Harriet awoke on a soft bed in a quiet place.
For a moment she lay staring blankly up at nothing, because her glasses were gone. Then panic surged through her and she shot upright only for her head to whirl, forcing her to sag back to the bed.
"Oh, no you don't, Miss Potter," said Madam Pomfrey's voice out of the blurry dimness, scaring Harriet half out of her wits. "You'll lie right there until I say so."
"What happened? How'd I get here?"
"Hagrid found you, Professor Snape—and Sirius Black—lying unconscious on the ground in the forest. That's the how," Madam Pomfrey said tartly, "though as to what happened, we were hoping you could tell us."
"Are they okay? The Dementors didn't hurt them?"
"Dementors?" said Madam Pomfrey. A sunlight-colored spell flared from her wand, stinging Harriet's eyes. "Well, if that's the case, you all escaped unscathed—though that won't be true of Black for long. The Dementors will be administering the Kiss shortly."
"What? No!" Harriet struggled to stand, though Madam Pomfrey held her down. "Let me go, I have to— Where are my glasses?"
"Miss Potter, what did I say?"
"He's innocent! It was Pettigrew—Snape knows—where is he?"
"Professor Snape is unconscious," Madam Pomfrey said. "He was very badly injured."
Harriet found her glasses and shoved them on her face as roughly as Snape had done. Madam Pomfrey looked grim, and there was blood smeared on her apron. Harriet's stomach bottomed out.
"I-is he going to be okay?"
"I am doing my best, Miss Potter," was the sort of reply Harriet didn't like at all. Panic was balling up in her chest, from so many different sources she wasn't even sure what they all were—except the one coming from the sense that something irreversibly dreadful was going to happen and she didn't know how to stop it, only that she had to.
"But he—you have to stop them—Sirius Black didn't do anything—where's Professor Dumbledore?"
As if summoned by the sound of his name, he walked in through the widely swinging doors. Harriet hadn't paid much attention to the Headmaster all that year, but she was almost as happy to see him now as she'd been to see Snape in the forest. He'd be able to stop this terrible thing from happening. Everyone said Dumbledore could do anything, everything.
She hardly heard Madam Pomfrey replying, "Never you mind, Miss Potter, you are here to heal and rest—Miss Potter!"
"Professor Dumbledore!" Harriet ducked beneath Madam Pomfrey's arm and skidded in front of him. "Please, Sirius Black can't—"
"Headmaster, this isn't good for her," Madam Pomfrey said angrily. "In her condition, getting overexcited—"
"Forgive me, Madam Pomfrey," Professor Dumbledore said, "but I'm afraid this cannot wait." He held up a hand. "I will do my best not to upset Harriet further, but it is vital that I speak with her."
Madam Pomfrey looked like she wanted nothing more than to turn him out on his ear—but she only curtseyed and strode away to the back of the ward. A moment later, Harriet heard a door shut with a snap.
"Sir, Sirius Black, he's innocent, it was Pettigrew—"
"Forgive me, my dear, but I must forestall you," Dumbledore said. "Sirius has told me the whole story," he went on when Harriet opened her mouth to argue.
"But then he's—"
"A fugitive from the law, with no proof." He laid his hand on Harriet's shoulder when she started to protest. "Harriet. I believe him, but my faith is no proof at all, and without proof, Sirius will receive a fate worse than death."
"But there has to be something we can—"
"There is nothing I can do to convince anyone," Dumbledore said. "Powerful though I may be in many respects, here I can have no influence. Nor, I fear, can you, not with the Ministry."
Harriet struggled for a protest that would convince him and finding none, neither in the dark spaces of her imagination nor in the knot of dread in her chest.
Dumbledore squeezed her shoulder gently. "Isn't it curious? We have both saved and served our world well, and yet they will not accept our word above their own beliefs. Humans are curious creatures."
"He's going to lose his soul," Harriet said, though she wanted to shout, What the fuck do I care how curious people are?
"We often forget, too," Dumbledore went on, "that sometimes power comes from the unlikeliest of places. Why, there are numerous creatures in this very castle whose tireless love for all of us, however little we may deserve it, makes it possible for you and I to have this discussion with little care for questions such as, oh, when the laundry will be done, or how much time the washing up will take."
Harriet raised her head slowly to stare at him. Dumbledore smiled.
"Very curious," he said. Then he patted her shoulder. "If you'll excuse me, my dear, I need to have a word with Madam Pomfrey. Severus does nothing by halves, and I'm afraid his courage might have got the better of him this time. . ."
He turned away, but then stopped, holding up a finger. "Ah, yes. When I am through, we'll invite Hagrid in to see you. He's the one who found you—Severus' clever sparks, you see—and he's been waiting anxiously outside to know you're well."
Then Dumbledore swept off the way Pomfrey had gone, opened a door, and let himself quietly in, shutting it softly behind him.
Harriet was alone in the ward. And outside. . .
She breathed in and out again, thinking through what she would do.
"Dobby," she whispered.
He appeared with only the softest snap in the air, eyes wide and imploring.
"Can you take me to Sirius Black?" she whispered.
Apparating with Dobby was a very different experience than Apparating with Snape. That had felt like being squeezed and shot through a tube at a speed that nearly took her skin off. Dobby's Apparition was like moving through a sheet of softly falling water. She closed her eyes in the hospital wing, and when she opened them one blink later, she stood in the eerie dungeon classroom she'd thought much too gloomy, with Dobby's cool, leathery hand slipping out of hers.
Curled in the corner, Snuffles raised his head from his paws. When he saw who it was, he changed back into the man with matted hair and skeleton-skin.
"How," he croaked, staring out of those half-dead eyes.
"Come on, you've got to come with us." Harriet was breathing quickly. "Dobby, can you take two of us at once, or—?"
"There is being no limit, Harriet Potter," he whispered. "If Harriet Potter's Snuffles and Harriet Potter will be holding hands with Dobby and each other?"
She took Dobby's hand and held out her left for Black. His skin was icy, and his bones rippled against her palm.
"We're going to Hagrid's," she whispered to Dobby. "On the edge of his pumpkin patch, near the trees, where there's some cover."
Another soft movement, like a gentle sigh of space and time, and they were in the exact spot she'd described. Madam Pomfrey had taken away her jacket and her shoes, and the cold was powerful, the moon bright and full above the trees. More than one reason to shiver. . .
She couldn't see any Dementors blotting out the stars, and she didn't hear the echo of her mum's voice in the cold. Good.
"Dobby, can you tell me if the hippogriff is in Hagrid's hut?"
Nodding, he flashed away.
"Holly-berry," said Black, in his hoarse, disused voice, and Harriet wished she had time to ask why he called her that.
"Buckbeak needs rescuing, too," she said instead. "You can escape together."
Before Black could reply, Dobby returned without any fanfare. "The hippogriff is being inside, Harriet Potter."
"Thanks, Dobby. Come on," she said again to Black, and when she slipped through the trees to Hagrid's door, he followed without a word.
Dobby opened the door from the inside. Buckbeak raised his head from the remains of Hagrid's bed, looking forbidding in the sunken light. Harriet bowed. Black did the same, and then they pulled Buckbeak out of the hut and led him down to the forest. He was too restless for Harriet to hold, tossing his head and flexing his wings, so Black took his reins and stroked the feathers on his head.
"Settle down, boy," he muttered, and to her wonder, Buckbeak did.
"The Dementors can't find you again," Harriet said urgently, shakily. "You've got to get away—"
"I will." But instead of flying straight away, he sank down in front of her, leaning on one knee. "First I've got to say I'm sorry."
Tears stung Harriet's eyes. "It's my fault—"
"How the hell do you work that out?"
"If I hadn't stopped you and Professor Lupin from killing him—"
"You'd be a different person." He gripped her shoulder. "It's what Prongs would've done."
"My dad," she whispered.
"He'd have done exactly what you did. And he'd be proud of you. Your mum, too."
Harriet had never had such a difficulty not crying.
Black put his hands on either side of her face. Up close, his eyes looked neither dead nor half-mad, but very real and very sad, like he was watching something precious slip away.
"I'll see you again," he said. "When I went to Azkaban, I made that promise, and I'm making it again. I'll see you again, Holly-berry." Then he clapped Dobby on the shoulder, almost knocking him over. "You, too, mate. Thanks, for all of it."
He mounted Buckbeak and guided him round. Buckbeak's wings stirred Harriet's hair.
"When you see Remus again," Black said over his shoulder, "tell him I'm shit at goodbyes, or I'd have said something better."
He urged Buckbeak out from beneath the trees into the moonlight, first to a trot, then a canter, and with a spread of his massive wings took flight, shedding silver light until they were a silhouette against the moon, then a black spot, like an inverted star. . . and finally gone.
When she and Dobby reappeared in the ward, they both leapt a foot in the air as something nearby gave a horrible, teeth-clenching CRASH.
Harriet stared wildly round, but she didn't see anyone demolishing the infirmary or any windows exploding, which is what the noise had sounded like. But no sooner had she failed to spot the cacophony than it came again, accompanied by muffled shouting.
Her eyes fixed on the door Pomfrey and Dumbledore had disappeared through.
"Thank you, Dobby," she said. "I owe you."
"Harriet Potter may be calling on Dobby at any time, for any thing," he said, "and Dobby is answering." Then with a low bow, he vanished.
Harriet ran to the back of the ward and tested the doorknob. It turned. When she eased the door open, the muffled voices became ear-ringing shouting—Snape's shouting. Her heart did a little somersault-collapse of relief. If he was yelling like that, it meant he wasn't that badly hurt. . . right?
Actually, she could picture Snape swearing someone's hair white with his leg hanging half off.
Shuddering, she pushed the door all the way open into a hall she'd never been to. It was darkish and lined with doors, but the first one on the left stood open, light pouring out of it and some bottles smashed straight across the floor in the corridor.
"DON'T TELL ME TO FUCKING CALM DOWN," Snape was roaring. "THERE WERE A HUNDRED FUCKING DEMENTORS, YOU TELL ME RIGHT NOW WHERE SHE—"
Harriet stared into the room. Snape was trying to get up off his bed but having little luck: Dumbledore was holding him back, while Madam Pomfrey didn't seem to want to get close to him. She had her wand held out defensively in front of her, but Harriet saw why: Snape had overturned a cart of potions and supplies and things, exploded the window, and smashed some sort of cabinet; wood and broken class and multicolored smears of potions littered the floor.
Harriet ran to the edge of the bed. "I'm here!" she said desperately. "I'm fine—"
"Miss Potter, out!" Madam Pomfrey cried.
"There now, Severus," Dumbledore said, "you can see for yourself that Harriet is perfectly well."
Snape stared at Harriet, his face looking wild, almost possessed, his chest heaving like he'd run a marathon race.
Then he said, "Five million points from Gryffindor," and passed out: his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped over in a dead faint. If it hadn't been for Dumbledore catching him, he would have crashed to the floor.
Harriet would've gone to him, but Madam Pomfrey pushed her back and started running spells over him, as Dumbledore eased him down to the bed. The lights from Madam Pomfrey's wand flashed like the aurora, one right after the other.
"Is he going to be okay?" Harriet asked, her throat tight.
"If I am left to do my work in peace, undisturbed," said Madam Pomfrey tightly, "he may yet come out of it. Return to the infirmary, Miss Potter, and do not come back in here!"
"He was looking for me!" Harriet said, her own anger flaring.
"And you acted promptly, my dear," said Dumbledore before Pomfrey could round on her. "If he wakes asking for you again, we shall send for you. In the meantime, Madam Pomfrey needs to concentrate. Please return to the ward. I will join you when I am done here."
Harriet went. Her skin felt hot all over. She didn't know whether she felt chastened or just angry, and sick with worry, because Snape looked dreadfully bad off.
"What use do you think you'd be against a full-grown werewolf? You'd be worse than a dead weight to me."
Guilt churned up her fear and anxiety. He'd told her to get away and she'd refused, and he'd half-killed himself saving her. But—how could she have left him there, alone? Had he had a plan? Or had he tried to send her away to save her? He had that life-debt to her dad. . . and he and her mum had been friends. . .
"Harry? Harry!" whispered a familiar voice.
It took her a moment to realize Ron and Hermione had crept into the infirmary and were inching along the rows of beds, looking frightened but determined.
"Thank God!" Hermione squeaked, falling on Harriet and throwing her arms around her.
"Pomfrey not here?" Ron asked, looking up and down the ward. "Lucky for us, or she'd turf us out."
"What happened?" Hermione was white to the lips. "Colin Creevey said he saw Hagrid bringing in you, Professor Snape and Sirius Black, all dead and covered in blood—"
"We were just unconscious, that's all—"
"You mean he really did—"
The infirmary doors banged open yet again, and a portly man in a green suit, wearing a cloak and clutching a bowler hat, hustled in, Professor McGonagall with him.
"Dumbledore!" said the bowler-hat man. (Ron and Hermione jumped.) "Where is Dumbledore? Thought he would be here! Said to look for him—"
"What now?" cried Madam Pomfrey, emerging from the corridor. "Minister, whatever it is, surely it can wait—"
"No, it can't!" retorted the Minister. "Sirius Black has escaped—"
"Escaped?" said Madam Pomfrey, while Ron said, "Bloody hell! Ouch!" as Hermione kicked him.
"Into thin air," Professor McGonagall said shakily.
"Had him under lock and key, in the dungeons!" said the Minister, looking harassed. "Door never opened, no sign of magic used, can't Apparate on the grounds—but he's gone—"
"If he could escape from Azkaban, I suppose Hogwarts would pose no great challenge."
Dumbledore had come out of the back. Madam Pomfrey whisked herself away to Snape's room once more as Dumbledore approached the knot that had formed around Harriet's bed: the Minister (for Magic?), Professor McGonagall, Ron and Hermione.
"But, Dumbledore, this is serious!" said the Minister in a blustery tone. "Black escaping twice—you and me here—the papers will have a field day, particularly that woman—if we don't want to be a laughingstock—" He seemed to realize Harriet, Ron and Hermione were listening to all this, because he suddenly broke off, clearing his throat. "Well. . . I'd better go and notify the Ministry. . ."
"And the Dementors?" said Dumbledore quietly. "They'll be removed, I trust?"
"Oh, yes, they'll have to go—attempting to administer the Kiss to an innocent girl. . . completely out of control—I'll have them packed off back to Azkaban tonight. Perhaps we should think about staffing dragons at the school entrance, with Black still at large. . ."
"Should you make such a decision, I know exactly who would love to be responsible for them," said Dumbledore, smiling slightly.
He left the ward with the Minister, Professor McGonagall hurrying after them. Ron and Hermione clustered next to Harriet's bed.
"Harriet," said Hermione, clutching her hand, "what happened?"
"Well. . ." Harriet said wearily. "Just so you know, it's a long story."
"I let him sleep in my bed," Ron kept saying over and over.
"Oh, Ron, let it go," Hermione said, but her heart wasn't really in it. She was still very pale, and she was clutching Harriet's hand so tight it hurt.
Madam Pomfrey came to shoo them away.
"It is past curfew, you two ought to have returned to your dormitories long ago. Why the Headmaster didn't send you away—"
"Harry needs us," Ron said, looking mutinous.
"What Miss Potter needs is a good nights' rest, Mr. Weasley," said Madam Pomfrey, but she wrote both him and Hermione passes and did not glare at them quite so sternly as before as she saw them out and locked the doors behind them.
"With me, Miss Potter," she said.
She took Harriet into the corridor in the back, past Snape's room, to the door just across the hall, and let her inside. The room was stark and bare, with an impersonal-looking bed, battered cabinet, and wash basin.
"Why are these rooms here?" Harriet asked.
"This is the quarantine ward, Miss Potter. You'll be sleeping back here for the time being, so I can have both my patients in one place."
And keep an eye on me, Harriet thought.
Once Madam Pomfrey had gone, Harriet sneaked across the hall and tried the handle of Snape's door. It gave her a small zap like a static shock, making her yelp. Before Madam Pomfrey could catch her, she darted back to her room and shut the door, fuming. They'd warded it against her! What did they suppose she was going to do? She just wanted to see him.
She drifted over to the frosted window. The moonlight made everything in the room and outside it look even more stark and bloodless. She thought of Lupin running the forest, his howl threading the darkness, and shivered.
The moonlight, cold and draining, didn't remind her of the silver doe at all. The silver doe was beautiful, warming. . . joyous.
She wondered how Snape was able to make it, when she'd never even seen him smile.
"Please be okay," she whispered. "Please let him be okay."
Harriet slept badly. She had dreams—nightmares—twisted, ugly, frightening things—of a figure in a rotted cloak flying toward her, and one by one everyone she cared about threw themselves in front of her and died—her mum and dad, Hermione, Ron, Dobby, Hagrid, even Buckbeak, for some reason—and finally Snape, blood running across his face, his eyes rolling back in his head and his body falling like a dead weight, trapping her, and she couldn't get up, she didn't want to, because if they were all dead what was the reason to live? She was tangled up in his cloak, falling, falling—
She woke up wincing on the floor, trapped in her sheets.
It was early, early morning, somewhere around dawn; maybe just before, or just after. Snape's door was still warded. Hand stinging more sharply the second time, Harriet curled up in bed, because it was cold and she didn't feel like she'd rested at all.
"I want to see him," she told Madam Pomfrey when the matron brought her breakfast.
"Certainly not," Madam Pomfrey said as she settled the tray on the swinging table next to Harriet's bed. "Professor Snape needs rest, Miss Potter. How many times do I have to say it?"
"I just want to be sure he's all right," Harriet said, feeling both fretful and angry.
"You may take my word for it."
"If he was, I could see him!"
"No, Miss Potter," said Madam Pomfrey, heartlessly, and shut the door behind her with a snap.
Harriet pulled a Snape and threw her porridge bowl at the wall. It shattered and left her with nothing to eat, and the flare of satisfaction she felt was swallowed in a burst of misery.
"Motherfucking shit," she said.
She struggled not to cry, but lost. She pulled her pillow over her head, even though she was alone, so no one could see if they came in.
Remus awoke alone.
The forest was cold enough that even he felt it, curled up beneath the sheltering roots of a massive oak. His body was stiff and aching, but not as bad as it often was. It was more a languid sort of ache, as if from long, exhaustive exercise.
His mouth tasted of blood.
He retched. Again. And again.
Even more than that, he was alone. He shouldn't have been alone. Padfoot would have been there, if he could. That he wasn't meant something had gone wrong.
For a long time, Remus couldn't move for weeping.
Madam Pomfrey let Harriet leave the infirmary at noon that day, though she refused till the bitter end to let her into Snape's room.
So Harriet made her excuses to Ron and Hermione and went to see Dumbledore. He'd written her a message that morning: "Last year, I believe Severus told you I am fond of sherbet lemon. This year, I find myself with a taste for butterbeer."
Last year, Snape had taken her and Hermione to Dumbledore's office. There had been a stone gargoyle to whom he'd said, "Sherbet lemon," like having to say it annoyed him as much as his students did, and a spiraling stone staircase, the door carved with the image of the four founders.
Everything looked exactly the same.
"Good morning, my dear," said Dumbledore, and Harriet felt herself calming without meaning to. "Although it is afternoon by now, isn't it?"
He handed her a mug of some foamy, caramel-colored drink. "I don't believe you've had a butterbeer, have you? That unfortunate business with Hogsmeade. . . Perhaps now that matters have so altered, we may find a way for you to join your friends. Sirius Black is certainly a threat to you no longer—though, in fact, we've found he never was."
Harriet wondered how she'd feel about everything that had happened—everything that had turned out to be true—when it was a little more distant from the present.
She sipped the butterbeer. It was sweet and light and filling, but not filling enough. It made her think of drinking chocolate that summer after hearing her mother's voice for the first time.
"How are you feeling?" Dumbledore asked her gently.
Harriet opened her mouth to say, Fine, thank you, but what came out was: "She won't let me see Snape."
"That sounds like our dear Madam Pomfrey, I fear. Well, being me, perhaps I might do something about that. You're very worried for him."
"I just want to see he's okay." She spilled butterbeer down her hand, but ignored it. She could tell Dumbledore, he liked Snape; it wasn't like telling Ron and Hermione, who didn't. "He saved my life—only he wouldn't have needed to, except I wouldn't listen to him. It's my fault he's hurt."
"Do you think so? I wonder. You see, I have known Severus for quite a long time, and I've never known him to do anything he didn't want to do. He never does things simply because he ought to. He is the least dutiful man I know."
"I-I don't understand."
"I'm not surprised," he smiled. "Severus is a deeply complicated man."
Wasn't that the truth. She didn't understand Snape at all. "When Professor Lupin changed, Snape told me to go, he could do better without me there—but I wouldn't. Only he was right, he was worse off because of me—"
"Really? How do you know this?"
"He got hurt."
"Severus had been doing some very powerful, potentially deadly magic before you found him in the forest," Dumbledore said. "Sirius told me. Severus and Professor Lupin had arranged it between themselves, you see. So Severus was already injured."
"But he had to protect me from the werewolf, and he hurt himself, and then the Dementors. . ."
"Ah, yes, the Dementors," said Dumbledore thoughtfully. "What happened there? Can you tell me?"
She told him—and about the Patronus.
"That was his, wasn't it?" she asked. "I mean, I thought he was unconscious—he was—but his hand did move when I was holding it. . ."
"Severus' Patronus takes the form of a doe, yes," Dumbledore said slowly.
"Then he saved my life twice." And my soul.
Dumbledore was silent a moment. "Severus is, as I have said, a deeply complicated man. . . and fate is capable, even on her simplest day, of complexity to stagger our understanding. We do not know what could have happened had you left the forest. It is possible that Severus had some clever plan that could only have been enacted were he alone. It is possible, too, that he had no such plan at all, and would have died alone, in great pain. Out of concern for him, you did not leave—an impulse any Gryffindor would understand implicitly, but a Slytherin, perhaps, not so much." A distant twinkle shone in his eyes; but then it faded, leaving him deeply serious again. "And left alone with Sirius, it is possible, too, that the Dementors would have set upon you both, and without Severus' Patronus to save you. . . two innocent lives would have been lost that night."
Harriet swallowed.
"It is an unfortunate lesson," said Dumbledore, "that what we do out of care for others can give as much pain as aide. But it is only in the aftermath that we see what our actions have led to. We cannot know beforehand. Some would say our heads are the best guide; others, our hearts. It is up to each of us to decide where we place our faith. Gryffindors tend to follow our hearts; Slytherins, their heads. It is perhaps one reason we understand each other so little. We each think the other is acting against our very natures.
"I will speak to Madam Pomfrey," he said, "so that you may see Severus. You shall receive my owl before long, I promise you. Now, my dear, I shall let you return to your friends. I'm sure you'd rather be catching up with them than listening to the prating of an old man."
Harriet knew she said something—or she hoped she did; something appropriately polite or grateful—but her head and heart were both so full that if they'd tried to lead her in opposite directions, she might have burst. She wandered away from his study with no very clear idea of where she was going.
Dumbledore had said Snape was not dutiful, and he did only what he wanted. But after Quirrell-demort had tried to kill her, Dumbledore had said Snape was protecting her because he owed her father a debt. That sounded like duty. So either Dumbledore had it wrong, and Snape could act for duty. . . or, for his own reasons, Snape wanted to protect her.
The way she'd seen his face in the forest. . . and the way he didn't want to talk about her mum. . .
It left her with a great deal to think about while she walked the halls without noticing, as the winter sunlight broke against the glass, the endless fog round the castle parting, the Dementors all gone