He went to Dumbledore's office instead of trying to root him out in the corridors. The study smelled of the usual cinnamon and seasonal pine. Dumbledore had arranged a giant Christmas tree draped with gold and silver tinsel and strung with multicolored fairy lights that faded and brightened like the stars in the sky. Although the office was warm, almost stifling, gusts of snow from the storm outside rattled and banged the black windows. Severus had noticed the weather worsening during dinner, the dark grey mass of the enchanted ceiling thickening and churning as they all worked their way through goose and stuffing, cider and mulled mead and minced pies.
A mound of presents was piled beneath Dumbledore's tree, so many different styles of wrapping and shapes to the packages that, even ignorant of how much the Headmaster was beloved, Severus would have known they were genuine and not merely decorative. He never bothered to put up a tree in his own quarters. There wouldn't have been much under it—Dumbledore's present; Narcissa's; the one from the staff Secret Santa (he rolled his eyes). His House usually gave him something communal because Slytherins recognized the importance of doing the needful. His mother never sent him anything, not even a card, but he didn't expect it of her. He had quit sending her presents over ten years ago, after she'd sent a curt note telling him not to waste money.
Dumbledore had tacked an obnoxiously bright stocking to his mantle. It was lurid orange and pink with Albus stitched across the top in a childish hand. The 'S' was backwards. Severus had told a house-elf to fill it with coal in the night, an honest impulse that he knew Dumbledore would think was funny.
He had just sat down in a chair next to the tree and started prodding the packages, seeing if he could guess what was what, when the door opened and Dumbledore stepped in. He didn't see Severus right away; instead, he drifted over to his phoenix and stroked its mottled head. It had burned a week or so ago and was now a downy chick again, canary yellow with a scarlet head and beady black eyes.
Severus wondered how it felt to be as old as Dumbledore looked right now.
"This looks like toffee from Hagrid," he said, and had the satisfaction of seeing Dumbledore give a quiet start at the sound of his voice. "I pray it doesn't pull out any of your teeth, old as they are."
Dumbledore smiled slightly. "I usually soften it over the fire. Ever since '77, when I forgot and cracked a tooth." But then the smile dissipated and he just watched Severus, his palm resting on his phoenix's bright head. So Severus went on nosing through Dumbledore's presents.
"Elphias Doge." He rattled the box. "Sounds like a set of false teeth, appropriately enough."
Dumbledore made a vague noise, sounding as if his mind was elsewhere.
Severus picked up a lumpy, lopsided present from Arabella Figg and turned it over in his hands as if trying to gauge its weight. In the same tone of voice that he'd commented on the first two presents, he said, "You've been thinking the girl is the Heir of Slytherin, weren't you?"
Dumbledore didn't answer right away, which told Severus all he need to know.
"Probably a hand-knitted cat pillow," he said, tossing the present back into the pile. "Why in God's name would you think she was sicking a giant Basilisk on Muggle-borns?"
"So you've deduced that it's a Basilisk, too," Dumbledore said quietly. He had a peculiar expression on his face as he looked across the study at Severus, like he was deep in an emotion that had nothing to do with what they were talking about.
"Roosters," Severus said, curt and quick, like he was reading off a list. "That voice she heard—it was the Basilisk's voice, that's why she heard it and I didn't, and we were in the dungeons at the time, which was Slytherin's domain. Salazar was a Parselmouth, which doesn't only mean you understand snakes, it means you can control them."
"Yes," Dumbledore said, more quietly still.
"You seriously thought she hurt that Creevey boy?" Severus really couldn't believe it. That wasn't Dumbledore's style. It certainly wasn't Severus's to have more faith in any person than Dumbledore did.
"Even if she had some track record of violent or sadistic behavior," he continued when Dumbledore didn't say anything, "which she doesn't, she was unconscious at the time of the attack, just as she was with me for this one. And her best friend is Muggle-born—"
"So was yours," Dumbledore said, even more quietly than before.
Severus felt himself go white. Dumbledore just watched him, sober and grave.
Severus felt his heart beat, hard, into the silence of their voices. The heat from the fire was suddenly suffocating, and yet Severus felt like ice through and through.
Then the phoenix chirruped, a sound like tiny silver bells, and Dumbledore closed his eyes.
"Forgive me, Severus," he said heavily. "I know . . . " But he trailed off, as though he was too weary to be wise.
"Fortunately," Severus said, barely moving his lips, "Miss Potter is better at making abstractions." He forced himself to keep speaking. "She has already understood that danger to Muggle-borns means danger to my Muggle-born friend."
"Has she?" Dumbledore asked, looking at him without any trace of mockery or sarcasm. When Severus jerked his head, Dumbledore rubbed a hand across his chin.
"I admit that any notion of Harriet as the culprit is not simply a matter of twisting the facts, but of outright ignoring them," Dumbledore said slowly. "Yet I have not been able to rid myself of the suspicion. . . "
"Perhaps I am not making myself plain," Severus said, still feeling cold everywhere that warm blood should have been running. "I know the signs of a child bent on domination of her peers. Miss Potter exhibits none of them."
"Tom Riddle was quite adept at hiding them," Dumbledore said, almost gently. "I taught him, you will remember."
"But you saw it in him, even at the time. When he had charmed everyone else into knots, you thought there was something to be wary of, didn't you? Other than the fact that she is the only known—known—Parselmouth in the school, have you any reason to suspect her? And anyway, we know it has something to do with Lucius Malfoy."
"Yes . . . " Finally, Dumbledore moved to sit down. "I had not forgotten Lucius. Or Dobby, come to that."
"If James Potter was related to Salazar Slytherin, I'll hug Longbottom," Severus said.
Dumbledore half smiled, but it faded almost as soon as it had come. "Lucius Malfoy's apparent involvement is a significant part of the matter."
Severus noticed that Dumbledore didn't say what part, or why it was significant. "But you're still not convinced it isn't her? Why not?"
"It would not be very wonderful to me," Dumbledore said, carefully now, almost tentatively, as though he was leery of saying this, "if Harriet were to . . . demonstrate some of the same . . . weaknesses as Tom Riddle. Both are orphans who suffered great neglect as a child. Both, from an early age, have shown talents far beyond their peers'. And both . . . both possess the rare gift of Parseltongue."
"She is not the Dark Lord, Dumbledore." Severus didn't even need to think this over. He didn't know why he believed it, or why he was so insistent, but he did and he was. Maybe he didn't want Lily to have died to protect her child, only to have it grow up and turn into another Tom Riddle. Maybe because he knew nastiness and malevolence far better than Dumbledore did, whatever he said or believed. Dumbledore might have brushed against darkness long ago, but he had never followed it breathlessly, never sought it and gloried in it, until the darkness within himself shattered all the brightness of his hopes. "She's something else entirely."
Dumbledore was watching him with a peculiar expression on his face. It was as though he was trying very hard not to beam like Christmas morning and throw his arms around Severus and start prating about love and joy and—dear God, Severus was getting nauseous just thinking about it.
"She's an impertinent brat whose peerless talent is risking her neck for no good reason." He wondered if he should sneer. The expected touch, or overdoing it? "She and Weasley and Granger are up to something—don't you twinkle at me," he snapped. "They robbed me of boomslang skin so they could brew invisible Potions in that miserable out-of-order girl's bathroom on the second floor, God only knows what they—
"What?" he demanded, because a very strange expression had just flitted across Dumbledore's face, an expression almost like gobsmacked astonishment.
Dumbledore blinked. Then he said, "You have not deduced, then, who the Heir of Slytherin must be?"
Severus was thrown off-kilter. What did that have to do with—
. . . Wait. Was Dumbledore offering him information about the Heir of Bloody Slytherin to distract him from whatever had astounded him? Oh, yes he bloody was, or Severus was the reincarnation of Helga Hufflepuff. "Never bloody mind that, thank you, Headmaster. I want to know what it was that shocked you just now when I said—"
"The Heir of Slytherin is Tom Riddle, Junior."
That time, Severus thought he actually felt the room tilt. Then his dread surged like the tide before a storm, and the weight of the thought It's too soon it wasn't supposed to be this soon was crushing.
"I have no reason to suspect Tom's direct involvement," Dumbledore said calmly, as if he weren't shaking Severus's tenuous peace by its foundations. "But we know that Tom has always been adept at influencing others. We were just remembering it. His powers of manipulation and personal enchantment were as great as his magical skills—though he would surely not wish to admit he was so talented at something so mundane."
This time it was understanding that broke over Severus, a softer wave but no less icy. "You think the Dark Lord is manipulating or controlling one of the children in the school."
Dumbledore inclined his head.
"You think it's her?"
"I think the connection would certainly be difficult for Tom to resist, do you not? The temptation to take by guile what he has not been able to by force—to destroy the avatar of our peace and hope, by forcing her to take the lives of Muggleborn students—do you not think this sounds like Tom?"
"No . . . " Severus said slowly. "You were right that the Dark Lord does not stoop to the mundane any longer. Magic was—is—all that he considers worthy. That . . . the other . . . that sounds like Lucius. Jesus Christ, that's Lucius all over."
He might have stared at Dumbledore in horror. Not because Lucius would be capable of that, for he knew that Lucius was, and anyway, it was a waste of time to sit aghast at the depths of cruelty in the human heart. But he was disturbed by what it signified. He had always been certain, as certain as it was prudent to be, that the Dark Lord had no contact with Lucius, or vice versa; but if Lucius wasn't merely acting on some sadistic lark—if he were somehow channeling the Dark Lord's essence into one of their students, Severus's certainty would have been in error, and he could not afford to be in error.
"So you agree," said Dumbledore, "that—we'll say Lucius, or perhaps Tom—is using one of the students, possibly unwillingly, to control the Basilisk and attack Muggleborns?"
"Yes. I do." Severus scrubbed his hand across his eyes. "I'll have his guts out through his nostrils."
"You know," Dumbledore said pensively, "that really does warm my heart, Severus. Who would have thought? It delights me, to see you caring for the children."
"I hate children," Severus snarled. "But I hope I'm not so mad as to fail to hate more the people who turn children into murderers for their own ends."
"Oh, Severus," Dumbledore said, giving him a fond and knowing look that made Severus wish he'd told the house-elves to put twice as much coal in his stocking. "I think I just proved, at least twice during this conversation, that your heart is in the right place."
"I don't have a heart," Severus said. "I had it removed and replaced with a steel trap years ago."
"I was just so sure it was Malfoy," Ron said for the millionth time.
"Oh, Ron, do let it go," Hermione sighed.
"I can't believe it," Ron said as if he hadn't heard her. "All that work, and we didn't find out a bloody thing we didn't know already. Well, there's that secret panel in the Malfoys' drawing-room—I'll write Dad and tell him—but we already knew the Chamber had been opened before, from what Harry overheard Professor Dumbledore saying—"
"We didn't know that someone died last time," Harriet said quietly. A vision of Penelope Clearwater lying on the floor with her curly hair spread over her face made her feel so cold, it was like being stabbed in the ear with an icicle.
"And we know that someone got expelled for opening the Chamber," Hermione added. "I bet it was in the paper . . . "
"Oh, well, that's great news," Ron said, rolling his eyes. "We can just travel back in time fifty years and swipe somebody's Prophet and get this whole thing wrapped up."
"Or," Hermione snapped, "we could just go to the library—"
"What, has it got a time vortex, then?"
"Honestly, Ron!" Hermione banged her fist on her knee. For good measure, Harriet smacked Ron lightly on the arm. "Thank you, Harriet." Fixing Ron with a beady, McGonagall-like gaze, she said forcefully, "There are old Daily Prophets, hundreds of them, going back decades. Whoever was expelled and whoever was," she swallowed, "killed, it would have made headlines. We can start about forty-five years ago—'fifty years' could be just a general—"
She broke off, looking up apprehensively; Harriet and Ron followed suit, but it was only Fred and George. They'd come over to the couches, and now sat down to either side of Ron and Hermione, who book-ended Harriet.
"Rotten way to end Christmas, isn't it?" said Fred.
They all nodded and then fell silent, staring at the fire. It was cheery and bright and warm, unlike them. Harriet felt cold inside. Dumbledore's expression kept haunting her . . . and Nick's slack face . . . Penelope Clearwater's wide, glassy eyes . . .
"Where are Percy and Ginny?" Hermione asked the twins quietly.
"Percy went to see if he could help with that Clearwater girl," George said, while Fred rolled his eyes. It made him look very much like Ron.
"Pompous prat," he said, without enthusiasm. "But it's Ginny we wanted to ask you girls about."
"We think she's up in her dorm, but obviously we can't get up the girls' tower," George added.
"Why not?" Ron said.
"The Founders arranged it that way," Hermione said immediately. "The stairs disappear if one of you tries."
"But you and Harry've been in my dorm loads of times," Ron said.
"Ah, dear, sweet boy," said Fred, putting his hand flat on Ron's head. "But he'll soon learn, won't he, George?"
"That he will, Fred," George said solemnly, ruffling Ron's hair into his eyes as soon as Fred removed his hand. They snickered at the scowl on Ron's face as he shoved his hair back.
"We'll go check on her," Harriet told the twins.
She and Hermione let themselves into the girls' stairwell. It was icy and dark inside; the torches in their brackets on the walls burned like sinister eyes. The diamond-paned windows rattled in the moaning wind, and some snow flecked the floor around them, blown in through the cracks in the masonry.
Their dorm was all the way at the top of the staircase, with the first year girls' one level below. They knocked on the door and listened, but nobody answered.
Harriet pointed at her wand at the glinting brass lock and said, "Alohomora."
Hermione pushed the door open. Empty of all her dorm-mates and their things, Ginny's room looked almost unlived-in. Trunks were gone and dressers bare, there was no light but the fire, and it was cold and silent . . . except for a hitched, whimpering noise that made Harriet's stomach clench.
She and Hermione traded a silent look and then made their way slowly, softly, to the one bed that was occupied. A lump sat upright underneath the covers, rocking back and forth, over and over, whimpering.
Harriet reached out and gently tugged the blankets off. She saw Ginny's red hair, vivid even in the patchy darkness.
Then Ginny rounded on them, her teeth bared in rage and lips pulled back in a snarl, her eyes wild and almost inhuman looking, with a glint Harriet could have sworn was red as blood.
Hermione gasped and grabbed Harriet's arm, but Harriet didn't back away. Her heart beating hard and fast, she stayed where she was, staring into Ginny's strange eyes.
"Ginny?" she said quietly, like she was talking to a frightened animal, because she wasn't sure that she wasn't. "It's Harriet and Hermione."
At first, nothing changed. And then her expression sort of melted, like the lines on her face were running like paint . . . no, they were tears . . . Ginny was staring at them and crying out of wide, terrified eyes, shaking all over like Dobby getting ready to run at Harriet's wardrobe and bash his head on it.
"It's okay," Harriet said, although she had no idea; even though it didn't feel okay at all. Her arm was going numb from where Hermione was gripping it. "Ginny, it's okay."
Ginny let out a sob, and then another, and then she was sobbing so hard her breaths sounded like frogs croaking. Hermione stepped forward and wrapped the blankets around her again, and Harriet lay Ginny's head in her lap. They stayed like that, Harriet and Hermione holding Ginny and looking at each other, wondering why Ginny should cry like her heart was breaking.
Ginny cried herself to sleep. Harriet and Hermione brought her up to their dorm and let her have Parvati's bed. All they told Ron, Fred and George was that Ginny was feeling a bit of a flu or cold or something and just wanted to sleep, but Harriet wasn't sure the boys had been convinced. They'd all noticed how Ginny had been unwell all term.
"I think we should write Mr. and Mrs. Weasley," Hermione whispered as the light from the fire died slowly in the dark. She and Harriet lay tucked up in her bed, Ginny asleep across the aisle. Her face looked distraught and unhappy even as she slept. "Maybe Ginny . . . maybe she should take some time off from Hogwarts for a bit."
"I think it's got something to do with the Chamber of Secrets," Harriet said quietly. "I think the monster, it's hurting her."
"So getting away could only help her," Hermione insisted.
Harriet hadn't told her friends yet what the teachers suspected. She had thought, in fact, about not telling them at all. But in the darkness of her dorm, in this safe, familiar place that smelled of home, like Hogwarts' soap, Parvati's amber perfume and Lavender's rosemary shampoo, and Hermione's books, she felt the urge pressing at her throat. She wanted Hermione to tell her how silly it all was, the way Snape had said Don't be absurd.
So she told Hermione that the teachers thought it was her, the Heir of Slytherin. Pinpricks of light from the fire swam in Hermione's wide, dark eyes. She said nothing from start to finish.
"They can't," she said at last in a hushed voice. "Of course it isn't you. Oh, they can't!"
"But the voice," Harriet whispered, anguished. "How come I can hear that killing voice if nobody else can, if I'm not the Heir of Slytherin?"
"Well, I . . . " Hermione froze. Then she grabbed Harriet by the shoulder, startling her. "Harriet! Oh, I—I think I've just understood something!" She sat up suddenly, pushing off the blankets, breaking a wave icy air over the bed. "I've got to go to the library!"
"Hsst!" Harriet gestured at Ginny, but she was so deeply asleep that she didn't even twitch. "You can't go to the library, it's the middle of the night!"
"We'll wear your dad's Cloak," Hermione said, breathless and quick. "We've got to, Harry, I'll never be able to sleep until I know—"
"Know what?" Harriet asked, as Hermione scrabbled around pulling on her slippers and a dressing gown.
"Slytherin's monster! Harriet, what if it's a giant snake? What if you were hearing Parseltongue? Oh, where's your Cloak? I'll go by myself—in fact, maybe I had better—"
"And get Petrified by a great dirty snake?" Harriet said in a hot whisper. "I don't think so. Hang on, let me find my slippers . . . "
As quietly as they could, they pulled the Cloak out of Harriet's trunk and sneaked out of the dorm. The Fat Lady was passed out with that load of nuns she'd been drinking with earlier, and they were all snoring hugely, their wimples fluttering over their faces.
Through the Cloak, the darkness looked silvery. The corridors were so cold that their breath misted in front of them in ghostly clouds, and the storm pounded and shrieked at the windows. They walked carefully, quietly, even though their slippers didn't make any noise above the wind and rattling glass. It was surely the creepiest walk Harriet had ever taken.
When something moved in the corridor ahead, they both froze like they'd been Petrified and clutched at each other. For a few paralytic moments, they stood like stone statues, hardly daring to breathe . . . and then Professor Sprout came into view, holding her illuminated wand in one hand. She swept its silver-blue light along the walls, to the grumbling of the portraits, and pulled aside a tapestry concealing a staircase to look up there, too. Was she patrolling? Looking for the monster? For more Petrified students?
She moved past them, her wand's light shining on the wall behind Harriet and Hermione's invisible bodies.
"Teachers!" Hermione uttered in a terrified whisper once Sprout had gone.
"We could just wait for morning," Harriet said. "That'd be the sensible thing."
She and Hermione looked at each other.
"I mean, I guess," Harriet said. "I'm not sure I'd know sensible if I met it, really."
"We'll be in such trouble if we're caught," Hermione breathed, the words warm and damp on Harriet's face. "You in particular. I don't know . . . "
"I'm going to the library," Harriet said. "I'm going to find out if Slytherin's monster is a great dirty snake, because then I can tell it to bugger off back to its rotten Chamber of bloody Secrets. But I'll take you back to the tower if you'd like—"
"Oh, shut up," Hermione said, squeezing her hand. They set off again, gripping each other by the hand now, on the watch for monsters as well as teachers.
"But if we see Professor Snape," Harriet whispered, "we're going around."
Harriet had been in the library once before at night, and she liked it just as little this time around. Books at night were creepy.
They kept the Cloak on as they thumbed through the card catalog, Hermione looking up magical snakes, and as they crept into the Magical Creatures section. Hermione levitated an ancient-looking, smelly book off a top shelf and smuggled it beneath the Cloak, where they spread it out on the floor and read it by the light of their wands.
"This is it!" she whispered triumphantly. "'Of all the fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it' . . . it all fits, Harry!"
"Okay," Harriet said, "so I'm the only one who can hear its voice—except the Heir of Slytherin—because I can talk to snakes—like the Heir of Slytherin . . . but how could I hear a giant monster snake and not see it?"
"Salazar Slytherin could have built tunnels for it to get around," Hermione said, frowning in the white-blue wand-light. "A normal-sized snake could probably use the plumbing, but a Basilisk is supposed to be huge."
She pointed to a picture that the writer had helpfully penned in. The Basilisk was a snake with the head of an eel and the eyes of a crocodile. Harriet couldn't see how the artist could possibly know what it looked like since the Basilisk's stare killed you immediately.
"But no one's been killed," she said, "only Petrified . . . "
She and Hermione stared at each other, and then they both said, "The water on the floor."
"Colin had his camera with him," Harriet recalled, remembering the acrid smell. "It was burnt to a crisp inside. He must've looked at the Basilisk through the lens—"
"And Penelope Clearwater must have seen it through Nearly Headless Nick—"
"He looked like he'd been killed twice . . . He must've seen its stare head on . . . "
Hermione clutched the book to her chest. "We've got to tell the teachers," she said breathlessly.
"We can't right now," Harriet said. "They'll know we've been out of bed, and I bet you anything they won't give us awards for it."
"No," Hermione said, worrying her lip. "No, you're right . . . "
"We'll take the book with us and tell them in the morning. The Basilisk's not going anywhere, after all," she said grimly.
Harriet woke up just before dawn to the sound of something scratching. At first, as she lay blinking at the chink of firelight visible through a gap in her drapes, she thought it was a mouse. It was a familiar sound, at any rate. Then she realized it was the sound of a quill on parchment.
"Hermione?" she said, sitting up and pushing her bed hangings aside.
But it wasn't Hermione; it was Ginny, sitting in front of the fire wrapped in blankets, scribbling in a leather book like a diary.
"Harry?" Hermione said sleepily from the bed next to Harriet's. "What are you writing?"
"It's nothing," Ginny said in a funny voice. She stood up, blankets and all, and climbed back into Parvati's bed, jerking the curtains shut behind her.
Hermione and Harriet looked at each other. Then by unspoken agreement they climbed out of bed and dressed shivering in the darkness, pulling on several layers of their warmest clothes. The wind was still hammering at the dorm-room windows. Hermione grabbed the book on the Basilisk, and they let themselves out of the dorm.
"D'you think it's weird how she won't tell us what's wrong?" Harriet whispered as they groped their way down the black, icy stairwell.
"That's what troubles me the most, actually," Hermione said. "I can understand her not telling her brothers, Fred and George tease her so horribly, but we're her friends . . . "
"Maybe she's told the friends in her year something," Harriet said as they reached the common room. A roaring fire was lit in the big hearth, but the flames kept guttering from the gusts of wind coming down the chimney.
Hermione checked her watch. "It's still really early . . . not even dawn yet. I doubt any of the boys are awake—"
She broke off as the portrait hole creaked open. It was Percy. His usually neat hair looked flat and uncombed, and his robes were rumpled, like he'd slept badly in them.
He stopped when he saw them. For a few moments, all was silent staring.
Percy cleared his throat. "You two are up early."
And you're out late, Harriet thought; but of all Ron's brothers that she had met, Percy was the one she was least familiar with, so she just shrugged.
"Yes," Hermione said, after an awkward lag of time had crept past.
Percy's face twitched in what might have been an attempt at a smile, but could just have easily been a grimace. Then he said, "Well . . . "
"Yes," Hermione said again.
"I'll . . . see you two later," Percy said, and escaped into the boys' staircase.
"That was weird," Harriet said. "Where do you suppose he's been?"
"Helping the teachers?" Hermione said, though she sounded like she was suggesting it because she didn't have anything better to offer.
"But he wouldn't need to act all awkward about that . . . "
"No . . . that's what's strange."
"Chalk it up to just one more mystery this year," Harriet said. "What are we at now? Fifty seven?"
"Well, we've been able to explain one, at least," Hermione said, hefting the library book. "Let's find a teacher. Oh!" She said, so suddenly Harriet jumped.
Hermione rooted around inside her jeans' pocket and pulled out a round, brassy compact mirror. "I found this in Lavender's dresser—I thought we could use it to check around corners—for the Basilisk, you know—so that way, if we do see it—"
"—we won't look it in the eye," Harriet finished. "Brilliant."
It was brilliant. But what it meant made her feel as if the icy wind from outside had swept down her throat, through her heart, all the way to her soul.
The storm had hurled so much snow at the castle in the night that if it hadn't been for magic, they'd all have been barricaded inside. Drifts stood ten feet high against the great oak doors fronting the Entrance Hall, and the windows were so crusted with frost that you couldn't see out of them. It was as if the world beyond the walls of the castle had been erased in the night.
Severus hadn't slept. He'd patrolled, suffered an intenser-than-usual attack of insomnia, and gone out patrolling again; he was starving, but his dyspepsia was acting up, so he wouldn't be able to stomach more than weak tea with a bit of dry toast, if he was lucky; and now, when it was so cold even he had to put on extra layers, he had blundered into that fucking ape's arse, Lockhart.
"Shame I wasn't there." Lockhart shook his head with regret. He looked pristine and well-rested, not a disgustingly golden hair out of place, not a wrinkle in his foul robes of a shade of pink that was practically an assault. Severus hadn't seen him out in the corridors last night, not once. "I know the exact curse that could have saved that girl. If only I had been on hand, this whole affair would have been in the bag."
They were alone in the corridor outside the staff room, and Severus knew that nobody was inside. His hand stole toward his wand, almost without his meaning it to—just not entirely. Just one curse . . . Lockhart would never see it coming . . .
"Professor?" said a young girl's voice, very familiar.
Looking down, Severus found himself confronted by the wide, earnest stares of Hermione Granger and Lily's daughter. They were both bulkier than usual in several layers of knobbly sweaters, and Granger was carrying a book that was almost as big as she was.
Lockhart beamed. "If it isn't my best students!" (Granger went pink and looked extremely flattered; Lily's daughter looked annoyed.) "Already hitting the books, eh? That's the ticket! Take it from me, if you want to be where I am—"
"Right," said the girl firmly. "Thank you, sir. We just wanted to ask Professor Snape something. About potions," she added. "Potions homework. That he gave us."
Severus did not react. Lockhart appeared almost taken aback, but he recovered his aplomb quicker than you could say "self-aggrandizing arsehole."
"Right ho, right ho—carry on, carry on," he said merrily. "I think I'll just see to a spot of breakfast. Good morning to you!"
And he flitted off. Severus regretted that he hadn't been able to curse him, but at least he'd buggered off now. Severus could always curse him later, anyway.
"I didn't give you any Potions homework," he said to the girl, who looked embarrassed.
"I just wanted him to go away, sir."
"We, we wanted to tell—someone—something we've found out," Granger said in a high, apprehensive voice, speaking quickly. "The monster, it's a Basilisk, sir, we figured it out last night—"
She had pulled the book open as she spoke and now pushed it into Severus's hands.
"—it was the Basilisk's voice Harriet heard in detention that night—"
"Yes, Miss Granger," he said, glancing down at the spotted, ancient parchment with its faded drawing of a serpent with enormous, slitted eyes, "we already knew that."
"oh," she said in a tiny, mortified voice.
"But then why didn't anyone say anything?" the girl asked indignantly. "Sir," she added when he gave her a cold stare, but her tone was almost aggressive.
Severus had absolutely no intention of telling them that Dumbledore had kept it a secret and Severus had only figured it out yesterday. He hoped to God it had been before a pair of twelve-year-old girls.
"Miss Granger?" he said coldly. "Can you answer Miss Potter's question?"
"Oh . . . " He could see her thinking it over, even though the question obviously bewildered her. But a teacher had asked her for an answer, and she was still smarting from the earlier disappointment, so she was thinking fast. "Not wanting to induce panic, sir?"
"I would've liked to know," the girl said hotly. "I thought I was going mad, hearing that horrible voice out of nowhere, being the only one who could, if I'd known it was a great dirty snake—"
"Am I to take it you heard it more than once, Miss Potter?" Severus asked in a voice that made her indignation flicker into wary guilt.
"Once was enough," she muttered.
She was clearly lying, but she was also staring back at him defiantly.
"That is not a direct answer, Miss Potter."
"That's how we found Mrs Norris," Granger said quickly.
The girl's mouth dropped open. "Hermione!"
He was glad he was holding the book; it gave him something to grip so he wouldn't throttle her. "And you didn't see fit, Miss Potter, to tell anyone?"
"You said you all knew," the girl said, and he couldn't be sure whether she was just being childish or if she honestly meant it. Granger looked like she dearly wanted to leave; she had an embarrassed, awkward expression on her face, like she was witnessing someone doing something lewd.
"That isn't the point," Severus sought refuge in saying, shoving the book back at Granger. "The point is that you withheld information from the Headmaster, and after he asked you a direct question. Thirty points from Gryffindor, and be glad it isn't fifty."
He knew he was being nasty, and he wasn't surprised when she went bright red, probably with fury. Granger looked mortified.
"That's—" the girl started; but Granger, apparently feeling that enough damage had been done, grabbed her by the arm.
"Thank you, Professor, we're so sorry, Professor," she gabbled, and dragged the girl away.
"I trust you'll be more honest in future," Severus called after them, knowing, even as he did so, that he was only inducing her not to be.
He heard her bleat a reply, but Granger hustled her around the corner and the exact words were lost.
When he was sure they were gone, he gave into his self-disgust and rubbed his face, only because kicking the wall would only have resulted in a sprained toe. "Nicely done," he said out loud, with the acrimony he usually reserved for Longbottom. "Next time they'll go to Lockhart."
Then he realized that he had let the girl walk off with a Muggle-born, and that whatever he'd told her yesterday, Slytherin's monster—or at least its heir—had proved capable of discerning blood purity and acting accordingly. Cursing himself for a bloody fucking fool, he took off after them. But when he rounded the corner, they were already gone.