Harriet opened her eyes to her canopy. The dorm was silent. That meant that Lavender and Parvati, at least, were still downstairs. They were incapable of being quiet.
But. . . someone was in here.
Pushing herself up on her elbow, she saw Dobby hovering anxiously next to her bed. As soon as her gaze fell on him, his face glowed with happiness.
"Harriet Potter! Dobby has come as Harriet Potter is wishing."
"Hi, Dobby." She took off her glasses and rubbed at her face, trying to hide that she was wiping any tear stains away. "How've you been?"
"Dobby has been most honored to receive Harriet Potter's note!" he said, making Harriet's insides squirm with guilt, embarrassment, and confusion. "How can Dobby be helping Harriet Potter?"
"How—how's Snuffles?"
"Snuffles is eating and eating, Harriet Potter. He is being angry because traitor-wizard is hiding from him, but he is sure to be finding him soon." The drooping ends of his ears lifted as he brightened. "Also, he is meeting his old friend Moony, who he has not spoken to for very, very, many years, and Moony is having a plan to catch the traitor-wizard. Harriet Potter's Snuffles does not know what the plan is being, but he is happy, because he and Dobby is not having much luck, Harriet Potter."
Harriet would have paid a mint to sit in on one of Dobby's and Snuffles' conversations.
"You remember what I said, right?" she asked. "To be careful? This. . . traitor-wizard, he's dangerous."
Dobby nodded, his eyes shining with unshed tears, his little face a mask of devotion. Harriet felt more embarrassed than ever, but didn't want Dobby seeing it for the world.
"Dobby is remembering. He is telling Harriet Potter's Snuffles, too, that Harriet Potter is wanting us both to be safe. But Snuffles is saying that there is no one in the world he would protect before Harriet Potter, not even so much as himself. He is saying it is just like Harriet Potter to want to protect us. It is just what Prongs would have done."
"Prongs?" Harriet repeated faintly.
"Dobby does not know, Harriet Potter. Snuffles is often talking of Prongs and of Moony. He is caring for them very much. He is always saying Harriet Potter is like Prongs—but not like him."
"You didn't have to come all the way up here to meet me, you know," she said. "I could've come to meet you. But it's okay," she said hastily when Dobby's ears drooped and a look of hurt came over his face. "I was just thinking—if it's inconvenient for you—"
He looked blank. "Dobby is a house-elf, Harriet Potter."
This reply was not perfectly satisfying, but Harriet let that go, too. "Well. . . thank you. I wanted to ask you—do you know anywhere in the school I could take someone who's not in my House? Someplace warm, where we could hang out and nobody would bother us?"
When Dobby beamed, his ears stood straight out from his head.
It was just as well that Severus had finished up most of his work and been sifting restlessly for something to do when Lupin approached him, because after Monday he couldn't concentrate on anything else. The promises and difficulties of the spell ate up his mind, his attention, his interest; everything else was insipid, unimportant, and useless. Every moment he couldn't spend working on it so increased his impatience that if his preoccupation hadn't made him inattentive, he might have damaged some of his working relationships forever by giving vent to his frustration.
But he liked feeling this way. Not irritated (he always was; it had no novelty at all), but impatient to be doing something in particular, something he wanted, something he enjoyed; something that stimulated and intrigued him.
And Dark magic. . . it had been so long since he'd felt it. . .
Owing the recurrence of this beloved feeling to Lupin, of all fucking people, annoyed him all the more, really. First the Wolfsbane, and now this.
He was inconceivably angry with Lupin for concealing this much about Sirius Black, but he could have been angrier. His reserves of rage knew almost no depth or bounds. That he wasn't more enraged—that Lupin was still breathing—was an outcome Severus could only attribute to his suspecting the truth all along. He'd known Lupin was hiding something, and he'd been right. The only shock was that Lupin had finally come forward—to himself.
He wasn't convinced that Lupin was being straight with him. The fact that Lupin was now "owning up" was deeply suspicious. He was certain only that Lupin wanted the spell performed; as to why, the real truth of it, he was far less sure. Why wait till now to come forward? To approach Severus with this plan? Even if he was only doing it to trap Severus somehow, to put him in Dumbledore's bad graces, why choose now?
Did Lupin and Sirius Black have a plan for getting into the castle that needed Severus out of the way? But he'd have to be turned out of Hogwarts for that to work, and Dumbledore wouldn't sack him for doing a Dark Locating spell. He'd be furious, disappointed, and unpleasant, but he wouldn't terminate their association.
It was no good asking Lupin, whether for the truth or for another lie. The bastard's secrets were too securely wrapped. Severus was only, perhaps, closer to the truth because Lupin had offered it to him.
It was galling.
So he threw himself into study of the spell to learn what he could of either Lupin's faithlessness or his unexpected candor. What he learned confused him more than ever. He owned a copy of this book, and the spell Lupin had found in the library was identical to the one in his own; a spell to find someone who did not wish to be found. Lupin had altered nothing to mislead him.
After determining that, Severus knew he would have to steel himself to do what he normally would never have submitted to: spending time with and talking to Lupin.
He would get to the bottom of this, one way or the other.
"Take this thing back with you," he said on Tuesday evening when Lupin arrived at his office. He dropped the library book onto the desk; it was so heavy the whole desk vibrated, rattling all his quills and ink jars. "I have my own copy."
"Cheers," said Lupin, "I'd been wanting to study it more. How have you been getting on?"
Oh, Christ. The faint gratification, the pretense of honest interest— This was going to be even more of a trial than Severus had originally thought.
"I know what I'm doing, Lupin," he said with icy rudeness.
"Do you think it will really work? From my understanding of Dark and Light magic, I thought it would, since it's not bound by the limitations of similar forms, as Light spells are, but—"
"Obviously I think it will work or I wouldn't be wasting my time."
"How badly will it hurt you to cast it?" Lupin asked after a pause, almost like the thought bothered him. How touching.
"You can spare the pretense of concern and stick to what you'll need to do. For it to really be reliable, we'll need something of Black's as an anchor."
"I have something," Lupin said, and looked like he wanted to change the subject; so Severus didn't let him.
"What have you got? We'll need hair at the least, but blood would be best." Now, let us see how you will finagle your way out of that.
"Lucky us, then, I've got blood. Now, Severus—"
"I beg your pardon? I'm not sure I understood. You're saying you have a twelve-year-old sample of blood."
"I have something he bled on. An old scrap of cloth, that's all. I was thinking that we could—"
For Christ's sake. Even the most mushy-headed fucking Hufflepuff wouldn't accept that at face value. "I will want to see it," Severus interrupted.
"I thought you might," Lupin said, as calmly as ever, and pulled a little bag out of his pocket. From it he withdrew an old scrap of cloth, which Severus snatched from him. Sure enough, it was spattered with a few drops and smears of what looked like old blood.
"You've treasured a piece of blood-stained cloth for twelve years," he said, his tone sagging with sarcasm.
"Not treasured it, no. I found it again. When Sirius went to prison, I boxed up most of his things and put them into storage in his Gringott's vault. I had some of it sent to me, when I found this spell, to see if there was anything we could use."
Merlin and Morgana, this was really getting ridiculous. "You stored his things away for him. Why not just throw them away?"
"I couldn't bear to."
Something in Lupin's face and voice was almost like real emotion—grief, regret, loss—emotions Severus knew better than any others. He knew them so well it was impossible to mistake them; he even knew they were being faked; and this seemed like. . .
"You just have open access to Black's vaults, do you," he said, hardening his voice.
"He co-signed them over to me ages ago," Lupin said, appearing to consider it a matter of complete indifference.
Severus found himself without any reply to make. If Lupin were telling the truth, it indicated a pride that was masochistic to the point of being nearly suicidal. No one who looked at Lupin could think he had lived any life but one of extreme poverty and hardship. To suppose he could have had access to the wealth of the Blacks and had chosen to deny himself the use of it all these years was ludicrous.
"You realize this spell will not harm its object," Severus said, collecting himself. "It will only lead us to Black and trap him until I cancel the binding."
"Yes," said Lupin. "Though I'm more worried about it hurting you. I know the backlash to even simple Dark spells can be debilitating, and— How powerful is this one?"
"It is fairly powerful," Severus said, pleased to appear as unconcerned about that as Lupin was about inheriting and discarding Black's wealth.
"But his being so close at hand, that won't make it easier to cast?"
"That has nothing to do with it. The spell will find someone, anyone, no matter what class of being he is, anywhere in the world. To the power required to set the spell in motion, his nearness is a matter of absolute indifference."
Lupin looked troubled.
"I have cast spells as powerful as this before," Severus said, annoyed. "And more besides. I can live through it, Lupin. You can store your scruples back wherever you normally keep them."
"I don't like being the means of you hurting yourself."
"You may not like it, but saying so is only an attempt to assuage your guilt. If you really couldn't stand to see me hurt, you'd have kept the idea to yourself. Your concern does nothing for me. It does not need to do anything. If I didn't want to do this, Lupin, I wouldn't. You couldn't possibly make me, by any means."
"That's certainly true," Lupin said. He looked thoughtful, however.
Tired of that subject, Severus redirected it. "I see no reason to wait to complete the casting. The components are extremely simple. I can have them collected within a day, two at the most."
All this exigency produced from Lupin was a satisfied nod. "Did I understand correctly that the spell will have the greatest potency for the smaller effort at the full moon?"
"Yes—" Severus repressed all his revulsion. "But you'll have to be on hand to follow the trail to its source, and as a wolf you'll be no help at all."
"But we could do it during the day, couldn't we? I don't transform until the moon rises, and that won't be until after dark."
"And if something goes wrong, you'll be in no shape to right it."
"But we want to catch him as soon as possible. I'll be on the Wolfsbane, Severus, I'll be safe—and you said yourself, the binding will hold him until we get there. We can do the spell in the early part of the day, as soon as you're ready, and have ample time. We'd want to do it before dark, in any case. And. . ." Lupin seemed to steel himself to keep speaking. "I'll be too ill to help you after. We'd have to wait till next weekend, probably, and in that time he might have, he could have done anything."
Severus hesitated—not because he thought Lupin's proposal was entirely sensible, but because he didn't and yet a part of him wanted to agree to it. Lupin's illness could pose all kinds of trouble and delays. . . During the day, it should be fine. . . and he knew, for his part, that the Wolfsbane was trustworthy. . .
The memory of a dark, low tunnel, the smell of earth and animal, throbbed at the edge of his thoughts.
"Very well," he said at last. "We'll hold Saturday in reserve. We can't do it during the week, in any case; it's dark out before we're done with teaching, and we can't be blundering around at night. It will have to be Saturday."
Harriet received two notes on Wednesday at breakfast: one from Hagrid, inviting her to tea on Friday afternoon, and one from Snape, moving her appointment with Asteria from Saturday morning to Friday evening.
She didn't know whether to be amused that the notes had come at the same time, or a little put out at Snape's moving things around without asking if it was convenient.
She snorted. As if he'd ever.
So she wrote to Hagrid, "Professor Snape moved my appointment to Friday, can I come for tea on Sat instead?" and "Okay" to Snape. Then she scratched that out and wrote, "Yes, sir."
"Snape's so promontory," she said to Hermione as she sent the notes off.
"Peremptory," Hermione corrected, though she didn't look up from her new book, one of the batch she'd turned up with last night just before curfew. It had that horrible middle English spelling, but Harriet thought it said howfe elfe.
Harriet spent the rest of lunch without saying a word. Hermione, busy with her book, didn't seem to notice.
In Potions class, Snape was acting strangely. Instead of telling them to be quiet and make whatever potion he spelled onto the board, he began the class by making a rare speech about Truth Serums.
"The most advanced of these," he said, sneering at the lot of them, "Veritaserum, is far beyond any of your capabilities—such as they are. Who is aware of the limitations of this class of potions in general?"
Hermione's hand, of course, was the only one in the air.
"Anyone but Miss Granger," Snape said, not even bothering to look round at her—and Harriet felt a flash of satisfaction that stunned her.
The Slytherins sniggered, Pansy Parkinson even letting out a shrill giggle. At the sound, Harriet, who was now feeling more deeply mortified than she could bear, said in a loud, angry voice:
"They only work on humans."
The silence of complete surprise fell over the classroom. Even Snape stared at her. Harriet glared defiantly back, her face feeling hot.
"Yes," he said coolly. "They do. Any non-human creature—such as a werewolf—will be immune to its effects."
He then set them to working on a revealing potion that left a dark blue stain on the lips and tongue of someone who was lying. The potion was rather fiddly and complex, and, from being so angry with herself, Harriet botched hers completely: what should have been a murky gray color like old dishwater turned out neon green. Hermione's, of course, was perfect, and Ron's came out brownish yellow. Snape mocked him for it, but said nothing at all about Harriet's, even though it glowed like toxic waste across the room.
At lunch, Hermione didn't open a single book, and seemed to be making an effort to be chatty, which made Harriet feel like a total slug.
"I do wish we were allowed to brew Veritaserum," Hermione said. "I'm sure we could—we made Polyjuice, after all, and they're on the same level—"
"You made Polyjuice," Harriet said, moving some bean sprouts around her plate. She wasn't remotely hungry. "Ron and I did almost nothing."
"It's only a matter of following directions, really," Hermione said, though she looked pleased. "But Veritaserum is restricted, you have to have a license even to brew it, and a court order for its use. . ."
Harriet didn't care about the lawful use of Veritaserum or any potion on earth, but she decided it was her duty to pretend that she did, for being such a fucking horrible friend.
"How did you know?" Hermione asked curiously. "About the potions only working on humans."
"I didn't. I just guessed. I knew their magic was different. . . goblins and house-elves and all that. . . so I thought maybe that was it."
In fact, she'd been pretty sure it was wrong, that everyone would then laugh at her, and she could have hated herself less. But she'd got the answer right when Hermione had been barred from giving it and been laughed at for trying, and that made her feel even more wretched.
"It was very clever," Hermione said approvingly, and Harriet felt she hadn't known before what it meant to feel ashamed of herself.
She had to make it up to Hermione somehow, without her knowing what was being made up.
"I've got something to show you," she said. "We can go after dinner?"
"I wish I could, but I've got to read half this book for Arithmancy, and write a summary of the important points for each chapter. . ."
"All right," Harriet said, feeling depressed. "When you've got some free time, then."
The rest of the week clipped by. Before Harriet was prepared, she was walking down dinner on Friday, still without having got the chance to show Hermione what she wanted to.
"Maybe tomorrow morning," Hermione half-promised. "I can get some of this out of the way tonight, while you're meeting with Asteria Greengrass."
But by tomorrow, it wouldn't be the same, because Harriet would already have shown it to Asteria. She had wanted Hermione to see it first. But Hermione was still wrapped up in her books. And if books meant more to her than whatever Harriet wanted to show her—
It was strange to be mad at someone and upset with yourself because of what you'd done to them.
Pushing her plate away, she said, "I'll see you," and trudged out of the Great Hall to put her things upstairs before she had to meet with Asteria.
Someone got on the swinging staircase next to her. At first she thought it was Neville—the person was quite tall—but then she realized it was Ron. She stared at him, or rather, at his arm. Ron did not look at her.
She was starting to wonder whether he was going to ignore her the whole ride when he said abruptly:
"She can be a real lousy friend, you know."
Harriet flushed. "What about you?"
Ron also colored, an unflattering maroon. For a moment he looked as angry as she felt, and then he ground out:
"Yeah, so'm I, all right."
Harriet was so stunned she couldn't reply. The staircase scraped up against the landing and settled, waiting for them to step off, but neither of them moved.
Ron was glaring at his shoes. "But she won't say sorry, if she thinks she's right, and she forgets other people are alive when she's got something to learn—like being right is more important than anything else."
All Harriet's emotions were balling up together and pressing on her chest, making it impossible for her to speak.
"I miss us all being friends," Ron said, kicking hard at the balustrade. "I bet you two've been doing loads of dangerous and life-threatening stuff without me—or maybe not, because she's always bloody studying and hardly noticing anyone else is alive—"
"You're one to talk, you've been ignoring us for weeks—"
Ron flushed scarlet. "Because her cat ate Scabbers and you took her side! How'd you feel if that animal ate Hedwig?"
"Crookshanks ate Scabbers but you made Hermione cry, of course I took her side!"
"And she's paying you back by ignoring you so she can study about Muggles, who she grew up with anyway." His face was contorted with fury, red to the tips of his ears.
"Oh, what do you care!" Harriet shouted, to get this suffocating weight off her chest. "You were sticking with the boys before Crookshanks ate anyone, it's not like we're your friends anymore anyway! Just a couple of stupid girls—"
"You know what," Ron bellowed, "forget it! Just—fucking forget it!"
He stormed down the stairs, but on getting to the bottom realized he was trapped; the connecting stair had swung away, leaving him with an empty drop. Swearing more foully, he stormed back up, shoved past her, and barreled off down the hall.
Harriet struggled not to burst into tears. She wouldn't be such a—such a ninny to cry over a fight, just because she she now felt worse than ever.
"No more coffee. . . you'll just fucking drive yourself mad. . ."
Severus dragged on his cigarette, even though it was little more than filter at that point. He only had two left after this one. What he'd parceled out all last term had been used up in the last five days.
A soft knock on his office door pulled his attention to the clock. Merlin, when had it got to be that late?
He swept his notes into a drawer that he shut and locked, sent the book flying to a nearby shelf that was charmed so the students couldn't see it, and banished the pathetic remains of his cigarette. Another slight spell eradicated the smell. Nobody would know he hadn't simply been sitting here all the while, vegetating.
"Yes?" he called.
The moment Miss Potter came in, it was obvious she was in a terrible mood. He'd never seen her expression so stormy with pent-up emotion. Her face was red, like she had a temperature, and her eyes were over-bright.
She took a seat without saying anything, although that could have been from not knowing what to say. Nobody could fool themselves that he was interested in chat.
Was she near tears? She looked like it. Shit. What was he supposed to do with that? Should he let her alone or try and say something? Anything he said was sure to make it worse. . . but she really did look poorly. . .
"Are you ill?" he asked at last, trying to keep his voice neutral.
She glared at her knees. "No," she muttered.
Could he leave it there? Of course he could, if he wanted to be pathetic.
"Did you hurt yourself?"
That time she only shook her head.
"Is something an adult should be made aware of?"
"No, sir."
Politeness from Miss Potter—well, polite words; the tone was no great recommendation of her manners—was unsettling.
At last, he said, "Your meeting with Miss Greengrass will require you to be in a better mood than this. As I have something pressing to take care of on Saturday," he wanted another cigarette, "we can't put it off."
"You wouldn't understand," she said, flushing. "You don't even like Ron and Hermione, you hate them. Otherwise you wouldn't make such fun of them in front of everyone."
Had he been particularly churlish to Granger and Weasley today? He couldn't remember.
"What are you talking about, Miss Potter?"
"Like you don't know!" The look her face—he knew he should've kept his fucking mouth shut. "Anyone but Miss Granger—and my potion was so much worse than Ron's, but you didn't say anything about that, and everyone was laughing—"
Then she did start crying, but it was an irate sort of crying, and she wiped harshly at her face as the tears fell, though that didn't stop them.
"I hate everything about this year! I hate S-sirius Black—and Hermione studying all the time—and Ron's being a git, even though Crookshanks d-did eat Scabbers, and I'd be angry t-too—and it's not my f-fault house-elves are the w-way they are—"
Severus sat motionless, too astonished to do anything about this passionate outpouring that sounded as angry as it did heartbroken. Pretty soon she was completely incoherent, and was sobbing so violently he worried she'd make herself pass out. He stood abruptly to send for someone, but had no idea who. This needed someone tender and motherly, and neither Minerva nor Pomfrey fit that bill. Sprout? No, God no. . .
Feeling both feeble and useless, he conjured a few handkerchiefs and handed them to her, or tried to; she wouldn't take them. Should he offer her a Calming Draught? No; the attempt would probably make things worse. Calming Draughts were best given to people in a state of heightened grief, not anger. When a person was this angry, the last thing they wanted was someone suggesting they calm down. He should know.
It said something about his House that in twelve years he'd never before had to deal with a student in this state, whom he hadn't put there himself. And he hadn't made a student cry since 1982, when he'd learned how to toe that line between "ego-deflating" and "hysteria-inducing."
She was still crying. Good Lord, how long had it been? This must have been bottled up for some time, and some recent event had proved one trial too many.
He decided to send for Pomfrey if she hadn't stopped crying after five more minutes.
He was reaching for the Floo powder he kept on the mantle when Miss Potter's sobs started to die down, perhaps because she didn't have the breath to sustain them. She lay weakly against the arm of the chair, her breath heaving in great gulps, looking wrung out and miserable.
He repeated his silent offer of handkerchiefs. After a moment of not moving, when he thought she either hadn't seen them or would refuse them again, she groped at the air to take one and started wiping at her face.
He should say something, yet he had no idea what. Everything sounded so hypocritical or platitudinous even in his head.
"Weasley will get over it," he said at last, when the only sounds she was making were sniffles.
She started crying again. Motherfucking—
Well, there was one thing he could do. She was in no fit state to help Asteria Greengrass learn to socialize, with or without his blundering help.
"Wait here," he said, feeling foolish, for she probably wasn't strong enough to sit up, let alone go anywhere, and left the office. Maybe she'd feel better for being left alone. Without himself, at least.
Asteria was waiting in the classroom when he got there, holding a letter. She turned eagerly at the sound of the door opening, but shrank back when she saw who it was.
"Miss Potter is unwell," he said. "The meeting will have to be postponed. I will contact you when I've arranged another session."
He left her looking, he thought, sincerely disappointed.
When he returned to his office, Miss Potter had stopped crying again, though she still radiated misery.
"What about Asteria—" she said in a thick voice.
"I've put it off. You're in no state to help someone else feel better about themselves. You had best concentrate on your own peace of mind."
She started to answer, but had to blow her nose instead. He conjured another handkerchief and vanished the first, which now looked disgusting.
Her anger seemed to have gone with the tears, but her misery had only increased.
"You ought to talk to someone," he said, hoping he didn't sound feeble. "Professor McGonagall—"
"I'm fine," she muttered.
"Miss Potter, people who are fine do not burst out crying for," he glanced at the clock, "eight minutes together."
She started pleating the handkerchief, without looking up. Recollecting that he was standing, he returned to his seat.
"You're fighting with Miss Granger," he hazarded, "and Mr. Weasley, so you have no one to talk to."
"I'm not fighting with Hermione." Why should she look so guilty? "I mean, we do fight, sometimes, but that's not. . ."
Severus knew how to elicit a confidence that another person was reluctant to give, but he was not going to use on Miss Potter tactics he'd perfected on Death Eaters.
"I'm. . . angry all the time now," she said, bending her head down so he couldn't see her face. "I wish I wasn't."
"That is part of growing up."
"I'm angrier than most people, though. . . most other people don't get as mad as me."
He was surprised she managed to say that to him without some kind of accusatory look.
"Some people have more vicious tempers than others. Your parents were each prone to emotional outbursts. You've only inherited it." And you have far more to be angrier about.
"You don't want to talk about my mum, do you."
He supposed this was his penance for making her cry—twice. ". . .No."
"Professor Lupin doesn't want to talk about them either. He told me about the jewelry, but even that was too much, he wrote it in a card he didn't sign. And you didn't tell me about Mum, Aunt Petunia did, I only asked you. Why. . . why don't you want to talk about her?"
There it was again, that desperate, yearning hunger, alloyed with heartache, and he had absolutely no strength within himself to answer her.
"Why?" she said again.
When he still didn't reply, the innocent plea in her face hardened. After a moment of regarding him with that hard stare, she stood, a bit unsteadily, and with a burning look of heartfelt reproach she turned to leave. He realized he was gripping the arm of his chair so hard that he was surprised the wood didn't crack.
When her hand was only inches from the doorknob, he said, "You didn't know her."
She paused but did not turn around. He forced himself to keep speaking, with a superhuman effort that outclassed any he'd called up while dealing with Lupin.
"You don't remember her. You want to know what you do not possess. We," and he could have sworn the wood in his chair creaked, "remember everything. The difference between learning of what you do not know and talking of what you do not wish to remember is—everything."
She stood facing the door for several long moments before turning. He couldn't read the expression on her face, or maybe he was in no state to.
"But you were friends," she said. "That's what I want to know about, not—how they died. I know that anyway."
He was going to break his hand, holding on like this.
"The reality of their death distorts everything that came before." And my guilt, my own crippling, crushing guilt. "When something you have been. . . dreading comes to pass," worse, worse than you could have imagined, "you would rather remember nothing about it at all, whether good or bad."
"Haven't you ever talked about it?" she asked quietly, after a long silence.
"No." Not more than I was forced to.
"You hate Professor Lupin," she said. "But he was friends with my mum and dad and you were friends with her, too."
"He was friends with your father. I was friends with your mother. She was easier to get along with than I was." The smoking detritus of the years that lay between the truth and that clean, succinct retelling fouled everything. He couldn't tell her.
He wouldn't.
Miss Potter walked slowly back over to the chair and sat down again. It was a testament either to her need to know or to her loneliness that she did not leave. He both wanted her to go and did not, each desire as sharp as the other.
"I found a letter she wrote me," she said, not looking up. "In her jewelry."
Something small and painfully bright dropped through the endless, empty blackness inside him. He closed his eyes.
"It's. . . I think she took a long time to write it, because the handwriting is different in places. I mean sometimes it's kind of wobbly, and others it's steady. . . sometimes the pen pressed almost through the paper, and sometimes letters are almost missing. . ."
The vision of Lily trying to write a letter to a child she thought might not remember her—for he could guess the contents, well enough—getting up to pace, returning to scribble a few words, and then stopping again, unsure how to go on; maybe even called away by the child herself, perhaps by a cry, or by the dictates of her own heart. . .
"I have some photographs Hagrid gave me," she went on, still not looking up at him, for which he was profoundly thankful. "Of her. . . and of Dad. But it's. . ."
"Not enough," he said, his voice barely audible.
She did look up then, and nodded. He had no idea what his face would be telling her. He couldn't even begin to guess.
She sniffed and wiped at her nose with his conjured handkerchief. Whether because she'd run out of the energy to talk or didn't know what she to say next, she seemed disinclined to say more.
"Mr. Weasley spends all Potions class making forlorn faces at you and Miss Granger," he said. "He is ready to make up, whatever happened."
"I know," she muttered. "He tried this afternoon—but I yelled at him. It wasn't fair, but he was still mad at Hermione." She looked guilty again. Ah. . .
"For the same reasons you are angry with Miss Granger?"
His guess hit its mark: she went bright red, with a look of acute shame.
"As long as you don't make up with Weasley to abuse Miss Granger behind her back," he said, wondering how in the name of God and Merlin had come to this, with his counseling someone on friendship, "there's no reason for you to castigate yourself. Whether your hurt feelings are reasonable or justified, you will have them. Everyone is out of charity with their friends at some point, often repeatedly. How you get over it," keep talking, get it out, "means a great deal more than never having an unjust thought. That isn't true of anyone."
She blinked at him, still very red in the face. "But. . . you make fun of them."
"They are your friends, not mine. What does it matter whether I like them or not?"
"You could be less mean," she said, frowning. He would have said giving people handkerchiefs increased their impertinence, except for the fact that Miss Potter had surely been born impertinent.
"And you could be more insipid, or Miss Granger could fail to try answering every question I ask. I am mean, you are temperamental, and Miss Granger is an overachiever. We are who we are."
She did not look pleased with this explanation, as well she shouldn't; but he wasn't going to be reprimanded by a thirteen-year-old girl. Even if she was right, and he hated to be looked at with that reproving disappointment.
"Why aren't you as mean to me as the others?" she asked. "Is it because of my mum?"
He blinked. "Yes."
"Oh." She looked confused. "Is that why you also get so angry when I do dangerous things?"
"It may be. No other student takes danger as far as you do. If I ever discover Asteria Greengrass with a dead Basilisk, I might surprise myself."
She made that loud, watery sniff again. "I can meet her now. I. . . feel better."
"Then you should go make up with Weasley or Miss Granger."
She looked surprised. After a moment, she nodded and stood for the second time to go.
For lack of anything else to say, he handed her the last handkerchief.
At the door, she paused and turned round again. "You know. . . you should try being nice more often." Then she looked thoughtful. "Though everyone might be too scared to believe it."
Was he being teased?
"I tried that once, in 1986," he said coolly, "for three days. Madam Pomfrey told me never to do it again, for the dramatic increase in nervous disorders it caused."
Miss Potter gave him a little smile and slipped out the door.
After she'd gone, he smoked both the cigarettes that remained, one right after the other.