The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

The Little Hangleton Gazette

Severus Snape stood among the Death Eaters, just one of the many gathered in the room. The ranks had been growing, it seemed every time they were called to the Dark Lord there were more of them, an army amassing so that Voldemort would magnify his voice to talk to the full assembly before selecting his closest few to a smaller gathering. It seemed, too, that there were times the Dark Mark burned and only some of the Death Eaters would come and Severus wondered how many meetings he was not summoned to... He could see flashes of them, bits and pieces that made it over Voldemort's weak occlumency walls without any effort of Severus's to peer through.

To do a favor was terribly out of character. Severus wasn't even sure what it was that made him agree to help the younger Black brother. But there was something - something about Regulus Black in particular - that inclined Severus toward pitying the boy. For one, it certainly could not be easy being the younger brother of that swine of an elder brother he had. But that alone was not something worthy of the favor Severus felt toward Regulus Black.

It was as though whenever he thought of double crossing Regulus, which was somewhat frequently, Lily Evans' face swam before him and he just couldn't do it.

There was no reason for him to think of Lily Evans in relation to Regulus Black. But every time he was near Regulus... it was as though Lily were somewhere near by, like she was just in the next room or something... and it made Severus feel more protective of the boy than he might naturally feel on his own.

But all of this information was tucked away as he stood with the Death Eaters, all those thoughts had been pushed into the back recesses of his mind, where they were safely stored further than the Dark Lord could reach with what little legilimency he'd learned to wield.

Now, the Dark Lord was addressing them, speaking of blood purity and the spread of muggle-wizard relations being touted by the Ministry. "Filth," he hissed, "Abomination!" He held a newspaper clipping from the Daily Prophet, an editorial piece on research being done on bloodlines in the Hall of Ancestors and Inter-muggle Relations Committee, where they were comparing the testing scores achieved the previous N.E.W.T. year between mudblood children and children of magical descent. The study published that it had found that over all the mudblood children were scoring higher than those of pureblood. "They dilute our blood and point to the children and claim the biological result of mudblood-wizard relations are not abominations." He hissed as he watched a wizarding photograph of students bent over their exams in the Great Hall at Hogwarts on the paper. "Halfbreeds... Half diluted magic... Left to the devices of the Ministry, wizards of pure blood will die off, go extinct, and then what? Then it is only generations before the magic has died out completely and wizards are no more."

There were enraged shouts around Severus, and energy went through the people that was near to electric.

"And this we take... this we allow... for Harold Minchum and his board of education to allow Albus Dumbledore to teach Muggle Studies as a positive thing... he has an entire wing of that school dedicated to muggles now, did you know that? Rooms of electric items that muggles use to replace magic, and there are provisions made for muggle-born children, sections of the library full of books that help supplement the things that they ought to have learned naturally from a proper family of a witch and a wizard. What next? Shall they teach the same runnish as a muggle school? Physics and chemistry instead of alchemy and potions? Already the students elect to study muggles and learn such meaningful information as how a telephone works or the function of things so important as rubber ducks and lightbulbs."

Outrage all around him again, and Severus looked back over his shoulder at a particularly blood-thirsty sounding man who bellowed out, "USELESS MUDBLOOD TRASH!" at the top of his voice, his face red from the  air expelled by the shouting he was doing.