After a halfhearted dinner, during which Harriet didn't see Hermione at all (and Ron was still so surly and bad-tempered that only Neville would sit with him), Harriet headed down, once again, to see Snape. She was rather used to the walk by now: down the dark stone stairs, along the cold corridor, with the drip, drip, drip of water unseen somewhere nearby.
She was early, so Snape made her sit quietly while he finished up some marking. Harriet took the opportunity to examine his jars. Each had something different and disgusting-looking floating in it. Were they his hobby, or part of some strange sense of humor? His private rooms looked perfectly normal. He even had lamps there.
That's Other Snape-space, Harriet thought. This is Teacher Snape-space.
She sneaked a glance at him. She didn't think it was just the lighting that made him look worse than usual. He never looked healthy, but Hermione was giving Harriet a decent experience with people who overworked themselves to exhaustion. Hermione's hair was frazzled like mad these days, and Snape's was stringier than ever. Hermione looked on the verge of tears, and Snape looked like he'd cut your throat with a quill. And Harriet couldn't recall seeing him at meals any time recently, either.
She had an extremely silly vision of herself trying to make Snape stop marking and take some dinner. It would be really brave—maybe the last thing she'd ever do.
At 6:00 exactly, Snape piled his marking into a leather folio and stuffed the whole thing in a drawer. Then he turned his cold, unfriendly eyes on her.
"I have informed Asteria Greengrass that she will be meeting with you alone," he said in his cold, unfriendly voice. "Her sister Daphne is also aware of this fact, but she will attempt to shoehorn her way into these sessions nonetheless. You will not allow it. Not the first time, nor in any subsequent meeting."
"Why not?" Harriet was trying not to be too obvious about looking at the jar over Snape's left shoulder. Was that an eyeball floating in it?
"Because," Snape glared, "the object of this experiment is to remove Asteria from the confines of her own isolation and force her into making new friends. I am beginning with you because as far my awareness extends, you are the only person aside from her sisters to have done her some positive good."
Snape hesitated, if you could call it that. He had an abrupt way of pausing, like he was stomping on his silences.
"Do not mention her sister's wedding. It will upset her, and you will get nowhere if she spends the whole first meeting in tears."
Harriet was starting to feel alarmed again. The floating eyeball wasn't helping. "Would that really happen?"
"It may," he said unhelpfully. "She is extremely sensitive."
"I don't want to make her cry."
"Then don't mention the wedding," he said, even more unhelpfully. "Or her home in Cornwall."
"Have you got a list of safe topics?" Harriet asked, not entirely being sarcastic. Maybe only forty-eight percent.
"No." Snape's look said he knew exactly what percentage of sarcasm she had used. It was a look that had a lot in common with an executioner's axe. "I have reason to believe she goes to watch you at Quidditch."
Harriet blinked.
"The Gryffindor game was the only one she attended."
"She could've just been scared away by the Dementors," Harriet said. . . but she was thinking of a beautiful thank-you-get-well card that had turned up at the hospital wing with no signature.
"So, you know best," said Snape, with 102% sarcasm. "I exercised sound judgment in giving you this assignment, it would seem."
Harriet didn't know whether to blush, scowl, or roll her eyes. "Anything else?"
"Her sister Daphne is likely a safe topic."
"But I don't know Daphne."
"Do try to apply your brain to this assignment," Snape said, with the withering weariness he was known for. (Harriet didn't have any trouble scowling, then.) "Even a shade of the initiative you've displayed on the Patronus Charm would be a welcome change from this wide-eyed bumbling."
"You're not going to give me Patronus lessons again, are you?" she asked before she could lose her nerve. Or her temper.
"Miss Potter." She couldn't read his expression—well, beyond sneering and crotchety. "I am quite serious in saying that I have absolutely nothing I can teach you there. Whether in my office or in Surrey, you will have to master it on your own."
Since Hermione hadn't been at dinner, Harriet went down to the kitchens after leaving Snape, to see about scrounging up a sandwich. The elves were only too happy to make her up a basket with a handkerchief over the top, stitched with the Hogwarts crest. Harriet wouldn't have been surprised to learn that one of them had embroidered it on the spot.
(Aunt Petunia would have despised house-elves. They outdid her in householdy things the way the sea outdid a bathtub. And one of these days, Harriet was really going to the sea, rather than having to be content with that twenty-foot mural painted on the wall of the Charms corridor.)
Dobby must have been feeding Snuffles because she didn't see him anywhere. So, waving good-bye to the house-elves, she lugged her dinner basket up to the Tower. House-elves apparently thought "sandwich" really meant "ten pounds of food."
Hermione was hunched over her dresser, looking miserable and exhausted.
"Look," Harriet said, hefting the basket in the mirror, in what she hoped was a tempting way. "Dinner."
"I'm fine," Hermione said vaguely, turning pages in her Arithmancy book. "I mean, I've been to dinner."
"No you haven't, because I was there and you weren't."
Hermione looked confused. "I. . . oh. Did I forget to go?"
This was an odd reply for a number of reasons, not the least of them being that Hermione never forgot things, ever.
"Don't make me write to your mum," Harriet said warningly. When Hermione only bit her lip, Harriet tried a different tack. "As your best friend, I command you to stop working and eat what I've brought you."
". . .Okay," Hermione smiled, "but you can't use the best friend card again for a whole year."
"Fair enough.
"D'you know how I'd go about asking Gringott's for that safe deposit box?" she asked as Hermione shoveled shepherd's pie into her mouth like Snuffles ate chicken.
"I donf." Hermione, her mouth full of pie, looked momentarily startled—perhaps by this lack of information in her head, or because her table manners were growing as bad as Ron's.
"I'll just ask Professor McGonagall," Harriet said quickly. "I asked Professor Lupin what was in it—he said my mum's jewelry. And some of my grandmum's. . ."
She wondered what her grandmother had been like. Which person had she been in the Mirror of Erised, two Christmases ago?
"Why would Professor Lupin know. . .?" Hermione asked.
"Oh." Harriet blushed to realize that in her miff the other day, she'd forgotten to tell Hermione anything about it. "He, er, he knew my parents. He. . . told me when I asked about the safe deposit box." And wasn't that the abridged version.
Hermione looked startled. "So he also knew Sirius Black?"
This hadn't occurred to Harriet. "I guess he did. . . he didn't mention that, either." Now she was growing annoyed with Professor Lupin again, and mostly confused. While very helpful in class, getting information from him on any other topic was like coaxing a toy away from Dudley.
And if Snape had known her mum. . . did that mean he'd known Sirius Black, too? He was as bad as Professor Lupin!
Hermione's surprise turned thoughtful as she switched from her shepherd's pie to dessert.
"He might not want to talk about it," she said slowly, digging into a lemon tart. "I mean," she blushed, "he might not want to talk about it because, if they all knew each other, then one of his friends killed the rest of his friends, and nearly killed you. If Professor Lupin knew your parents, he probably knew you as a baby. He would surely remember. . ." Her pale face went even paler. "It would be terrible."
I have trouble talking about them even with people who knew them, Professor Lupin had said.
And Harriet hadn't known them at all.
"I hate that everyone knew my parents and I don't," she said, half without meaning to, and then looked away.
Hermione blinked rapidly, the way she did when she was trying not to cry. Very carefully, she stacked her empty plates together and set them inside basket. As soon as she'd dropped the napkin in, too, everything, basket and all, disappeared with a faint pop!
"Let's go ask Professor McGonagall about Gringott's," Hermione said.
Harriet looked over her shoulder at Hermione's fortress of open books, sheaves of inky parchment and quills. "What about—?"
"It can wait," Hermione said.
The rest of the week went much the same way. Hermione, Parvati, and Lavender all got their periods on Thursday, and Parvati was hopeful that by the next month, Harriet's first day would fall on the same day as theirs. She was full of happy preparations for her Divinations spell, which looked to be quite complex.
Ron and Hermione continued not speaking to each other, though at least without any rowing matches. Fred and George started up a betting ring on which of them would crack first, until Harriet yelled at them (when Hermione wasn't around), and Ginny threatened to write their mum.
Hermione fought to achieve new levels of studying masochism. Oliver Wood dragged the team onto the pitch, and Harriet spent her time hovering above the game on an ancient Shooting Star and dreaming of her Firebolt, which Professor Flitwick and Madam Hooch were still testing for jinxes.
With Professor McGonagall's uncharacteristically patient help, Harriet wrote to Gringott's requesting the Potter safe deposit box. Professor McGonagall said she would probably hear back within a month, though not much before.
The day of Harriet's first meeting with Asteria Greengrass loomed over the weekend. She'd almost rather disembowel another barrel of horned toads. At least if she cocked up there, the toads were already beyond earthly suffering. She couldn't escape the fear that she was somehow going to ruin Asteria's life.
She wondered if this was how Hermione felt every time a test was coming.
And Snape was like a ruddy unhelpful magical textbook.
"Why don't you ask the other teachers?" Hermione suggested, proving why she was the most brilliant witch in their year.
They had Herbology with Professor Sprout next, so Harriet decided to ask her first.
"Asteria Greengrass?" Professor Sprout asked as the rest of the class slogged across the snowy grounds towards lunch. "Why d'you want to know, Miss Potter?"
"Sn—Professor Snape wants me to get to know her," Harriet explained. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized how mental they sounded. Professor Sprout seemed to agree.
"Professor Snape?" she repeated, her eyebrows almost disappearing into her flyaway hair.
"Erm." Harriet squirmed. "In place of detentions."
"Hmm." Professor Sprout considered her. "You've asked him about the girl?"
Harriet didn't know how to tell another teacher that Snape was bloody unhelpful. "I think she's scared of him," she said as diplomatically as she could.
Professor Sprout's lips twitched. "Well, she's scared of most things, truth be told," she said, sounding rather diplomatic herself. "She gets along well enough with plants, though she can't stand doing group work. Too nervous. Afraid I can't tell you much more, Miss Potter. She keeps to herself."
At lunch, Harriet read to Hermione from her Arithmancy textbook while Hermione ate. It was going quite well until Ron said, in a carrying voice from his seat next to Neville, "It's a shame some people don't care as much about animals as they do about their grades."
Hermione froze. Her lip trembled, but she didn't burst into tears, at least. Instead, she pulled her textbook away from Harriet and left the table at a half-run.
As soon as she was gone, Harriet rounded on Ron. "What's the point of being such a fatheaded git?"
Ron's ears were already red, but they went, if possible, even redder. "She's acting like Scabbers just went on holiday!"
"And you're acting like she ate him herself," Harriet said angrily. "Why don't you grow up!"
Grabbing her bag, she stormed away, past the staff table and out of the Great Hall. She was rather early for Charms, but perhaps she could talk to. . .
"Professor Lupin?" she called to the only other person in the Entrance Hall. He turned quickly round from reaching for the handle on one of the front doors.
"Harriet," he said, bringing up a faint smile as he stepped away from the door. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," she lied, the quarrel with Ron still knotted in a little space beneath her heart. "I wanted to ask you. . ."
"Asteria?" Professor Lupin repeated when she'd explained, looking even more surprised than Professor Sprout had, though more curious. "I'm afraid I don't know her at all. She keeps so intensely to herself."
Harriet was going to nod and just give it up, but. . . looking at Professor Lupin's tired face, his clear, interested expression, she remembered Hermione saying, He probably knew you when you were a baby, and an urge rose in her. . .
"I don't want to say the wrong thing and make her cry," she blurted.
Professor Lupin blinked. "If you do," he said gently, "it will only be that she's so different from you, you couldn't have known what upset her. Then you only have to do what you usually would, when one of your friends is crying. I'm sure that's happened?"
Had it ever. "Hermione's having a bad year," Harriet admitted. I wish she'd just stop, I'm afraid she's going to make herself sick...
"Some people take on too much, and some people will do less for themselves the more other people do for them. It sounds as if Professor Snape thinks Asteria is the latter. Really, I think he made a good choice in assigning you to help her."
"He needed to give me detentions," Harriet mumbled, blushing. "I'm not any good at. . . emotions stuff. I never know what to do."
"Most of us don't. We blunder along, doing the best we can. You're very kindhearted—otherwise you wouldn't be worried about doing the wrong thing for her—and you've already helped Asteria once, at Hallowe'en. Professor McGonagall was quite proud of you."
His smile faded, while Harriet was so embarrassed she didn't know where to look.
"I can tell you," he said quietly, "that the other students treat Asteria very poorly."
"Why?" Harriet asked, her embarrassment taken over by indignation.
"She's different," Professor Lupin said. "She's afraid—and she's in Slytherin." Harriet thought a shadow passed over his face. "Any would do, but all together. . . And when someone is used to poor treatment, even a simple kindness can have a profound effect. . . Perhaps Professor Snape is thinking of that, as well. He might also be using your, ah, fame."
"Eh?"
"If you're seen being nice to Asteria, it might make others back off her," Professor Lupin explained. "It would be a very Slytherin design, all things considered."
Harriet thought about this and decided she was relieved. Although it was nice not to be treated the way she was in Little Whinging—like a sack of dung—her fame, as Professor Lupin called it, had always made her rather uncomfortable. If it helped Asteria Greengrass, then it would have bloody finally done something useful.
"Have you talked to her sister?" Professor Lupin said. "Daphne? They're very close. If you want an idea of Asteria before you meet, you might talk to Daphne."
Harriet felt like an idiot for not thinking of this before. That was one of the only things she knew about Asteria: she loved her sisters.
"But if I might suggest it," Professor Lupin went on, "I think it would be best to let Asteria tell you about herself. That might be one reason Professor Snape wouldn't tell you more about her." Like Professor Sprout, he twitched his lips. "I heard him talk about her in the staff room, back at the beginning of last term, and he really does know a great deal about her. Most of us prefer to tell our own stories rather than letting others speak for us. Asteria might not want to be put to the task, but it would do her a world of good."
Harriet nodded. "Thanks," she said sincerely, and went up to Charms, feeling very thoughtful. It wasn't until she was looking round outside the classroom for any sign of Hermione that she realized she'd entirely forgotten to ask Professor Lupin about knowing Sirius Black.
Remus was still mulling over his conversation with Harriet when he set out to meet Sirius.
He'd arranged it for his free period, which fell right after lunch that day. With Snape sure to be on the watch, he had decided against walking the grounds at night. But Snape had his classes in the afternoons, and Remus, if questioned, could simply claim to be going for a midday walk. The weather wasn't all that fair—solidly overcast and frigid—but for a werewolf that hardly mattered.
As the rest of the school returned to its lessons, he circled the long way round the lake and meandered into the thin, pale trees on the farthest shore.
Sirius, as Padfoot, was waiting far too close to the lake's edge for Remus' comfort, but Remus wasn't surprised. You and your risks, he thought, not trusting himself to say it for fear his voice might break.
"Before you nag," Sirius said, in that hoarse, unfamiliar voice, "I was only wondering where you'd got to. Thought something might've happened."
"Something like 'it became too dangerous to meet'? Yes, that would make it a good idea to step out looking for me."
"Smug git," Sirius said without rancor. "You mentioned Snape's here." His gaunt face darkened. "Bastard might've poisoned you."
On Monday night, Remus had stayed in the Shack almost till dawn. At some point he'd brought up the Wolfsbane Potion, though in hindsight he shouldn't have. This was only their second meeting, and Sirius had already predicted seventeen times that Snape would poison Remus. Eighteen, now.
"I only take Wolfsbane in the week preceding the full moon, and that's almost two weeks away. So you needn't worry about me getting poisoned for another week."
Sirius gave him a sour, moody look, quite unlike himself. Or rather, it was unlike him considering the provocation. He did become sour and moody, but not for so little. Remus decided to change the subject.
"I was talking to Harriet."
Sirius' dead eyes lit up. In another life, Remus might have envied Harriet the ability to inspire that, when he no longer could.
"Did she like the broom?"
"What br—" Remus stopped, remembering Minerva telling him. . . "Do you mean the Firebolt?" he asked slowly.
"'Course I do. What? Why're you looking like that?"
"Sirius, what do you suppose the reaction was when Harriet was sent a very expensive present with no note, during a time when someone is trying to kill her?"
Sirius looked startled, then appalled. "They threw it away?" His voice rose. "Of all the fucking—"
"It's being tested for jinxes and hexes," Remus said sharply, "which is as it should be. Did you really not think of that?"
"Merlin, I don't know." Sirius dragged a claw-like hand through his matted hair. "Her broom got smashed to bits by our tree, so I thought—you know the goblins'll keep your gold for you, no matter what. I got the cat to take the order to the Owl Office in Hogsmeade for me, it was a cinch."
Remus was momentarily distracted by the perverseness of a society that would send a man to prison without a trial or the possibility of appeal or parole, and still allow him access to his gold without question.
"Well, if you didn't curse it, she'll get it back eventually."
"Of course I didn't bloody curse it, I keep telling you—" He pressed his lips together, looking at Remus with something like recrimination mixed with bitterness. "You still don't believe me, do you."
"I—"
"Then what're you fucking doing out here?" Sirius paced away from him, stalking about the little clearing. He muttered to himself, making sharp, meaningless movements with his hands.
"Dumbledore gave evidence that you were James and Lily's Secret Keeper," Remus reminded him sharply, while his heart beat into his throat. "Have you really no proof other than Peter? Did it never occur to you to need any? To any of you?"
Sirius stopped pacing, though he didn't look at Remus.
"It was supposed to work," he whispered hoarsely. "It was supposed to keep them. . ."
They fell silent, not moving. The wind passed through the trees, clicking at the empty branches.
"I never told anyone. . . about Padfoot," Remus said eventually. "Not then, when it happened, or now. . . I never told them about the secret entrances we all discovered—which you were using to get into the school, I'm guessing—or about the Shack, the Willow. . . none of it."
Sirius blinked at him with those hollow eyes but didn't speak.
"It's never felt right," Remus said. "The truth—what everyone said was the truth. You, Voldemort's spy. . . but what other explanation was there? I didn't know what to do or to think, even. . . so I did and thought nothing," he said flatly.
"You were always like that," Sirius muttered, an odd look on his face.
"Now I can't help thinking. . . if you're telling the truth, and I had told everyone what I knew; if they'd caught you and you'd been Kissed. . . But if you're lying, and I lead you to Harriet. . . or if I doubt you, and you're right about Peter, and somehow he finishes what he started, twelve years ago. . ."
A black look suffused Sirius' face. "I'm going to find him, Remus. I'm going to find that little shit of a coward, and when I do—"
"How? I've gone over and over the Map, Padfoot. He's run for it."
"That Rob boy—"
"Ron."
"—he took Peter round with him all over the place, the fucking rat's scent is all over the castle. I'm tracking where he's been, Crookshanks is doing the same, and Dobby's helping. . . we'll find him. I didn't get out of Azkaban to get this far and no farther, Remus."
"How did you get out?" Remus asked, as an old thought niggled at him, trying to struggle through the detritus of more recent thoughts.
"Dog. Slipped through the bars. Barely made it, even so. Swam for it."
"Good Lord, it's a wonder you didn't drown."
The shadow of a dark smile passed over Sirius' face. "Man on a mission. Or dog, rather."
"She's at Hogwarts," Remus said suddenly. "That's what you said—'she's at Hogwarts.' Before you broke out."
"What?"
"In your sleep, you were heard saying it. That's why everyone's been so certain you're after Harriet."
Sirius scratched at his filthy hair. "Don't think I said that. Might've said 'he's at Hogwarts.' Peter. Fudge came for one of his fucking inspections—they were always fascinated by me." That dark smile again. "For never going mad."
"How didn't you—?"
"Dog," Sirius said again. "Their thoughts are. . . different. Dementors don't have as much interest in animals. I'd change and they'd bugger off to torment someone else. But it lapses when I sleep, you know. . . and when any humans came, of course, I didn't want them knowing, so I'd change back. Fudge gave me his paper, and I saw the photo of Peter. . . it said the kids were going back to Hogwarts, so I knew Peter would be there, too, and I knew what I had to do. . ."
Remus sat down on a fallen log, rubbing his forehead. Sirius shuffled at the dead carpet of leaves on the ground.
"You have class with Holly-berry today?"
"Tomorrow," Remus muttered. "Had it Monday—I asked her about the dog, and Peter—she said exactly what you had, more or less."
Sirius nodded but did not appear to find this partial exoneration as interesting as its source. "How's she been?"
"She was ill over the weekend, but she seems better now. She cut her hair a little. It's like James's. The more of it there is, the wilder it grows."
"Prongs and his ruddy magic hair," Sirius said, more hoarsely than ever.
"It's been odd, being back. So odd. . . She looks just enough like them that I keep expecting them, and yet she's an entirely different person. It's so obvious that she is—everything about her manner is different. So it's more that split-second when I first see her coming round a corner or sitting in class. . ."
"It's like Prongs-not-Prongs," Sirius said. "And then Not-Prongs."
"And Not-Lily," Remus added.
"Thank Merlin's arse."
Remus surprised himself by almost laughing. "You liked Lily very much eventually."
"Eventually," Sirius said. "She had a, what, a fungal personality."
"Grows on you?" Remus guessed.
"Yeah. After you can't get rid of it."
Remus remembered Sirius and Lily taking nasty pot-shots at each other, then being achingly, over-the-top polite, and James's happy oblivion. Not the king of the emotional nuance, James.
Remus and Sirius looked at each other, no doubt remembering variations of the same thing.
"Holly-berry's sad," Sirius said. "Lonely."
"Yes," Remus agreed. He felt suddenly and intensely ashamed of himself for not reaching out to her more that year; for hiding in his own regrets and fearing what she'd uncover, that poor child who was, for the most part, unloved. The other professors worried about her, Minerva in particular, and she had her friends; but a child needed more than that.
Anyone did, but a child most of all.
Daphne had always been well-disposed toward Professor Snape. As Tracey had pointed out last year, he looked after the Slytherins, whom the rest of the school, even most of the wizarding world, was against. That was their burden to bear, and Professor Snape helped them bear it.
But this business with Harriet Potter made her feel almost. . . betrayed.
Professor Snape ought to be above such considerations as popularity. Slytherin House approved his general dismissal of Potter's special status, which the rest of the school bestowed upon her. The Slytherin girls, from years one to seven, approved one degree further, and the Slytherin girls in Potter's year approved the most of all. They only wished he would tell her that she was ugly, or insult her glasses or her dreadful hair.
Yet now he was telling Daphne that she was not complete enough a companion for her own little sister—that Harriet Potter was better than herself.
How could he? How could he prefer Potter to one his own?
Asteria was no help. Daphne had hoped that if Asteria could be induced to say something to him, Professor Snape would change his plans. Asteria speaking, to him, would indicate something momentous. But Asteria would only hide behind her homework and mumble so that not even Daphne could understand her.
"But Aster," she said with increasing desperation, as the day of that first and awful meeting drew nearer, "surely you don't want to have to meet with Potter, and have her talk at you—"
After four months, Asteria still slipped away whenever Tracey came by, and she went absolutely white and hid whenever she heard Pansy's voice. She did not seem to mind Millicent, but Millicent didn't try to talk to her. Surely Harriet Potter would not be so forbearing.
But Asteria said, sounding both solemn and innocent, "It would be much scarier to ask Professor Snape to let me off than to meet with H-harriet Potter."
And with that, Daphne had to be content.
Though she certainly didn't have to like it.
"You're mollycoddling her," Tracey said. "It's no wonder she's terrified to step out of the dorm without you."
"Not everyone is so fearless as you," Daphne retorted, stung.
"And no one's as totally fearful as her," Tracey said, unfazed.
Usually Daphne admired how little ever got to Tracey, for though her emotions were deep and powerful, she guarded them fiercely. Daphne felt shallow and insipid in comparison. But today she wanted a crack to show in Tracey's armor. She wanted to be the one to put it there.
"I don't expect you to understand. You care for no one."
There; a flicker, that hardened like a shell of ice. "You know that's not true."
"Isn't it?" Daphne challenged. "You've snogged Draco behind Pansy's back. That's heartless."
Tracey shrugged, though the look in her eyes was not so casual. "He wanted it. I didn't put the thought in his head."
"You knew exactly what you were doing, making yourself up this year. You've snogged Blaise, too, didn't you? It's not only heartless, it's indecent."
"Indecent?" Tracey laughed, sharp and scornful. "Right, I forgot: you're living like it's the 1820s so you can bag a rich old husband with dried up balls and huge sacks of gold."
"Tracey!" Daphne said, really appalled.
"You don't call that heartless? I've got a life to live. If you want to cordon yourself off like a marble statue, just you and your darling little sister, and protect her from her own shadow, you do as you like."
And she left without a backwards glance. Daphne sat alone, not certain at all that she'd hurt Tracey in any material way, but fully aware of having hurt herself more deeply than she'd prepared for.
The weekend arrived quickly, probably because Harriet didn't want it to.
On Saturday, she made sure she had everything she needed for her meeting with Asteria before she headed to lunch. Snape had ordered her to be at the extra dungeon's classroom at 1:00.
While she ate, Harriet glanced along the Slytherin table, but she didn't see either Asteria or Daphne, though Pansy and Draco were there. Eurgh. Harriet didn't see how they could stand to snog each other.
Snape wasn't at the staff table, either.
At 12:45, she said good-bye to Hermione and headed into the gloom of the dungeons. She found the unused classroom easy enough; it was just down the hall from Potions and looked almost identical to that room, down to the greenish lighting. The whole place had a dusty, disused air that reminded her of an attic where nobody went. She couldn't imagine a more depressing place to meet.
At 1:01, a prim knock rattled the silence.
"Er," Harriet said, and walked over to the door and opened it, as if she was at home receiving visitors.
It was Asteria—and Daphne. More accurately, it was Daphne and Asteria, since Daphne stood in front, she was clearly the one who'd knocked, and she had a brisk, take-charge expression on her face that reminded Harriet no little bit of Hermione. Asteria was half-hiding behind her and staring at the floor.
"Potter," said Daphne in a brisk, take-charge voice. "How do you do."
"Er—fine, thanks." Harriet scratched her head. "Erm. . . How are you?"
"We're quite well, thank you," Daphne said, still briskly, and whisked herself and Asteria into the room—or tried to. But Harriet blocked the door.
"Sorry," she said, "but Sn—Professor Snape said the meeting's just me and Asteria."
Daphne stared at her, and Harriet was momentarily startled by the hard unfriendliness she saw there. "I'm sure you misunderstood him, Potter. Asteria needs me."
"Snape's rather hard to misunderstand," Harriet said firmly. "He wants it to just be me and her."
Daphne started to reply, but froze when Snape's voice bled out of the air:
"How regrettable that you found my instructions confusing, Miss Greengrass."
Harriet saw Daphne grimace slightly, but she turned around to face him, her shoulders straight. "I. . . must have not been attending properly, sir."
"Indeed," Snape said coldly, looking down his hippogriff-beak nose. "Now you know. You may leave your sister with Miss Potter with no qualms."
Harriet glanced at Asteria to see how she felt about this. She'd gone white—well, pale green in the dungeon lighting—and seemed to be trying to make herself as small as possible. Harriet had seen a similar expression on Neville's face when he'd faced his Boggart.
"Come with me," Snape said to Daphne, and led her away. Harriet mused that he'd probably been waiting just out of sight to see if she was going to follow his orders about keeping Daphne out.
Left alone, Harriet stared at Asteria, and Asteria stared at the floor. The silence was awkward and uncomfortable, like a lumpy bed.
"Want to come in?" Harriet said, trying to sound friendly.
Asteria didn't look any less scared, but she edged into the room and looked around it (rather fearfully).
"It's not the nicest place," Harriet said. "Sn—Professor Snape picked it. I think he's allergic to natural light."
This got no response except an apprehensive half-look.
"Want to sit down?" Harriet asked after a long pause.
They sat at one of the tables—on opposite ends. Harriet had to sit down first to make Asteria move, and she chose the seat farthest from Harriet, looking like she'd rather be sitting down on the other end of the room.
Harriet cleared her throat. "Sorry I couldn't let your sister in. Professor Snape said it had to be just us, and, well, you saw him lying in wait."
Asteria stared at her lap.
Harriet scratched the other side of her head.
At least she wasn't crying.
"Erm. . ." At a total loss, Harriet fumbled in her pocket for the list. "Sorry, I'm just going to look at. . ."
Asteria, of course, did not say, "Perfectly fine, go ahead," or "Personally I think that's rather rude," so Harriet unfolded the list and scanned down the questions.
Last night, Hermione's idea had been to draw up a list of questions to get a conversation rolling. But it wasn't going to work. Daphne's absence, Hermione's questions and Snape's room—they just weren't going to do the job.
Harriet felt a surge of determination, and with it came an idea.
"This room is depressing me," she said. "I know somewhere better." She smiled at Asteria's timid glance. "Have you ever been to the kitchens?"
Harriet figured the house-elves were always delighted to receive visitors because they were always so thrilled whenever she came in. Maybe they only stayed in the kitchens—she'd never seen them anywhere else—and liked new faces.
"Could we get some dessert?" she asked the happy group that clustered round her and Asteria. "Do you like chocolate?"
Asteria had large blue eyes that made her look wide-eyed no matter what, but now they were even larger than normal as she stared round at the kitchen and the elves. At least she looked more stunned than terrified—and she actually nodded!
Another group of elves rushed over bearing a silver platter with a matching tea-service on it: hot chocolate with whipped cream, a plate of those amazing eclairs, and chocolate-iced croissants. Then another group ran up with another platter: plates of Belgian chocolates, dozens of them, each decorated differently, probably each a different favor.
"Blimey," Harriet said, using Ron's word.
"Is Miss wanting more?" asked the elf, who she thought of as the butler. "We is having much, much more if Miss wants!"
"This is brilliant," Harriet said, hoping she and Asteria wouldn't fall into comas and be found by Snape lying on the floor of the kitchen covered in chocolate.
The elves were already making up a table for them in the corner, laying it with a sky-blue tablecloth and setting out plates and silverware. Harriet helped herself to one of the eclairs, while Asteria lingered over the chocolates.
"Have you got a house-elf?" Harriet asked her.
Asteria shook her head. She seemed to start to reply, but then stopped herself. Harriet considered that another success, though, maybe even a brilliant one—it was the first reply she'd almost got.
"My relatives are Muggles. I'd never heard of house-elves until I met Dobby. He's not here today, though—at least, I don't see him." She left off explaining who Dobby was so that Asteria would have to ask, if she wanted to know. She did look like she was listening, but she didn't say a word.
"He knit me some odd socks for Christmas. They're really quite warm." Harriet tugged up the leg of her jeans to show.
Asteria leaned around the table to see and smiled shyly.
"I can't knit, or do anything artsy." Harriet was glad to have worked round to this, and reached into her pocket to pull out her ace—or what she hoped would be her ace, at least. "I got this when I was in the hospital wing, but it wasn't signed."
She unfolded the thank-you-get-well card with the drawing of the roses and the calligraphy. Asteria's eyes went rounder than ever, and her face went bright red.
"It's really brilliant," Harriet said. "Whoever can draw and write like this, they're genius."
Asteria was trying to hide behind her long blonde hair, which told Harriet she was right not to have asked outright if it was from her. But it clearly was.
"And it was really nice to get," Harriet went on, folding it away again, "because I was feeling so low then. Really terrible. Dementors. . ." She took a deep breath and said, "They scare me."
Asteria peered out from behind her hair.
"I'm trying to learn this charm," Harriet said. "Called the Patronus. . ."
She went on talking and eating chocolate, and Asteria ate chocolate and listened. She never said a word, but a little smile flickered onto her face and stayed there, like a light shining in a house far across the way.
Had Daphne Greengrass been a student of any House but his own, Severus would have read her the riot act for attempting to disobey his explicit instructions. As it was, he only sent her on her way. Then he retreated to the staff room to finish off some marking that had piled up at the end of the first week.
Sprout and Minerva were there chatting along with Lupin. Severus almost turned around and walked out, but felt how stupid that would make him look. So he sat down in his usual chair as if they were at the bottom of the lake, and opened the dreary folder that contained this week's mind-bogglingly stupid homework assignments.
"Tea, Severus?"
He looked up to find Minerva holding out a cup to him. It was so unexpected that he had absolutely no idea how to react.
Undaunted, Minerva sat the tea down on the table next to his chair and took the seat next to it.
"Pomona and Remus were just telling me about a peculiar assignment you gave to Miss Potter."
Ah. That explained the tea, but—
"What do they know about it?" he asked, staring hard at culprits.
"She came asking us what we knew about Asteria Greengrass," said Sprout. "Couldn't tell her much, though. Didn't seem to have got much more from you."
"I don't see what business it is of yours," said Severus, while inwardly he was surprised to learn Harriet Potter had taken the assignment so seriously as all this.
"Do try not to get your wand in a knot, Severus," Minerva said, "we're only curious."
"She was afraid of making Asteria cry," Lupin said, with an odd half-smile.
"It would be no great wonder if she did."
"I think it's rather sweet, truth be told," Minerva said. "Now confess, Severus, you do like Miss Potter."
Severus had no idea what to say to this. But Minerva went on, without waiting for his reply:
"You bristle up whenever one of us so much as mentions a Slytherin student's name, and yet you're entrusting the most delicate of them all to her."
He couldn't escape the feeling that he was being made fun of. Minerva had a merry look in her eye, and Sprout seemed to be trying not to grin. Lupin looked—strange. What was that expression supposed to be? It was both faraway and sharply present, like he'd just understood something momentous, and it had stunned him.
"I have no opinion of Miss Potter," Severus said, cold and dismissive. "But I feel that her fame will prove very useful—probably of more use than she will be."
He grabbed his marking and left them, having successfully managed to wipe the smiles off their faces. But he didn't feel any better for having done it, and that rather pissed him off.
He retreated back to his office to wait out the rest of Miss Potter's meeting, but at five minutes till its end, he locked his door and went down to the classroom he'd appointed them.
Inside, it seemed to be silent. With a hot rush of suspicion, he pushed open the door.
The room was empty.
He was standing in the doorway, struggling with a dawning surge of fury, when he heard a familiar voice echoing down the corridor:
". . .can't even swim very well, I bet it literally looks like a puppy you chuck into a pool, and it's struggling to get to the side. . ."
Harriet Potter was coming down the corridor, Asteria Greengrass with her; and although Miss Potter was doing all the talking, Asteria was listening with every appearance of raptness.
". . . good for a laugh, at—" Miss Potter looked up and saw him, and her eyes widened. "Least. . .Er. Hallo."
He looked from her to Asteria, whose obvious enjoyment was fading into fearfulness again, her color paling, her eyes dropping to the floor, her head tipping forward and her hair swinging in front of her face. Miss Potter frowned.
"The meeting time is done," Severus said, finding himself at a loss but refusing to show it. "Miss Greengrass, you may return to your usual pursuits."
She darted away, stealing a look at Miss Potter as she went. Miss Potter waved after her, though she didn't get a wave in return.
"Why's she so scared of you?" she asked once Asteria had gone.
A more appropriate question is, why are you not? "Wouldn't she tell you?"
"I couldn't get her to say anything," Miss Potter said, looking resigned. Then her face lit up. "Though I did get her to nod and shake her head."
Severus was surprised, not only to hear that she'd managed that, but that she should realize that it was a real achievement.
"More than once?"
"Yeah," she said, clearly pleased. "Sorry we didn't stay in that room, but it's horridly gloomy in there—and you didn't say we couldn't go walking."
"And of course you'd have stayed put if I had," he said coolly. Her only response was a little smile that was half self-deprecating, half impertinent. "Where did you take her?"
"To. . . get dessert," she said, a rather evasive look coming over her face. "And then to that mural of the sea on the Charms corridor. I was trying to get her to tell me about the sea without mentioning her house. Of course, I couldn't get her to talk, but she did nod and all that."
Severus was surprised yet again by the real thought and effort she'd displayed.
"You do realize," he said, "that having achieved so many successes, you're never going to escape the burden of this assignment?"
"I don't mind," Miss Potter said. "I didn't once make her cry."
She looked so proud and relieved at the same time; very young, but taking on a responsibility that he had fully expected to be beyond her means.
"I will assess the situation and let you know when another meeting is convenient," was all he could think to say.
He shut the door to the old classroom and followed slowly behind her as she headed for the stairs.
He said, "Miss Potter," though quietly enough that she might not hear. She did hear, though, and looked back at him curiously.
At first he hesitated because he was unsure of exactly what to say. But then the reflexive cutting reply rose to the tip of his tongue, and he had to stop himself from saying it. It took an effort, because he always said it.
"You. . ." He grit his teeth and forced out the rest: "Did well."
She lit up.
"Thanks," she said, apparently delighted, as if it was the most profound compliment she had ever received.
Then she ran up the stairs to the Entrance Hall, out of sight.
He had been intending to return to his office and the ever-present bloody pile of marking; but just then, he changed his mind and his direction at the same time. In fact, he found he'd rather go for a walk.