The next morning, Professor Dumbledore visited Harriet in her own room, conjuring a rich and enormous breakfast on a curly-footed golden table he magicked into existence.
"I imagine you'd like to be free of these walls for a little while," he said as Harriet was overwhelmed by a spread of croissants, kippers, sausages, fried tomatoes and eggs, and stacks of jellied toast. Snape had always fed her some variation of hot cereal or muesli. "Growing bodies need nourishment as well as fresh air."
Harriet thought of the drizzling rain, the thick mist and the Dementors, which she still hadn't seen except in the pages of those ancient books. Still, she said, "Yes, sir," because she was bored, and somehow she knew Snape wasn't going to play Scrabble with her again.
"Splendid, splendid." Professor Dumbledore beamed. "What do you say to a spot of flying after breakfast?"
The words Did Professor Snape say that was okay? pushed to the tip of her tongue, but of course she didn't say them. She wasn't even sure if she'd have been joking or not. It wasn't that she thought Professor Dumbledore would make her stay inside if Snape didn't like her going out; it was that she didn't want Snape to rupture anything.
"Shall we meet in the Entrance Hall in, oh, an hour? Would that suit you, my dear?"
"Yes, sir," Harriet said again, through a jangle of confusion. Why did she need to meet him to go flying?
He left her to finish her breakfast. She hurried through it so she could finish yesterday's letter to Hermione before she went out. She'd thought about writing after her aborted game of Scrabble, but found she somehow didn't want to. Now, though, she was full of questions and writing them to Hermione (who would be sure to answer every single one) made her feel more centered. It was like Hermione's zeal for organizing.
By the time she'd wrapped up the letter and hunted through the mess she'd made of her room looking for her broom, she was feeling much more cheerful, even a little excited. She hadn't been flying since term had ended. Maybe if she tried casting the Patronus right after she'd flown, she would be able to recall that feeling of freedom strong enough to make it.
Snape's door was shut, no light behind it. Maybe he was in his lab.
When she trooped upstairs to the Entrance Hall, she found Professor Dumbledore deep in conversation with an unfamiliar man. The Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher? she wondered, looking hard at him.
He didn't look like much, to be honest, but in all fairness neither did she. In fact, she looked like less than not-much. At least this man was fully grown, however thin and lined, with silver-flecked brown hair. An air of tiredness hung about him, and his robes were shabby and patched (but Harriet had made do all her life with clothes that Aunt Petunia begrudgingly bought her from Oxfam, which were always hideously ugly and never fit properly, and had led to Hermione's parents giving her several sets of nice clothes for her birthday).
As she stepped up into the Hall, the Probably Defense Professor looked over at her, and Harriet thought he maybe wasn't so tired after all. His expression was alert, his eyes intelligent, and although Lavender and Parvati would never in a million years build a magazine cut-out shrine to him, she thought there was something rather pleasant about him.
"Ah," Professor Dumbledore said, as though deeply content to see her again. "Exactly punctual. Harriet, allow me to introduce Professor Lupin, your Defense professor for this year. Professor, though she scarcely needs an introduction, this is Harriet Potter."
She'd much rather Professor Dumbledore had left out any allusions to her fame; it was embarrassing, and she wasn't able to say, "Pleased to meet you," as well as she would have without it.
But Professor Lupin only smiled, almost like they were old friends, and said, "The pleasure's mine," and shook her hand. It probably should have made her feel silly, but it didn't. In fact, she thought it was the best introuction she'd had since coming into a world where she was extremely, bewilderingly, undeservedly famous. It made her feel quite grown up.
"Excellent, quite excellent." Professor Dumbledore smiled somewhere in his beard, like they were two favorite grandchildren he'd finally gotten to meet each other. "I hope it doesn't inconvenience you too terribly, Harriet my dear, but I thought it best if Professor Lupin kept you company while you're outside—Hogwarts being what it must, this year."
Sirius Black. Dementors. Harriet's fledgling contentment evaporated like cotton candy in a blast furnace. "Yes, sir," she said. She supposed it didn't make much sense as a reply, but it was all she had.
"I hope you don't mind my not flying with you," Professor Lupin said, smiling down at her. "I have a history of nearly breaking my neck every time I get on a broom."
"No, it's fine," Harriet said. She hadn't expected to have any kind of company, let alone the airborne sort, and flying with a teacher would have been too odd.
"Then I'll leave you two to it. I hope you have a delightful time," Professor Dumbledore said to her, and then swept away.
Harriet felt awkward, standing there alone with a stranger, and one who was a teacher on top of that. But if Professor Lupin picked up on it, he didn't show her. Instead, he smiled again and opened one of the front doors.
"I'm afraid I can only spare the morning," he said as they stepped out onto the front steps, which were slick with foggy humidity, the air solid in Harriet's lungs. "Though we might not want to give it more in this." He peered into the hazy distance, where the mist rolling in from the lake blotted out the trees again today, just as they had done yesterday, just as they'd done since she got here two weeks ago. He glanced down at her, faintly smiling. "I'll leave it to you to decide. It's your outing, after all."
Harriet only nodded, not quite knowing how to talk to him. Maybe it was because she was used to talking to Snape, who bossed her around. She usually had something to reply to that.
Professor Lupin put out his palm, and breathed out once into his hand, long and slow. Blue flames sprouted up with tiny shapes inside them, flickering and leaping over each other. At least, that's what they looked like, though she'd hadn't seen or heard of such a thing before.
"What's that?" she asked, leaning forward to get a better look.
"Friendfyre," he said, in such a way that she could hear the old-fashioned spelling. "It creates warmth but doesn't burn—not painfully, I mean. If I were to drop it in the grass, the grass wouldn't even singe. And it'll stay lit until I cast the charm to put it out." He held it out to her, and passed his fingers through it for emphasis. "See?"
Harriet put her hand against the flames. They were intensely warm, but not uncomfortable, and tickled her finger when she poked it along the top. "Wicked."
"The only problem is, they must be held," Professor Lupin said as they walked down the steps, circling across the damp grass toward the Quidditch pitch. "They wither almost to nothing if you try and put them in a jar."
"What are the shapes in them?" Harriet peered closer. "They look like faces."
"Sprites," Professor Lupin said. "This fire is technically sentient—in a magical sense."
"Could I learn it?" Harriet asked, sure he would surely say it was too advanced for her.
But he only smiled. "You could always try."
Professor Lupin sat in the stands with his Friendfyre cupped in his hands while Harriet dived and looped around the goal rings. She wished she had a Snitch to play with.
Even without other teammates, without any competitors, any game, it felt wonderful to fly again. She was sure it felt as wonderful this time as it had the first, when she'd risen into the air so naturally she thought, This is magic, this right here.
She couldn't have flown at the Grangers', she told herself. It didn't make up, though, for having such a miserably lonely holiday. Maybe this wasn't strong enough a feeling to cast a Patronus, then.
Still, she was going to try. She'd try to cast the Patronus now, up here, with the memory of flying so recent in her heart. She wouldn't think about being alone; she would do what Snape had said, and put it out of her mind. Just think about flying.
Closing her eyes, she tried to push every thought away, tried to make her mind a blank space. Taking a deep breath, she went into a shallow dive, pulled up, and shot off. The feeling of soaring filled her; she imagined it was a tangible thing, one she could wrap around her and turn into magic.
And then an image bled into her mind: the image of a streaming black cloak, a flesh-rotting hand curling in a skeletal claw.
A feeling of cold—of fear—pulsed through her. She banked again. Were they near? She'd still never seen one. Snape said they haunted the gates. She scanned over the dark tops of the forest, looking for a scrap of cloak drifting through the midst, bringing the cold and the sound. . . the sound of. . .
But what she saw instead was curl of smoke rising out of Hagrid's chimney.
With a whoop of excitement, she shot toward his hut.
When she landed on the damp, squelchy grass outside his house, she found he was out. His door was unlocked, but she didn't see him anywhere inside or out in his garden. And it wasn't like there were many things around he could hide behind.
"Hagrid?" she called over the sloping, cheerfully untidy rows of carrots and cabbages, all entirely Hagrid-less. There was no answer, not even from the raven that watched her haughtily from its perch on the scarecrow.
Must be grounds-keeping, she thought, and had just swung her leg back over the broom to go looking for him when she saw the dog.
It was the biggest dog she'd ever seen—or at least the tallest. Though it was almost as tall as she was, weight-wise it was all shaggy, matted black fur and bones. It looked starved half to death, like it had lived a lot worse than sleeping in a cupboard.
Even ignoring its zombie-dog appearance, though, it was surprising to see a stray on Hogwarts' grounds; she never had before. In fact, Fang was the only dog she'd ever seen at school. Loads of cats and owls and even a couple of toads, but never a dog. She'd heard of Crups, but she'd thought they were much smaller and had forked tails.
The dog had been standing on the edge of the forest where the trees met the grounds when she first saw it, but now it folded back its ears and lay down, putting its head on its front paws, and made a whimpering, whining noise. It even wagged its tail—weakly, barely more than a twitch, but it was clearly intended for a wag.
"You look hungry," Harriet said, and then felt stupid, even though it was a dog and it couldn't understand her; of course it looked hungry. Hadn't she just been thinking it looked starved into zombiehood?
It whined again.
"Guess I'll have to start carrying steak in my pocket." She dismounted her broom again and stepped over Hagrid's cabbages carefully toward the dog. It didn't seem mad or dangerous, though. In fact, it wag-twitched its tail some more, and when she was close enough that she could have petted it, it rolled onto his side, which is when she saw it was a he, definitely.
"Poor doggy." Harriet scratched behind his ears. They were caked with dirt. "I wonder if Hagrid's got something you can—what?"
The dog had been lying peacefully, flopping his tail; but suddenly he scrambled up, a growl rumbling the back of his throat, his ears flattening, and then he scrambled back into the underbrush and was gone.
Harriet was stumped for a few moments, until she heard the crunch of someone approaching, and looked up to see Professor Lupin pelting across the green.
Oh, crap. She'd completely forgotten.
"I'm sorry!" she said before he'd even skidded to a halt, kicking up mud. "I saw Hagrid's chimney smoking and I just forgot, I'm sorry."
"Well, it got my heart rate up," he said, hardly out of breath at all. "All the same, I'd rather run with you than after you."
"I'm sorry," she repeated, thinking that Snape would've given her fifty detentions and probably sworn at her.
"There's no harm done—but let's not repeat the experiment." He checked his wristwatch. "We've still got a bit longer we can stay out here before I have to meet Severus. . ."
"You're meeting Professor Snape?" she asked curiously. "What for?"
Snape would have said something like, "When that's your business, I'll let you know." It was a very nosy question, and she almost apologized and took it back; but she was so astonished and curious that she didn't really want to.
But Professor Lupin only said easily, "He's brewing something for me. One of the conditions of my employment. I hear this job has a very high turnover rate." His eyes were bright with amusement, but Harriet had developed an instinct for telling when grown-ups were not being entirely truthful, and that instinct was whispering to her now. But she only nodded, because it had been a very nosy question. When she considered it, she thought she was lucky he hadn't been offended.
"We can go inside if you need to see him now," she said by way of a peace offering.
"It's not for a—"
But then he stopped, turning his head to the side and narrowing his eyes. In a movement so slight she almost didn't see him do it, he had his wand in his hand. Heartbeat kicking up, she groped in her pocket for hers, looking the same direction he was. She could hear it too, now—a crashing, from something very large moving through the trees—
Hagrid appeared from the forest on the other side of his vegetable patch, carrying what looked like a bouquet of dead ferrets (eurgh). Professor Lupin exhaled, so quietly Harriet almost didn't hear.
"Harry!" Hagrid said happily, knocking leaves and twigs out of his beard and hair. "Professer Dumbledore told me yeh was here early." He glanced at Professor Lupin, and then did a double-take. "Remus Lupin? S'tha' you?"
"Last I checked," Professor Lupin said, sounding amused. "I won't ask the same of you. I don't think you've changed at all. Even the beard looks the same."
"A bit more tangled, 's'all," Hagrid said, and leaned over to clap Professor Lupin on the back. He almost knocked him face-first into the cabbages. Just the fact that Professor Lupin managed to stay upright told Harriet he was a lot stronger than he looked. Her back winced in sympathy just watching.
"What were you doing in the forest?" Harriet asked curiously. "With. . . " She eyed the ferrets. "Have you got another—pet?"
"Ahh, well. . . " Hagrid looked a bit shifty but pleased with himself. He toyed with the end of his beard. "No harm in tellin' yeh, I s'pose, though I wanted it ter be a surprise—but I s'pose it'll be a surprise anyhow. I'm gonna be yer new Care of Magical Creatures professer."
"What?" Harriet yelped as a grin started. "That's fantastic!" She threw her arms around his waist, or what she could reach of it, which wasn't much. Hagrid patted her on the back, which made her sink ankle-deep in the mushy ground. "No wonder you sent me a biting book! But what were you doing in the forest?"
"Preparin' for me first lesson. You want ter see 'em?"
"Yeah!"
"What—what are they?" Harriet said, not sure whether to be awed or nervous.
"Hippogriffs," Hagrid said happily.
"Oh, my," said Professor Lupin, stopping some feet back from the paddock Hagrid had built on the other end of the wide clearing.
There were at least half a dozen of them, each one a cross between an eagle and some kind of horse, and all different colors. Their eyes, though, were all the same: blazing orange-gold, like a tiger's, with fierce, slitted pupils. They had to turn their heads to look at her and Hagrid, since their eyes were on either side of their faces, but one fiery golden eye was enough to see at once. Harriet thought they were surely the proudest creatures she'd ever met.
"Aren' they beautiful?" Hagrid said, gazing adoringly at the pack of hippogriffs, much the same way he'd looked at Norbert. Harriet supposed they were quite beautiful in a dangerous way, the way wild tigers were beautiful.
She glanced at Professor Lupin to see what he thought of them, but he merely looked thoughtful. He was standing exactly where he'd stopped on first seeing what was in the paddock, some twenty feet back at least.
"Wan' ter say hello?" Hagrid said, looking so eager that Harriet couldn't say no, even though she didn't really want to say yes. Snape would be pleased to know she did have some instincts of self-preservation.
"I'll wait here," Professor Lupin said mildly. Hagrid turned to look at him in surprise, and then something in his face—what little of it was visible between beard and hair—changed.
"Righ'," he said, nodding, suddenly serious. "S'a good idea."
A dozen more nosy questions crowded into Harriet's brain, but she let them go. Professor Lupin didn't look scared, but sometimes you couldn't tell. Maybe he was allergic.
In their paddock, the hippogriffs tossed their heads, looking immeasurably proud.
Reaching over the gate, Hagrid unlocked the paddock and shuffled in, motioning her along. "Now," he said, "the thing ter known about hippogriffs is tha' they're proud. You got ter earn their respect or they'll—well, see the claws?"
Harriet certainly did. They were talons longer than her hand. She swallowed. Snape would've grabbed her by the scruff of her jacket and dragged her off before letting her within fifty feet of a single claw.
"Not poisoned or anythin'," Hagrid said, "but they bite deep. So yer want to be careful."
"Yes," Harriet said feelingly.
"The thing ter do is bow. Look 'im in the eye—don' look away, makes yeh seem untrustworthy, an' they don' like that. Then yeh wait till they bow back. When they do, it's safe ter get closer."
"And . . . if they don't?"
"Well—yeh've got good reflexes," Hagrid said. "Here, let's try with Buckbeak."
Remus stood back against the trees, a spell on the tip of his wand to drag Harriet back if the hippogriffs seemed in any way ruffled. She looked nervous but determined—to go forward, and not to show any nervousness. Lily would probably hex his head on backwards for allowing her into that paddock. James, too. Once when Sirius had accidentally dropped her on the bed, James had just about had a conniption.
They'd certainly hex you for keeping quiet about Sirius, Conscience said with cold disgust. It still hadn't forgiven him for writing Albus three letters and not a single line about a big, black dog.
At half past eleven, Remus left Harriet stroking Buckbeack's feathers and headed back to the castle for his meeting with Severus. He was positive that Dumbledore would approve of Hagrid as a bodyguard. Human spells had very little effect on part-giants, and although Hagrid could feel Dementors, he could also theoretically rip one in half with his bare hands. Besides, if Sirius had enough wits to escape from Azkaban, he was unlikely to attack Harriet in the company of a half-giant and a herd of hippogriffs.
Still, he sent his Patronus on to Dumbledore to report where he'd left Harriet, before descending into the shadowed chill of the dungeons.
Years ago, the Marauders had decided the dungeons were a perfect fit for anyone creepy enough to be Sorted into Slytherin. It was stranger to see a Slytherin in broad daylight than to catch them skulking where it was dark and twisty and gave you the collywobbles. Naturally, the Marauders had enjoyed going where it was dark and twisty and gave them the collywobbles, but they were Gryffindors, magical purveyors of mischief; it was an adventure, not a place where they'd belonged. That had been the thrill: along with the possibility of crossing paths with a Slytherin and fighting your way free of evil. They hadn't even cared too much when the dungeons proved unmappable by any spell, remaining a mostly blank place on the map, except for the top corridor where the Potions classroom and professor's office lay.
Sometimes Remus longed for the naïve simplicity of those days, when every good thing had seemed possible and bad things came only from the enemy. Knowing better was one lesson in growing up: a moment when you realized it was better to stay young.
The dungeons were somehow still eerie. He could tell they were chilly, though his permanently elevated body temperature meant he only felt the dampness in the air, not the cold. His way was lit by flickering torches, their wavering light creating an ebb and flow of shadow, and no matter where he turned, he heard the intermittent drip . . . drip . . . of water.
"You took your time," was Snape's genial greeting when Remus knocked on his laboratory's open door.
Ah, yes: Snape.
"I don't remember the dungeons as well as I used to," Remus said, smiling because he knew it would annoy Snape. It certainly had at the gates, and Snape's temper patterns had always been too predictable. "I'm quite sure I've never been down this way before." He looked around the array of cauldrons, all neatly in a row and smoking above magical fires that glowed an eerie green. "You haven't got a mad scientist streak, have you?"
"Stop trying to be clever," Snape said, "or witty, or charming, or whatever that is, and," he levitated a beaker at Remus so sharply, it almost hit him between the eyes, "swallow this."
"Thanks, I'd love a drink," Remus said under his breath, though from the way Snape's glare intensified, he must have the hearing of an ocelot.
Unfortunately, Remus breathed in as he went to down the beaker, and almost dropped it when his whole body revolted against the smell. "Good Lord, what's in here?"
"The Wolfsbane, idiot," Snape said. "I need to see if you've an allergic reaction."
"Does vomiting count?" Remus asked plainly.
"Not from the smell or the taste. Only if it goes down and comes back up later. Drink it or I'll force it down you. I haven't got all day."
"Cheers." Remus held his nose and chugged. It did almost come back up. He was sure his esophagus shuddered. "God," he said hoarsely, wanting to pull out his tongue and scrub it. But now that the gunk was down, and though he felt queasy, it seemed to be staying down.
He opened his eyes to see that Snape was eying him as though resigned to the fact that Remus was probably about to spew all over his tidy lair. "Seems to be staying put," Remus said, if a trifle unsteadily.
"Sensations?" Snape said curtly.
"Queasiness," Remus said with feeling.
"Any tingling or numbness?"
Remus thought about it. "My throat feels a bit odd." He massaged it and coughed experimentally. "A kind of tickle. Might be a tingle." He hoped they weren't going to be the last words he ever uttered.
Snape made a note in some kind of moleskin journal. "Anything in your extremities?"
Remus wiggled fingers and toes. "None so far."
Snape made a final scratch in his journal, then shut it on his quill and turned to one of the cauldrons, which he stirred with the air of a man who was going to ignore Remus until he needed something from him again.
"What does it mean?" Remus asked politely. "The tingling. Or the queasiness. Or both, if it comes to that."
"Do you know anything useful about this potion?" Snape asked without turning, and equally without any suggestion in his voice of thinking Remus had a brain.
"If you mean did I read the findings, yes, I did. If you mean did I understand a word of them—only the commas. Everything else was much too specialized for someone of my thorough non-expertise."
Snape glanced at him with patent disgust—from looking at Remus, or from contemplating Potions skills so wretched, perhaps. Remus smiled at him.
"Wolfsbane contains large amounts of aconite," Snape said in a voice of practiced insult. "You do know aconite is a poison, I hope?"
"Mmm," Remus said mildly. "Particularly lethal to werewolves."
"Aconite numbs," Snape said. "Hence the tingling in your throat. Taken internally, it paralyzes the circulatory, respiratory and nervous systems, resulting in death in most warm-blooded animals. This potion," he waved his stirring rod at the row of smoking cauldrons, "is a werewolf sedative. Belby's theory is that if the werewolf is sedated, the human mind can regain control over the body."
Remus massaged his throat, considering.
"The potion is, on its simplest level, a balance of ingredients that allows the aconite to sedate the werewolf without poisoning the body. It has no recorded analgesic qualities. In fact, the werewolves who have participated in the studies—"
"—have said that remaining conscious through the whole transformation is worse than letting the transformation subsume them," Remus finished calmly. "Those studies I did read and understand."
"Yes." Snape's face showed no pity. "I am having to adjust Belby's measurements. The man is an ass. He made no provision for variance in body mass. His tests gave the same dosage of aconite to a hundred pound girl as to a two hundred and eighty pound man. No wonder it took him thirteen years to develop even a provisional prophylactic."
"I'm about one-fifty," Remus supplied. "And . . . I do think I'm about to be ill. You don't have anything I could be sick into, by any chance?"
Two hours later (Snape would only give him one dose per hour), Remus was nursing one of Snape's old, empty cauldrons after a third dose that had come immediately back up, when Snape suddenly barked: "Miss Potter!"
Remus managed not to upset the cauldron when Snape shouted, but then barely managed not to laugh when Harriet appeared in the open doorway covered in what James would have eloquently labeled "yuck."
"Yes?" she asked, looking far less scared of Snape than Remus had felt a couple of times in the last two hours. "Oh, hello," she said to Remus, with a slight smile. She rubbed absently at her cheek, smudging yuck across it.
"What have you been doing?" Snape demanded to know, while Remus, trying not to laugh or be sick again, did not trust himself to respond to her greeting verbally.
"I fell into Hagrid's compost heap," Harriet said with calm dignity.
"I thought you were going flying," Snape said, narrowing his eyes like he'd caught her out at some wrongdoing. Then he transferred the look to Remus. "And I thought it was only so long as he," the obscenity was implicit in the tone, "was with you."
"I was, but then I was helping Hagrid," Harriet said—quite reasonably, Remus thought, considering Snape was acting like, well, himself. He hadn't changed very that much more than Hagrid had, except that now he dressed like Dracula.
"Hagrid's compost heap is at least six feet tall," Snape persisted. "How did you fall into it?"
"I was flying." (Remus choked on a laugh. Snape either didn't hear or was ignoring him in favor of staring unblinkingly at Harriet.) "And I think there's a rotten peach just slid down the back of my jumper. Can I go have a bath now?"
Snape waved her irritably away. "Bye," she said to Remus, and left, grimacing and wiggling the back of her mucky jumper.
Snape stared at the spot where Harriet had stood, his forbidding eyebrows knitted together over the crag of his even more forbidding nose.
"Nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition," Remus murmured.
"Shut up, Lupin," Snape said without looking at him.
"I'm sure Harriet is ruminating on the sins of falling into compost heaps," Remus said reassuringly. "Have you ever had a bit of rotten peach down your shirt? I haven't, but I had a bit of cucumber, once—"
"She was concealing something," Snape said, continuing to eye the spot where Harriet had stood, as if he could still see her there, misbehaving.
Remus blinked. "You think she was lying about falling into the compost pile."
"I said concealing, not lying," Snape said, searing him with a why-are-you-too-criminally-stupid-to-understand-the-nuance look. "And you've gone green. I shan't give you any more today. The aconite has likely built up in your system now. We won't get anywhere else today, or until you recover, so bugger off."
"Now, Severus, surely you enjoyed poisoning me? On some level."
"If I were to poison you deliberately, Lupin," Snape said, baring his teeth slightly, "my preferred method would not be suffering your company whilst doing it. Aconite doesn't affect your hearing, so I assume you heard me tell you to bugger off, though why you're still here—"
"Always a pleasure, Severus," Remus said genially and left, feeling stirrings of honest amusement.
Despite the poisoning, it hadn't been such a bad morning at all.
Harriet wallowed in her bath for a while, scrubbing all of the compost out of her hair, until the water started to feel like a cool drink on a hot day. She dressed shivering in the chill, and then, hungry, walked the six feet to Snape's rooms.
There was a note pinned to the door, with Miss Potter written on front.
You're eating dinner in your room from now on. Sit at your table and say "dinner."
And that was it. No "hello" or "you miserable brat" or "see you later." She wasn't that surprised, but on some level it was always a bit startling how Snape was always so very . . . Snape. Even when he was doing something technically nice, like seeing you were fed, he was rude about it.
And why was she suddenly eating in her room now? Had he loathed Scrabble that much?
Puzzling it over, she wandered back into her room, sat at the table Dumbledore had conjured earlier, and said, "Dinner, please." A covered platter appeared: a filet of baked salmon, citrus rice, a spinach salad, and iced custard for dessert. More Snape food. She'd noticed how the food she ate in his room was usually vegetarian, with only fish if there had to be meat, and very healthy. It was awfully different from the food the house-elves served all the rest of the year, and from what Professor Dumbledore had fed her that morning. She wondered if Snape ordered these healthy meals himself.
She left her door open so she'd know when Snape returned, and was polishing off the custard when she finally heard him. He rustled on by without acknowledging her open door, went into his own room, and shut his door so firmly it was just shy of a bang.
A Hermione-like voice in her head said that she should probably stay put. Of course, she didn't listen to it. She pushed her plates away and stood, letting them wink out of existence.
She knocked on Snape's door.
After a very long time, he pulled the door open just enough for her to see his face and eyed her narrowly. She thought of the hippogriffs, fierce and proud and with talons that could slice your belly open.
"What is it?" he asked in no very welcoming tone.
"Hello," she said, emphatically deciding not to tell him about the hippogriffs. She didn't want to be responsible for Dumbledore needing to hire a new Potions professor—or one for Care of Magical Creatures. "Why'm I not eating in your room anymore?"
"Your shirt is buttoned incorrectly," Snape said, instead of answering. "And you're wearing odd socks."
Harriet looked down at herself. She'd buttoned off by two, and one sock was green-and-red striped like Christmas, the other bright blue. Dobby had sent them to her for her birthday.
During her sock inspection, Snape had shut the door. Harriet put her hands on her hips, and knocked again. Another long silence ensued while she glared at the woodgrain and he did not do what any normal person did when they heard a knock, which was answer the door.
Then he did, jerking it open. "What?" he said, glaring like she was the one being rude.
"I was thinking about something else while I was getting dressed," she told him.
"Perhaps you shouldn't do that next time," he said, as if he didn't care one way or the other, and made to shut the door again.
"I tried casting the Patronus Charm."
Snape's left eyelid flickered. Or maybe it was just one of the torches guttering in its bracket.
"How do you just not think about unhappy things?" she persisted. "Is there a trick?"
"No," he said, after a brief something that was not quite a pause. "You just do it. It's something you will have to learn for yourself."
He started to shut the door for a third time, so she said quickly, "I need to learn how to cast it! Else I won't be able to get past them to Hogsmeade."
Snape stopped with one inch left between the jamb and the door. After a long, definite pause, he pulled the door back enough to look down at her, or at least at her shoulder, which he seemed to be staring at rather than at her face. "Then Professor McGonagall hasn't told you."
Her stomach started sinking as fast as if it had rocks tied to its feet. "Told me what?" she asked, trying to control her voice.
"Your aunt returned the form denying you permission to go," he said, after another almost-not-there pause. She might have imagined it—her heart seemed to be beating double-time, waiting for him to bloody get it out—and then he did—and she wished he hadn't.
She heard a faint ringing in her ears.
"I dare say it's for the best," he said.
"Stuff that," Harriet said, her voice shaking, and she spun on her heel and ran into her room, slamming her door behind her. She jammed the lock home, grabbed a pillow off her bed and screamed into it.
She hated this year already.
"Wretched Muggles." Minerva jabbed her wand fiercely at the teapot, like a fencer lunging for a final strike. "The worst sort imaginable—if I had my way—"
Tea exploded from the spout at the force of her temper. She made a noise like an angry cat, her spectacles flashing.
"Harriet will be so disappointed," Remus murmured, rescuing the plate of biscuits before they, too, could perish in the face of Minerva's wrath. "I don't suppose there's any way . . . ?"
"No." Minerva sighed and let her wand fall into her lap. "It's the law that it must be a parent or guardian. Though I wouldn't be surprised if, under other circumstances, someone could be prevailed upon to override it—all those wretched anti-Muggle laws might be good for something, at least—but with Sirius Black's escape— it is better that we keep her close. But the poor girl. Everyone else will skip off, merry as grigs, and she'll be left here. I can't remember the last time a student wasn't permitted to go to Hogsmeade. Thank you," she said as he handed her a cup of tea, having decided it was less dangerous if he served it.
"She came to me this morning asking if I could sign the permission form for her," Minerva said, her mouth twisting as she glared into her tea. "I'm sure I've had a harder time telling someone no, but you shan't catch me remembering it anytime soon. Wretched, worthless Muggles. . ."
As Remus poured himself some tea, he couldn't help thinking of Lily's reaction if she knew what Petunia had done—not just this time, but all the others he'd been hearing about. Rumors of Harriet's Muggle family had whispered through the wizarding world for years, from witches and wizards who'd glimpsed her. Six years ago, learning her relative location from Dedalus Diggle, he'd gone to see for himself, and he'd found a near-starved slip of a girl, much too quiet for a child so young, with a haunting air of loneliness. It had broken his heart, and she wasn't even his daughter. He couldn't imagine what James and Lily would have felt.
He'd given her some chocolate he'd had in his pocket, and she'd at least got to swallow a couple of bites before her aunt had seen and come to hustle her away. He'd only once met Petunia—she'd come to Lily and James's funeral, with the baby, with Harriet—but he was sure she hadn't recognized him. Plain even in his unlined youth, he'd spent the years since then wasting away.
Harriet wasn't a baby anymore; or at least, she was a baby twelve years older. She looked healthier now, though it was relative: she still couldn't be called really healthy-looking, in spite of being regularly fed. But she looked more like James and Lily, more like the child they'd all loved and envisioned, and less like a corporeal ghost. In fact, his first sight of her at Hogwarts had suckerpunched him, James's hair and the owl-like glasses and the glint of Lily's vivid eyes throwing him out of time.
"And after being left with Severus for the past month," Minerva sighed. "I really don't know what Albus was thinking."
"I'm surprised Severus agreed to it," Remus said honestly. "I would never have thought of him as someone who, er, enjoyed looking after children."
Certainly not James's. And Harriet looked enough like James that that would be the first thing anyone who'd known him would think. Snape had loathed James. In fact, "loathing" was probably too clean a word. Remus would probably have hated James, too, if James had treated him the way he'd treated Snape, if he'd muscled in on a girl he'd fancied... if she'd later gone out with him. Married him. And...
"Oh, he despises it," Minerva said dryly. "He's a dreadful teacher, though if you repeat that, Remus Lupin, I shall transfigure your ears into leeks. In all fairness, he's more even-handed than Horace was with the Slytherin students as a whole, and he does keep them more in line, but in other ways he's equally and abysmally partisan. He'll turn the most dreadful blind eye to the most underhand tactics from his own House and dock points from the rest for the most ridiculous . . . rubbish. . . "
"Let me guess," Remus murmured, "from Gryffindor most of all?"
"I can see Albus hired you for your analytical mind," Minerva said tartly, the corner of her mouth twitching.
Remus raised his teacup in acknowledgment. "I'd say that's good for the Slytherins, though—to have a Head of House who's not interested in them only if they're well-connected."
"Yes. They're quite devoted to him, honestly," Minerva admitted. "I shall never humble myself by asking, but I'd almost like to know how he does it. If I could see even a third of that spirit from Fred and George Weasley, I'd shed tears of joy."
"Troublemakers?" Remus said, amused.
"That doesn't even begin to cover it. It's good you're here—they'll be your comeuppance."
"Mine?"
"Yes." Both corners of her mouth twitched that time. "You Marauders—oh, don't think we didn't know how you styled yourselves. Teachers gossip dreadfully. You'll find this out. For all the mischief the four of you wreaked, Fred and George will afford you a small slice of contrition."
"I look forward to it," Remus said, laughing. "I've made a study of mischief over the years; new specimens are always welcome."
"We'll see if you say that once you've had to try and teach them something," Minerva said, with smug wisdom that implied she knew what he would say later, and it would be mostly expletive-filled.
"Does Harriet cause trouble? I thought from Severus's behavior that she had, but it's hard to tell with Severus."
Minerva tapped her nails on the side of her teacup. "Miss Potter—and her friends—have a more . . . unique way of causing trouble. Since she's been a student here, there have been two instances of . . . I suppose you would call them evil. And both times, Miss Potter was actively in the thick of it."
Remus felt his eyebrows rising of their own accord.
"Many of my Gryffindors have sought out trouble over the years," Minerva said dryly. "Seeking to battle evil." Remus remembered his own reminiscences as he'd walked Snape's dungeons and smiled in self-deprecation. "Miss Potter manages to find it, however. So far she's come out on top. . . "
The but lingered in the air, unspoken but not unheard.
And this year. . . Remus thought, but did not say that either. They both knew.
They finished their tea in silence, the windows tinting with mist from the Dementors that haunted the gates. They both knew you couldn't fight evil with evil, but sometimes fighting it with goodness was just as hard