility potion snuck into the pumpkin juice that gave people erections?

Juvenile.

Disgusting.

And when Severus had sprung a boner in the middle of Potions class, of course, everyone had laughed.

Two days later, they were still laughing. He tried to play it off. When the Slytherins had found out about it, he shut them up with a cool gaze. "At least I have something down there to write home about," he told Evan Rosier. "Then again, didn't your last paramour write home for a sex manual with diagrams in order to show you how to find the clitoris?" That had silenced the Slytherins, but he hit his breaking point in Hogsmeade that weekend.

He had simply wanted to look at the new books at Tomes and Scrolls. He had enough gold saved up from tutoring O.W.L. students that he could afford to treat himself. But when he walked into The Three Broomsticks for a drink after making his purchases, a crowd of Gryffindors had burst into song:

"Cheers to the Dungeon Bat's prick! We hear it's remarkably thick! Both his knob and his nose Show prodigious growth — Too bad neither can make him rich!"

Even Madame Rosmerta had covered up a laugh. He could tell she felt bad about it because she then handed him a butterbeer with a chagrined, "On the house, luv."

"Keep your charity," Severus growled, slamming some coins onto the bar. He grabbed the butterbeer and took a long swig.

Don't you dare fucking cry. Don't let them get to you.

But all he could see was Lily laughing at him. Was she in the crowd? Was she laughing at him, too?

Seven years. Seven years of Potter and his friends humiliating him. Seven years of being looked down on by the other Slytherins for being a half-blood and poor, to boot. At least he'd had Lily for most of it, but now...now he was all alone.

I'm fine. I don't need anyone.

But didn't he? He remembered the way his mother had smiled at him when he'd been very small. Before the world wore her down. He missed that. Now she was just...broken. Was he next?

He finished the butterbeer and had another, then followed it up with a glass of firewhiskey. Some people smirked as they walked by, a few humming that blasted song, but he ignored them. In a few more months, he'd be out of this hellhole. The Dark Lord had already promised him glory at his side. I'll show them. I'll show them all.

He knew he was more than a little tipsy by the time he stumbled out of the pub. He wondered if this was what his father felt like when he drank. Was he destined to turn out like him?

Never. I'll forge my own way, and no one will laugh at me again.

But that damn song was stuck in his head. He kept playing it over and over again in his mind. He wandered into an alley and leaned against a wall, slumping to the ground, finally letting the tears fall.