Harriet was exhausted and aching. Hermione had to steer her, not just because she'd lost her glasses and could barely see, but because her left ankle throbbed with every step. She held onto Hermione with one hand and the sword with the other, using it like a walking stick.
The portraits sent the word ahead of them, whispering like the wind.
Snape slammed open the door to the Headmaster's office, really slammed it, so hard one of its hinges fell out. Harriet heard Mrs. Weasley's voice, raw and so grief-stricken it couldn't even be happy: "Ginny!"
The blur of Ginny's copper hair flashed across the room, her voice sobbing along with her mother's. Someone was wheezing, "Rowena, Helga and Godric—what's wrong with Miss Potter?" That was Professor McGonagall.
"I lost my glasses," Harriet said, putting out her hand so as not to knock into the furniture.
"A great deal more than that seems to have happened! Severus, what—?"
"Where the sodding fuck is Pomfrey?" Snape snarled.
"Severus Snape!"
"I'm right behind you," said Madam Pomfrey's indignant voice, "there's no need for that kind of language in front of the children! Yes, Professor, I see her—Miss Potter, what have you been doing?"
"It's all my fa-a-ult," Ginny sobbed.
"See Ginny first," Harriet protested, "she's been ill all term—"
"Ginny, what happened?" cried Mrs. Weasley.
"It, it was this," Hermione said in a high-pitched voice, and several people started babbling at once.
Someone grabbed Harriet by the elbow—Snape—and pushed her into a chair. "Will you do your job?" he snarled at Madam Pomfrey, who huffed and started passing her wand over Harriet. The colors of the spells flashed over her, the prickle of the diagnostic magic.
"What happened to your glasses, Miss Potter?" she asked as she worked.
"I lost them falling down the pipe into the Chamber of Secrets," Harriet said honestly.
"What happened to her arm?" Snape demanded.
Pomfrey took Harriet's elbow gently and peeled back her bloody, punctured sleeve. "There's blood, but I don't see a wound."
"The Basilisk fang stuck me there," Harriet said. "But Fawkes—"
Something exploded in the room, something made of glass. Several people shrieked.
"What in Godric's name!" yelped Professor McGonagall.
"Severus," Dumbledore said over the cacophony, "a word, if you please?"
"Oh, no you don't—" Snape snarled; but a second later, he was gone, and Harriet was left at her chair with just Madam Pomfrey.
Pomfrey muttered, "I worry about that man's—" But then she abruptly stopped and went back to work, as if she hadn't meant for Harriet to hear her.
She repaired Harriet's ankle, knitted her cuts, soothed her bruises, and then switched Harriet for Ginny and herself for Professor McGonagall, who transfigured Harriet a pair of glasses. When Harriet slipped them on, she saw that both Professor Dumbledore and Snape were absent.
No wonder it's so quiet now, she thought.
Hermione was holding the golden sword, reading it, apparently. Harriet marveled at this level of devotion to words, that Hermione looked for something to read even on the hilt of a sword.
"Harriet—look." She turned and beckoned Harriet closer, and held the sword hilt up. "Can you read through those glasses? Look at this."
Harriet peered down at the sword's dirty blade. Underneath the hilt, someone had etched in weird Anglo-Saxon letters, which seemed to read. . .
"Does that say Godric Gryffindor?" she asked slowly.
"That is Gryffindor's sword."
Professor Dumbledore's voice made them both jump. He'd returned silently from wherever he'd gone, minus Snape, and was smiling broadly beneath the acres of his beard.
Harriet couldn't find anything to say. Professor McGonagall walked over to stand next to them, looking down at the sword with raised eyebrows.
"Well, the hat was Gryffindor's, you see." Professor Dumbledore waved toward the patched and filthy hat that was sitting upright on his desk, looking like it was watching them all. "Gryffindor charmed his sword to appear to any Gryffindor who had true need of it."
Professor McGonagall's hand brushed Harriet's shoulder, squeezing gently, and then pulled away.
The Sword of Gryffindor, Harriet thought as Hermione laid it delicately on the desk. Harriet didn't have the heart to mention that even throwing it off the Astronomy Tower probably wouldn't so much as ding it, since it had gone through the roof of a Basilisk's mouth and come out only a little dirty.
Gryffindor's sword had come to her when she was fighting Slytherin's monster, whom she'd been able to understand when no one else in the castle could. The Sorting Hat, who'd given her Gryffindor's Sword, had wanted to put her in Slytherin before any other House.
What did all of that mean?
"There will be no punishment," Professor Dumbledore said, turning to the Weasleys with a smile. "Older and wiser wizards than Ginevra have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort."
Mrs. Weasley shivered at the name; Ginny's eyes leaked tears. Mr. Weasley, looking tired and older than Harriet had seen him last summer, put his arm around his daughter's shoulder.
At that moment, Harriet envied Ginny more than anyone else in the world.
When Dumbledore opened the door to his sitting-room, into which he'd hustled and locked him, Severus turned on him with a snarl of rage that rattled the walls themselves.
"You knew where the entrance was all along, didn't you? Didn't you? Just like you knew it was a fucking Basilisk—"
"Severus," Dumbledore began.
"When I mentioned a girl's bathroom, you deflected me!" He was shouting, but he couldn't bring his voice down; he didn't want to, he didn't give a fuck if anyone was in the room beyond, although Dumbledore had surely anticipated that this would be Severus's reaction and would have sent them all away. "And a girl's bathroom is exactly where the goddamn fucking entrance was, you knew all along! How could you have—Jesus fucking Christ—I thought you cared what happened to that girl, to—"
"Severus," Dumbledore said, "I came in here because I thought you might be interested to know that Harriet has just left to give Tom Riddle's diary back to Lucius Malfoy."
Severus stared at him. Dumbledore stared back.
Severus shoved him out of the way and took off running.
Leaving—he'd be heading for the exit—he'd take the main route, it's the easiest—
The inside of his mind was like a shattered mirror, shards of piercing brightness refracting light and darkness. Find Lucius—find the girl—find them find them—
"You shall not hurt Harriet Potter!" cried a shrill, reedy voice, unseen but close at hand. The air in the icy corridor imploded with the force of magic released; he caught the sound of it impacting a body, and then the crash of the body falling into something hard—several times.
Rounding the corner, he found Lucius's house-elf standing in front of the girl with his finger outstretched, gazing fiercely down at something at the bottom of the stairs. The girl looked stunned but proud, joyous.
Alive.
"You shall go now," the elf said fiercely to the thing at the bottom of the stairs—Lucius, probably. "You shall leave and not hurt Harriet Potter!"
She glanced up at Severus as he bore down on her, her eyes widening behind a pair of unfamiliar spectacles.
"We were just—" she blurted.
He gripped her arm so hard that she winced. He felt dizzy, not from the running but from the panic. He couldn't seem to stop panting.
"Harriet Potter!" the elf squealed.
"Shut up—" (She made a tiny noise in the back of her throat, a noise that sounded like pain. He needed to let go of her arm but he couldn't.) "You will get back to your Tower. NOW."
She nodded jerkily. He pushed her away from him; she stumbled but righted herself, and if she rubbed at her arm he never saw; she waited until she'd rounded the corner.
When he turned toward the elf, it gave him a potent, reproachful look but then cracked away, vanishing from the hall. At the foot of the stairs, Lucius had picked himself up, knocking at his cloak, flinging back his mussed hair from his face.
"That miserable half-blood brat," he snarled. "She's just cost me my servant! The cretinous little—what are you doing?" he asked blankly, staring at the tip of Severus's wand.
"I'm showing you the price of ambition," Severus whispered.
It was almost strange how quickly life returned to normal, or at least as normal as it ever got at Hogwarts.
For abandoning his job, Gildeory Lockhart was sacked. A scathing article appeared in the Daily Prophet a couple of weeks later (Investigative Reporter, Rita Skeeter, reporting), claiming that all of Lockhart's books were forgeries, with scads of notes in his handwriting (looking partially burnt) printed alongside. There was even some hinting that Lockhart would be brought up on charges. Hermione looked mortified and Snape very smug. The other professors got funny expressions on their faces whenever they heard anyone talking about it, like they were trying not to smile. (Most of the female population at Hogwarts ranged from heartbroken to indignant.)
Professor Dumbledore took over the abandoned DADA classes. Some days he would lead the students around the school, teaching them about its defenses. When he weather warmed, he brought them outside, sat them in the grass and told them stories about the Founders. He spun for Harriet's class legends about the Sword of Gryffindor, which they all crowded round in awe, and guided them through learning the Disarming Spell. Harriet got top marks.
Colin, Mrs Norris and Penelope Clearwater remained Petrified until May, since the Mandrakes had to grow up enough for harvesting; but Madam Pomfrey assured everyone that being Petrified was just like sleeping for a long time. Harriet hoped they didn't have nightmares of giant eyes. It would be terrible not to be able to wake up from frightening dreams. At least she could wake up from hers.
On Valentine's Day, Harriet received so many cards and so much chocolate that the huge pile buried her at the Gryffindor table up to her waist. Pansy Parkinson sent her a bouquet of posies that would have squirted Stinksap at whoever tried to smell them, but it got squashed by a ten-pound chocolate cake decorated with iced sugar socks, sent up from the kitchens by Dobby.
Professor Dumbledore told no one that Ginny Weasley had been possessed by the spirit of Tom Riddle, or that Lucius Malfoy was the reason it had happened; instead, he blamed the whole thing solely on Voldemort. After spending a month with her parents in Romania, visiting her brother Charlie, Ginny returned to school looking much better, but she was horribly tense around Harriet. Remembering Riddle's taunting, Harriet figured it was from fear of what Riddle might have told her. She tried to get Ginny alone to tell her not to worry, but whenever Ginny saw her coming she would go bright red and escape into a passel of students who were crowding near to hear, for the eighty millionth time, the story of Slytherin's Basilisk and the Sword of Gryffindor.
Hermione suggested writing her a letter, so Harriet did. At least, she tried. After writing Ginny she sort of dried up, chewing on her quill and then pausing to spit out feathers.
"Just write what you feel," Hermione said.
So Harriet finally wrote:
Ginny that Riddle was the greatest git who ever lived. Well we can tell, cause he turned into Voldemort. I don't let it worry me, anything he said, and anything he told you is total rubbish to. I'm still your friend if you want to be.
It wasn't super eloquent, but Harriet knew that she wasn't, either. She sneaked glances at Ginny the next morning at breakfast, watching her unwrap the letter, clearly confused, and then go as red as her hair as she read it.
That afternoon, Ginny walked resolutely up to Harriet after Charms, threw her arms around her neck, and burst into tears. Hermione and Ron helped Harriet pull her away from the rest of the curious class, because Ginny was sobbing I'm sorry, I'm so sorry over and over.
"It was horrible," she told Harriet when she'd calmed down. Her eyelashes were all stuck together from her tears and she looked miserable. "The first time he started writing back, I thought it was so lucky, that someone had left a magic diary in one of my second-hand spellbooks and forgot about it . . . he was so—so understanding. Everything I told him, even things I was afraid or ashamed of, he made me feel brave and clever for thinking . . . " More tears leaked out of her eyes.
"Professor Dumbledore said Riddle could always charm the people he needed to," Harriet said quietly, holding onto Ginny's hand.
Ginny wiped her nose with her sleeve, and Harriet made a note to herself to start carrying handkerchiefs. "Then I started having these black-outs . . . hours would disappear . . . I'd remember opening the diary and starting to write to Tom, and then just a blankness . . . there'd be red stuff on my hands and feathers on my robes, and I'd be with people I didn't remember meeting up . . . I wanted to tell you and Hermione what was going on, but Tom made me knock over that suit of armor on you and after you nearly died he said that if I didn't do what he wanted, if I told you, told anyone, he'd make me kill you next time . . . "
It was a long, sad talk, but things became a bit better after that. Ginny and Harriet returned to being friends. Fred and George weren't teasing Ginny so much anymore, although Ginny voiced doubts to Harriet and Hermione that it would last for very long.
And last, but not least, Snape was back to ignoring Harriet. He swept past her cauldron in class without pausing, handed back her homework without speaking to her, never forced her to stay behind the others, and had entirely stopped shadowing her through the school. It was just like first year when, of all his students, Harriet alone had seemed perfectly invisible.
"I suppose he was trying to protect you," Hermione said when Harriet noted this discrepancy. "He did only start following you after Hallowe'en, when Mrs Norris was attacked . . . "
"Huh," Harriet said, even though, as she reviewed Snape's behavior (unpleasant as it was, its impression lingered) she could see that Hermione was right. "He's got a funny way of showing he cares."
"I suppose it's about that debt you told me about, the one to your father," Hermione said, turning a page in a book Professor Dumbledore had recommended to them during last class, Tales of Beadle the Bard. Harriet liked the one about the Three Brothers because there was an Invisibility Cloak in it. And sometimes she dreamed about holding the Resurrection Stone, and her Mum would come back to her and tell her how proud she was, how much she missed her, how much she loved her, how she was sorry she'd ever had to go away.
"Snape took care of that last year, though," Harriet pointed out to Hermione, shaking herself out of these reflections.
Hermione shrugged slightly. "Apparently Professor Snape doesn't think so."
"'Cause he didn't stop Quirrell or Riddle from hurting me, not directly . . . " Harriet mused. "I guess he's waiting until he saves me from a runaway train or something."
It was a little mystery of its own, but happily it was the only one left. And as the days grew longer and golden and the mandrakes ripened, Harriet soon forgot about that one, last mystery entirely.
Severus watched the light play on the enormous, egg-sized ruby set into the hilt of Gryffindor's sword.
"Unbelievably ostentatious," he said, knowing that Dumbledore had come at last into the study. It wasn't a suitable opening for the first words he had spoken directly to Dumbledore since he'd screamed his voice out after the Chamber of Secrets was closed, but it was the only one he had.
That had been four months ago. Another spring was gilding the castle now. Severus had not forgiven Dumbledore for withholding about the Basilisk and the Chamber and he was quite certain he never would. He wondered if this was how Lily had felt after he'd called her that word, though the enormity of this offense—of deliberately withholding information about a monster, for some purpose Severus could barely fathom—outclassed the damage caused by any words, even most that could ever be attached to spells. He had gone over and over it in his mind, and yet he was quite certain: Dumbledore had known the location of the Chamber's entrance all along, and he had not only concealed it, he had done his best to prevent anyone else from discovering it. It was so beyond anything Severus would have thought of him, and no matter how long he wrestled with it, he couldn't quite believe the danger Dumbledore's actions had posed to all the students, which surely the Headmaster cared about. Surely. Could anyone be capable of the level of hypocrisy that would entail?
The answer must lie with the girl. Had Dumbledore thought he was protecting her? He had suspected her of being the Heir, or of at least being controlled by the Dark Lord. And yet he had not stepped in to help, except, it appeared, by telling his phoenix to go to her aid. Why?
It was a question Severus's own mind had no answer to. The events of last year had disgusted him.
You disgust me
But he was wearied of having no one to talk to all winter. He and Minerva were too quarrelsome, especially with the Potter girl on the Quidditch team. She didn't believe Dumbledore had known all along about the Chamber. Her perception of the Headmaster's wheels within wheels didn't encompass that. Severus almost couldn't blame her, though her opinions on the subject had him not speaking to her, either.
"Well, it is the Sword of Godric Gryffindor," Dumbledore replied easily. As if Severus hadn't been snubbing him since the New Year and only turned up now, in his office with no warning. And even though Severus wasn't facing him, the twinkle in his voice was audible.
"It's all been very fitting," Severus said. The first spring sunlight of the year was shining through the crystal bottles in Dumbledore's cabinet, refracting on the many rubies in the sword's golden hilt, so that it seemed full of bright little eyes, all watching him. "The legendary Sword of Gryffindor to triumph over Slytherin's monster."
"Yes . . . " Dumbledore said pensively. "And yet, I wonder . . . "
Severus waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. He sensed Dumbledore's quiet determination to stay quiet until Severus gave up the pretense of half-ignoring him. Normally he would have pushed it, just to be contrary, but he found he just didn't have the energy today to be so emphatically himself. This year had exhausted him with caring, even the warped form of it that was all he was capable of. He'd gone without it for so long.
When he turned, he found Dumbledore sitting next to the window, looking out on the grounds below. Late snow lay scattered across the green, and the light gleamed white-gold where it touched anything reflective.
"Well, Headmaster?" Severus said coldly. "What have you been wondering?"
"It's been such a delight to teach the children again, you know," Dumbledore said, apropos of nothing. "I wish you'd permit yourself to enjoy it more, Severus."
"I'd have to like people to enjoy it."
"Then I might wish you'd let yourself like people more." But Dumbledore was smiling. "I've been teaching them about the castle, you see, about the Founders . . . and all of that, as well as what happened in the Chamber, has got me thinking . . . "
He trailed off again, his eyes drifting back to the window. For the first time, Severus wondered if his hesitation was something other than manipulation; if Dumbledore was really this distracted by his own thoughts. After a hundred years, he might well be.
"It was the Sorting Hat itself who told me," Dumbledore said, still watching something out the window. "It was, oh, many years ago. It's not a story it circulates often, it said, because nobody wishes to hear it . . . but it truly seems that all those many, many lifetimes ago, when Slytherin left the school, he left the other three brokenhearted. He and Gryffindor were once the best of friends, after all. The Founders were never quite the same when they weren't Four."
Severus had heard this story before, in fact. He had gone often to the nave in the Slytherin common room, where Salazar was said to have prayed, and curled up in the cold, hard little space, where the light shone green in the lake water through the shape of a Christian cross, thinking of Lily and wondering why, after a thousand years, it was still impossible for magic and Muggle, Slytherin and Gryffindor, to be one. He had sometimes comforted himself with the knowledge that no one had achieved it, so the failure was not entirely his own; and sometimes despised himself because he ought to have done it, he ought to have been great enough to overcome it. He had meant to be great enough. Greater than Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor both.
The dreams of youth always died when the kingdom of childhood fell apart.
"If that's the case," Severus heard himself say, "then Slytherin probably regretted leaving."
Dumbledore smiled at him, as if Severus had said something delightful, not depressing. "Yes. That is exactly what I've been thinking."
The gentle, comforting sounds of Dumbledore's office settled around them in the absence of their voices. Severus watched Dumbledore gaze out the window, that argent light glazing his half-moon spectacles, and wondered how many of the rumors of his youth were true.
"That doesn't, however, account for the Basilisk," Severus said eventually.
"Maybe not," Dumbledore murmured. "But do we really know for certain that Slytherin wished for it to kill all Muggle-born students? We only know that Tom Riddle did. It was subject to his whims, in the end, just like poor Ginny Weasley. It's not particularly to Slytherin's discredit that he nursed a monstrous pet . . . After all, our own, dear, gentle Hagrid has been known to raise dragons, man-eating spiders, and three-headed dogs." He laughed. "To name a few."
" . . . Wait," Severus said flatly. "Are you—Albus Dumbledore, the greatest modern patron of Gryffindor—trying to say you don't think Salazar Slytherin was such a bad bloke after all?"
Dumbledore shrugged lightly, still smiling. "I am saying . . . that the truth is much less tidy than legends would have us believe . . . less tidy, and harder to live with . . . but more precious, for all that. Wouldn't you prefer a truth where Slytherin was not a monster?"
"You don't prefer one truth over the other," Severus said, his heart twisting up inside him, that thing he didn't have anymore. It wasn't supposed to hurt when it was gone. "You have to take what you get. Things are either true or they aren't."
"Are they?" The sunlight turned the blue of Dumbledore's eyes as clear as water. "I'm not so sure. But after a thousand years, I think we can all find our truths just the way we like them. In the end, it is what's here"—he touched his long fingers to his chest—"that matters."
"Of course," Severus said. The sneer came so easily, he wasn't sure whether it was from long practice, habit, or sincerity. "The language of the heart. I don't speak that, or Parseltongue."
But Dumbledore just smiled at him, his eyes bright and clear.
End of the Chamber of Secrets