Harriet awoke in that bloody room, like always.
This was really getting old.
She closed her eyes, so she'd have time to think. . . and then she remembered why she'd been out of it.
She shot up, scanning about the room—realized some daft git had removed her glasses—found them and crammed them on her face—and saw Anaita sitting next to the window, a deck of tarot cards spread out on the table at her elbow.
"Where'd he go?" Harriet asked.
"Who?" Anaita asked, not in the confused way people usually did when they didn't know what you were talking about, but calmly.
"Se—Snape." She'd almost called him Severus. Why? She'd have to be mad. . . no, suicidal. "Professor Snape."
"He accompanied the Headmaster somewhere," said Anaita. "You remember him now, then?"
"He was still in a coma when I did the spell." She blinked. Yes. That's what had happened. Bringing flowers—talking to Snape, who didn't wake up—doing the spell with Parvati and some other girl, the spell that had done this to her.
"You remember the spell." Anaita looked surprised.
"That's what Parvati was always reading," Harriet said slowly. "A book about the spell." She couldn't remember what the spell had done, only that she'd done it. . . and ended up here. It was the reason she'd lost her memory, wasn't it? All they had told her was "time-accident."
A Divinations spell. . . about. . . seeing the future, and. . .
Like a lodestone turning north, her mind pulled back to Snape. "Snape was in a coma because he saved my life. I think." She frowned.
"Well." Anaita still sounded surprised, but a little impressed, too. "You've remembered a great deal more than I expected you to, from that one encounter."
Harriet found herself wanting to talk to Snape very badly. There was something else, something she was supposed to remember, something very important. . .
She tried to relax, to stop thinking about it. Anaita had said not to force things. Maybe soon she'd see something that would prompt another memory-surge. But the thought kept buzzing like a bee in a jar.
"Are you looking at the future?" she asked, glancing at Anaita's cards to distract herself. The future the future something really important in the future stop thinking about it shut up!
"I'm playing Solitaire." Anaita smiled. "They don't really tell the future, you know. You lay them out, and you tell the person you're laying them for what they're like now, in the present. But you know that by looking at them. Most of fortune-telling is deductive."
"Can you see the future? Ever?"
"Through focus and meditation, yes, I can." Anaita swept the cards together and stacked them. "But people prefer to think the cards are doing it. I'm an academic, you know, but I'm practical. I see a person's future in my own way, but they only pay me if I lay out the cards and put on a show." She smiled. "I don't mind. The show can be fun. I suppose there's a little bit of the actress in me."
Harriet imagined Anaita in a dark, perfumed room, draped in sequins and tassels, her voice misty and mystical, laying out the cards on a velvet-covered table. She felt like she'd been in such a place, though not with Anaita.
"A letter came for you." Anaita was holding out a ball of parchment that had been so folded in on itself Harriet couldn't even get her nails in it to work it open.
"Here." Anaita waved her wand and the ball unfurled like a flower, revealing parchment inside of parchment. One sheet was old, tattered, dog-eared, blank. It looked familiar, but how did a blank piece of parchment look familiar?
The other was a note, one line only: 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.'
Harriet stared at it for a long time. Then she smiled.
She looked up at Anaita to find herself being watched with an expression she didn't understand.
"It's always a blessing to receive letters from loved ones," Anaita said in a soft tone that made Harriet feel suddenly rather sad.
"How did you know?" But then she remembered what Anaita had just told her: Fortune-telling is deductive.
"Your smile," said Anaita. She slipped her tarot deck into a velvet purse and tied it shut. "Are you hungry?"
"Okay," Harriet said, more because they fussed when she refused food than from any real desire to eat.
As Anaita left to order dinner, Harriet folded the note up inside the map (smiling, because she remembered) and placed them under her pillow. And then she froze.
Professor Lupin.
Full moon.
Snape in hospital.
Werewolf.
She scrambled over to the window and looked out at the black sky—but it was overcast. She couldn't see the moon, full or not.
A memory came to her, then, of standing right here and looking out at a clear sky, the moonlight turning the world to silver, draining it of color and warmth, and thinking of something glittering and bright that made her ache with happiness. . .
A doe—silver—
Patronus.
She stood with her hand on the glass as it clicked into place in her mind at last.
Hearing Anaita come softly into the room, she turned.
"Is my wand in here?"
Anaita looked surprised but said, "Yes, it's in the drawer here. Do you want it?"
Harriet nodded. "There's a spell I want to cast."
The room had no windows, and when they shut the trap, its outline would disappear, leaving four walls of unbroken stone. Four not-very-big walls, damp with neglect, filling his mouth with the taste of algae.
Severus had chosen the oubliette himself. He knew the dungeons better than anyone else in the school; perhaps better than anyone alive. Even Dumbledore had been surprised when Severus had touched the stone that opened the trap in the floor.
"Are you certain this is the place you want, Severus?" Dumbledore asked. He hadn't seemed troubled before, but then Severus had only called it "a room in the dungeons" before now.
"A wolf won't be able to climb out of it," Severus said. And I'd rather be down there than in a cage.
He kept his wand with him. He couldn't bear the thought of leaving it. A few days ago, Pomfrey had told him he was well enough to use magic again, and handed him his wand with a gentleness he hadn't wanted to contemplate. Now it felt like one last link to his humanity—which was absurd, seeing as werewolves could still use wands.
"I'll be out here," said Dumbledore, "through the night."
Severus nodded, affecting indifference, and conjured a rope with knots placed strategically for climbing. Dumbledore watched him secure it to a bracket in the wall and climb down into the hole. Once he'd touched ground, he flicked the rope for Dumbledore to draw it back up.
"Lower the trap," he called up.
"If necessary," said Dumbledore, "I will."
"I want you to close the trap, Albus." He surprised himself. He never called Dumbledore by his given name.
Silence was his only answer for some time. Then Dumbledore said, "As you wish, Severus," and the stone scraped over the patch of light above his head, blocking him in the dark.
Severus was not afraid of the dark, not even in this dungeon within a dungeon, this place of forgetting. He felt there was a sort of irony there, considering what had happened to Miss Potter.
There was no way of telling time in the oubliette. He made himself as comfortable as he could, but it was only out of habit. There was no way he could be comfortable.
And he waited.
The wand felt. . . right. . . in her hand. Like it belonged there. Like she belonged with it. She gripped the handle until the carving left imprints on her palm.
"Can I try this by myself?" she asked Anaita.
"Of course. I'll be outside if you need me."
She kissed Harriet's hair and left the room, shutting the door behind her.
Harriet thought of the silver doe.
"Expecto Patronum," she said, her voice clear and firm, like Asteria's when she'd brought her painting to life.
The room filled with white light. All the colors in Asteria's painting washed away, inverting themselves. The tint of the moonlight was swallowed up. Her eyes tingled with brightness, and when it faded. . .
She stared at her Patronus. It stood taller than she did, with powerful, curling antlers and a grave, gentle face.
She smiled, her heart filling with pride, with happiness, and put out her hand. The stag lowered its majestic head to nuzzle at her fingers.
"I need you to go somewhere for me," she whispered. "Can you do that?"
How much time had passed?
Had the moon risen? Was he still human because he hadn't been bitten or because his sense of time was fractured?
How long had he been resting his forehead against his linked hands, staring into the darkness that he'd not lit his wand to combat?
. . . Where was that light coming from?
The brightness was sudden, startling—yet soothing, comforting. It wasn't the light from the corridor outside; it was. . .
He raised his head from his hands and almost laughed; but the sound caught in his throat.
The stag regarded him with a placid sort of gentleness. He thought noble and majestic, which he'd certainly never thought about James Potter, for all that his Patronus had also been a stag. But this one seemed brighter, more solid; stronger.
"Congratulations, Miss Potter," he said.
The stag bent its head and nuzzled his shoulder. He held as perfectly still as if it was a real animal and he was afraid of startling it.
When it faded, he felt somehow more for its having been there, and lesser for its having gone.
How long it had taken to fade, he couldn't say. How long after that he heard the scrape of the stone being moved overhead, he couldn't say either. The torchlight, harsher than the glow of Miss Potter's powerful Patronus, stung his eyes.
"Severus?" said Dumbledore's voice.
"What?" Severus asked, his own voice sounding rough.
Dumbledore paused. "My boy. . . do you realize it is morning?"
Something powerful rushed through his body, rushed straight out of his heart, through his blood to his bones.
"You're safe, Severus," said Dumbledore. "You haven't turned."
His brain wanted his body to stand, but his legs wouldn't cooperate. His hand went to cover his face, and he forced the breath, the immense, crushing relief that wanted to escape as sobs, out of his lungs. He wouldn't let it; he wouldn't abandon his dignity like that—
He heard the rope slither down and pulled his hand away from his face, sat up, tugging his robes straight. He tried to school his expression into something implacable. But the attempt was forgotten when he saw, to his astonishment, that Dumbledore was climbing down the rope.
"What are you doing?"
"Ah, you're fully with us, then." Dumbledore touched down and lit his wand so that its light glistened off the algaed walls. He took in the oubliette at a glance but fixed almost immediately on Severus, and when he smiled, it was so brilliant and beaming that his beard couldn't hope to hide it.
But Severus didn't return it. No; the opposite—now that his repressed panic had dissipated, now that he knew he had nothing to fear, all the complicated emotions he'd barely had time for in the past two weeks rushed over him. He registered that Dumbledore was reaching out toward him, almost as if to embrace him, in time to recoil.
"Don't you dare—" He was pleased to hear his voice come out harsh and crippling, as if he were in complete control of himself.
Dumbledore stopped as if hit with Impedimenta, his face going blank. "Severus?"
"Get out of my way." Now his voice was deadly dangerous. Good. Good. But a sense of panic, from a new source, was rising through him. He needed to get out of here before he lost it completely.
"Severus," Dumbledore said again, and Severus couldn't concentrate to decipher his tone.
Severus stepped round him—difficult in that enclosed space, but Dumbledore didn't try to stop him—seized the rope, and hauled himself up. He was almost surprised his arms were strong enough after a month spent in hospital, or maybe it was adrenaline driving him.
Once he was out of the hole, he strode off. His breath was coming quick and harsh, and he felt almost lightheaded.
He needed to destroy something.
Remus woke up aching, curled up against something warm and. . . furry.
"Padfoot," he croaked. "Ibiza. . ."
The warmth moved away a little. A moment later, human hands were wrapping him in a blanket with simple, no-nonsense movements, without a single lingering caress. There were no soothing murmurs floating over his head, no queries about the pain, no words at all. Sirius remembered what to do.
Something inside Remus cracked, just a little.
He had no idea how he got from the dungeon room where he transformed to his borrowed bedroom, but he woke up there much later, with a rare patch of late-afternoon sunlight burnishing the ceiling above his bed.
He closed his eyes. "Padfoot?" he called, his voice rough, reedy, hoarse. He sounded like Azkaban-Sirius.
He could tell by the sound of the footfalls that Sirius was human right now.
"Snape?" Remus asked, as soon as Sirius' footsteps paused.
"He's his old blithe, bonny self," Sirius said. "Dumbledore's just told me. You didn't turn him."
Remus thought he might faint from the relief. He felt tears leak out beneath his closed lids, trickling down his temples into his hair.
"I've brought you food," said Sirius. "And you're gonna bloody sit up in bed and eat it like a primadonna, I don't want to hear a syllable about getting yourself to the table."
"Who's the primadonna?" Remus said, half under his breath, but he wasn't going to argue. Sitting up was chore enough, and he barely had strength to grip the utensils.
Sirius was still sly, he reflected as he concentrated on not letting his hands shake or dropping the fork; trying not to let on how hard it was to get through the simple task of cutting his own breakfast and ferrying it to his mouth. He might have lost the ability to read Sirius, but Sirius hadn't forgotten how Remus acted these mornings after the full moon. Eating breakfast was normal, so he clung to it, as Sirius had known he would. It got him through the turmoil of what would happen now; a question—a million questions in one—that he'd put aside in the struggle to get to this side of the full moon.
He hadn't turned Snape. Thank God. Thank the stars, the planets, thank life itself.
He imagined that possible future dissolving like tissue in water. But the other possibilities, the ones that would become the real future, today, tomorrow, and every day after that, arrayed themselves grimly before him. He didn't even know where to begin.
So he ate his breakfast and let Sirius make his tea, and tried to live that fifteen minutes of normalcy without wondering what would come next.
Harriet woke to a feeble bit of sun creeping across the walls, lying on top of her blankets instead of under them. She'd left the shutters open so she could watch the setting of the moon. . . and had fallen asleep, the map crinkled under her cheek.
After pulling on her dressing-gown, she opened the door to her room and went to the room across the hall, the one she'd seen Snape coming out of yesterday. The door opened easily. The room inside was empty, all the impersonal furniture bare and unmarked, as if nobody had ever lived here, even for four weeks.
But. . . surely that meant he was okay? If he'd turned into a werewolf, surely he'd be here, he'd not have moved out already?
"Miss Potter, what is it you think you're doing?" Madam Pomfrey's sharp voice demanded. Harriet turned to find the matron bearing down on her, starched from shoe soles to hairline, nostrils flaring like a dragon's.
"Is Snape okay?" Harriet asked immediately.
"He has not been infected." For a moment Madam Pomfrey actually smiled with relief. Then she was monumentally stern again. "Now, I assume you're going to tell me what you were doing out of your room? Now as well as yesterday."
"I was getting the owl—it had a letter for me."
Last night, after Anaita had gone, Harriet had touched her wand to the map and whispered the password, and run her fingers over the lines of Hogwarts from topmost tower to lowest dungeon. She'd seen and remembered Gryffindor Tower, Hagrid's hut, the Quidditch Pitch, and had thought about them hard enough to push the memory of that dark cupboard away. Red and gold, the smell of tea and Hagrid's teeth-cracking rock-cakes, green grass and golden hoops, the Snitch glittering as she chased it. . .
She'd stared at two dots labeled Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger sitting side-by-side in Gryffindor Tower until she'd fallen asleep with her hand pressed over their spot on the parchment.
"It was a reckless and dangerous thing to do, Miss Potter," said Madam Pomfrey. "We are keeping you isolated for your benefit."
Harriet didn't reply. To apologize would be insincere, as she wasn't sorry at all. She appreciated how hard Anaita was working for her sake, but that accidental run-in with Snape and reading the Marauder's Map had restored more memories to her in just a few hours than all the careful guidance of the seven days before.
"Can I see Ron and Hermione today?" she asked.
"You will have to speak with Mrs. Patil. Now, back to your room."
But when Anaita visited after breakfast, she was perfectly willing. "It's unusual for someone to benefit from such sudden exposure," she said to Harriet, "but I've been talking to your Head of House, and she says you learned to fly by diving through the air."
Draco Malfoy had stolen something from Neville and flown off with it, something small and light and glittering, and Harriet had caught it when he threw it toward the ground. She'd been made Seeker for that. It was the first time she'd really felt like a witch, like she belonged at Hogwarts: when she was flying.
The days settled into a new pattern, one Harriet liked so much better.
She saw Hermione and Ron, at first separately, and then together, every day. She saw Asteria again. Neville brought her flowers. Ginny hugged her so tightly her shoulders twinged. Parvati started off in tears and ended up in awe of that strange sort of time-travel that had taken all of Harriet's memories, shaken them up, and failed to put them back where it found them.
"Do you remember anything from the future?" she asked, wide-eyed.
"I don't think so," Harriet said, though she often wasn't sure. "Some stuff is still out of order. . ."
"Mummy says you're very strong," said Parvati, going serious again. When she looked grave like that, her resemblance to Anaita tripled. (I have my mum's eyes, Harriet thought.) "I think she looked at your future. She's said it's easier when the person is going to have a lot of major things happening to them. I guess that's why the spell worked for you like that."
Anaita hadn't mentioned anything to Harriet about reading her future. Perhaps there were still too many things from the past to remember right now, she thought Harriet didn't need anything extra.
"I hope you feel better soon," said Parvati as she left. "It's not the same without you. Lavender and Hermione haven't quarreled in days. And that ugly cat of Hermione's has taken over your bed."
Harriet didn't know why Lavender (so that was the fourth girl's name) and Hermione fighting was something to hurry back to, but she supposed she understood what Parvati really meant.
Professor McGonagall came to visit, actually smiling, which Harriet couldn't remember her doing before. She hugged Harriet before she left, and Harriet knew that hadn't happened before.
Professor Lupin came, his face too young for all that silver hair, all those lines. He brought a letter that said only, "I'm back. Dumbledore knows,"with an inky paw print for a signature. At first Harriet didn't understand, and then she squawked:
"Is he mad?"
"He's certifiable," said Professor Lupin dryly. Then he looked at her. "I'm so sorry," he said.
Was he apologizing for what had happened last month? Harriet couldn't remember anything else, but surely he'd apologized for that already? "I don't think you need to be."
He only shook his head, like he felt too much to speak.
Harriet felt peculiarly happy and sad after that visit. It was like the emotions were so entwined she couldn't wrap them round one thing or the other; they just went together.
She remembered her mum's letter.
When the weather warmed, Harriet walked the grounds, wading through the melting, muddy snow with Anaita on weekdays, with Ron and Hermione in the evenings and on weekends. One day Hagrid joined them, but Harriet had already remembered him. It felt right to give him a hug.
After Professor Lupin's visit, the most complicated one was Professor Dumbledore's. That was when she really remembered Voldemort. But by then, she'd already remembered so many of the things he'd done, it was only like putting a name to a face at last.
As March flowed into April, Professor Dumbledore started spending several hours a day with her, reviewing spells. Like all of her life-memories, the magic she'd been taught at school was still in her head, just disordered. They spent most of April on first year lessons, and made good progress, but Harriet had to ask. . .
"What am I going to do about missing almost two full terms?"
"An excellent question," said Dumbledore, smiling. "Timely, if you'll forgive the pun. I have been talking with your professors, and in light of what's happened, we've decided to give you the option of dropping Divination and pursuing a course of. . . independent study, shall we say. I'm afraid you might find it a little dull, but we think it best to keep you on through the first part of the summer, to see how far we can get you. We'll focus on the key components of third-year study that you'll need in order to find your feet in year four, and anything else can be reviewed when you'd normally be in Professor Trelawney's class."
A summer at Hogwarts instead of with the Dursleys? And giving up all those hours in Trelawney's stuffy attic, listening to her predict everyone's doom?
"I'd like that, sir," Harriet said fervently.
"Splendid!" Dumbledore beamed. "I only hope Miss Granger isn't too jealous that you'll be studying through the summer."
And so, as winter gave way to spring (sometimes grudgingly, with days of driving rain and blustering wind transforming to long days full of sunlight), Harriet's past unfolded and her future settled itself into a predictable shape. She was relieved, and should have been almost happy.
But not once did Snape ever come to see her.
"You seem subdued, Severus," said Minerva. "Is it Slytherin's prospects for the House Cup?"
"I don't see why I should be worried about my House prospects if you aren't worried about yours." Two months prior (had it really been that long ago?), he'd returned to his duties with grim determination to make up for all those futile, languishing days when his authority had been taken from him like his wand. The other Heads' relief at having him back had had the life expectancy of a dandelion in a blast furnace.
"I'd ask if you had your sense of humor surgically removed," Minerva said tartly, "except I'm well aware you never had one."
Severus had never understood why people always accused you of having no sense of humor when they were the ones who hadn't managed to say anything funny.
"I'm trying to cheer you up," she said, as if it was his fault for not translating My-Good-House-Is-Beating-Your-Evil-House to something positive. "You've been moping for the past two months at least."
"I don't mope," he said (and even to his own ears it sounded mopey).
"Usually, no. You brood, rather, or sulk. But there has been definite moping this spring, Severus. We've all noticed it."
Normally he would have taken umbrage at the thought of Minerva and her posse sitting round the staff-room discussing his moping-versus-brooding state, but somehow it failed to rouse his ire this time. Instead of replying, he drank a mouthful of tea, and almost spat it out. Sprout had brewed it from some special blend of her own making, and it tasted like a Quidditch player's dirty socks. He thought about insulting it, but couldn't bring himself to care.
Maybe Minerva was right. Life seemed extremely dull lately. Something was badly off if he couldn't even be arsed to insult Sprout's truly disgusting tea.
"I really think you ought to make up with Albus," Minerva said. Her tone wasn't scolding but advisory.
There: a flicker of anger. Minerva must have seen it, because she went on more firmly:
"You're both moping, it's obvious to everyone. Albus won't stop buying socks, and last week when Longbottom's potion exploded and turned his nose into a cucumber, you sent him to the hospital without taking even a single point. If I didn't know better, I'd say someone had impersonated you."
"You want me to return to docking points from your Gryffindors right and left?"
"Being deliberately obtuse is like your old self," Minerva said dryly. "I want to know what the matter is, man, and what can be done to fix it."
"I thought you'd already diagnosed it," he said irritably. Minerva sighed.
"Why are you avoiding Albus? Is it because of Remus?"
The anger was more than a flicker that time. As before, Minerva went on: "Albus tried to make the best of a bad bargain. The children need someone teaching them Defense—"
He clenched his teeth together so he wouldn't say, I could teach them Defense— When I came to him, I told him everything, I had no secrets, and he used me, like Lupin did this time— Use the Slytherin, it's all their good for— He's given Lupin everything, forgiven him, without conditions, not a single one—
"—and being short-staffed in the middle of the year, after going through this last year," Minerva prated on. "I think Albus knew he'd have to set aside his Headmaster's duties to assist Miss Potter—"
"He made up his mind about keeping Lupin before she had her accident."
Minerva paused. "True," she acknowledged. "But even so, this is a further demand on his time, of which he has little to spare."
Severus understood the logistics of keeping Lupin on: the appointment was hard enough to staff every year without needing to do it twice. But (as he refused to tell Minerva) Dumbledore wasn't acting from logical motives. He liked Lupin, he preferred him to Severus, he always would. But Minerva wouldn't agree with that, or she'd agree with Dumbledore. When it came to Severus, they always picked someone else, took that other person's side.
Minerva sighed, and Severus read in it the understanding of a woman who knows she's not getting anywhere. She wasn't a fool, and she'd more or less known him since he was eleven years old.
"I don't like seeing two of my friends unhappy, you know."
"So I should put aside my own feelings, because my unhappiness makes you unhappy. I'm not unhappy," he added peevishly, feeling the idiot.
"That isn't what I mean and you know it," Minerva said, "and yes, you are. We all get lonely, Severus—"
"Spare me," he snarled, shoving his cup onto the table, in preparation for storming off. But Minerva, too, was a Gryffindor; without batting an eye, she went on:
"If you're upset with Albus, you might try telling him—"
"When has that ever worked? The Great Albus Dumbledore does exactly as he wishes, with regard to no one's feelings but his own—"
He turned on his heel, toward the door, and stopped. Dumbledore had been coming into the staff-room, but now he stood with his hand on the doorknob, looking straight at Severus. Minerva made a soft noise, like a sad Oh.
Without a word, Dumbledore stepped back into the hall and let the door swing gently shut.
"It makes no difference to me," Severus said coldly, and left.
As he stalked down the (empty) corridor, he refused to admit that the unpleasant tightness in his chest was not the justifiable anger of a person confronted with one of the last people on earth whom he wished to talk to, but regret.
Lupin pulled open his door, smiling. "Hello, Harriet, it's good to see you. You look like you made it all right—more than."
Harriet nodded. She brushed her hand over the map that was tucked away in her pocket. "Didn't have any attacks at all."
He ushered her into his quarters, which looked mostly the same—she thought—except for the presence beside the fire of a lumpy pillow covered with black dog hair. But she only got the quickest look at it before something enormous and furry bowled her over, knocking her to the carpet.
"PADFOOT!" Lupin didn't sound amused one whit, but Harriet was laughing as Padfoot licked all over her face, his tail thumping loudly.
"I'm sorry." Lupin sounded exasperated as he hauled Padfoot off of her. "He's been spending too much time as a dog—not that he ever really knew how to behave as a man—"
"It's all right." Harriet scratched behind Padfoot's ears, making him whine. "I think of him as a dog, really." Padfoot whuffed.
Lupin ordered tea—the full meal, with jam-and-butter scones, pancakes, and clotted cream—and they sat beside the fire to eat, which was a cozy move. Although it was nearly May, it had been pouring for six days straight. Padfoot lay at Harriet's feet, a warm, doggy rug. It felt nice to have been missed so very much. She wiggled her toes against his flank and he wagged his tail.
"How are your lessons going?" asked Lupin.
"Professor Dumbledore says I'm making good progress. He says I shouldn't worry, it's only what I'll be doing for O.W.L.s in a couple of years." (She'd made the mistake of mentioning this to Hermione and sent her into a brief tailspin of panic.)
"He's right, there," Lupin said. "I wouldn't be surprised if Hermione started studying tomorrow."
Harriet experienced an odd mixture of emotions: surprise that Lupin should have guessed, that he knew Hermione so well—jealousy that he might know Hermione better than she did, at this point. She told herself she was just being stupid.
"Ron says she started studying yesterday," she said, and Lupin laughed.
"Er. . . I wanted to show you something," she said after she'd swallowed the last of her (very messy) jam-covered scone. "Erm. Both of you, I guess."
Lupin looked curious. Padfoot raised his head from his paws, lifting his ears.
Harriet wiped her jammy fingers on a napkin, suddenly feeling self-conscious. She told herself there was no reason to. She knew how to do this.
Taking out her wand, she said firmly, "Expecto Patronum."
The room glimmered with bright, silvery light.
Lupin held perfectly still, staring. Padfoot did the same. The stag regarded them tranquilly, majestically.
They still did not move. When it faded, they sat staring at the place it had stood, still frozen.
Harriet felt suddenly awkward. It occurred to her that maybe she ought to have warned them.
"I'm sorry—" she said.
"Why should you be sorry?" Lupin's voice was hoarser than usual. Still looking at the place where her Patronus (she'd taken to calling it 'Prongs') had stood, he reached out and took her hand. "My dear child," he said, "there's no reason in the world to be sorry."
"I. . ." Now Harriet wondered if it would be intruding, to ask what she wanted to know. "Is that what my dad looked like? When he transformed."
"He was a stag, yes—did you remember I told you?" Lupin finally looked at her, though Padfoot still hadn't turned. "As to whether that's Prongs exactly. . . I can't tell you that, I'm afraid. The Patronus typically takes the form of the animal with which we each share the deepest affinity. For Animagi, their Patronus and Animagus are usually represented by the same animal, for that reason—you share the deepest affinity with the animal you transform into—so his Patronus was also a stag. There are different breeds of stag, though."
"Why would mine be a stag, though?" Harriet asked. She'd wanted to discuss this with Snape, but he didn't care about her anymore, he never came by. "Since I'm a girl? Why's it not a doe?"
"I'm not sure that's something anyone could tell you," Lupin said, smiling slightly, "but stags. . . well, in James' case, he liked to. . . issue challenges, shall we say, and was a bit of a boaster. King of the Forest, we used to call him. But mythologically speaking, stags have many associations. In Scotland it's seen as a noble creature. Warriors and heroes were compared to stags in Gaelic poetry."
This made Harriet feel much more impressive than she suspected she really was.
Padfoot finally returning to lying on her feet again, resting his head on his paws. His tail did not wag, but he pressed his head against her ankles.
"So lots of people have Patronuses that aren't the same, um, gender as them?"
"I'm afraid don't know the answer to that," Lupin said. "It's not as easy to tell if you've a male or female sparrow as it is to tell if you've a male or female deer. It doesn't bother you, I hope? Having a stag."
"Oh, no," Harriet said, surprised. "I was just wondering, is all. Someone told me that meant it was strong. . . 'cause it's a strong animal."
"That's a common belief," Lupin said, smiling again. "That some animals are worthier, more powerful than others—but the wizard Illyius, whose Patronus was a mouse, was able to drive away a hoard of Dementors when many stronger Patronuses, like bears and wild boars, failed."
Harriet hadn't heard that story. Lupin must have sensed her curiosity, because he summoned a book from its shelf.
"This might help you," he said. "Also with your review."
Wonderbook: Book of Spells, she read. It was made of purple leather with heavy, baroque accents in gold.
"It's, er, sort of a children's book, really. The Hogwarts library lost its copy years back and never replaced it. . . I've found that Muggleborn students take to it because it relates fables that wizard-born children grew up hearing."
"Thanks," Harriet said, leafing through it. The pages were heavy and hand-printed with beautiful lettering. There were drawings, too, rather flat and stylized, but greatly detailed.
"That book," Lupin nodded at it, "suggests that a Patronus' form doesn't indicate its strength, just the caster's affinity with a particular animal. Its theory is that the strength of a Patronus is entirely reliant on the purity of the caster's heart. The impure of heart can only produce maggots."
"Eurgh." Harriet had just found that picture: a craggy-faced wizard in thick fur robes surrounded by a cloud of maggots. "So, the purer the heart. . ."
"The stronger the Patronus." Lupin smiled. "Of course, the theory is reliant on the fable of Illyius. The charm itself is so difficult to cast, and nobody has a satisfactory answer as to why. After all, Raczidian's maggots prove he was capable of performing the charm, though not of producing an actual Patronus. A lot of people can barely get a wisp of silvery vapor, and some people never manage to produce a corporeal Patronus—that's where you can see what shape it takes. Yours is corporeal."
"What's yours like?"
"Mine isn't corporeal." His smile turned self-deprecating. "Sometimes it goes as far as getting four legs, but that's as much as anyone can tell. Lily's was corporeal, though," he added. "Hers was a doe."
A frisson went through Harriet. She felt like she stood on the edge of a long drop, leaning into a sharp wind. "R-really?"
"Everyone in the—" He coughed. "All their friends used to take the mickey out of her and James dreadfully, saying they were meant for each other. James was always dead chuffed, and Lily used to threaten everyone with hexes, but it pleased her, too." He fell silent (looking back into the past, Harriet guessed. She knew what that felt like).
Her face was tingling. Snape's Patronus and her mum's were both does. . . Snape wouldn't tell her he and her mum had been friends, he wouldn't tell her what his Patronus was. . . and Aunt Petunia, she'd said. . .
"Would—do two people ever have the exact same Patronus? I don't mean like they're both cats, or even boy-girl deer. . . but does someone ever have a Patronus that's exactly. . . exactly like someone they're—in love with or something?"
Lupin looked surprised, then thoughtful. "As you've surely noticed, there's a lot we don't know about the Patronus," he said slowly. "I've heard of it changing as part of a great emotional upheaval. . . but I've known people to be very much in love and have radically different Patronuses. Like Neville's parents—hers was a seal, his was a boar. I don't feel I've answered your question," he said apologetically.
"It's okay," Harriet said, giving herself a mental shake. "I was only curious."
"You don't know someone else with a stag for a Patronus, do you?" He smiled, like he was joking. "Someone you absolutely can't stand?"
"Thank Merlin, no." She made herself laugh. "If it was Malfoy, I'd write a whole chapter for this book on how bogus it is, thinking you're in love 'cause you've got the same Patronus."
Lupin chuckled. The fire popped, dragging his attention to it. He glanced up at the clock on the mantle. "When did they want you back? About five, was it? Do you want an escort?"
"I can handle it," Harriet said, smiling to show she didn't mean to be rude, she just wanted to do these things herself.
"Somehow I thought you'd say that."
He opened the door for her. Padfoot followed, licking her hand and whining sadly. She hugged him and (now that he'd had many baths) kissed the top of his head.
"See you later," she said to him, and to Lupin, "Thanks for the book—and for telling me stuff about Patronuses—and for the tea."
"Not at all. It was my pleasure." He waved as she left, and stood in his doorway with Padfoot until she rounded the corner and was out of sight.
She ducked behind a tapestry into a hidden staircase and pressed the Wonderbook: Book of Spells against her chest to try and slow her heartbeat. She didn't know why she felt all twisted up like this.
A memory kept coming back to her, of Hermione reading an old book, old like this one, and saying, "I suppose it's that debt you told me about, the one to your father."
"Snape took care of that last year, though," Harriet had said. . . And Hermione had said something like, "Apparently Professor Snape doesn't think so," and Harriet had guessed Snape was waiting till he saved her from something directly, like a runaway lorry.
Last year, Snape had acted all overprotective while there was a threat against the school (Voldemort's Riddle's Basilisk the diary Ginny sword). . . and had returned to ignoring her once that danger was over. And first year, when she'd first met him, he'd ignored everything to do with her except for those moments when Quirrell had threatened her, like at the Quidditch match when he'd refereed. . .
She remembered now. And in light of what she'd just learned. . .
She'd asked herself before, hadn't she, whether Snape had been in love with her mum. Now she knew, didn't she? Maybe Professor Dumbledore had told her about a life debt to her dad because they didn't want her knowing what Snape had felt for her mum. For some reason. Why? She'd have been happy to know that, if they'd told her straight, if Snape wasn't so bottled up and thorny.
It was nice to have the mystery solved. It was. Snape's Patronus was like her mum's because he'd been in love with her. She was sure that was it. His Patronus was an exact replica of hers twelve and a half years after she'd died. That's how much he'd loved her. He'd been so dead-set on protecting her in memory of her mum. When Harriet was safe, as far as Snape was concerned, she didn't matter.
There was absolutely no reason to feel small and sad about that. None at all.
Two days after that frustrating tea with Minerva, Severus received a short note, in Albus' familiar, curly handwriting. Were the curls somehow subdued, to use Minerva's word?
Preposterous.
The note read:
Dear Severus,
I am keeping Harriet at Hogwarts until the end of July so that she may catch up on the classes she's missed after her accident. Minerva, Fillius, Pomona and Hagrid are all on board. Do you consent to reviewing Potions?
Yours, Albus
Oh, the clever, wily. . .
Severus had often been astonished that Dumbledore hadn't been in Slytherin: not because he was brilliant and made unscrupulous connections, but because he followed through with them. This letter (with its dears and yourses, neither of which were accidental) aimed to accomplish several things:
1) Severus would have to reply to it, and a reply to a letter was as good a spoken answer. Replying would dismantle the two months of absolute silence, for good. He could not revert without looking supremely foolish.
2) It was a concession to his judgment, as immediately banishing Miss Potter to Petunia (as Severus had told him when they were still speaking) was the worst thing anyone could possibly do to Miss Potter in her current, vulnerable state.
3) It was a concession to the burden Dumbledore had placed on him twelve and a half years ago, for how could he properly protect Miss Potter if she was being starved and neglected?
In other words, it was an olive branch that manipulated Severus into bridging the cold silence between them: a peace-offering designed to mend their relationship, because Severus had to reply and of course he would comply.
Just not right away.
For the next few days, he went about his business as usual. He took his meals in the Great Hall, shunning Dumbledore (and Minerva increasingly, as she tried to play peacekeeper). He taught his tedious classes, docking points from Gryffindor for transgressions so stupid he couldn't remember what they were later. He even told Granger she was a show-off and Longbottom he was hopeless as a Flobberworm, and didn't derive any satisfaction from it. In fact, he felt like he was trying to reignite some spark that had extinguished itself.
Maybe he did miss Dumbledore's prating, his would-be witticisms, his maddening little proverbs, his relentless offers of sweets. . . But that didn't feel like the answer. He couldn't imagine any kind of catharsis that would accompany his signature on a piece of parchment, tied to the leg of a featherbrained owl and sent winging through the springtime dusk toward the Headmaster's office.
Maybe Dumbledore wasn't the answer after all.
Though he was damned if he knew what the answer was.
He kept himself awake, trying to puzzle it out.
About five nights after he'd first received the letter, something clicked into place inside his head, a realization that made him spill his water goblet across his dinner plate.
"Severus?" asked Flitwick.
Severus didn't bother to reply. He shoved away from the table and strode out of the Great Hall as fast as he could without running. Once out of everyone's sight, he did break into a run, down the dungeon stairs and along the flickering, torchlit corridors to his quarters. He threw open the door with a spell and summoned the scroll before he reached the room, and caught the parchment before he'd made it through the doorway.
Unrolling it, he skimmed down the page. He read it twice to be certain. Then he sat down to think of what it could mean.
Miss Potter's account of her upcoming summer did not include Hogwarts anywhere in it. This. . . this was a new development.
Was the future already changing?
Casting the scroll aside, he went to find a quill and ink, and Dumbledore's letter.
He wrote back with only one word.
End of Prisoner of Azkaban
To Be Continued in Part Three: The Goblet of Fire