Remus was bartending in a seedy joint when Albus Dumbledore walked back into his life.
Even at the time, the irony of the situation amused him on some level.
The bar was nameless, simply referred to as the bar, perhaps because it was the only bar that most of its patrons could frequent south of the Hog's Head—and even the Hog's Head was more respectable than the bar. Remus had always felt the Hog's Head gained the inherent respectability of a village, even if only a veneer; in a village you watched yourself because everyone knew everyone's business and Strangers' Business was always no good. But in London, nobody knew anybody's business because they didn't want anyone knowing theirs; and instead of the chill of suspicion, the bar was thick with the miasma of mind-your-own-fucking-business. These were people whom the wizarding world would chew up and spit out, and sometimes had already. It was the only place where Remus could hold the same job for any length of time, which he managed through a careful construction of lies. Darius, who ran the place, was so used to his employees disappearing for a time without a word, only to turn up again later, that Remus's planned absences and habit of coming to work bruised and battered didn't register as anything suspicious, as long as Remus varied the pattern. He had a few people to help him; people whom he otherwise might not have dealt with, but he'd survived long enough not only to outlive a lot of ethical squeamishness, but to completely forget any projected lists of people whom he might never want to know.
He already knew most of them, anyway.
The night Albus returned, Remus was suffering the society of one of his comrades-in-crime, Mundungus Fletcher. Or suffering the odor, at least. He was very thankful the lore about werewolves having a heightened sense of smell was bollocks.
"'Ere now," Fletcher said, trying to lean across the bar but failing because he'd been drinking cheap firewhiskey for the last hour, the kind that took the roof off your mouth and shriveled your tongue, "really think you ort to let me, mate, oy do."
"Mundungus," Remus said pleasantly, trying not to breathe, "I am not letting you cover for me on the full moon. You'll pocket all the cash in the till and drink all the stock under the bar before Darius opens, and he'll find you passed out with your pockets stuffed with Galleons and haul you off to Petty Azkaban."
"Righ' you are, mate," Fletcher said, grinning loosely. Then, without any noticeable change in expression, he gently toppled backwards off his bar stool and didn't get back up.
Remus dumped his glass in the sink, mopped the firewhiskey puddles off the pitted wooden bar top, and dropped a few of his own Knuts into the till to pay, because he knew Mundungus had paid for that last glass with rocks he'd painted himself.
"Are you just going to leave him there, then?" asked a young woman curiously. At least, her voice was young, though her face wasn't, nor her hair, which straggled around her shoulders in a candyfloss-colored snarl. Her eyes made her look like she was about to walk off in two separate directions. She appeared to be hag so hideous her warts were probably growing their own warts, but something about her made Remus suspect she was playing dress-up with a really good glamor.
"He could use the rest," Remus said, not smiling because a smile to the wrong person here had once been responsible for a pair of singed eyebrows, and that was only because he'd ducked in time. "Would you mind terribly kicking him behind the bar? He'll sleep better back here, where there's only me to trod on him."
The hag grinned, showing several snaggle teeth. "Would I mind terribly, or would I kick him terribly?"
"Yes."
"Oh, ha," she said, rather too good-naturedly for a hag. But she took out a wand and Levitated Fletcher over the bar, dropping him none-too-gently on Remus's side. Fletcher snorted in his sleep, then rolled over and started snoring, rattling the row of bottles nearest the ground.
"Cheers," Remus said. "What'll it be, then?"
"None of whatever he was drinking," said the friendly hag. "I could smell the fumes out on the street. Can you make a Vermouth carnassis?"
It was an old-fashioned drink, the cocktail favored by pure-blood ladies of a certain class and age. Unlike the teeth and the crooked eyes, which were going stereotypically overboard, the drink was incongruous.
"Is that your order?" he asked, raising his eyebrows in mock-skepticism. "Or are you just asking?"
"Oh, go on," she said, her grin showing the snaggle teeth again. "Stop being smart and just make the bloody drink."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, trying to remember how Andromeda Tonks had mixed it, that year when Sirius had taken Remus and James to meet her.
"Tell me how accurate that is," he said, setting the glass down in front of the hag, who'd lurched onto a bar stool, "or isn't."
"It's totally dreadful," she said, smacking her lips, "so I'd say you'd got it right."
He didn't bother asking why she'd asked for it if she didn't like it. Instead, he folded his arms against the bar and leaned in. "A word of advice?" he said lowly.
She leaned in, seemingly in spite of herself. "What?" she asked, just as lowly, her cocked eyes moving from his eyes to his mouth (or at least one of them did, anyway).
"Three snaggle teeth are overdoing it just a bit," he whispered.
She stared at him. Then she ran her tongue over her teeth. "How—"
"It just seemed like a disguise," he said apologetically.
She sighed. "Bugger. Look—it's okay if you say no, but can you act like you think I'm the most super bloody convincing hag you've ever met?"
"If you'd like," he said, bemused.
"I'm in a test," she stage-whispered.
"Say no more," he said, straightening.
It was in that lull of silence that he first noticed a portion of the bar near the door had gone strangely quiet. By the time Remus noticed, silence was rippling across the whole room. When he looked up to see who—or what, in a place like this—had come in, he saw Albus Dumbledore standing in the doorway, smiling at him, resplendent in robes of magenta and gold. The cheap spell on the lamp outside shone orange on the edge of his hat and waves of silver-white hair.
"Albus," Remus said blankly, for they hadn't spoken in over ten years.
The hag turned on her bar stool and choked.
"Remus." Dumbledore drew up to the bar and reached across it to shake Remus's hand with both of his, clasping Remus by the forearm in the old way of the Romans, though Remus knew he wasn't looking for a weapon. "It's ever so good to see you."
Dumbledore didn't say he was looking well, an omission which Remus appreciated because he knew he wasn't. He looked at least ten, fifteen years older than his contemporaries, weary and ill.
"It's good to see you, too," Remus said. He wasn't sure if it was, but neither did he know if it wasn't. He let a wry smile sketch across his face. Dumbledore, at least, wouldn't try to hex it off. "Shocking, too, I must admit."
"I would have written," Dumbledore said, "but as I intended to come anyway, it seemed unnecessary work for one of our poor Hogwarts owls—and Fawkes is, regrettably, undergoing the intermediate stages of sexual maturity. I'm afraid I can't rely on him whenever he does that."
Remus couldn't help laughing. "He reminds me of—" But then he could help laughing, because he never spoke that name anymore.
He glanced at the hag. She seemed paralyzed. When Dumbledore turned an inquisitive smile on her, she gurgled and scuttled away, tripping on her bar stool.
"Friend of yours?" he asked.
"Just a customer." From the floor, Mundungus let out an ear-ripping snore.
"Then that is what I shall be," Dumbledore said cheerfully, and he seated himself on a stool at the corner of the bar. "I don't suppose you've any oak matured mead stashed back there?"
"You and the hag have just asked for the most sophisticated drinks this bar has ever served," Remus said. "I think Darius actually pours turpentine into old firewhiskey bottles."
"Well," Dumbledore smiled, "fortune favors the bold."
Fortune favors those with superior numbers and tactics, Remus thought, but he didn't say it. He generally kept his cynical side tightly under wraps. What werewolf would people rather tolerate: a genial one with no apparent bitterness, or a pessimistic cynic who hobnobbed with criminals and societal dregs?
Dumbledore accepted the firewhiskey and drank half the glass without a blink. "Potent," he said thoughtfully. "I'm not sure even Aberforth serves anything this strong."
"It's been known to knock teeth loose with one sip," Remus said. "You're tougher than most, Albus."
Dumbledore smiled. "I would love for this to be a social call," he said, obviously meaning that it wasn't. "There is a great deal for us to catch up on, and you deserve more than the cursory visit this must, regrettably, be. But I have very much to do, and quickly."
Remus simply nodded along. Dumbledore folded his hands on the bar and looked at him for a moment in silence, not hesitating, but as if he was preparing the both of them for what he was going to say. Remus's heart did not speed up with nervousness, his palms did not dampen, he did not fidget. He'd known from the first sight of Dumbledore's face that he could only be here for something serious.
"Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban," Dumbledore said.
Remus stared at him for a few moments. Then his heart did speed up. His hands did feel cold, his stomach weighted with lead . . . but not with fear. Not with despair, either. Those emotions were paralytic. This . . . was something else.
"Good God," he said, reverting, as he always did in tense moments, to his mother's Muggle expressions. "How?"
"That, we have not been able to ascertain," Dumbledore said, no twinkle in his eye or smile on his face. "Nor his whereabouts. Remus. You know I have no wish to cast suspicion on you, nor any ulterior motive of malice, but is there any chance you know what means he used to escape or where he might be?"
Remus was so numb he could only shake his head—numb all over his skin, but his blood and his heart were beating hard.
Dumbledore nodded once. "I thought not. Which brings me to the second, though related, reason for my visit. I want to offer you the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor at Hogwarts."
Remus's mouth actually fell open.
"I do not do so lightly," Dumbledore said, holding up a hand, as if to forestall whatever objections Remus would raise; but Remus was too stunned to say a damn thing. "For your own sake—the curse upon it is very real. You will only serve three terms at the most, and several of its occupants have terminated their posts and their lives simultaneously. But I have a powerful reason to suspect that Sirius Black's target is his own goddaughter, and if that is the case, I need you on hand."
"You think Sirius broke out of Azkaban to kill Harriet," Remus repeated. For a moment, he pictured James pulling her away from the fireplace, the day she learned to crawl. She had crawled for the first time when it was just the two of them in the house, and James had been so worried Lily would be upset for missing it that they had never told anyone and had pretended, when she crawled again that evening, that it was for the first time.
"I can think of no other explanation," Dumbledore said. And if a brain like Dumbledore's could find only that possibility, who was Remus to argue?
It had never seemed right, what Sirius had done. It had never seemed like something he would do. It still didn't, twelve years later, even after Remus was so used to thinking his name with a twist of bitterness in his heart that if they cut him open, they'd probably find that organ tied in a knot. Yet he had done it, and Remus had been so very wrong about him that who was he to say whether anything Sirius did needed to make sense?
He'd be mad anyway, after twelve years in Azkaban.
"Perhaps he just wanted his freedom, after all this time," he said slowly.
"It is possible," Dumbledore acknowledged. "But why now? I feel the timing is significant, though I have not yet seen how. And according to the dementors," a darkness of emotion rippled across his face, "he was heard saying She's at Hogwarts in his sleep."
Remus scrubbed a hand across his face. "Good God," he said again. "Of course I'll take it. The Defense position, I mean."
"Good." Dumbledore's smile returned and he took Remus's hand, holding it as if in a shake, but not pumping it. "It relieves a weight from my mind. Oh—I meant to add a further incentive, but consider it a bonus for your estimable good nature. Have you heard of the Wolfsbane potion? Very recently released to the public—"
"Incredibly expensive and virtually impossible to procure?" Remus finished. He'd been following the preliminary findings since they'd been released eight years ago. "It sounds vaguely familiar, I think."
"Well." Dumbledore's eyes sparkled. "I happen to have—somewhat under my thumb, if you'll pardon the expression and keep it to yourself—one of the foremost Potions experts in Britain on staff, and have managed to oblige him to brew it. If it interests you, of course."
Remus's head literally spun. "Merlin—yes, it does, of course. Albus—that's incredible, I don't know what to—"
"Well, seeing as you've already accepted the position," Dumbledore said cheerfully, "you've thanked me in the best way you can. Thank you, my boy. You've done me—and the children, of course—a great service." He stood; Remus remained swirling in disbelief. "You may come to Hogwarts whenever you are ready, though of course by 1st September."
"Of course," Remus parroted dizzily. "Albus—Headmaster—thank you."
They shook hands again. That time, Dumbledore held both his hand and his gaze. "If you remember anything that might help us find Black," he said, "or uncover his motives, share them with me. Even if it is in the dead of the night. I found, once I passed a hundred, that I hardly need much sleep at all anymore."
"Of course," Remus said again. And again, "Thank you."
Dumbledore smiled once more, and then he was gone, the door snicking softly shut behind him.
Remus did not know how he spent the next few minutes or even hours. He went through the motions of his nightly routine almost without feeling them, his head and heart full to bursting. The last time he'd seen Harriet—Lily and James's funeral—the last time he'd seen Sirius—Peter's mother sobbing as she held the box containing all that was left of her son, his finger. The moonlight shining on Prongs's antlers, when they'd all transformed for the first time on a night when Remus was human, so he could see. Wormtail cleaning his whiskers. Padfoot. . .
CRASH. He'd dropped a bottle of Darius's best firewhiskey on the floor, but he was too preoccupied to care that it was probably eating through the concrete.
Perhaps the reason they hadn't found Sirius yet was because he could turn into a dog, and nobody alive knew that except for Remus and Sirius himself.
Harriet awoke the morning of her birthday the same way she'd done for the past three weeks, snuggled beneath the blankets on Hermione's trundle bed. The sound of Hermione's sleeping breath, soft and familiar, threaded through the room, and her nightlight—a globe with a lamp inside—glowed dimly in the predawn light gleaming past the curtains.
Harriet let her eyes adjust in the darkness until she could see the things she knew were there: the photographs of the Earth as seen from space, the movie poster for Labyrinth; the bookcases crammed with Hermione's favorite books, since she had so many she had to pack away several boxes for storing in the cellar every six months; the old record player with her dad's favorite albums stacked next to it; the burbling fish tank. It was the sort of room Harriet had always wanted, when she was lying on her cot in the cupboard under the stairs, staring at the grille in the door, listening to the rattle of the telly and Aunt Petunia's nasally voice gossiping on the phone.
Since leaving them three weeks ago, she hadn't communicated with the Dursleys at all, though before she'd escaped Privet Prison she'd overheard Aunt Petunia talking on the phone with Aunt Marge, Uncle Vernon's sister (and so not really Harriet's aunt, thank God; she couldn't have handled being blood-related to both Aunt Petunia and Aunt Marge), about a long visit at the end of July. Staying at Hermione's and renting old movies was such a better birthday present, it almost didn't bare comparing. The last time Aunt Marge had come over, her bulldog had bit Harriet by the hair and dragged her down the stairs.
Bitch. And Harriet didn't mean the dog.
Now she could hear the sound of water vibrating through the walls. Jean was always up first in the mornings, using the bathroom for a good half hour while the rest of the house slept—except for Harriet, who always woke up with the thrumming of the pipes.
For her birthday Hermione's parents had made plans to be home from the office early (they worked on Saturday) to take the girls out to dinner and a play. Harriet had never been to a play before. Before coming to the Grangers, she hadn't been out in public much at all. Even at the Weasleys', Mrs. Weasley hadn't liked for them to spend too much time in the Muggle village, which was too foreign and strange to her. She worried about cars leaping off the street and hitting them, the way Uncle Vernon worried about Harriet's wand going off and hexing them.
Her stomach burning with early morning hunger, Harriet rolled quietly out of bed and padded to the kitchen, savoring the feeling of being able to move freely and feed herself whenever she wanted, even if it was just cornflakes and toast.
When she got to the kitchen, she saw an unfamiliar owl perched on the sill outside the window over the sink, watching her impatiently through bright yellow eyes, as if to say, Well it took you long enough.
School letters, she realized.
She couldn't reach the window clasp over the sink; she was still too bloody short. Resigned to her extreme non-height, at least today, on her sure-to-be brilliant birthday, she pushed one of the kitchen table chairs over to the sink and climbed up on it to let the owl in.
It dropped two fat envelopes on the table, spurned her feeble offer of cornflakes for a snack, and with one last burning, reproachful look, winged out the window again.
"Sorry!" she called after it.
"Goodness," said Jean's voice from the kitchen doorway. Harriet pulled her head back into the kitchen to find Jean staring after the owl with a fading look of alarm. "I'm sure you find me silly," she said, "but that still takes getting used to."
"Wizards feel the same way about phones," she said. "Mrs. Weasley can't stand the way they ring."
Jean smiled briefly, which was the only way she ever seemed to smile, and held out a plain white paper envelope. "For yours and Hermione's shopping today." Then she leant down and brushed a kiss across Harriet's cheek. "Happy birthday, dear."
Harriet's face burned, and a lump formed in her throat. Jean straightened up and fastened on her earrings. Unlike her daughter, she had dark brown hair that she wore cut slightly above her shoulders; about the length of Harriet's own hair, but so much tidier.
Jean whisked herself away, leaving Harriet to open her letter. It seemed thicker than usual this year. There was the usual booklist, the standard greeting letter . . . and something else.
Hogsmeade Visit Permission Slip.
That was right—third years got to visit Hogsmeade. Harriet read it over, wondering why her stomach felt like it was sinking, why she didn't feel excited . . . and then, as clear as if someone had pinged their fingernail against a crystal glass, she knew:
She'd have to ask Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon to sign it. And what were the chances of that?
Folding the permission slip, she stuffed it halfheartedly back into the envelope with the other papers. The only way she'd have the tiniest hope was to make Aunt Petunia think Snape wouldn't like it if she didn't sign it, and she wasn't sure how much weight that threat could keep carrying. Still, she'd do it, if it would mean not getting left alone at Hogwarts while everyone else went off and had fun.
Cereal in hand, Harriet drifted into the parlor that looked onto the Grangers' little lawn, where a high brick wall and tall hedges blocked the house from the street, and turned the volume down on the telly very low before switching on the set.
The blank screen filled with the image of a corpse with blank, staring eyes. For a moment she was confused; Daniel always watched the evening news, so the telly was always set to that channel, but why were they showing a dead person? This looked more like a B-horror film.
". . .escaped convict, Sirius Black. . ." murmured the newscaster's subdued voice. "The public is warned that Black is armed and extremely dangerous. . ."
Oh. He wasn't dead; it was just a still photograph. Well, he looked dead—his skin was waxy and the color of earthworms. Starving dogs on the street had cleaner hair. His hung down from his bony skull to his elbows in a matted tangle like thick, ancient cobwebs. Harriet was horrified. What prison had he been in? He looked like he'd been locked in a hole in the ground and starved—for at least a decade.
"The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries will announce today . . ." the newscaster was saying, as Sirius Black's image disappeared from the screen.
Harriet clicked over to another channel, but she wasn't really watching the cartoons as she ate her cereal. She kept seeing Black's dead-looking face. What had he done?
"Thought I heard the telly," said Daniel's cheerful, easygoing voice, making Harriet jump slightly. "Anything good on this morning? Or are they being as bloody-mindedly dreary as ever?"
Jean and Daniel headed off to work within the next half-hour, while Hermione crept sleepily out of her room, rubbing at her eyes. As soon as she'd awakened properly, however, she was filled with brisk instructions for the rest of the day.
"We'll need to get the clothes first, of course—we'll start at Marks and Spencer. And shoes, too—depending on how long shopping for outfits takes, we might have to break for lunch and then tackle the shoes—"
Harriet let her go on planning and just concentrated on trying to get the tangles out of her misbehaving hair. She didn't care what they did or in what order they did it, and organizing made Hermione feel better.
"This is already the best birthday ever," Harriet told Hermione as she gathered up her handbag and checked obsessively to make sure she'd got her wallet and housekeys and Oyster Card. "And we haven't even done anything except eat breakfast."
"Well, you did spend your last birthday locked up with bars on the window and padlocks on the door. This one was bound to look up," Hermione said, pressing her lips together. It was weird how often she and her mum did that—nice, but also painful, like an electric shock in Harriet's blood. Whenever they did it, Harriet wondered what she and her mum would have done that was just the same.
"Well," Hermione said, reaching for the doorknob, "let's g—"
The doorbell chimed.
They looked at the door, then at each other. Hermione's mum had been quite firm about their not answering the door when she or Daniel wasn't at home.
The bell chimed again. The girls stood quite still, looking at each other, not saying a word.
Then someone banged on the door.
Harriet stood on her tiptoes ("Harry!" Hermione whispered) and squinted through the peephole.
"It's Professor Snape," she hissed.
Hermione dropped her bag.
"And Professor Dumbledore."
"What did you do?" Hermione squeaked.
"if either of you is in there, you had better open this bloody door," said Snape's voice through the wood.
Harriet pulled the door open in time to hear Professor Dumbledore saying, "You would make a very interesting door-to-door salesman, Sever—ah, good morning." He smiled brilliantly down at Harriet and Hermione, who were peering around the door frame. "It's a pleasure to see you two. May we come in?"
"Yes, of course, sir," Hermione said, in a robotic way.
Harriet pulled the door all the way open, and Professor Dumbledore led the way inside. He was wearing an electric blue velvet suit with pants cut like bellbottoms. It was as astounding as anything Lockhart had ever worn, especially with Dumbledore's hair and beard. Snape, behind him, was all in black, but other than that looked relatively normal. For himself, anyway, or those artsy Muggles you saw round London. Together he and Professor Dumbledore looked like they should be sitting in a cafe, smoking and drinking coffee and arguing about Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (something Harriet had seen Hermione's dad reading).
Harriet looked at the hard lines on Snape's face, his cold, biting eyes, and couldn't imagine him ever fancying anyone, let alone her mum.
Dumbledore glanced around the house, which was dim with all its lights off, the only sound the ticking of the clock in the foyer. "Are your parents at home, Miss Granger?"
"No, sir," Hermione said, clutching her bag to her chest. "They've gone to work. Did—did you need to speak to them?"
Snape made a soft noise in the back of his throat but said nothing. Harriet didn't know what that noise meant, but it sounded scornful. She frowned. As if her displeasure was a signal for his sixth sense, he looked away from the wall photograph he'd been glaring at and turned the glare on her, his severe black eyebrows meeting over the beaky bridge of his nose.
You're nothing but a copy of his spoilt princess, Aunt Petunia had said. But if that was the truth, then Snape couldn't really have liked her mum, because that wasn't the expression of someone who thought nice things about you.
"I will, eventually," Dumbledore said, "but at present, I want to speak to you, Harriet."
"Me?" Harriet blurted. Snape rolled his eyes. Harriet glared at him but spoke to Professor Dumbledore: "Why me, sir?"
"I think the point of this visit is to explain that," Snape said with all his usual charm.
Dumbledore looked mildly at him, but that one glance made Snape subside (irritably).
"The—the parlor's through here," Hermione said in a high-pitched voice, pointing to the left.
"Thank you, Miss Granger," Dumbledore said pleasantly, bowing slightly for her to lead the way. She did, still clutching her bag and looking terrified to have two teachers in her house.
Dumbledore took the sofa Hermione's trembling finger pointed to, hitching up the legs of his trousers as he sat. Snape stationed himself behind the couch with his arms crossed. Harriet thought, Good cop, bad cop.
"Won't you both sit?" Dumbledore smiled at the girls, who perched together on the end of Daniel's Barcalounger. But no sooner had Hermione lowered herself to the chair than she sprung back up.
"Tea!" she cried rigidly.
"Sit down, Miss Granger," Snape snapped.
"Tea would be lovely, my dear," Dumbledore said, ignoring him. "Thank you."
Hermione scuttled out of the room, going the long way round so she wouldn't have to bypass Snape. They heard her banging about distantly in the kitchen and spilling a whole cabinet full of pots across the floor, by the sound of things.
"I hope your holiday has been going well," Dumbledore said to Harriet.
"For God's sake," Snape muttered under his breath.
"It's been terrific, sir," Harriet said, glaring at Snape again.
"I'm delighted." Dumbledore smiled. "I wonder, do you watch the news at all?"
Harriet had no idea what that had to do with anything, but surely Professor Dumbledore hadn't come visiting the Grangers—with Snape—to ask about her holiday or talk about the news. He must be working up to something else. "Dr. Granger—that's Hermione's dad—he watches it every evening, sir."
"I wonder if you saw the recent segment about Sirius Black? The escaped convict."
Harriet nodded slowly. "I saw it this morning."
"Then there is not quite so much to explain."
Harriet glanced from Dumbledore to Snape, who was watching the headmaster now, his black eyes fierce and intent.
"In brief, Harriet—I regret to say we believe that Sirius Black has escaped Azkaban in order to find you."
Harriet blinked. She blinked again. She looked from Dumbledore's calm, grave face (what little she could see between the beard and hair) to Snape's. His expression was ferocious, his gaunt features crystallized with something like . . . hatred. He wasn't glaring at Dumbledore, she realized, but staring at some point in mid-air, the way she'd seen people do when they were looking into the past.
The thought I thought he was only a Muggle flitted through her mind and out the other side, as quickly as the Hogwarts' owl had come and gone. She thought of Jean's surprised face and thought, Yes, that's how it feels.
"Find me?" she repeated, completely at sea. "What . . . what for?"
"Twelve years ago," Dumbledore said, quiet and solemn, "on Hallowe'en night, when you lost your parents and Voldemort was defeated"—
(Harriet saw Snape's hands spasm where they were clenched on his arms, and his face became, if possible, even more hate-filled.)
—"Sirius Black, believed to be in a rage at his master's loss, murdered thirteen people on a street full of witnesses—twelve Muggles, one wizard. For that, and for the many crimes he is believed to have committed as an agent of Voldemort, he was sentenced to Azkaban prison, where he remained until he escaped three nights ago."
Harriet rubbed at her breastbone. Her chest felt oddly tight. She saw Black's corpse-like face, his matted hair, his dead eyes. She'd wondered what he'd done. Now she knew.
"So he's coming after me because he's, what, angry I defeated Voldemort?" She suddenly felt very tired, like she'd been awake for too long. It was only nine in the morning.
"That is our belief, yes," Dumbledore said. His voice was calm and measured; Harriet wondered if this was how doctors talked to patients who had fatal diseases. "Naturally, Black has not been very communicative, but from things he was . . . overheard . . . saying during his final days in prison, we are fairly confident we have the right of it. Accordingly, we must take steps."
"Steps?"
"I am afraid," Dumbledore said, his voice gentling, "that you can no longer remain with the Grangers."
Harriet sat up straight, like someone had dumped a bucket of icewater down her spine. The dread certainly felt that cold.
"It is not safe," Dumbledore said, still gentle.
"Please don't send me back to the Dursleys." It came out sounding, not pitiful like she'd feared, but tight and upset.
"That was not my intention," Dumbledore said, holding up his hand palm-out in a calm down gesture. Snape moved slightly, but by the time Harriet's eyes flicked across him, he was motionless again. "Instead, I am inviting you to come early to Hogwarts."
She digested this offer. She knew that under other circumstances she might have been, maybe even should have been, thrilled, just as she knew that this wasn't really an offer offer.
"It isn't an invitation," Snape said, as if unable to restrain himself. Now he was glaring at a knick-knack on Jean's mantle, a doe with her fawn.
"Severus," was all Dumbledore said. Snape turned slightly to the side, his lips moving like he wanted to curse.
"Harriet?" Dumbledore asked her in a kind voice. But for the first time, Harriet wasn't glad to hear that kindness, and she didn't want to see him anymore. She wished he would go, take Snape with him and leave her to enjoy her birthday, without the shadow of Voldemort creeping across her life.
"I don't—it's not like I have a choice, do I?" she said to her knees.
"We always have a choice," Dumbledore said.
That wasn't really helpful. Especially since she didn't think she did.
"Professor Dumbledore?"
Dumbledore turned on the couch to look over its back at Hermione, who had come through the door that joined onto the dining room, which led to the kitchen. She was holding a tray with her mother's turquoise teapot and four matching cups, and she looked pale but resolute.
"Yes, Miss Granger?" Dumbledore said, appearing entirely interested in what she had to say.
Pressing her lips together, Hermione walked determinedly around the sofa, but instead of setting down her tea tray, she stood holding it, as if gave her strength to talk.
"Tonight, we, we all had plans to go out for dinner and see a play," she said, her voice steady enough that Harriet almost couldn't hear the waver. The cups on the tray tinkled, though, when her hands shook. "It would be a sh-shame if we didn't—after all, it's Harriet's birthday. Could—could Harriet stay one more night, and go to Hogwarts tomorrow morning?"
Dumbledore studied her, his fingers trailing along the edge of his beard. Snape had turned to stare at him incredulously.
"You surely aren't going to—" he started, but Dumbledore held up his hand again and Snape swallowed the rest of what he'd been about to say, although the taste of the unsaid words seemed to twist his stomach.
"Yes," Dumbledore said, smiling from Hermione to Harriet. "I think that sounds an excellent idea. Harriet ought to be able to enjoy her birthday celebrations."
Snape made a choking noise. Harriet wondered if he was swallowing his tongue. She barely resisted the urge to give him a gloating look. He looked so furious that he might have killed her if she did.
"Thank you, Professor," she said to Dumbledore.
"Not at all, my dear. I'm sorry to have to cut your holiday short at all. Thank you, Miss Granger," he said cordially, accepting the tea cup she handed him. "Two sugars, please. Severus, do stop looming and have a seat on this very comfortable couch."
Dumbledore stayed to drink his tea, drawing Harriet and Hermione into conversation about—something. When he got up to leave, Harriet wasn't sure what they'd been talking about, although they'd been chatting the whole time. Well, Snape hadn't. He'd sat crunched into the corner of the couch, glaring into his cup, and whenever Dumbledore had said something to him, he'd just transferred the glare from the cup to Dumbledore.
"Thank you for the tea, Miss Granger. I'm afraid I have much to do or I would linger for longer. Professor Snape will stay to explain the situation to your parents."
Snape's sour expression was totally lacking in surprise, but Harriet couldn't stop herself from staring at Hermione in horror, and seeing that horror mirrored exactly in her friend's face.
"Y-yes, sir," Hermione stammered. "They—they might not be home—for a while."
Snape rubbed at his forehead, like he'd been dreading that.
"Severus will stay however long it takes," Dumbledore replied. Snape's answering expression said, Don't do me any bloody favors.
Then Dumbledore left. Hermione stared at Snape. Snape did not look at either of them.
"Well?" he said, staring at a potted fern next to the telly. "Haven't you something to be getting on with?"
"We were going shopping," Harriet said. "We've got things to buy for tonight."
"Where are your parents?" Snape asked Hermione, making it sound like they were terrible people for not being there.
"At work, sir."
"It's Saturday."
"They work a half day," Hermione explained timidly. "They'll—they'll be home at lunchtime." Emboldened a little by Snape's not biting her head off immediately, she went on, "Harriet and I have been out loads of times by ourselves—"
"There wasn't an escaped convict after you then," Snape said coldly.
The silence that followed this was sharp and fragile.
"I'll go call my parents," Hermione said in a high, thin voice.
The Grangers were clearly bewildered and quietly mistrustful. Harriet didn't blame them. She felt that Professor Dumbledore would have been much better at instilling confidence, because Snape clearly didn't give a damn if he didn't. It could not have been plainer that he intended to bring Harriet to Hogwarts willy nilly. Whether the Grangers liked or understood it didn't make any difference to him.
"Well," Jean said, reading over the letter from Professor Dumbledore. "I appreciate your time, Professor Snape, but I believe we are fully capable of looking after Harriet until tomorrow."
Snape's distasteful expression didn't flicker, and he didn't budge.
"The letter says you may leave Harriet to us," Jean said, not quailing the way people normally did when Snape stared at them like that. "She'll be perfectly safe."
Snape still didn't move. Daniel cleared his throat.
"Would you like to read it?" Jean asked with icily precise politeness.
"No, thank you," said Snape in a tone that wasn't anything like grateful. "I can imagine what it says." He stared at Harriet and Hermione as though they were unpleasant potions ingredients (although he never looked at potions ingredients, however unpleasant, as disgustedly as he looked at his students). "You will get your wands and keep them on you."
"But what about—" Hermione said, and then she went bright red and clamped her lips together when Snape's eyes flashed dangerously.
"Thank you, Professor," Jean said, not sounding at all grateful either. In fact, she sounded like she wanted him out of her house. She stood as she said it, in case the tone wasn't clear enough. "I'll see you to the door."
"I'm not so mentally incompetent that I can't find it myself," Snape said. With one last glare at Harriet, he strode out of the room.
"So," Daniel said once the front door had shut, just short of a slam. "That's your teacher, is it?"
Once out of the Muggle house, Severus didn't Apparate. He Disillusioned himself and settled in to wait, blending into the bricks and the grass. He'd watch the goddamn play with them, if that's what it took. Muggle protection wasn't worth a paper boat in a flood.
People were so fucking stupid, wizard or Muggle. Nobody ever learned a thing. Life must go on, they said, but it wasn't courage so much as thick-headedness. Selfishness.
He didn't blame the girl so much as he blamed everyone else.
He blamed Dumbledore most of all.