That was a nightmare," Harriet said grimly, trying to drag her trunk up the sloping grounds without putting too much weight on her left ankle.
"Of all the rotten luck," Ron said, "we had to hit the tree that hits back."
Their luck had certainly been patchy all day. First they'd been shut out of the barrier at 9 ¾, which had seemed like the worst thing that could possibly happen; especially to Harriet, who'd more than once drifted out of nightmares where she was back at the Dursleys' with bars on her window and locks on the door. It had always taken her a while to fall back asleep, staring at the patch of starlight glittering through Ginny's small, bright window.
But then, brilliantly, Ron had remembered his parents' car. They'd flown it out of London and followed the train to Hogwarts, making good time; but then the engine had failed as they'd flown in, and they'd crashed into a tree that had nearly beaten them to death.
"And my bloody wand," Ron moaned, trying to stuff a catatonic Scabbers into his pocket. "How am I supposed to do anything with my wand bloody broken?"
"I'm sure they'll be able to fix it?" Harriet said.
"They'd better," Ron said grimly. "Or Mum'll sew my skin back on once she's done taking it off for losing the car, just so she can skin it right back off."
"Surely someone'll be able to find the car?" Harriet said, wincing at this disgustingly horrifying picture. "I mean, how far can it go?"
"I don't want to find out. Here, let's stop before my legs break off, they feel like they're halfway there already."
They dropped their trunks at the foot of the front steps. Windows glowed golden high overhead on the turret's faces; stars shone against the silky backdrop of the night. A few low clouds skimmed the tallest towers, and moonlight glittered on the black waters of the lake below.
Professor Sinistra had told them the stars made humanity aware of its own insignificance, but for Harriet it was Hogwarts, only in a good way. It was easy to believe that Hogwarts had always been there and always would be; that it would outlast everyone, and yet there would always be someone new to come home it.
When she placed her hand the castle's wall, she was surprised to feel it was slightly warm, as if it still remembered the afternoon sun. She thought of the tables full of food in the Great Hall; of her four poster in the messy red and gold of Gryffindor tower; of the passageway she and Hermione and Ron had found that grew over with violets; and the permanent smell of dog and pipe smoke on everything in Hagrid's hut.
I'm home, she thought.
For a second, she thought she felt the castle stone flaring warmth beneath her hand. Surely it was her imagination, but she smiled anyway.
But then something moved in the darkness that made her smile and all the blood drain from her face.
"Hey, it's the Sorting!" Ron said, standing on his trunk to peer into a bright window near ground level. "There's Ginny! Harry, come see . . . Harry?"
But Harriet couldn't answer or go over to the window. She was frozen to the spot in terror, because melting out of the shadows, his gaunt face white as bone, his teeth bared in fury, was Professor Snape.
"Do you have any idea WHAT YOU'VE DONE?"
For the first half of the sentence, Harriet had been marveling (in a dread-filled way) how Snape could make you want to cringe just by whispering; but in the second half his voice rose to a shout and she did cringe. She'd never heard Snape shout before.
"Hon-honestly, Professor," Ron stammered, "that tree did more damage to us than we—"
"Silence, Weasley," Snape spat, and Harriet tread on Ron's foot, because Snape looked about two seconds away from murdering them right there in his office. "You don't grasp the enormity of the situation, do you? You are guilty of more than being criminally stupid." There was such venom in his voice that Ron flinched.
"Wecouldntgetthroughthebarrie r," Harriet blurted, "ithadjustturnedtosolidbrick—"
"Oh?" Snape hissed in a voice somehow as icy with rage as it was hot. "And you felt that justified stealing the Weasleys' property and leaving without a word to anyone? Did it not occur to you, you foolish girl, that after the events of last May, it might be rightly assumed that your life was in danger?"
"I . . . " Harriet didn't know what to say. Snape's sneer could have peeled paint.
"Or," he said, and threw a newspaper down on his desk, where a black and white miniature of the Weasleys' car flew across the front page photograph, "that a twelve-year-old is hardly the world's most accomplished driver, that a Muggle vehicle enchanted to fly is hardly reliable, and the pair of you could have crashed and killed yourselves? Have you ANY CONCEPT—"
He stopped, breathing audibly through his uneven, yellowed teeth, which were bared like a dog's.
"You two," he hissed, "will wait here. Right here, in this exact spot. If you move by so much as a centimeter, you will wish I had never been born."
Then he swept out, the door banging shut behind him.
Even though he was gone, Harriet and Ron didn't dare look at each other. Harriet was sure that Snape would count moving her head as moving in general.
"If we're going to die," Ron said suddenly, speaking like he was trying not to move his lips or teeth too much, "I just want you to know, it was nice having you for a mate."
"Even if I'm a girl?" Harriet asked. But she stopped her smile in case Snape would also count that as moving.
"After five brothers, I don't mind girls," Ron said.
It was bad when Professor McGonagall came, but more like badness layered on top of badness: she was clearly angrier with them than she'd ever been, even when she'd caught Harriet and Hermione out of bed last year after they'd gotten rid of Norbert, but her anger had nothing on Snape's. He stood in the shadows, his black eyes staring cold-blooded death threats.
Then Professor Dumbledore showed up, and it was worse.
He heard them out in silence. When they had finished, he said nothing for a few moments, and that silence was somehow the worst part of all.
"We'll get our stuff," Ron said in a hollow voice.
"What are you talking about, Weasley?" snapped Professor McGonagall, as if she'd had quite enough of them acting stupid.
"Well, you're expelling us, aren't you?" Ron asked.
There was a tiny pause, but when no one said You bet your arse we are, Harriet dared to look up.
"Not today, Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore said, though he was still grave. "But I must impress upon both of you the seriousness of what you have done. I must also warn you that if you do anything like this again, I will have no choice but to expel you."
In the corner, Snape made a soft sound like he wished that moment would come sooner rather than later.
"Professor McGonagall will decide your punishment," Dumbledore told them, and glanced at her. "I must go back to the feast, Minerva. I've a few notices to give. Come, Severus, there's a delicious-looking custard tart I want to sample."
Snape treated Harriet and Ron to one last look of disgust before allowing Dumbledore to sweep him away. Harriet, feeling like someone had taken sandpaper to her skin, was glad he was gone.
She'd been right: being on the receiving end of Snape's temper was awful.
Everyone in the Gryffindor common room wanted to congratulate them for the ultimate coolness of flying a car into the Whomping Willow—except for Percy, whose horn-rim glasses flashed dangerously when they stumbled through the portrait hole, and Hermione, who wasn't even there. When Harriet tore herself away from everyone (Lavender and Parvati saying, "You're famous, why couldn't you have flown in with someone so much cooler and better-looking than Ron Weasley?") and escaped upstairs, she found Hermione in her nightdress reading Voyages with Vampires.
For a split second Harriet was so glad to see her, she could have cried. But then Hermione looked up, her scowl just like Percy's, and Harriet almost groaned aloud.
"Please," she said, "Snape tried to take my skin off with sandpaper, and I didn't know McGonagall's mouth could go that thin, and Professor Dumbledore was even worse, and it wouldn't have happened if I'd thought about Hedwig, I know, but we couldn't get through the barrier!"
It came out like one huge, long word. When it was done, Harriet stood breathing heavily, and Hermione sat staring fixedly at her, Vampires open on her knees.
Then she said, "You could have been expelled."
"I know—"
She slammed her book shut. "You could have died!"
"I know—"
"Muggles saw you!"
"I KNOW," Harriet said, tugging at her own hair. "Look, Snape already yelled all this, I mean yelled, with whispering, too, and glares, and we wouldn't—we wouldn't have done it if we thought, we just weren't! Didn't, I mean! We . . . " She pushed up her glasses to rub her eyes. "I didn't mean to scare everyone, honestly. I never wanted that."
Hermione stood up, her lips pressed together like McGonagall's, her scowl tight, her eyes narrowed. Then she said, "What do you mean you couldn't get through the barrier?"
Harriet told her how the gateway to the platform hadn't been just an illusion but real, solid brick. Muggles had stared at them, and then eleven o'clock had passed, and the train had gone . . .
As if she couldn't help herself, Hermione said, "You could have just waited for the Weasleys to come out—"
"Hermione!"
"Well, I just don't understand how you could have thought of flying the car to school but not thought of any of the obvious solutions!" Hermione said, like she really, really couldn't understand and it was driving her mad.
"I don't know either," Harriet said wearily, dropping onto her bed. "It all seems so obvious now. And we're in so much trouble . . . "
Hermione went as white as her nightdress. "You're not expelled!"
"Nono," Harriet assured her, waving her hands. "But we've got detention and Dumbledore said if we break any more rules we will be. Expelled, I mean. And he's writing to our families . . . not that the Dursleys will care, they'll just count it an unlucky miss that the Willow didn't squash me flat."
"Well," Hermione said, frowning, "it could have been a lot worse. And your family are horrid," she added.
"I know," Harriet sighed, dropping face-first onto her duvet.
Dumbledore force-fed him tea with a Calming Draught. Severus knew it was in there from the way the steam drifted sideways over the rim of his cup, but he drank it anyway because he thought that otherwise he might murder Ron Weasley in his bed.
The Calming Draught also allowed him to sleep a good portion of the night, almost six hours, and so it was with only (for him) low-level rage that he ascended to the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning.
The hall was already ringing with the raucous voices of those demons in human form known collectively as students. Dumbledore had saved him a seat next to himself, and smiled at him, no doubt wanting to remind him that if he poisoned the Weasley boy, it would place Dumbledore in an awkward position.
Severus scanned up the Gryffindor table. When he saw the girl, something in his chest clenched in the region of his heart. But he didn't have a heart anymore. It had been surgically removed and replaced with a steel trap.
She looked much healthier than she had at the beginning of August, thank Molly Weasley, who had also trimmed up her hair but been unable to lessen her resemblance to a hedgehog. Granger sat on one side of her, the Weasley female, who appeared to be gazing at her worshipfully, on the other. Granger had her nose in a book, and even halfway across the hall she radiated chilly displeasure. On the other side of the table, Ronald Weasley was stuffing kippers in his mouth, the nauseating cretin.
Speaking of nauseating cretins . . .
"I see Lockhart's not here," he observed, stabbing a kipper.
"Setting his hair, no doubt," Minerva said with asperity.
"I wish mine looked half so good," said Sprout, leaning around Severus to help herself to toast and tomatoes. She smelled like she'd been rolling in the dirt all morning; typical Sprout.
"It would if you spent Godric knows how many Galleons on hair potions and several hours applying them," McGonagall retorted. "You've better things to worry about."
Severus almost admired the way neither of them looked once at his own hair during this exchange.
"Definitely better things to be doing," Sprout agreed, heaping marmalade onto her tomatoes in all defiance of gastronomic decency. "Been slinging the Willow all morning after those dear Gryffindors of yours, Albus—bless their wretched little hearts—flew that bally car into the blasted thing—"
"Speaking of which," Dumbledore murmured. "I believe we're about to witness the conclusion to last night . . . "
Severus looked back at the Gryffindor table as a tureen exploded from the kamikaze descent of someone's owl and a sausage hit Longbottom between the eyes. Weasley extracted a red envelope from a milk jug and then thrust the thing out at arm's length as if it he'd just realized he was holding a scorpion. The Weasley female's eyes fixed on it, round and fearful; Longbottom looked horrified and sympathetic; Granger and the girl perplexed. Severus wished he could see more than the back of the Weasley boy's head. His expression might have been worth the sight of his face.
A second later, Molly Weasley's amplified voice exploded to the vaulted ceiling, rattling the windows and turning heads.
". . . STEALING THE CAR, I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED IF THEY EXPELLED YOU, YOU WAIT TILL I GET HOLD OF YOU. . ."
"Ah, how I do miss being young, sometimes," Flitwick said as Molly Weasley's Howler continued to rage at her son.
"Now?" Minerva said, attempting to hide her smile in her tea.
"I remember the Howlers, of course," Flitwick said, beaming, "but I remember the things I did to deserve them with significantly greater clarity."
"Right you are, there," said Sprout, chortling. "You should've heard the one I got from my mother right before N.E.W.T.s, God rest her soul. Was almost a shame Howlers let it all out at once, that one could've been preserved in a museum. Well, I'm off." She stuffed the last of her toast between her teeth. "Got the second-years potting mandrakes, bless them. I wouldn't miss the looks on their darling little faces for a galleon of Galleons."
Severus was glad she was gone. Morning people were insufferable. Minerva was the only one he could abide at breakfast; Sprout was as sunny as Dumbledore. At least Minerva was always in a suitably catty mood.
"I want Miss Potter's detention," he told Minerva across Dumbledore, who was eating toast very neatly to avoid getting boysenberry jam on his beard.
Minerva made a noise that sounded like poor girl. "Not Weasley's, too?"
"Not on your life. Give him to Filch," Severus said.
"I had been planning on it," she said tartly.
A sudden silence pressing on Severus's ears like cotton meant that Molly Weasley's letter had stopped shouting. A small curl of smoke was rising from the table in front of Ronald Weasley, who'd sunk below the bench, and the girl looked both mortified and miserable.
He was surprised to feel the faint tendril unfolding inside him as he looked at her was something like sympathy.
"Mandrakes are fascinating, aren't they?" said Hermione as they headed across the lawn, away from the thick heat of the greenhouses toward the castle. The scent of perfumed earth followed them, rubbed onto their robes after the mandrake-potting.
"Although I think it's rather cruel to cut them up as soon as they've grown—" she went on.
"I don't," Ron said with feeling. "Unless it's cruel to us not to cut them up sooner. I wonder if that's what Slytherins look like as babies?"
"I don't really like it either," Harriet said, remembering the way the mandrakes had squirmed and wailed, unheard through their magical earmuffs. "It doesn't seem fair to let somebody grow up just because you need them to get big before you can . . . you know . . . "
"They're only plants," Ron said.
Harriet ignored this. "It's like that book with the pig and the spider."
"What book with a pig and a spider?"
"Charlotte's Web," Hermione said automatically.
"Right." Harriet nodded. To Ron she explained, "There's this pig, see, named Wilbur, who's supposed to die because he's a runt, only this girl named Fern thinks it's too cruel, so she makes her dad, who's the farmer, not kill him. He says all right, but actually he's only going to wait for Wilbur to become big enough for slaughtering—"
"Well, that's what happens to pigs, isn't it?" Ron said as the shadows to the entrance hall folded over them. "We've got to have bacon."
"It may seem like nothing to you—" Hermione started hotly.
"Only there's this spider in the barn," Harriet raised her voice to break over their bickering, "named Charlotte, and she doesn't want Wilbur to die either, so she writes things in her web to make all the humans think Wilbur is an amazing pig and they won't kill him."
"Sounds a bit barmy," Ron said, sitting down across from Harriet and Hermione at the Gryffindor table, where platters of lunch had started appearing between the empty plates.
"It isn't," Hermione said resentfully. "It's a beautiful and touching story. Charlotte saves Wilbur's life."
"But then she dies," Harriet said, not reaching for the baked potatoes that had appeared next to her. "I hate that bit."
"It is very sad," Hermione said. "But that's what the whole book is about, you know—death, and how it's natural, even though we don't want it to be."
"You know what I don't want?" Ron said. "Double Potions with the Slytherins."
He was probably thinking about Draco Malfoy. Harriet was thinking about Pansy Parkinson, and she'd bet Hermione was, too. They all grimaced.
"I mean, bad enough we've got to suffer two hours with Snape," Ron said. "But always with Slytherins on top of that? Why couldn't it be with the Ravenclaws or Hufflepuffs?"
"Really, Ron," Hermione said as she helped herself to buttered asparagus. "After the troll and the Devil's Snare and the giant chess set, is Double Potions with the Slytherins and Professor Snape really that terrible?"
"Yes," Ron said. "I dunno how you can even ask, Hermione. Compared to Slytherins and Snape, that other stuff was a lark."
Harriet finally dragged a baked potato onto her plate, but she had trouble doing more than poke it with a fork. She didn't admit it aloud, but she was nervous about Double Potions. It would be the first time she was meeting Snape since she and Ron had crashed into the Whomping Willow, when he'd been so furious. Was he going to be mean and nasty to her now?
She ate her potato because it was silly not to. She knew the value of food. But she ate less than she otherwise would have, and she was sure it didn't taste as good as it ought to have done. When it was time for Potions, she pushed her plate away, shouldered a bag that felt oddly heavy, and plodded down into the icy dungeons with Hermione and Ron.
Snape didn't have his door open yet, curse him. Harriet hoped he'd let them in before the Slytherins arrived. Last year, Pansy Parkinson had really enjoyed taunting Harriet and Hermione in the queue so that everyone could hear and her gang of girls could laugh until the cold, dark corridor rang.
Yes, Harriet decided: she'd rather deal with Snape about to murder her and Ron on his office rug than listen to Pansy's taunting. It wouldn't be so bad if she could punch Pansy in the face, but if Snape did his nut because she and Ron ran a car into a tree, she didn't want to know what he'd do if she smacked one of his precious Slytherins.
"Oh, no," Hermione whispered with distaste as the unpleasant sound of a gaggle of Slytherins echoed through the dungeons. A moment later, they showed up, like bedbugs in clean linen.
Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy, and sundry Slytherins. Urgh. Harriet didn't know what it was that made Slytherins seem so ugly, because really, they didn't look any better or worse than Hermione with her overlarge front teeth or Ron with his long nose and freckles or Harriet herself with her hedgehog hair and horrible glasses. But every time she saw the Slytherins in her year, she just wanted to give them fat lips. Maybe they reminded her too much of Dudley and his gang and her aunt and uncle: she could feel them itching to do something mean.
"If it isn't Potter the Glamour Girl," said Pansy Parkinson, to the snickers of her posse. She had a short, turned-up nose—literally turned-up at the tip. It made her look rather like a pug, but she thought she was God's gift to second-year Hogwarts' girls because her hair was sleek and shiny and she wore handmade Italian shoes and always had perfectly manicured fingernails. Well, that's what Harriet guessed. She couldn't see what else it could be.
"I'm surprised your family could afford a car, Weasley," Malfoy drawled. "Or did your brothers steal it off some Muggles too stupid to defend themselves?"
Harriet and Hermione grabbed the back of Ron's robes as soon as his face started turning maroon.
"Maybe you can sell some of Potter's signed photographs," Malfoy said, while Pansy pointed at Ron and laughed. "Buy another car . . . or at least a small piece of it or something."
"Leave it, Ron," Harriet said shortly, doing her best to act as if the Slytherins weren't laughing in loud, carrying voices. "He's just a jealous git because he'd never—"
She bit off the sentence when the classroom door swung open. They all waited to see if Snape would appear—the Gryffindors apprehensively, the Slytherins eagerly—but when he didn't show, Hermione grabbed Harriet and Ron by their elbows and hustled them inside. Snape had a cauldron set up on his desk, the fire lighting his face eerily from beneath as he stood over it. He made no sign that he'd seen them as they scuttled past his desk.
"Sir," said Malfoy over the scrape and clatter of settling in, "sir, Weasley tried to attack me in the corridor just now, I thought you should know—"
"He did," Pansy added. "I saw it, Professor, we all did."
"He did not!" Harriet said loudly, before she could stop herself.
"Harriet!" Hermione whispered in a frightened voice, struggling to grapple with Ron as he tried to push to his feet.
Snape looked up at Harriet's table, not at his Slytherins. His expression was so cold and remote, it made Harriet shiver.
"Twenty points from Gryffindor, Mr. Weasley," he said in that voice like cold, dark tunnels. "Your disruptive behavior ends now. Do I make myself clear? Miss Granger, release Mr. Weasley or I'll have another twenty from you this time."
Ron was gripping the edge of the table, on his feet. Harriet's heart pushed hard and hot against her ribcage. She did not look at Malfoy or Pansy because she was afraid that if she did, she'd throw her cauldron at them. The injustice of it flared so incandescent inside her, she couldn't clearly see or hear what was going on around her.
"Sit down," Snape snapped at them.
Harriet dropped numbly into her seat.
She'd been expecting it, really. She didn't know why it stung so badly.
"—and then," Sprout was saying as Severus pushed open the staff room door late that afternoon. She paused, glancing toward the door; Minerva, Flitwick and Pomfrey mimicked her.
"It's only Severus," Minerva said, as if it weren't obvious. "He'll want to hear this."
"We're abusing Lockhart," Pomfrey said to him in a stage-whisper.
"Don't let me stop you," he said, taking a seat near Flitwick, close enough to hear them clearly but not near enough to reasonably participate in their conversation. He was exhausted, anyway. First days back always did that to him. After two months of near-isolation, the return to the racket and demands of the constant presence of other (and criminally stupid) people drained him.
"He was flitting around the Willow this morning like a blasted nuisance," Sprout resumed. "Tries to tell me how to bandage the tree that I planted, and clearly doesn't know a bally thing! 'You've got to let it thrash,' he says—while I'm bandaging it? Daft daffodil brain, that's what he is. 'When I saved the historic bo tree of Barun Valley,' he goes—"
"I hope he decides to try telling Severus a thing or two about potions," Minerva said, her square lenses glinting. At least she had said potions, not his hair.
"Oh dear," Flitwick said. "Minerva, you mustn't. It would be the shortest term a Defense teacher has ever served."
"Shh!" Pomfrey said, while they all tried to muffle their laughter (except Severus, of course, since he was constitutionally incapable of laughter). "Someone's coming . . . "
They all listened avidly to the murmurs of footsteps and voices out in the hall.
"Yes, it's him," Sprout told them in a half-whisper, "I'd know that smarmy voice anywhere, more's the pity."
". . . well, of course," said Lockhart's indisputably smarmy voice through the staff room door, "soon as I heard, I knew it was all my fault—"
The door clattered open and he came in trailing Dumbledore, who was listening to him with every sign of interest. Lockhart was wearing turquoise trimmed with gold, but Dumbledore had out-done him in cerulean blue with a pattern of peacock feathers along the sleeves, the hem and the shoulders. Together, they were more than a bit of an eyesore. Severus saw Minerva lift her eyes to the ceiling.
"—could have kicked myself," Lockhart went on, shaking his head in a self-deprecating way that somehow managed to look entirely self-important. "Gave her a taste for publicity. Gave her the bug. She got onto the front page of the paper with me and couldn't wait to do it again."
Severus was momentarily so mesmerized by the way Lockhart managed to show every single one of his gleaming teeth at any given moment that the true meaning of this speech did not immediately register. But then he realized Lockhart was talking about Lily's daughter.
"Now, Gilderoy," said Dumbledore, ushering Lockhart to a chair slightly apart from the other teachers', "I'm sure you take too much upon yourself."
"No, no, Albus, not at all!" said Lockhart. "I understand how it is. It's natural to want a bit more once you've had that first taste, and I blame myself for giving her that—it was bound to go to her head—but—"
Dumbledore glanced at Severus, who realized that, as unbelievable as it seemed, the headmaster was enjoying himself.
"—see here, young lady, I said to her, you can't start flying cars to try and get yourself noticed! Plenty of time for that when you're older!"
"Yes," Minerva said waspishly, "when she has an operator's license."
"I'm positive she took me to heart," Lockhart said, no doubt failing to hear her because the remark contained no praise of anything to do with him. "Understood me completely! Had a look of real amazement on her face by the time I was through."
I'm sure she did, Severus thought.
"It was most kind of you to take Miss Potter's interests to heart, Gilderoy my boy," Dumbledore said, sounding fully sincere, although his eyes flicked toward Severus again. What was that supposed to mean? "She's a dear girl—quite special to us all."
"Oh, of course, of course!" Lockhart said, showing all of those perfect gleaming teeth. "You know, Albus, I wondered if I might take that detention of hers? All my fault, you know, like I said! And I think she might like to take a few lessons from me on the best way to handle fame—caught her offering to give out signed photos today! Looks a tad bigheaded at this stage, as you can bet I told her, but I'm sure she was only trying to emulate me. Dash it, she's not met anyone quite so famous before, it's no wonder she'd make a few wrong choices at first. Overcome with admiration—only seeking to emulate—stands to reason!"
Somewhere beneath Dumbledore's expression of good-natured interest was a gleam of unholy amusement, but Severus was sure one of his ribs was going to crack with the strain of not committing bloody murder.
He met Minerva's eye across the room and saw his thoughts mirrored there exactly:
This is going to be a very long year.