A/N: This is a collection of one-shots tying into my primary AU verse, which is composed of two prequel/sequel series. The prequel story (The Path Not Tread) is set in the Marauder era, and is a what-if AU branching from a canon argument Lily and Severus had, in which I explore how something as small as saying three sentences in different order might eventually result in a completely altered canonical history. The sequel series (The Lion and The Snake) follows the canon timeline of this alternate universe, with the biggest change being that James and Lily do not marry, and instead, Harry's mother is Lily's good friend Mary Macdonald, while Lily has a son named Evan with Severus. Harry is still the Boy Who Lived, but due to the changes in the Marauder era that eventually impact all of the main characters of that time, Sirius is stopped by Remus from going after Peter, does not end up wrongly convicted in Azkaban, and is therefore Harry's primary guardian, raising him on the stories of the Marauders and their adventures. Meanwhile, Lily's survival in the First Wizarding War results in drastic changes to the political situation of Wizarding Britain, as she becomes something of a revolutionary, introducing the Muggle concept of political parties to the governance model, pushing for massive schooling reforms that are less isolationist from the Muggle world than in canon, and helping to secretly institute a much stronger and continued influence of the Order of the Phoenix on the main players on the political stage in an attempt to suppress the Pure-blood-led anti-Muggle sentiment that helped Lord Voldemort reach such heights during the First Wizarding War.

New readers might want to keep this in mind when checking out this particular body of work. I've started off the collection with something that should be mostly self-explanatory so long as you keep in mind that this is an alternate universe you're dealing with. That said, the one-shots will have a wider range than the primary stories, as I'll use them to explore side characters and events that weren't directly relevant to the big plotlines of the primary stories. I'll update as I come up with things, which means it won't be chronological and it won't be regular. If anyone has requests or is interested in some aspect of my alternate universe, I'm open to doing them, so long as I'm not already planning to put them in somewhere else.

This first one-shot fits somewhere quite soon after Chapter 8 of 'The Lion, The Snake and The Stone', and, as the date would suggest, at the beginning of their first year of Hogwarts.

September 1991
Hermione's Hero

When Professor Minerva McGonagall had come to the Granger home in April of 1991 to inform them that their only daughter was a witch, Hermione's world changed in what was perhaps the most drastic way she could ever have imagined, and not simply because the stern-looking teacher had revealed to her that she could do magic. No, it was for a much simpler reason than that – it was because with her explanation, Professor McGonagall had finally made all those strange little instances in Hermione's life make sense.

Like that time when those girls were making fun of her hair, and the next day one of them hadn't shown up for school because, gossip had revealed later, all her hair had fallen out in the night, or that time when she'd been at the bookstore and the book she'd really wanted, on the highest shelf, had slid out and fallen on the ground right by her feet, or dozens of other little ones that had made Hermione think something was different about her. Now she knew what it was, and she felt finally, for the first time, at ease with herself.

Her curiosity had been impossible to contain after that, and she found as many books as she could about magic and the wizarding world, and spent her summer reading through them almost obsessively. She read Hogwarts, A History and The History of Magical Britain and she even found one called Magical Heritage: Why Purity Matters, which she thought was one-sided and bigoted and insulting, even if it did introduce her to the concepts of Pure-bloods, Half-bloods and Muggle-borns. There was a lot of information about someone everyone called You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, which was just absurd and extremely frustrating, because it was ridiculously hard to find what this supposedly dangerous Dark Wizard was even called properly, and she learned all about the Potters, James and Mary Potter, who gave their lives to stop You-Know-Who, and their son Harry, who somehow survived with only a scar on his forehead. The people who wrote these books loved James and Mary Potter, but they adored Harry Potter, calling him The-Boy-Who-Lived, most of them insisting that he'd survived the Killing Curse, though Hermione had managed to find out eventually that the Killing Curse was unstoppable, which made her think they were all just being stupid and exaggerating.

But the one person Hermione grew to love reading about the most, she discovered very late in the summer, when she finally got to the texts about after the war (she was a proper historical researcher, of course, which meant that she was going to go absolutely chronologically and not jump to newer information until she'd learn of the older first, because that was how time worked and it would be hard to understand stuff that came later if she didn't know the stuff that came before). That person was a Muggle-born who had made what Hermione gathered was the biggest change in the history of Wizarding British politics, the person who fought against everything Hermione had disliked in that stupid purity book, and her name was Lily Evans.

She knew that Lily Evans had been only twenty-one years old when the war had ended and she'd become very active in politics. She knew that Lily Evans was the one who'd created the first wizarding political party in Britain, the Coalition for Muggle-born Witches and Wizards, and she knew that Lily Evans had apparently modernised Hogwarts, which sounded very bloody amazing to Hermione, since she'd read Hogwarts, a History and both knew that Hogwarts had barely changed in the last thousand years and had been afraid that she'd not get proper normal subjects in school, like Mathematics and English Literature and Science. But most of all, Hermione loved Lily Evans because she was just like Hermione, Muggle-born and smart and a girl, and she'd showed the whole world that being all those things was something to be proud of. Hermione, who'd never had proper friends because no one liked snooty, know-it-all, book-obsessed, ugly girls, decided that she wanted to be just like her new hero. She wanted to be somebody the whole world would be proud of.

When Hermione entered the library, the Slytherin first-year she'd met two weeks ago was sitting at the table in the corner, reading what appeared to be a letter. Hermione took a moment to study him, from the way he seemed self-contained and orderly, to his greasy hair that hung around his face. She'd seen him yesterday with clean hair, and it really took her by surprise again, how quickly it got greasy-looking. She could go for weeks without washing her hair without it appearing any less clean than it did when she'd freshly washed it. She imagined most curly hair was like that.

"Why don't you ever tie your hair back?" she asked him, placing her bag on the floor by the chair she chose for herself. "Or cut it short? It'd look less..."

"Dirty?" Evan Snape finished for her with a long-suffering sigh. "Shockingly, I like my hair long and loose, and I can't very well help it that I have a horrible hair type."

"Yes, but why?"

"I dunno; why don't you cut your hair short?"

"Because I'd look even worse than I look now with it."

"I don't know; it might be easier to manage."

She gave him the stink eye – and it was such a pleasing surprise that she had someone whom she could give such a look without them being horrible to her in the next moment and then never speaking to her again – and dropped the conversation.

Instead, she pulled out her newest book, The Intricacies of Modern Wizarding Warfare and the Consequences Thereof: From Grindelwald to You-Know-Who and Beyond, along with their Charms and Transfiguration homework assignments.

"Oh, please don't tell me you're reading that," Evan muttered when his eyes fell on her stuff.

"Why not? It seems like a good book."

"It's supposed to be a book about tactics and battles and other gory war things, and they wouldn't even write You-Know-Who's name," he groused. "Mum's always on about that."

"You don't say Voldemort's name."

Unlike most other people she'd met recently, Evan didn't overtly react to the name.

"Dad doesn't tolerate the name at home, and I'd rather not call him the Dark Lord, since that has some bad connotations. Usually, they just call him 'he' if he comes up in discussion. Guess it's a habit."

"It's ridiculous, you know. It's just a name, like Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin. There's no reason not to call him by his name."

"If that's his name, that is."

"You think it's not?"

"We don't have lordships in Magical Britain, and there's certainly no family named Voldemort. I'm pretty sure he made it up himself."

"Do people do that?"

"Sure, sometimes," Evan confirmed. "Though, usually it's just to be fancy in school. My dad called himself the Half-Blood Prince, because his mum was from the Prince family, and he was Half-blood. He signed his books like that. See?"

He pulled out his potions textbook and flipped to the inside of the front covers, where, indeed, there was a faded script stating 'Property of Half-blood Prince' in the lower corner. Hermione shook her head at the ridiculousness of it all and just chucked it up to the magical world generally being a little whacky.

"The book's all right," she said, "though I'm reading it mostly for the last couple of chapters, cause they talk about Lily Evans in them. Have you heard of her? She's this famous witch who came up with the idea to make a political party, because she's Muggle-born and she fought in the war against Voldemort and turned wizarding politics upside-down. She's really, really amazing, she showed that Muggle-borns are every bit as worthy as Pure-bloods, and I wanted to meet her – she has a shop in Diagon Alley, did you know that, and I suppose it must be a bit tiring to have people coming in just to meet you, but I imagine that's also good for business, isn't it – but it was too late when I found this out, it was only two days before we were to come here, but my mum and dad promised they'd take me over the... winter... hols, Evan, are you ok?"

Only now was she noticing the pinched expression on his face that she thought might be the result of his face not knowing whether to laugh or to grimace. He didn't say anything; instead, he handed her the envelope of the letter he'd been reading. Confused, Hermione looked down at it, wondering what that had to do with her words. The address on the front was simply Evan's name, which didn't tell her anything at all.

"What did you want me to see?"

"The envelope; turn it around."

She did. It wasn't hard to spot, since it was the only thing on the other side – the return address in the top left corner.

Lily Snape
112 Ivory Way
Waltham Forest

London

"Your mum's name is Lily, too," she exclaimed, figuring out that this was why he'd found it so funny. When she looked up, though, he again had that look, and it came to her that she was still missing something. Apparently, that was the look he had when he was finding something funny, but didn't want to insult anyone by laughing. "I'm not getting it."

"It's my mum."

"Well... yeah."

"No, I mean, my mum's maiden name was Evans."

The penny dropped so noticeably that Hermione could almost imagine it clanging in her head.

"Oh. Oh! The... but..."

"Yeah, that's my mum. She doesn't use her married name publically, that's why people don't really realise it when they come visit the store. I guess they just think Mum and Dad are business partners, not spouses as well."

"Store?" she repeated dumbly, her mind still stalled at the thought of Evan's mum being Lily Evans. Hermione's first real friend was her role model's son!

"Our store," Evan repeated. "The one you wanted to visit, Snape's and Evans' Potions and Charms."

"Oh, I..." Evan's words brought back a fuzzy memory of the storefront, and that was right, there was Evan's last name on the name plaque, but she'd completely forgotten, because it hadn't seemed interesting at the time when she'd visited Diagon Alley, and she'd not even known that it belonged to her role model until right before coming to Hogwarts. "It's your store."

Evan was smirking full-on now.

"It does have my name on it, you realise."

"Oh! That's where your name comes from!" Hermione exclaimed, almost vibrating in her seat as her hand shot out to clutch at Evan's sleeve in her excitement. "Evan, because your mum's maiden name is Evans!"

His smirk turned into a disgruntled frown.

"My parents are corny," he muttered with a roll of his eyes. "Granted, I like the connection to Mum, but really, they weren't even married when I was born. Can you imagine, my name actually used to be Evan Evans when I was born? Thank Merlin they changed it as soon as they could, I don't think I would have lived through that in my House."

Hermione burst into giggles, and Evan harrumphed, but she did catch the corner of his lip twitch slightly. There was a wealth of unknown in the boy, and every little detail made Hermione more and more intrigued by him, making her mouth want to stretch into a smile every time she thought about the fact that she now had a friend, a real, genuine, good friend, who was so interesting to boot.

A thought occurred to her as her fit passed.

"Wait, even if they weren't married, why'd you have your Mum's last name? Don't kids still get their father's last name even in those cases?"

Evan grimaced at that.

"Well, my mum and dad's relationship was a secret in the war, see, so she couldn't well give me his last name, when no one even knew they were together when I was born."

"What, really?" Hermione asked, fascinated. "Why was that?"

"Cause..." He paused, face contorting into a grimace Hermione didn't know how to read. Then he bit his lip and chewed on it for a moment, something she'd not seen him do in the few weeks of their acquaintance, but it came to her that whatever was behind the explanation was obviously something he didn't want her to know. Yet at the same time, he wasn't outright rebuffing her question, which meant that he didn't want to not tell her, either, which meant...

Hermione suppressed a sudden urge to shift nervously in her seat, stomach flipping lightly at the thought that he didn't want to not tell her because he thought she might get upset with him, which meant that he cared about her, too. "It's ok. You don't have to tell me if it's a secret."

He blinked and looked at her with his brilliant green eyes, and grimaced again.

"Well, it's not like it's much of a secret in most circles, really," he decided in the end. "My dad was, er... sort-of playing both sides in the war? I don't know that much," he said hurriedly, looking around them as if checking to see whether someone could hear their hushed conversation, "but he's got a lot of war-time acquaintances that are these Pure-blood-superiority obsessed snots, and he was also working with Mum and Gra– Dumbledore, of course, though that's still supposed to be just rumour, so you can't tell anyone."

"Of course," she promised immediately, not doubting him for a second; she couldn't even process the thought that her role model would have married someone who violently opposed her beliefs about something as important in wizarding society as one's magical heritage. "So how did your parents even get together, then? And why have I never run into any mention of you or your dad in these books?"

"Well, Lily Evans and Lily Snape are almost two different people, see," the boy explained. "The shop has her last name, they didn't really have a wedding as such – I think my dad's head would have blown up if he'd had to deal with a wedding reception – and she had me when she was just another Charms Mastery student, even if she was part of the resistance, so I suppose no one really thought to connect it before she and Dad opened the shop, and by the time they did, she'd already stopped being involved with the politics for almost two years. I mean, it's not like she hides it or anything, but it's just like the You-Know-Who thing – these people who write books don't care about the actual state of things, they just like to interpret, and it looks better when Dad and I aren't mentioned as existing." He rolled his eyes and shrugged. "At least I don't get accosted by people every time I walk down the Diagon Alley like Mum does."

"So how did they meet? Was it during the war, in the resistance?"

Evan looked a bit startled by her earnest questions, but sniggered and shook his head after taking a moment to process the inquiry.

"No, no, they grew up together. They were best friends since before Hogwarts, way before they got together."

"Oh," Hermione voiced, momentarily disappointed to hear it; the idea of a spy meeting the leader of the resistance, and the two falling in love and having a child in secret sounded far more romantic to her. "Well... can you introduce me? Only, I've read so much about her, and she's so amazing, and I–" Realising how she sounded, Hermione broke off her building tirade and blushed, feeling suddenly embarrassed for what was her usual way of enthusiasm.

In response, Evan rubbed his nose with his fingers and frowned, though Hermione didn't get the impression from it that he was particularly perturbed by her request.

"All right, but you can't be all moony about her, yeah?" he said. "It's my mum; it'd be totally creepy."

"I... suppose. I mean, I don't want to be creepy. I just want to meet her, that's all. I mean, she's a Muggle-born like me, and she's done so much to change everything, and I really admire her."

"Fine; maybe over the winter hols? I'm going home for sure, so you could come to Diagon Alley for the day. I spend most of my free time at the store anyway, Dad has a laboratory for routine brewing where we experiment sometimes. You'd get to meet her – and I know both she and Dad will want to meet you, too, they're always far too nosy about my friendships and you're the first friend whom they didn't know before I did–"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I have two really good friends, and our parents have been friends since either Hogwarts or the war, way before we were born."

"But, didn't you go to school?"

"I did; other kids didn't like me very much," he admitted with a shrug, though Hermione thought it had to be something of a sore spot for him. After all, she herself had gone through primary school without any real friends, and she knew how painful that had been. Though... it made her stomach feel warm at the thought that she and Evan shared this one thing between them, and now they'd found each other and become friends.

"So, if they were so involved in politics, how come they now own a store?" she asked him.

"They're both craft masters who like to experiment, so researching and making stuff is what they trained for before they got involved with the war. This way, they both have a place to do their research and experimentation, and they can also earn money from their crafts; dad was actually already working like that since finishing his mastery. It's more mail-order than over-the-counter, but they usually keep the store open during the busiest times for walk-in customers."

"Does it pay well?"

"Eh," he said with a shrug. "We get by. I think they'd earn more if they were to work full time, but I don't think either of them likes being a salesperson very much; it's mostly because they don't like people to know where we live, because Mum has fans, and Dad gets hate mail sometimes, so it's just easier to have an official address for that sort of thing."

"Why would your dad get hate mail?" Hermione asked, intrigued by that seemingly bizarre statement.

"I told you, because of what he did during the war. They keep wiggling out of telling me the whole story, but Dad has a darkish reputation, cause of all his suspect acquaintances and his activity during the war and such. I, er... I overheard Dad talking to G– Dumbledore once, and it sounded like maybe Dad had even been arrested right after by the Ministry, because of his whatever-it-was with You-Know-Who or the his supposed Death Eater friends." Hermione's eyes widened in shock, and Evan shook his head. "I don't know, I'd rather not ask him about it if I don't have to, and it doesn't really matter. I know he loves my mum and me more than anything, so I don't believe he'd ever work for You-Know-Who for real. Also, the whole thing doesn't mean anything, because almost everyone without a stellar reputation was suspected, since the Ministry was horribly incompetent all through the war, and so they wanted to give the impression of fixing things swiftly after You-Know-Who disappeared."

"But, this book says that the Ministry answer was thought to be very good," Hermione pointed out.

"It's also a book that doesn't call him by his name," Evan pointed out with a wry look. "There's a reason why Mum creating a political party was such a big deal, you realise."

"I... well, I suppose," she agreed, thinking it over. Really, there were a lot of things that made little sense in this new world she was now a part of, when she made herself consider them from a normal standpoint. The thought left something of a bad taste in her mouth, because she liked things making sense, and just because magic was involved, it didn't seem to her that everything should completely lose its logic. "Oh, all right, which book should I read, then? There has to be at least one that tells the full truth without prevarication."

Evan's eyebrows rose. "Well, I think you'd be better off just asking people who fought in the war about it. You probably shouldn't ask my dad, he doesn't tell even me anything much, but Mum would answer your questions for sure, and she's always on about keeping in touch with both our wizarding and our Muggle heritage; she's still got a lot of friends from Mum and Dad's old town, Cokeworth, that she keeps in touch with. Did you know, she made our house be comfortable for both? Even my snitty aunt comes to visit, and she hates magic."

"Really? How did she do that?"

Evan launched into an explanation of the difficulty behind combining electricity and magic, which didn't mix at all, and how there were so many little things that either world took for granted, but which she had had to adjust so that both her wizarding and her Muggle friends felt comfortable coming over. Hermione listened, almost entranced, her mind racing to make the connections and develop new ideas, and through it all, a slow, warm sense of anticipation built, until she was almost desperately looking forward to the moment when her new friend would finally introduce her to her hero, the woman Hermione firmly decided she wanted to be like when she grew up – someone who never sacrificed a part of herself for the whims of others, while still managing to make a huge change to the whole wide world.