The next day, Harriet awoke to Lavender and Parvati's noisy morning routine of deciding how to fix their hair. Hogwarts' strict policy on dress, from jewelry to shoes, meant that hair was pretty much the only leeway the girls were allowed, and so Lavender and Parvati always spent the mornings in an agony of indecision.
"Harry?" asked Hermione's voice through the thickness of her drapes. "Are you awake?"
"Yeah." Harriet sat up and tugged the rope to open her hangings.
"Are you feeling okay?" Hermione's worried face came into focus as Harriet fumbled on her glasses. "Do you need to rest today?"
Harriet took stock of herself. She felt rather drained and wobbly, but she had no desire to lie in bed all day. "I think I'll be okay."
"Well, I'm putting a pain potion in your bag, just in case. . ."
Harriet couldn't help noticing that Hermione's hair looked more brushed than usual. It had a shiny quality to it, though whatever she'd done to it had made it bushier than ever.
"Oh Harry, you ook awhul," said Lavender, her mouth full of bobby pins.
Harriet knew she had to look really terrible if Lavender was noticing. Glancing in the mirror, she saw her own pale, pinched face and hair like Medusa's.
"Maybe you should stay up here," said Parvati worriedly. "You don't really want everyone seeing you like that."
"Thank you for putting the matter in such perspective," Hermione said waspishly. "Harriet, I've got your uniform ready, and here's your toothbrush. . ."
Harriet got dressed, but so sluggishly that she was ready at the same time as Parvati and Lavender. They whooshed out of the room in a whirlwind, but Harriet and Hermione followed much more slowly.
"I want you to promise me," Hermione said, pushing open the door from the stairwell to the common room, "that if you start to feel worse, you'll say something."
Before Harriet could reply, she was accosted by Oliver Wood.
"Harry, there you are." Competitive fire was already alight in his face. Before she could reply to that, either, he said, "Have a good Christmas? Listen, I wanted to ask if you've ordered a new broom yet. We'll be playing Ravenclaw. Their Seeker Cho Chang isn't as good as you—she's had a lot of injuries and I was hoping she wouldn't recover—but she's good enough to outfly an old Shooting Star—"
Hermione, her eyes sparking as bright as Oliver's (though with a very different light), cut him off at the pass.
"Harriet was sent a broom for Christmas," she said with McGonagall-like sharpness. "No, she doesn't have it, Professor McGonagall does."
Eyes bulging slightly, Oliver seemed to struggle with priorities. He finally settled on: "What kind of—"
"A Firebolt," Harriet offered, not quite able to quash a twinge of wistful disappointment at not getting to ride it even once.
"A F-f-f—" Oliver's eyes bulged and his mouth open and closed.
"Professor Mcgonagall thinks it may have been tampered with," Hermione said briskly. "Harriet will have it back when we're sure it's not jinxed."
Then she swept Harriet away before Oliver could stop choking on his tongue—or tried to. Fred and George materialized on either side of them, bringing them to a halt.
"Did our ears deceive us?" the twins chorused.
"How are we to know?" Harriet asked tiredly. Maybe she should've stayed in bed. . . she'd forgotten how. . . exuberant everyone was on the first day of term.
"A Firebolt?" Ron demanded, turning up behind her and Hermione. "Seriously, a real Firebolt?"
"Cor!" said Seamus, appearing over Ron's shoulder with wide eyes, and Dean turned up at the other to say, "Cool."
Even Angelina, Katie and Alicia were crowding round. Harriet's head spiked.
"Harriet doesn't even have it!" Hermione said, loudly displeased. "Professor McGonagall took it away—now will you please let it alone? We need to get to breakfast, and Harriet hasn't been—"
A ginger form blurred in the air, and a split second later Ron swore loudly and staggered sideways: Crookshanks had landed on his head. While they all stood gaping, the cat clawed down Ron's shoulders and took a swipe at his pocket, ripping it wide open, and Scabbers dropped straight to the ground.
Ron bellowed—with shock, pain, anger, and maybe all three—as Crookshanks took a flying leap off his shoulders, arching after Scabbers, who shot between everyone's feet and streaked beneath a cabinet against the far wall. By the time Harriet, Ron and Hermione had pushed past everyone, Crookshanks was crouched low, tail lashing, swiping beneath the cabinet. Ron aimed a kick at him; Crookshanks leapt away, spitting, and Hermione cried, "Don't!" at the same time Ron kicked the cabinet instead of the cat and swore loud and foul enough to shock a group of first-year girls who stood nearby, gaping at them.
Harriet scooped up Crookshanks as he made to spring back toward the cabinet. Ron was on his knees, groping under the cabinet for Scabbers, and managed to drag him out by his tail, though Scabbers fought him with a terror that seemed half mad.
In Harriet's arms, Crookshanks let out a long, menacing hiss that startled all three of them and made Scabbers thrash alarmingly.
"That mad cat's got it in for Scabbers!" Ron said furiously, his face deep scarlet with fury.
"All cats chase mice, Ron!" Hermione said in a shaken voice. She was standing half in front of Harriet and her cat, like she wanted to shield him. "Crookshanks doesn't realize its wrong!"
But, then as before, Harriet wasn't so sure. Crookshanks was holding very still in her arms, his tail lashing methodically back and forth like a pendulum, his yellow eyes fixed on Scabbers and his pupils wide.
"Look at him!"
Ron thrust Scabbers forward. Harriet realized she hadn't seen Scabbers in ages; he had lost a great deal of weight, and his fur was falling out. He was shivering violently in Ron's grip, and the closer proximity to Crookshanks made him squeaksqueaksqueak and writhe, his black eyes bulging.
Ron snatched Scabbers back against his chest with a look of alarm that instantly darkened to anger. "He's scared to death of that mad cat! He was fine before that monster came!"
"It isn't Crookshanks' fault!" Hermione said shrilly. Harriet really thought she was saying, It isn't my fault!
"I'm going to go put him upstairs," she said, though she doubt they heard her, and left, her arms clamped tightly round Crookshanks so he wouldn't escape.
"Why've you got it in for Scabbers, huh?" she asked quietly, scratching behind his ears He twitched them and gave her an enigmatic cat look, nothing more.
Shutting the dorm-room door firmly behind her, she left to rejoin Hermione. Ron was storming out as Harriet got back to the common room; she was just in time to see the tail end of his angrily flapping robe and hear the portrait slamming loud enough to hurt her ears.
She looked at Hermione, who snatched her hands down from her face. Wiping away tears?
"I'm fine," she said in a suspiciously thick voice before Harriet could ask. "Let's—let's just go down to breakfast? I-I'm starving."
Harriet nodded silently and followed her out of the common room. She watched her carefully, but Hermione was equally careful not to make eye contact.
On the other side of the portrait, Sir Cadogan was picking himself up from the ground and trying to pull his helmet the right way round. The force of Ron's exit must've knocked him off his feet.
"Morning, Harry. You look awful. This came for you," said Ginny all at once, and handed Harriet a folded bit of parchment sealed with a drop of wax. "The owl didn't want to wait. By the way. . ." She lowered her voice, her eyebrows scrunching together. "What's up with Ron now?"
Harriet glanced up the table and wasn't surprised to see Ron sitting with Fred and George and Lee Jordan, mashing up his fried eggs like they were the ones who'd clawed his neck and attacked his rat.
"Later," she muttered out of the corner of her mouth, since Hermione was sitting on the other side of her. She had a book open in front of her and was bent over it so that her hair shielded her face. She hadn't said a word since they'd left the common room.
Ginny slid a sideways glance at Hermione and went back to her toast and tomatoes. Harriet turned to her letter.
Miss Potter was written on the front in glistening black ink with the shape of Snape's spiky handwriting. She wondered what his deal was with all the black. Even the drop of wax sealing it shut was black.
On the inside, Snape had curtly written: My office after dinner, promptly, for your assignment.
And that was it. Snape wasn't at the staff table. Most of the teachers weren't, by now. Even the student tables were sparse with breakfast-eaters.
"We should get going," Hermione muttered as even Ginny got up to leave with her pack of friends. "We'll probably be late to Divination. . ."
"It's all right," Harriet said. "I'm sure Professor Trelawney's already foreseen it."
By the end of the day, Harriet was exhausted. Her head hurt, though not like the migraine had; just a solid ache, especially around her temples. After about half an hour of swirling her spoon around her soup bowl in not-very-interesting patterns, she gave up and headed down to see Snape.
Hermione had skipped dinner entirely. Harriet didn't blame her; Ron was ignoring her so obviously and unpleasantly that even Dean and Seamus had started avoiding him halfway through Care of Magical Creatures. But he wasn't at dinner either.
At least the lights in Snape's office were dim, to enhance creepiness. Maybe it would soothe her headache.
Snape's unfriendly voice told her to come in, and he was glaring at the door when she sidled into his office. Lavender and Parvati would have said that eerie, greenish light didn't do his skin tone any favors. Lord, she hoped that was just her migraine talking.
"Sit," he said curtly, so she did. He eyed her with a tinge of suspicion in his face. Harriet was too tired to wonder why, or be indignant or defiant or anything. She just wanted to go to bed.
"Are you still feeling unwell?" he asked abruptly.
Harriet realized she wasn't too tired to feel mortified, or to blush all over her face. At least Snape was looking equally embarrassed (and stunned, like he couldn't believe he'd said it). It wasn't a look she'd ever seen on him before—in fact, it took her a moment to realize that's what it was. It wasn't an especially flattering expression on him, but she found it strangely calming.
"I'm just tired," she mumbled, trying not to look at him.
"The effects of migraines last after the pain has abated," he said, so sharply she wondered if he wasn't somehow telling her off. "You should have sat out classes today. Get to Madam Pomfrey. Go on," he said when she just stared at him.
"But. . . the meeting?" she said blankly.
"It wasn't going to be tonight in any case, and I certainly wouldn't have you doing it in this state. Infirmary, now." He pointed.
"She'll just make me spend the night in the hospital wing," Harriet objected. "I hate being in there. I'll just take another potion and go to bed when I get upstairs."
"When did you last take a potion?" Snape asked impatiently.
"Erm. . . in Divinations this morning. Around 9:30, I think?" Trelawney's incense had made her feel like throwing up.
"Then you can't have another one until later tonight. They have a twelve-hour span. Especially since you took. . ." Oh God, she hoped he wasn't going to name it. ". . .another exceptionally strong potion yesterday, you have to be careful. Ingestion of too much poppy can lead to a number of unpleasant side-effects."
He fell abruptly silent, staring at her through narrowed eyes. Then he snapped, "Wait here," shoved his chair back from his desk with a loud scrape, and stalked into his storeroom. She heard him rustling around, and then he came back holding a small jar made of glass that was—surprise of surprises—black.
"If you're still feeling poorly tomorrow, drink that. Return at the same time tomorrow evening to discuss Miss Greengrass."
Thoroughly bewildered, Harriet took the potion and left. She might have said thank you, but she wasn't sure of even that much. Her aching head was spinning. It was almost like Snape. . . cared. Or something. No, caring was much too strong a word, but that had been almost. . . considerate?
Definitely the migraine talking.
As soon as Sir Cadogan's portrait swung open, Harriet's ears were slammed with the sounds of a really frightful row. It didn't take her more than a couple of wincing seconds to recognize the bellowing voices as Ron's and Hermione's.
Harriet pushed through the crowd, who were looking mostly amused and gleeful and had formed a circle around Ron and Hermione, who were facing off a few paces apart and yelling at each other. Ron was holding . . . his sheets?
Harriet didn't bother to ask anyone what was going on; she walked straight toward Ron, grabbed his bed sheet, balled it up, and threw it. A silence fell over the whole common room, except for the whump of the sheet landing on the floor. She grabbed Hermione's hand, spun her around, and dragged her to the stairwell.
She forgot the door pushed inward and spent a couple of moments swearing at it for not opening, while the common room remained dead silent. But then she got the door open and stormed up the stairs, Hermione towed silently behind her.
In their dorm, Harriet threw down her bag, placed Snape's potion carefully inside her dresser, and then finally turned to look at Hermione. Her eyes were very wide.
There was a moment of continued silence. Hermione's lip trembled.
"I think Ron's head nearly exploded," she said in a high, squeaky voice.
Then she burst into tears.
Horrified, Harriet said, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean—"
"It's—not—your—fault," Hermione sobbed, her breath hitching. "I'm just—so—tired—I—"
Harriet rubbed Hermione's back while she lay face-down on her bed and howled into her pillow. After her offer of, "Ron's a git-faced wanker," made Hermione howl even louder, Harriet had no idea what to say and fewer ideas about what to do. So she just sat next to Hermione while she lay on her bed and cried, and rubbed her back, and felt like the most useless person alive.
No, on second thought, that was probably Ron. And everyone in the common room who'd just stood round grinning.
"H-h-h-h-h," Hermione gulped.
Harriet's right hand was going numb, so she switched to her left.
"H-h-h-h-e-e said Crookshanks had—eaten Scabbers," Hermione choked. "He had—some of Crookshanks' h-h-hairs—and th-there was b-b-blood on h-h-h-his sh-sh-sheets—"
"That explains why he had the sheets, then. I'd wondered," Harriet said feebly, while Hermione dissolved into incoherent sobbing again.
"Look," Harried tried. "You said earlier that Scabbers was looking bad before you ever got Crookshanks. He's, what, twelve years old? Or something—he was Percy's rat first—he's probably just old and sick, and then Crookshanks fixed on him because almost everyone's got an owl, there aren't that many rats in the tower, and Scabbers was weak anyway. It isn't your fault your cat's doing what all cats do."
"It was s-so nice," Hermione said in a badly wavering voice, taking Harriet aback. What was nice about anything she'd said? "Earlier th-this year, at the H-hogsmeade w-weekends—it was almost like—but h-he's so—so angry—and he's been spending so much time with Dean and Seamus—and I just miss when w-we were all friends and wh-when I didn't have so much stupid homework and S-sirius Black w-wasn't trying to kill you and R-ron didn't h-hate me because my cat ate his Scabbers, I mean his rat—"
Harriet absorbed all this while Hermione broke down in a fresh wave of tears. A range of emotions fluctuated through her, more like a wavelength of light than actual thoughts, so fast she wasn't sure what all of them were. But one of them pulsed more strongly bright than the others, forming into words: I wish my mum could tell me what to say. Surely her mum would have known what she should do here. That was one of the things about being a mum, wasn't it? Mums were good at fixing problems. And her mum would probably have had crying friends and would've known what to do for them. Maybe she hadn't had friends who were crying because they were taking four classes at the same time as other classes and because their cat ate the rat of the boy they liked, but surely her mum would have known something comforting to say.
"I think you need to ask Professor McGonagall to drop a couple of classes," Harriet said at last, when Hermione's crying had wound down to the occasional wrenching hiccup.
Whether this was the right thing to say or not, Harriet couldn't exactly tell, but it made Hermione raise her head and start wiping her eyes.
"No," she said eventually. "I—I want to finish out the year, at least."
"You just told me yesterday you wanted to drop Muggle Studies because it was stupid and patronymic," Harriet reminded her.
"Patronizing," Hermione said automatically. "Patronymic means a component of a surname derived from—"
"Okay," Harriet said patiently. "But why don't you just go ahead and drop it? If you want to already."
"I can't have on my record that I just dropped a class in the middle of the year, Harriet." Hermione looked anguished, like the thought caused her physical pain. Harriet supposed she should have realized it would. But at least Hermione was upset about how her record would look and not Ron, right?
"Okay," Harriet said again. "You're right. Bad idea."
Hermione was wiping her eyes on her bed sheet. "Where's my bag?" she said, looking round in a vague-yet-distressed way for her things. "I need to start my essay on equinumeral distichs. . ."
Harriet struggled with a few strong feelings. When she was sure—well, mostly—that she'd got her voice under control, she said, "Hermione, I really think you ought to take a break tonight from—"
"I can't, Harry," Hermione said in a trembling voice, like she was trying to be calm but was really on the verge of a panic fit. "I have to write an essay for Muggle Studies about electricity and complete a Runic translation of High Ancient Dwarvish and read the next three chapters on Leonidas of Alexandria for Arithmancy—"
"All right," Harriet said, as her head throbbed just thinking about all this work. If you'd stood her and Hermione together and asked a stranger which of them had been bedridden with a migraine the day before, you probably wouldn't have been able to guess unless Snape or McGonagall told you. "How can I help?"
Hermione shook her head. "You're sick," she said, fumbling open her book bag. "You should take your bath and go to bed. I can handle it—I signed up for these classes, you know, and Professor McGonagall wouldn't have let me if she thought I couldn't do it—"
Harriet was seriously considering having a word with Professor McGonagall about helping Hermione achieve self-destructive levels of knowledge-seeking. "At least let me do your Divs homework or something."
"I couldn't!" Hermione shook her head harder that time. Her hair had returned to its normal frizzy bushiness. "I'll be fine, Harriet, really. Get your rest."
She kissed Harriet's cheek; her own was sticky from all the crying, cold where the tears had run and hot where they hadn't. Then she stood, her arms so full of books she had to tilt her head back so her chin would clear, and very carefully shuffled toward her dresser. Lavender and Parvati's dressing tables were covered in beauty products, but Hermione's had towers of books and quills and rolls of parchment. She sat down, opened the first enormous grimoire, and started reading.
Harriet took her shower, washed her wilder-than-ever hair, and spent at least half an hour trying to comb out the wet tangles. (And that was after using the special conditioner Hermione had assured her helped even her frizzy curls.)
Back in the dorm, she found Hermione had turned down the lights except for the lamp on her dresser. It was only 7:30.
"You don't have to work in the dark," Harriet said as she took off her glasses and placed them carefully on her nightstand, in the same spot she always did. She was too blind to find them when she wasn't wearing them unless she knew exactly where they were. "Your eyes'll get as bad as mine."
"I'm fine," Hermione said after a long pause, her voice gone thick again. If Harriet were Snape, her eyes would have narrowed to knife-blade slits of suspicion.
"Hermione. . ."
"Good night, Harry." Hermione bent further over her book, quill scratching. "Have a good sleep."
She must've been quietly crying most of the time Harriet was in the bathroom. Harriet wanted to hit something. Ron, maybe. Or Muggle Studies. Harriet took a deep breath. "I will, if you promise me one thing."
Hermione's quill paused. "What?" she whispered.
"You're not possessed by Voldemort, are you?"
Hermione gave a surprised laugh. "No!" She finally set down her quill and turned round in her seat. "I'm just tired. And worried. About you." Harriet couldn't tell what her face looked like, but her voice was quiet and shadowed.
"I'm worried about you, too," Harriet said quietly. "You're unhappy all the time."
Harriet heard Hermione swallow loudly three times without speaking.
"Goodnight, Harriet," she said eventually, her voice almost steady. "I'll see you in the morning."
Then she turned back around, picked up her quill, and bent over her books again.
Harriet climbed into bed and pulled her hangings shut. Hermione's light glowed like a halo through the dark velvet at the foot of her bed.
It felt like a long time that Harriet lay listening to Hermione's scritch-scratching quill and her sniffs. As Harriet drifted into sleep, she wondered if Snape would know what to say to a crying girl friend, since he'd been friends with her mum.
Remus checked the Map every morning, noon, and night, and periodically throughout the day. It was night now, and the ghostly sliver of the moon, at this time almost swallowed by its own shadow, glinted on the snow and the window glass. Piles of marking cast long shadows across his desk in the candlelight.
So far, he'd found nothing, but he wasn't surprised. (And perhaps it was just as well during the day—he could hardly go running off to confront a mass murderer five minutes before his next class was due.) It was often difficult to pick out people on the Map unless you knew exactly where they were or if they spent a great deal of time alone in isolated locations. Common rooms tended to be a black mass of tangled names, impossible to distinguish. Between bells, the corridors writhed with streams of ink.
But Sirius had to have sent this to him. It was the only explanation.
Why would Sirius want to be found? (Could Animagi get into the Gryffindor girls' dorms?)
Sirius could be trying to get Remus to come to him and thereby put him in some kind of trap. Under Voldemort's tutelage, Sirius could have learnt Dark spells to compel werewolves. They existed, Remus knew they did. A simple Imperius wouldn't work on him. Others had tried—close friend of the Potters, use that shabby Lupin, easy to get to them—and always failed.
Harriet had looked quite ill all day. Minerva had said she was sick over the weekend. Perhaps Severus had overworked her.
Remus didn't really think so, but something—odd—was going on there. He hadn't found an explanation for it, nor any simple solution that would stop it prickling at his mind, the mental equivalent of a pebble in his shoe. Nothing seemed to fit from what he knew and had observed. But, he'd learned patience over the years. Waiting each month for all your bones to break had that effect on a person. He would wait and see.
He glanced at the Map one more time before he wiped it clean to head to bed. The candles were burning low, causing even the words on the tattered, beloved old parchment to cast their own shadows.
And just before his wand touched the parchment and he whispered Mischief managed, he saw it, in the tunnel to the Whomping Willow.
Sirius Black.
The world around him seemed to break apart and drift away, as if he and it were separated on an endless black ocean.
Sirius Black
Sirius
It was as he stared at the tiny dot moving slowly down the tunnel that he realized he'd never had the slightest intention of telling anyone about Sirius. Even his arguments with himself had been the assertions of a self-denial so profound he hadn't even seen it till now.
He had always meant to keep Sirius Black for himself.
With one wordless swipe of his wand, he doused the candles. His office became absolutely dark around him, except for that faint, silver tint of the moon.
The Map in hand, he ran from the room, headed toward that tunnel and that solitary dot.