On Friday morning, Harriet was dragged from sleep by a frantic hand on her shoulder shaking her back and forth.
"Wha—?"
"Harry, wake u-u-up!" It was. . . Parvati? "You've got to see if you got yours!"
Got her. . . what. . . ? Since the dorm didn't seem to be under attack, Harriet rolled away from her. "B'ger off. . ."
"Both Lavender and me started our cycles today! You've got see if you did, too!"
"That's what you woke me up for?" Harriet said, coming fully awake in outrage. "For fuck's sake—"
"Harry!" Parvati said, scandalized.
Harriet refused to satisfy the whims of nutters who tried to drag her up before dawn for some stupid fucking Divs spell, and kicked Parvati out of her fourposter. But with those two already awake, it would have been easier to go back to sleep in an elephant's bath house. All she could do to thwart them was lie stubbornly in bed, feeling tired and annoyed.
When she finally deigned to get up, she was satisfied to find that she hadn't started yet. But by lunchtime, she was feeling much less smug: her whole lower body was aching, and a trip to the loo before Charms made her very disgruntled.
"Tell Professor Flitwick I'm going to be late, I've got to run to the dorm," she said to Hermione, and dashed up the many staircases to Gryffindor Tower, where she'd left Snape's potion in her dresser.
She was just rooting it out of her drawer when the door to the dormitory flew open, making her jump and drop the bottle. It smashed all over the inside of her drawer.
"Dammit, Hermione! That was the only bottle I had!"
"Sorry," Hermione panted. She looked out of breath and her face was flushed, like she'd run all the way to the dorm. "Sorry—I didn't mean to startle you—I just had to tell you—whatever you do, don't do that spell!"
"What?" Harriet pulled a goopy hairbrush out of her dresser, and swore when she cut her hand on a shard of the glass. "Motherfucker."
"The Divinations spell, with Lavender and Parvati—you can't do it, please swear to me you won't—"
"I'd rather not, you know," Harriet said as she rooted for something to wrap round her cut. All she could find was that handkerchief Snape had given her. "I'm not planning on telling them I got it today—ugh, this is such a rotten mess. Look, I've got to see Madam Pomfrey now, I'll see you later—"
"Promise me!" Hermione said urgently as Harriet stomped out of the dorm.
"What are you on about?"
"I—I've just got this horrid feeling something is going to go very, very wrong," Hermione said desperately.
"Professor Trelawney must be getting to you," Harriet said. "It's just a dumb old spell. I've got to run—aren't you going to be late to Charms?"
And she took off, leaving Hermione looking stricken and frustrated. She knew it was spiteful to feel a bit satisfied, but because of Hermione and her Divs-prejudice, Harriet felt even more like crap now.
"Miss Potter, what now?" asked Madam Pomfrey, staring, as Harriet walked in holding her bandaged, bloody hand at a careful angle.
After Pomfrey poured her a standard analgesic and knitted her hand, she ordered Harriet to lie down. "Just in case this somehow manages to incapacitate you, after everything."
Now Harriet had time to regret brushing Hermione off like that. What had that been about, anyway? Where had the panic come from? Hermione's attitude toward the Divs spell had always been annoyed and condescending, not fearful, like it was a second Firebolt. And. . . hang on, when she'd burst into the dorm, she'd been missing her tie and cardigan. . . and books and school robe, come to think of it. . . like she'd dumped everything to run after Harriet and rave about things going terribly wrong. But if it was so urgent, if she was in such a hurry, why had she stopped to take off her tie?
Harriet was so busy trying to puzzle it through that she forgot to ask about seeing Snape until Madam Pomfrey came to tell her she seemed bonny enough, miracle of miracles, and could be off.
"Could I see—"
"Not now, Miss Potter. It's time for dinner, and it's important you eat at regular times, especially today."
She looked awfully pleased to be able to say that.
By the time Harriet climbed onto the bench at Gryffindor table, Hermione had composed herself. There was no trace of the not-so-repressed panic from earlier, and she'd dressed herself properly again, even re-knotted her hair.
"You okay?" Harriet asked as she sat down, at the same time Hermione said, "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," said Harriet, while Hermione said, "Why wouldn't I be okay?"
Harriet peered at her, but Hermione only looked bewildered. Tired, but not freaking out. Maybe classes had just overloaded her? She was still taking all of them, despite sneering at Divinations and fuming about Muggle Studies several dozen times a day.
"Well," Harriet said, "if you're not still—"
She broke off as Parvati and Lavender squeezed onto the bench next to her, almost dislodging Ron to the floor.
"You got it, didn't you!" Parvati squealed.
"Got what?" Ron groused.
Face flaming, Harriet grabbed her rabbit-brained dorm-mates by their sleeves and dragged them away from the table.
"You aren't going to say a thing in front of Ron!" she hissed.
"Of course not!" Lavender looked affronted. "He's a boy."
"We'll do it tonight," Parvati said delightedly. "I've got everything ready!"
"Great," Harriet groused.
Hermione didn't go into panic-mode when Harriet returned to her seat, only looked sardonic. Well, at least she was feeling better. Harriet decided to let it be.
After checking to make sure Lavender and Parvati were deep in discussion over teensy slices of strawberry pie, Harriet sneaked away—to visit Snape. They wouldn't think to look for her there. She'd leave eventually. . . just not right away.
When she pushed open the infirmary doors, she stopped dead. It wasn't exactly because a group of Slytherins had all turned to glare at her so much as the fact that they were there. It was always a nasty shock, seeing them when you hadn't prepared yourself.
"Back again, Miss Potter?" said Madam Pomfrey from the center of the group that had Malfoy, Pansy, Tracey, Daphne, and Millicent in it.
"Yes, ma'am," Harriet said, responding to Pansy's insolent stare with her own contempt.
"She gets to see him?" Malfoy demanded.
"It is none of your concern, Mr. Malfoy," Madam Pomfrey said in freezing tones.
"You said Professor Snape wasn't receiving visitors," he said aggressively. "Is he or isn't he?"
"I have just said that is none of your concern. If none of you is ill, you will all clear out of here to make way for those who are."
"And who is exactly is that?" Pansy asked insultingly. "There's no one even here!"
On cue, the infirmary doors banged open and a group of boys blundered in. One of them had a giraffe neck, one had sprouted leeks from his ears and nose, a third had soap bubbles coming out of his mouth, and a fourth was shouting, "I won! I bloody won, you tossers!" while a fifth (with walrus fangs) dragged him in a headlock.
"Sit down!" Madam Pomfrey shouted at all of them, and, "Oh no, you don't!" to the Slytherins, who had started a surge toward the quarantine door.
"It's an unfair bias!" Malfoy snapped. "Just because she's the famous Potter—"
"Out!" Madam Pomfrey barked, her wand in hand. "Before I propel you out myself!"
The Slytherins went, making no effort to hide their muttering, and each giving Harriet a look of purified hatred as they passed her. As if that was intimidating, after werewolves and Dementors.
When Madam Pomfrey turned to deal with the dueling boys, Harriet slipped into the quarantine ward.
Snape looked the same as ever. He never even turned in his sleep. Though, her wishful thinking made her imagine his heartbeat-light looked brighter.
Thirteen days, now.
"Some of your Slytherins tried to visit you," she said. "Malfoy and the girls in my year. They weren't too pleased when Madam Pomfrey wouldn't let them. Not that I blame them, honestly, I threw a right fit when she wouldn't let me. You probably wouldn't have been too pleased to see her turf them out like that.
"Sorry, I forgot to bring flowers this time. This last batch is on its way out, too. . . But— hang on, maybe I can make some. . ."
She pulled out the notes Hermione had given her on the work she'd missed in Charms. The spell, Floria, was supposed to conjure flowers; any sort, so long as you were focused. Hermione had made violets, forget-me-nots, camellias, and hibiscus (Ron had got weeds).
After three tries, Harriet wound up with a handful of scraggly looking thistles. Remembering the old Muggle superstition, she blew the down off the head and into the wastebin, thinking, I wish he'd wake up and be okay.
Another try produced a few peaky-looking daisies. She tried one more time and managed a single daffodil.
"Kind of girly," she said, but she emptied the mignonette and sunflowers that had gone dry and replaced them with the daisies and the daffodil.
"Parvati and Lavender have got their hearts set on doing this stupid Divs spell," she said as she filled the vase with water from the sink. "Hermione wouldn't do it with them—actually, she had a major freak-out about before Charms, though she's fine now. . . Anyway, I said I'd do it, though I can't remember why now. I'm wishing I hadn't, I dunno why, I just don't want to, anymore."
Snape, of course, made no reply. He probably wouldn't have said anything even if he'd been awake. This couldn't possibly interest him. She just had to say something, to fill that pressing silence.
His heartbeat light glowed and dimmed, glowed and dimmed.
"It's rather vague, too." She arranged the vase in front of the window, twisting the daffodil round so it looked across the room. "Though, most magic stuff is. I can't believe none of those bloody books told me Patronuses look like animals. This spell is something to do with seeing the truth within ourselves, or whatever. I'm sure I won't see anything, I'm rubbish at Divs. I've never been able to predict what I'll be having for lunch when the food's sitting right in front of me."
She tried to tell herself the daisies and daffodil looked cheerful, but they only looked lonely.
"Best I can do," she said glumly. "Well. . . I'd better go. Madam Pomfrey will be looking to toss me out, soon.
"Good-night," she said, and shut the door after her.
Severus opened his eyes once the echo of the shutting door had faded, though at first he lay without moving. From the moment he'd crested into consciousness (in stages, like waves that carried you ever closer to shore), he'd been aware of pain that ran so deeply through him it seemed to define him. It felt, possibly, like being turned inside out. He couldn't move, could barely think. Someone was talking, but he couldn't make out the meaning. Was the voice a distraction, or did it make the pain worse? He couldn't tell. . .
When he'd finally recognized Miss Potter's voice, some of the malevolent agony inside him ebbed for a moment.
Perhaps he should open his—no. Christ, no. They were shut again now. But that hurt, too. Lying here hurt. Existing hurt.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. He rolled his head on the pillow, or started to, then stopped as agony shot through his neck like lightning. He'd seen enough, though. That must be what Miss Potter had meant by girly: the little white vase with scraggly daisies and a sad-looking daffodil in it.
He was bewildered but accepting. It didn't seem like the first time he'd seen her since he'd hurled his Patronus at the Dementor fluttering over her. . . There was a scrap of memory somewhere in there, of her white face and more-than-usually disheveled hair, and he thought she'd said, I'm here. . . but when. . .?
Well, he'd survived, and so had Miss Potter, if she was chattering about Divinations spells with her vapid dorm-mates and conjuring flowers. He was almost ready to thank her for happening to be on hand when he came to. Now he didn't have to raze the roof down in a panic to figure out if she'd survived.
He forced his eyes open and took stock of his surroundings. It was after dark; the little window (which he could barely detect from the corner of his eye) was black in the wall of this bare, impersonal room, bleak except for Miss Potter's conjured flowers.
This was one of the quarantine rooms.
And then he recalled something of great significance, as to why he might be in a quarantine room. . .
He closed his eyes again, but opened them a moment later when the door swung open and Pomfrey rushed in.
"Ridiculous child!" she exclaimed. "Not telling me you'd finally awoken, what was she thinking? I ought to have her head—"
"She didn't realize I was awake," Severus said—or meant to. Nothing came out. He coughed and tried again. "I was. . . playing dead."
Pomfrey whisked her wand over him. "Well, then I'll take you to task. That poor child has been here every day, hanging over you and hoping you'd be all right in the end—"
"Is she poor. . . or is she ridiculous?"
"Hush. How do you feel?"
Like absolute shit. "Did that son of a bitch bite me?"
Pomfrey paused. Then she resumed her spell-sweeps. "I've found no evidence of a bite, Severus."
How he hated being soothed, lied to. "Then why the bloody fucking hell am I in quarantine?"
"Because you need rest," she said sharply,. "I just had four students in the ward, spitting bubbles and plants and half-transfigured into bleating animals—"
"Can you tell me," he grit his teeth, "honestly, that you feel there is no danger?"
Pomfrey stopped again. That time, she looked him grimly in the eye. "No. Not to be entirely safe. There is always the possibility that one of your other wounds masked a scrape. But I found no traces of saliva or teeth-marks."
"But I did have open wounds."
"You fell a hundred feet in a rock slide, Severus, you're lucky you aren't paralyzed for life!"
He felt like he could be, at least. "How much of my mobility is likely to be compromised?"
"That remains to be seen. Which is why you will follow my injunctions as if they fell from the lips of Slytherin himself; do you understand me? If you wish to recuperate fully, Severus, there will be no patient-knows-best. Your injuries were extremely serious. I would have removed you to St. Mungo's if Albus hadn't forbidden it, for his own mysterious reasons."
Because Dumbledore knew Dark magic backlash when he saw it. Someone at St. Mungo's would be likely to know more than Pomfrey, whose expertise dealt in schoolchildren, and Severus might have woken up in restraints, scheduled for an interrogation.
"Call him down." And let's fucking get it over with.
"This is going to be so cool!" Parvati said.
Harriet wished she had their enthusiasm, but she was just trying not to feel stupid.
Hermione wasn't helping. When she wasn't wearing her condescending face, she was reading with a condescending silence. Just now she turned a page in her book: scra-a-a-ape. Harriet couldn't decide if it was better or worse than the freaking out.
"Ready!" Lavender climbed down from the chair and dragged it back to her dresser.
The dorm was dark and smoky, their regular lights turned down and a special kind of incense pouring smoke from a burner that Lavender had just finished hanging from the ceiling. The smoke made Harriet's eyes water and her head feel thick and stupid.
"Do you really need that much incense?" Hermione asked suddenly.
"It's to promote clairvoyance," Lavender said in a snooty voice.
"Well, I'm sorry in advance for interrupting your communion with the magical forces by sneezing."
Parvati moved in front of Harriet holding a bowl of paste that smelled like crushed flowers drenched with perfume. Harriet pushed her bangs off her forehead and let Parvati smear a smelly, vertical stripe down the center, right across her scar, which just happened to be in the place where the flowery paste needed to go.
"The past," said Parvati as she drew down Harriet's forehead. Then she drew another line across the palm of Harriet's right hand, which tickled. "The future."
Harriet took the bowl and drew a line down Lavender's forehead and across her right palm, repeating Parvati's words; and then Lavender took the bowl and did the same for Parvati. They both looked thrilled and at the same time deadly serious. They really thought this was going to accomplish something.
With the smell of the incense in her nose and the sticky paste on her palm, Harriet couldn't decide whether she agreed or not.
"Lie down, Harry," Parvati instructed, stretching out on her blankets. Lavender was doing the same, her feet poking up near Parvati's head.
Harriet lay down with her feet near Lavender's head and her own head near Parvati's feet, so they lay in a perfect triangle. She wriggled to get comfortable, and told herself she was being stupid for feeling stupid.
"Now," Parvati said, her voice floating through the near-dark and the smoke, "put your hand toward the center of The Triangle."
Harriet stretched out her right hand—the paste-sticky one—and lay it palm-up on the floor. She'd seen the diagrams: the lines they'd drawn on each other's hands would form a triangle of their own.
"Blessed Hecate," said Parvati's voice in the thick, smoky darkness, "Maiden, Mother, and Crone, Goddesses of Time and Fate, we supplicate thee. Open the windows and doors inside us, that we may know the past within ourselves, and so the future."
Then Lavender repeated it, their voices entwining. When they reached the end, it was Harriet's turn. Their voices swallowed hers. She closed her eyes against the burning incense, saying the words over and over, until they were meaningless, detached in the dark.
She couldn't remember what was supposed to go next. Maybe now they'd just lie here until the others gave up, disappointed, or reported a mystical connection with the Time Goddess. She trailed off, tired of speaking. . . and they stopped, too.
But as she lay there, listening to the dorm around her, she realized she couldn't hear anything. She couldn't hear Hermione reading or sneezing, or the fire settling, or Parvati's loud, whistly breathing. It was like she was in a black, soundless room.
She opened her eyes.
The world roared around her and went white.
"Do you know the little chapel round the back of the castle, facing over the loch?"
"No," Severus snapped, hating that he had to lie on his back even to have a simple fucking conversation. His fingers ached from clutching the bed.
"When you're better," Dumbledore said, "I shall take you to visit. The Fat Friar tends to, ah, haunt it. Nobody uses it anymore except for him. It's quite derelict, but still beautiful, for all that. . . perhaps even more beautiful, in fact."
"By all means, let's plan a sight-seeing trip just in case we find I haven't lost the ability to walk."
"I've been going there these past thirteen days," Dumbledore went on, "to. . . well, to pray. There really aren't many places in Hogwarts formally set aside for that. We've gotten away from it, in recent centuries. When I was a boy, some of the Muggle-born children would say grace over their meals, but even that's gone."
"You've been praying," Severus said flatly.
"That you'd wake up again, and be yourself. It seems to have worked," Dumbledore said, twinkling. "Or perhaps not so much for my tireless efforts. . . by the bye, those flowers are quite lovely. Harriet is always bringing them for you—I wonder what they symbolize?"
Severus felt oddly proprietary of his flowers, sad little things that they were. "Muggles bring flowers to the sick in hospital. Never mind that. What's been happening?"
Dumbledore arranged his bell-shaped sleeves. For anyone else, the gesture would have been fidgety.
"How much do you remember?" he asked as he settled. Stalling?
"I remember your pet werewolf almost goring Miss Potter, and nearly killing myself stopping him." And oh, they would be getting to how Severus had always been right about that mongrel, and Dumbledore wrong. "I must have blacked out, because the next thing I knew, the Dementors were. . ."
Floating over Miss Potter, its hood pushed back, its face lowering to hers—the doe ripping the last of his strength out of him—blackness welling over him as the Dementor reared away—losing consciousness before he could see whether he'd got it in time. . .
"Yes," Dumbledore said quietly. "A Patronus of that strength is commendable—particularly coming, as it did, with so many Dementors on hand. . . and on the heels of quite a powerful Dark spell."
And there it was: the stern look Severus had been waiting for (though it was strangely softer than he'd imagined).
"It was only middling range," he said, trying to dismiss the itching feeling of being chastised—or of waiting to be, since, to his bewilderment, it really didn't seem he was. "And it was in aide of finding Black. Though that's hardly how it worked out. The werewolf," and the rage pressed against his teeth, "has been playing quite the double game."
"And you were right," Dumbledore said. "I acknowledge it freely."
Severus found that an admission he'd yearned after was hollow for needing to be given at all.
"Remus and I have been talking—"
"He's still here?"
"Severus—Severus—don't try to get up or Poppy will have our heads. Yes, he is still here. I need a Defense professor, particularly now that I am temporarily without a Potions master. We are managing to cover your classes for the time being—"
As if Severus gave a bloody fucking damn about his fucking classes! "Lupin's carelessness could have cost that girl everything! He is too much indebted to a lucky scrape for his acquittal—"
"Remus did his very best to resign. His arguments were equally as impassioned as your own—"
Severus swore.
"Yes," Dumbledore said firmly, "they were. Remus feels responsible—"
"As well he should, the lying fucking coward—"
"But what he has done has saved an innocent man from a terrible fate. Yes, he is indebted to the event for his acquittal. So are we all."
If Lupin had walked into the room then, Severus would have done his best to kill him, broken back or no. That Lupin should lie to Dumbledore's, to everyone's, face for months, trick Severus into this position for his own purposes, almost get Harriet Potter killed, and that Dumbledore should absolve it all—
"There's some talk of awarding you an Order of Merlin," Dumbledore said. "For your service to Harriet."
Severus didn't know how to react to this, so he decided to fling blame. "A sop to your conscience, is it?"
Dumbledore sighed. "You did a very courageous thing, Severus. You, too, saved an innocent—two of them, in fact. You have helped uncover the truth."
"It's not the only truth I could uncover," Severus hissed.
For a split second, Dumbledore looked astonished—and then his anger rose to the occasion. "Severus. You shall not."
"You're claiming to need the werewolf for the children's defense—a lying, sneaking, backstabbing subhuman—"
"Severus," Dumbledore said warningly.
"—who has lied and endangered those same children since the moment he set foot—"
"Severus!" Dumbledore's voice would have shriveled Severus' tongue twenty years ago. "That is enough—"
"They can none of them do any wrong, can they? No matter who they threaten, they're still your precious fucking golden Gryffindors!"
Dumbledore was silent, his eyes as hard as adamant. . . but then they softened to a kind of troubled sadness that twisted Severus' insides more painfully than any look of angry displeasure.
"I wish you did not equate kindness toward yourself with cruelty to others, Severus."
It hurt like a knife shoved home through his ribs, straight to his heart.
"Get out," he whispered.
Turning his face away, he heard Dumbledore sigh softly. A moment later, the door opened.
"Leaving, Headmaster?" Pomfrey asked.
"And not a moment too soon," said Dumbledore, "if your appearance is any indication. You look like a woman come to escort me from the premises."
"He needs his rest."
"Don't fucking talk about me like I'm not here," Severus said without looking round at them.
"Severus Snape," said Pomfrey sharply, "you will watch your language—"
"I'm not a fucking twelve-year-old, and I shall talk however I bloody fucking well please, thank you very fucking much."
"You're just lucky there's no one here right now," Pomfrey retorted, "or I'd—"
"Madam Pomfrey!" cried a girl's voice. "Madam Pomfrey!"
With a warning glare, Pomfrey whisked away. Dumbledore made to follow her, but Severus snarled, "Wait," because he recognized Lavender Brown's voice.
"It will be about Miss Potter," he said by way of an explanation when Dumbledore turned toward him in surprise. "See if I'm wrong."
And whatever else he'd done or failed to do, Dumbledore walked promptly out of the room. Severus (still locked down to the bed) heard the muffled sounds of a commotion.
It felt like ages before Dumbledore returned, looking pensive.
"You were quite right, Severus. It's Harriet."
Bubbles. Colorful bubbles, and she was trying to catch them—the man laughed, made a few more from his wand, daddy—
With a sensation like somersaulting in mid-air Harriet knew who she was and that she was inside some sort of memory. She was inside her own body, seeing out of her own eyes, but her hands moved after the bubbles without her doing anything, like her body had a mind of its own.
"Whoops," said her dad, laughing, "almost caught that one."
"James," and that was her mum, not screaming or panicked, only exasperated and warm, so warm. "She's supposed to be getting ready for bed."
Her dad said, "Now we're in trouble," and scooped her up. Then he turned to face her mum.
Mum, Harriet thought.
"Just you." Her mum was smiling, and she stepped forward to take Harriet into her arms at last and kiss her dad on his cheek. Harriet was lightly trapped between them, her mum's hair tickling her face.
She would have stayed there forever.
But Mum was already pulling away, taking Harriet with her. Dad ruffled her hair one last time and then yawned and stretched, turning away to toss his wand down on the couch. Then he was out of sight as Mum carried her up the stairs.
Baby-Harriet touched Mum's hair falling all around her, the light shining softly through it. When her mum hummed, Harriet felt it all through her body.
Her mum carried into a room with a crib and animals and clouds painted on the walls, toys everywhere. Harriet wanted to look round and see everything; she didn't want to look away from her mother for a second; but the body she was in didn't respond to any of her desires. She was a passenger inside herself, and baby-Harriet just wanted to play with her mum's hair.
"Got your favorite toy, then," said Mum, brushing her lips across Harriet's cheek.
Something exploded downstairs, a noise like shattering wood, and her mum's body went completely still.
Through the open door, Harriet heard her dad shout, "Lily, it's him! Take Harriet and go, I'll hold him off—"
And her mum was holding her so tightly all of a sudden, and Harriet could feel her heartbeat racing. She knew what this was, what was going to happen now; she'd heard it before, drowning in the cold.
No, she thought. Not this, why do I have to see this?
Whispering under her breath, cradling her head, her mum was lowering her into the crib and turning to slam the door and throw things in front of it, a rocking chair, a kiddie stool, a whole shelf of toys, flung down. Then she turned back to the crib, and Harriet saw her face—
Mum pulled her out of the crib and pressed her to her chest, whispering, "No, no, please, please, God, no."
Let me out, Harriet thought, let me out, I don't want to be here—
The door crashed open, the things her mum had thrown in front of it scattering. Mum fell to her knees, crushing Harriet to her chest, curling her body protectively over her.
"Not Harriet, please not Harriet—"
"Stand aside, you silly girl," said Voldemort, and Harriet couldn't see his face, her mum's hair was hanging in her eyes. "Stand aside now—"
"Please no, take me, kill me instead—"
"This is my last warning—"
"Please, have mercy, please, I'll do anything—"
"Stand aside, girl!"
And then came the rush of green light that Harriet remembered, and her mum fell down, down, down. Harriet could no longer feel her mum's frantic heartbeat, as if it had simply vanished from her chest. Over the sound of her own crying, she heard footsteps approaching slowly. . .
She looked up into a darkened hood at the sliver of a white face.
"Avada Kedavra," said Voldemort's voice—
The world filled with green and shattered.
It was like the searing movement of wizarding Apparition without the squeezing; like wind scouring her skin and rushing through her body; like time hurtling through her and space hurtling past her—
Then with a wrench it stopped. This place she also recognized: the Forbidden Forest at night and the moon washing the world with silver and black, only this time she was running and her breath was gushing silver in front of her.
She'd never run in the Forbidden Forest at night. Was she going to? If that memory with her parents was her past, had she arrived at her future?
She was running like she knew where she was going, like her life depended on getting there as fast as she could. Close by she heard the pounding of hoof-beats but the body she was in—her own body?—must have known she'd hear it because she didn't look round.
The woods broke open and she propelled herself onto the shore of a lake, skidding on the rocks. Someone turned from the edge of the water, spun quickly to face her.
It was Snape.
"Do we have to do this outside, where it's so bloody cold?" she asked for all the world like she'd been expecting him.
"Naturally," he replied like he'd been expecting her. "Power in magic means suffering. Have I taught you nothing?"
Snape did look older, more worn, though she couldn't say how old he might be. His hair was still completely black and so were his robes (which weren't his normal teaching robes but somehow fancier and more severe). His face looked like he'd lived a thousand years in one but his eyes were as sharp as ever, maybe even sharper, and seemed to pull all the light from the stars into them.
The body she was in—her own body, right?—if Snape was older, that meant she was older too, didn't it?—he did seem less towering, which might mean she'd grown—this body walked down the shore toward him.
"No shit," she said. "You've got your bloody shoes off, Severus, Jesus."
Severus? Harriet thought.
"It will be colder in the water," Snape said. His voice was dismissive, but how he looked at her was strange in every way.
"That's the reason to take off your shoes?" older-Harriet asked as she unzipped her jacket and dropped it, while beside her, Snape peeled off his cloak. "Because it's less cold out here?"
"Don't be daft," Snape said, but there was something in his voice that made Harriet suspect he wasn't really insulting her.
When Snape stepped into the water, Harriet winced—both deep within herself, and in body.
"We're gonna catch hypothermia," she said.
"What price the vaunted Gryffindor bravery?" asked Snape sardonically, but the expression on his face was something else entirely. When he held out his hand, older-Harriet took it and stepped into the water with him.
"I can't swim," she said as the frigid water closed over her legs, then her thighs, her waist.
"You did well enough in the Second Task."
"That was the gillyweed. . ."
As the water slid up to her chin, she hooked her arms round his waist and rested her chin on his chest, and he slid his arm round her back. The strange thing was that neither older-Harriet nor Snape seemed to find this strange at all. They were acting like it was the most natural thing in the world, Harriet laying her head on Snape's chest, him holding her against him.
"This is deep enough," Snape said, stopping their forward motion, while older-Harriet's feet floated off the bottom of the lake, already going numb.
"Ok-ka-a-y," older-Harriet chattered. Her heart was beating hard and fast and her insides were all twisted up: Harriet recognized fear and apprehension and worry and something else, something she didn't recognize at all.
Snape brushed her hair back from her face, dripping icy water across her skin, but she didn't flinch. She looked up into his face. The expression there was so un-Snape-like, so confusing, so unfamiliar in every way, that Harriet didn't have a name to put to it.
"If it doesn't work," he said, "you won't be hurt."
She nodded, like he'd said this before.
"If it does work?" she asked, tightening her arms around his ribs. (Lord, Snape was skinny. Did he eat, ever?)
"You'll know," he said quietly.
She closed her eyes. Harriet wished she hadn't, because she couldn't make them open; she was still only a passenger, and she wanted to see what was going on, to figure out what they were talking about.
His arm secure around her back, his hand resting against her face, Snape's breath moved across her forehead, and he began to speak. The words sounded Latin, but unlike most incantations, which were only a word or two, this went on and on, like a litany or a prayer.
When a brightness started to shine behind her closed eyes, older-Harriet opened them.
The water around them was glowing. It was like the blue-silver-white of the Patronus, like a fire lit beneath their feet. The longer Snape spoke, not even taking a breath, the brighter it grew, tingeing with gold. . . but was it spreading across the lake, or spreading up them? It was hard to tell—it was impossible—it was filling the world, her eyes, her whole body, blotting out the dark of the wood and the sky and the diamond-glint of the stars; blotting out Snape (and there, a pang, as if he was the only loss that mattered). His voice rolled through her first like falling water, then like the thundering of a waterfall, down from an enormous height into mist and darkness below—into a yawning blackness she'd never known was there until his voice tried to fill it, and dropped down, down, down, echoing through those cold, empty spaces where something dwelt, unseen—
And then, for a third time, the world exploded.