Little Red |Sirius Black|

Dye, Dye My Darling - Arianna

"What do we know?" I asked, walking towards the two boys. Behind me, Sirius coughed and got up to follow me. Pretty soon, everyone except Mary and Hestia followed.

James and Remus looked grim. "It's bad." Said James.

"Really, was it all the blood that gave it away?" I asked sarcastically.

"Yeah, will you tell us already?" Dorcas demanded, and the rest of us nodded.

The two Marauders then explained the whole story to us.

Around an hour before we got there, the Lestrange brothers, Mulciber, Avery and a few others had cornered Mary right outside Myrtle's bathroom and forced her in. They had been taunting her about liking one of their friends. They said they couldn't believe that a mudblood like her would even dare to look at them, much less like one of them.

"They said they wanted to make an example of her." Remus said, his voice hollow. "Which is why Mary is currently in the state she's in."

"After they were done, they just left." James said, looking like he was going to be sick. "Myrtle used the pipes to get to the Gryffindor girl's bathroom to alert Hestia and Emmeline at Mary's request."

The girls and I looked at each other in horror. A few months ago, Hestia had told us that Mary had a crush on Severus.

"How did they know?" Alice asked us softly.

No one answered. We were all wondering the same thing.

"He wouldn't." Lily said softly to herself.

"Lils?" I asked.

Lily had gone a little pale, and she looked at me with mild confusion. "A few days before the Quidditch match, I was the one who told Sev about Mary's crush on him, and encouraged him to ask her out."

"You did what?" Dorcas yelled, turning towards her in fury. And it seemed like she wasn't the only one who was angry.

"Lily, I made you promise you wouldn't tell him!" Hestia screeched, moving Mary's head from her lap to a folded up cloak. She got up and stalked towards us. "Now look at what's happened to poor Mary because of you!"

Lily looked like she had been slapped. "No, Sev wouldn't do this, I'm sure of it! And I only told him because I thought Sev would ask her out, and they'd both be happy."

Dorcas gave an acerbic laugh. "You've got to be joking, you cannot possibly be so blind!"

"What do you mean?"

I sighed. "She really is that blind, Dorcas." I said, before turning to Lily. "Snape is not a nice guy, Lils. Maybe once he may have been, but now? Now he's the guy who does this." I pointed to where Mary lay on the floor. I did not mention Snape's obvious crush on her, which was what Dorcas had been referring to, mostly because I did not think she'd take that very well.

Not now at least.

Lily shook her head again, this time more vehemently. "I keep telling you people, Sev did not do this!"

I scoffed. How could someone so smart be so goddamn stupid?

"How else would the miserable bastards who did this, have found out about Mary's crush?" Dorcas demanded.

"It's not just that." I said. "Snape created the spell that made all those deep gashes on Mary's torso."

"It's true." Said Sirius, in the silence that followed. "Her chest wounds were clearly from Sectumsempra, a spell Snivellus created to fight with the Marauders."