30

Harriet didn't see Snape for the rest of the holiday—almost. For several days he stopped showing up for meals, and she didn't quite have the nerve to go near his office. She began to worry he was ill. Why would they not see him otherwise? He certainly wouldn't be avoiding her. He ought to have come to claim his million points and half-a-million detentions by now.

In the days where he never appeared, Harriet had time to dredge out of her memory more of the details of their conversation. She had shouted and made angry demands, and he'd mostly answered her with more questions, in a cruel, biting voice.

He'd never told her why he'd never said anything about Sirius Black. The only concrete answer she'd got from him had been about her mum.

Were you friends with my mum?

I was

He was sick as a dog for your mother. Did he tell you that you were precious to him? You're nothing but a copy of his spoilt princess.

In the moon-tinted darkness of her four-poster, she had wondered: Would Snape's strange behavior about—well, pretty much everything to do with her—make sense if he'd been in love with her mum?

Harriet didn't know. She didn't know enough about love even to guess.

Within a couple of days of Christmas, Professor Lupin, at least, returned to meals, looking a great deal worse for the wear, but ready to chat with the other teachers.

Harriet hadn't forgotten about the card he'd sent her. More secrets; more questions. She sat at Gryffindor table, which had been restored to its place on the floor along with the others, and watched Professor Lupin. She waited for him to say something about the card, but he never did more than smile and nod at her.

So, the day before the holidays were due to be over, Harriet got up from her solitary breakfast (since Boxing Day, Hermione had been going half-sies on her masochistic studying schedule) and marched up to the High Table.

"Hello, Harriet," Professor Lupin said, smiling. "Did you have a good Christmas?"

"I got some good presents," she settled for saying, since she wasn't sure she'd call it a wholly good Christmas, all things considered. Professor McGonagall still had her possibly-curse-laden Firebolt. "Thank you for your card. What's in the Gringott's safety deposit box?"

For a split second, Professor Lupin look startled. Then he brought his smile back. "A few odds and ends I thought you might not have been told about. I take it you haven't written to them yet?"

She shook her head. "How come you know what's in it?"

Now she got the impression that Professor Lupin was wishing she would stop asking him questions. But all he said was, "I knew your parents a little, is all. I thought Hagrid mentioned taking you to Gringott's, but I didn't think he'd have known about the safety deposit box. It's kept in a different part of the bank than the money vaults."

Harriet had not been prepared for this answer. "You knew my parents?"

Professor Lupin blinked at the sharpness in her voice. "Yes—"

"You never said."

He paused. "Many people knew your parents," he said slowly, and she knew he was lying.

"Well enough to know about the stuff they keep at the bank?"

Another pause, slightly longer this time. "We were friends at Hogwarts. It was a long time ago—"

"Yeah. Right. You know, I wish, for once, people would tell me things, instead of just what suits them," she said angrily, and stalked off.

"Harriet," said Professor Lupin; she heard the sound of his chair scraping. She stopped, but not because he'd called after her.

Snape was standing in the half-open door, like he'd been about to walk in, then decided to just turn and go, and finally changed his mind. He appeared to have been watching Harriet and Professor Lupin, but was wearing a peculiar expression, like he was trying not to smile.

But when he saw Harriet looking at him, the expression vanished. His glare flared like an open furnace, and he jerked out of sight, banging the door shut.

Harriet stood with her mouth hanging open.

Even for a grown-up, Snape was weird.

"Harriet." Professor Lupin sounded hesitant. She turned back toward him. His face was wary.

"I'm sorry I've upset you," he said.

"Why didn't you tell me you knew my parents?" She ignored the persistent question knocking against her ribs like a heartbeat: Why didn't Snape tell me he knew my mum?

Professor Lupin didn't answer straightaway. His eyelids flickered, like he was trying not to look away.

"Let's. . . not discuss this here. All right? Will you come to my office?"

Harriet would have gone to the heart of the Forbidden Forest to get to the bottom of all this bloody secrecy. Impatiently she followed Professor Lupin out of the Great Hall, trying not to step on his heels. Finally, I'll find out—

Only they walked straight into Snape. She did step on Professor Lupin's heels when he stopped to avoid walking into Snape.

"Severus," Professor Lupin said, "good morning—"

"Miss Potter." Snape looked straight through Professor Lupin, like he wasn't even there. "You are late for your detention."

"What?" Harriet blurted.

"The one—of many—you incurred for being out of bed after curfew." A nasty sneer curled around Snape's mouth, and his eyes glittered eerily. "And, being as I had to come and fetch you myself, you've just earned another."

"You didn't tell me about any detentions," Harriet protested, her face feeling hot with anger and embarrassment. "How can I be late—"

"I suppose you should have come and asked." He finally looked at Professor Lupin—glared at him, of course, with bone-curdling hatred. "Get on, Lupin. Miss Potter, with me."

"I thought it was standard procedure to inform students of their punishment beforehand?" Professor Lupin said quietly.

If looks could have killed, Professor Lupin would have been a scorch mark on the wall.

"Miss Potter," Snape snarled. "With me."

Harriet opened her mouth, but caught Professor Lupin giving her the tiniest of head shakes. Of course, he wouldn't mind they'd been stopped. He clearly didn't want to tell her anything, anyway.

She glared at him as she followed Snape, but his brief look of confusion and—hurt?—strangely did not make her feel any better.

She trudged after Snape into the dungeons. She expected him to head to his classroom, but instead he strode past it, down the twisting corridors to his private lab, the one where he and Professor Lupin had been making that mysterious potion all summer. The room was cold, everything put neatly away.

"What am I doing?" she asked, seeing nothing terribly disgusting sitting out for her to take care of.

"You will sit here"—Snape pointed his wand at a three-legged stool, which skidded across the floor to a corner of the room—"facing the wall, and contemplate the stupidity of your actions."

Harriet spluttered, face catching on fire.

"Sit," Snape barked.

Harriet knew there was nothing she could say to keep her from sitting on the stool. The most she could hope for was something that would make Snape angrier and put him in a worse mood, but she couldn't think of a single thing to say. So she turned on her heel and walked over to the stool, which he'd wedged so far into the corner her knees almost didn't fit, and tried her fiercest to pretend he didn't exist.

It was hard when she was so incredibly bored within five minutes. And Snape kept rustling around behind her. She could hear his knife thwocking on the table top. Was he making that potion for Professor Lupin?

She tried to sneak a look without him seeing.

"That's another hour you've earned for not following directions," he said without looking up.

"An hour?" Harriet said indignantly.

"That's two for speaking," he said, and chopped a thick wooden root clean in half with one strike.

Well—that was just—fine! If that's what he wanted, she'd never speak to him as long as she lived.

"Of course she'd figure it out," Remus said to Ermentrude, his potted plant. "Or if she didn't, Hermione Granger would have," he added wryly.

He didn't know why he'd written to her about the safety deposit box. In retrospect, he should have figured that she might think it was a trap from Sirius Black. That didn't seem to have occurred to her, but the question of how he would know about the box had. He'd have preferred it hadn't. Questions about Lily and James would lead to questions about why he had never mentioned it, perhaps even to questions about Sirius, and she would be understandably hurt, if not extremely angry, to find out that Sirius Black was her godfather and no one had ever told her.

The safety deposit box was all jewelry: Lily's jewelry; Potter heirlooms. Lily had seldom worn those—only once that Remus could remember, to a charity ball when she and James had only been engaged, before the War made such things inappropriate. But she'd been grateful for the excuse to forgo them; James's mother had had old-fashioned taste, and had restored the jewels to a replica of their original sixteenth century setting. They were rubies, too, which Lily felt clashed with her hair.

Had felt.

So she'd bought her own jewelry, and put it all away into storage when she and James went into hiding, along with the pieces she'd inherited that weren't claimed by Petunia when their mother died. He didn't remember all that was in there, but it had seemed a much better Christmas present for Harriet than anything else he could possibly give her, or that she could want from him.

Perhaps telling her about her parents would have been a more valuable gift than jewelry?

And perhaps you sent her the card because you knew that and didn't want to admit it.

He scrubbed his hand over his face.

"Talk to me," he muttered, tapping his wand against the surface of their Map. Their handwriting blossomed on the parchment, one line after another.

Mr. Padfoot bids Moping Moony a good day, and inquires on the long face, which, scarcely possible though it may be, is not an improvement over the old one.

Mr. Wormtail advises caution, or it will surely stick that way.

Mr. Prongs wonders how Mr. Wormtail can be so pathetic as to think that's a good insult.

Mr. Moony thinks it might be an improvement after all if his face should stick some other way than it's always been.

Mr. Padfoot would advise Mr. Moony not to talk down to himself, the old misery-guts.

Smiling, if sadly, Remus murmured, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

The Map sketched itself on the blank parchment, the dots drifting. Heart clenching, he looked for any dot labeled Sirius Black, but there was none.

Nor did he see any dots for Harriet Potter or Severus Snape.

For a moment, his heart stood still. Then he remembered the dungeons were unmappable, aside from that first corridor where the Potions classroom and professor's office lay, and he breathed out.

But. . . why would Severus have taken Harriet deep inside the dungeons?

He drummed his fingers on the desk, staring out the snow-encrusted window. Then he tapped the map with a brief, "Mischief managed," folded it up and put it in his pocket, and left his rooms.

Snape's wall was extremely, amazingly, fundamentally, mind-bogglingly boring. It made Binns' class look like a party.

Harriet had no idea how long she'd been sitting on that stool, crammed into the corner, but she was ready to bash her brains out just so she'd have something to do.

"Very well," said Snape's wintry voice. "That will do for now. You may get to lunch, once you've told me what you learned."

Harriet paused in her dash to the door. The retort welled up in her like water someone had just chucked a bag of stones into.

"You've got five hundred and seventy six stones in that wall over there."

Snape's stare fixed on her and bored in. His face was hard like each one of those stones. Her heart and stomach tried to squirm into each other's places.

"Come back after lunch," Snape said coldly. "Don't make me come and find you."

Harriet turned and left without another word, and made sure to shut the door very politely behind her on the way out. She hoped he felt it.

"There you are." Hermione looked intensely relieved. "I've been looking for ages and weren't able to find—what happened?" she asked, taking in the expression on Harriet's face.

"I was in detention with Snape." Harriet jerked a dish of creamed corn toward her and slapped a spoonful onto her plate. Hermione jumped as some of the corn went splattering across the table.

"Detention?" she repeated, horrified. "What for?"

Harriet knew Hermione would keep asking until she found out. "That night you told me about Sirius Black, I—went for a walk. Well, I couldn't sleep, could I?" she said defensively when Hermione's eyes flashed with alarm and disapproval. "What would you have done?"

"I wouldn't have gone out into the castle, alone, at night, without telling anyone!" Hermione said, as if she really couldn't believe Harriet had done it. "Harriet, you know that Sirius Black knows how to get in! If Professor Snape found you, then Black could have, too—"

Harriet was in no bloody mood to be lectured. "I was wearing the Cloak, all right?"

"And if Sirius Black knew your dad, he'd know about the Cloak, too!" It didn't make Harriet feel any better to reflect that this was exactly what Snape had said. "That was very careless, Harriet! Professor Snape was right to be upset—"

"Oh, was he?" Harriet snapped. "And you are, too? I suppose you know exactly what it's like, finding out what someone like Black did to your parents—you and Snape both—"

"Harriet, of course I don't know what it's like." Hermione's eyes were bright with tears. "And I'm sorry, I am, but—I didn't tell you about him so you could play right into his hands! Don't you see that's what he'd want? What would you have done if you'd run into him that night?"

"Hexed his murdering traitor's face off." Harriet shoved her plate away and stood.

"Where are you going?" Hermione asked fearfully.

"Finish my detention with Snape."

"But your lunch—"

"Funny, I'm not hungry anymore."

She stalked off, not looking back. Professor Lupin wasn't at the staff table, but she almost didn't care. Right now, she just couldn't deal with someone else lying to her or trying to tell her how to handle the only truths she did know.

Sometimes, Severus was grateful that his enforced role as a double-agent had led to his developing a certain kind of mental agility. Without it, he might never have been able to carry on doing one thing that required such steadiness and concentration while being so enraged he could've blasted the ceiling down on his own head.

He'd never have survived teaching without it, certainly.

The mechanism also forced him to ride out his fury until it had dissipated to a point where he wasn't in (so much) danger of committing manslaughter. If it hadn't been for needing to get on with his work, he might have strangled Lily's daughter where she sat. Or stood. Or smarted off.

Insufferable little. . .

The detention had been spur of the moment. He'd seen her about to walk off with (untrustworthy, collaborating-with-a-mass-murderer) Lupin and, in a fit of alarm, had put a stop to it. Unfortunately, this meant keeping a resentful and rebellious thirteen-year-old girl near himself after deliberately putting her in a bad mood.

The spawn of Lily and Potter could thank Narcissa that she hadn't been throttled.

Since childhood, Narcissa had suffered a chronic complaint that worsened in the cold months. It could easily be kept in check with potions, and she had long insisted that Severus' were superior to anyone's. Although he would have, for various reasons, provided them for a pittance, Narcissa always paid him a tidy sum (in addition to providing remuneration for the ingredients). He used it to sweeten his traveling fund.

He'd never had the opportunity for travel—not the lengthy, considered, and unencumbered sort he longed for—and he probably never would; but by God he'd have the funds for it, if one day he was ever allowed.

He was brooding on his indenture, dreaming of faraway mountains, and monitoring Narcissa's potion when he heard the unmistakable sound of a lost owl flapping in the hall. Usually such owls were for him, though they occasionally got lost.

Opening the door with a wordless spell, he Summoned it; scattering feathers, it shot into the room and tumbled onto one of the empty tables.

"For me?" he said, detaching the letter. The owl was too stunned to acknowledge him.

It was for him. He split the wax seal as the owl tottered to its feet and fled the room as fast as it could.

He never looked at salutations first; always the signature. This letter was from Mrs. Jacob Greengrass.

(Jacob Greengrass was all but estranged from his family, living on the Continent with a string of heinous mistresses, and still his wife very correctly signed her letters with his name.)

She was writing to inform Severus of the withdrawal of her daughter Leto from Hogwarts. Leto was to be married as soon as possible, and wouldn't be returning to finish her seventh year.

"As you are Head of Slytherin, I feel it quite natural to place my trust in you, and beg that you intercede with the Headmaster on behalf of our family in the matter of my daughter's withdrawal."

This was typical of Slytherin mothers in her situation. Severus had, in fact, informed Dumbledore twenty-seven times over the years that such-and-such a female student wasn't coming back to school because she was getting married. Slytherin parents instinctively mistrusted non-Slytherin Headmasters. Since there had only ever been one Slytherin Headmaster, it was something of a House tradition.

It wasn't a surprise that Leto Greengrass should have become Girl Number Twenty-eight, but Severus couldn't stop a flash of Minerva-like disgust. He knew it was pure-blood tradition, not just among the conservative Slytherins, but he'd never liked how so many of his female students' ambitions pinned on making a good marriage.

(He blamed his Muggle upbringing. Even pure-blood Non boys didn't think anything of it.)

But an ambitious marriage was too apt to turn out badly for the girls. For non-former Death Eaters with life debts yet to pay, switching careers was easy, but magical marriages were ultimately binding. When the ministers said, "You are now bonded for life," they weren't speaking metaphorically: the marriage spell was unbreakable by anything but death. It was one reason pure-bloods didn't consider half-and-half marriages to be genuine; true marriage binding required two wands, and Muggles didn't have those. To all proper society, half-bloods like Severus could be legally considered bastards. Any laws that honored them beyond that were hardly more than gentleman's agreements. It was one of many little injustices that had put him at such odds with his own society and made the Dark Lord's prospective future look so attractive.

Mrs. Jacob Greengrass was a half-blood of Slytherin, careful to cover the tracks of her Muggle heritage. She'd married into a pure-blood line as unbroken as they ever got; but her first sights had been set on Lucius. Everyone's had, in those days. Narcissa, subtle, ruthless and cunning, had beaten them all; consigning some to scandal, grinding others to dust, racking up enemies and dismissing them all as unimportant. Narcissa had always been untouchable. He couldn't recall exactly when the one-day Mrs-Jacob-Greengrass had fallen out of the running—or even what her name had been—but now she had four daughters to tread the same path as herself.

He hoped Leto had at least managed to snag someone wealthy, if she had to throw herself away. In the circumstances, there couldn't possibly be anything more than affection without substance. He hoped, for her sake, that it would solidify into something real one day. . . however unlikely it was.

Daphne Greengrass was surely headed the same way. Though sensible and level-headed, she'd never done more than the barest minimum as a student; like most Slytherin girls, she was more preoccupied with her social upkeep. Perhaps he ought to recommend her to Narcissa. If Daphne had set her mind on a marriage of convenience, she might as well try to be one of the richest women in England.

But Asteria. . . perhaps he could do something there. Make a push. Towards something other than marriage to a pampered prince.

He wouldn't do it himself. He never meddled directly in his students' affairs unless he thought they'd die otherwise (which had nearly happened more times than he was comfortable with). He was such a miserable arbiter of his own happiness that he knew he had no discernment towards anyone else's. But he also knew how you could be so blinded to your own ambition that you forgot anything else existed or would ever be possible. You could think the world would allow you only one recourse by which to better yourself, finding out too late that there might have been others.

As he finished Narcissa's potion, which glimmered a pearly gray, luminescent in the dim light, he laid the groundwork for his plan. Simpler plans were better ones. They allowed more room to adapt.

When the girl returned, sulking and scuffing her feet, he'd prepared what he needed.

In truth, he was almost surprised to see her, and very nearly on time. But something. . . something was. . .

"Is that snow on your shoes?" he asked, deceptively soft.

She went quite still, eyes flying to his face. For the first time he wondered whether her Patronus would be a doe, too, should she ever manage to produce one.

"I went out to the courtyard," she said, after a hesitation that was just a little too long. Her tone was almost correctly casual.

He narrowed his eyes, staring her down. She looked boldly back.

"Get back to your corner," he said.

She got back to it with an air of dignity.

He finished Narcissa's potion and bottled it in the crystal decanters that were actually necessary for its transport; it was so delicate that it would react with any other material. The bottles were spelled unbreakable, and he added another layer of enchantment that would prevent anyone but Narcissa from opening them. It was his standard practice, even with clients who weren't friends that had nearly been victims of fatal poisoning in the past.

By the time he'd cleaned his workspace and packed everything away, he judged the girl was frustrated enough to be receptive to his proposal.

"That will do for today. Conditionally," he added as she jumped up from the stool, and then let the word dangle.

She looked at him, half wary and half defiant. "Conditions?"

"You have a further eleven detentions to serve," he said with obviously deceptive mildness; she heard it, and looked alarmed. "However, I would. . . entertain the possibility of curtailing them were you to accept my counteroffer."

"Okay," she said immediately.

"You haven't even heard what the offer is," he said, irritated for more reason than one.

"It can't be worse than staring at the wall," she said.

"How do you know I wouldn't make it so, to prove you wrong?"

She opened her mouth and then shut it, eying him as if trying to determine if he was being serious or not.

"Is it shorter, at least?" she asked.

He knew that his answering smile was not anywhere near nice. "You've already accepted."

She glowered impressively. He'd take that for starters.

"Strain your memory," he said, "back to Hallowe'en. You will recall Asteria Greengrass."

Emotions had flitted across her face as he spoke—indignation, exasperation, wariness, clarity—ending in confusion. He found himself unable to remember if either Potter or Lily had been this easy to read, or if her face was unusually expressive.

It was probably nothing more than his increased capacity for deciphering facial ticks.

"Well?" he said impatiently. "Do you?"

"Yeah, sure," she said, still bewildered. "Hard to forget that. What about her?"

"Miss Greengrass is not adjusting well to boarding school life. The recent loss of her eldest sister is doubtless going to make it even more diffi—"

"Daphne died?" the girl blurted, going white. "When?"

He rallied after a split second's surprise. "No one died, and not Daphne; the eldest sister, Leto. She's withdrawing from school due to an impending marriage."

The girl had relaxed with relief; now she wrinkled her nose. "Why is that a bad thing?"

"Because," he said impatiently, "Leto was, besides Daphne, one of only two people whom Asteria would talk to. She will also pine for her sister and become even more withdrawn. You will attempt to curtail this self-destructively insular behavior."

"Me?" Now the girl was more bewildered than ever, and was beginning to look alarmed again. "What can I do?"

"I leave that for you to determine."

Panic, now. That was interesting. "But—but I don't even know her. What will happen if I can't help?"

"That is for me to determine. You have already accepted the assignment, Miss Potter."

Panic turned to troubled anxiety. "I'm not good at—with people—Hermione would be better at this than me—or one of the Slytherin girls—"

"I have given you the task," he said in a tone that, with a non-Gryffindor, would have forestalled any argument. "You will undertake it or go back to your corner."

Her expression said she'd actually forgotten about that part of the bargain, but it swiftly shifted to mulish determination. "I'll take the corner," she said. "I'm not—not qualified to help—"

"You saved her from childish brutality once," he said, coldly, to repress a pang that was almost something complimentary in memory of it. "This is no different."

She blinked. When she looked at him then, he found himself quite unable to tell what she was thinking.

"All right," she said. "I'll do it."

"Yes," he said, sneering. "I will contact you with further details. Get away, now."

She went, looking thoughtful. He waited until she was well down the hall before dousing the lights and following her out.

Once he was sure they were gone, Remus lifted his Disillusionment. If he were caught, it would be too hard to pass off "I just got lost in the dungons" while under a concealing spell.

He'd learned just enough to ponder, but not enough to come to any conclusion.

He left, feeling very thoughtful.