35

Remus had so many unpleasant thoughts to occupy him these days that he always went to bed with a jumble in his head, as first one consideration jostled to the fore, only to be succeeded by another; and he always awoke with a mixture of them on his mind.

There was Peter, of course. And Sirius. Together and separately. They took up a large space in his head that was set aside for worrying, and occasionally muscled in on his concentration and complacency—such as it he could ever find nowadays. He knew he always appeared complacent, because nobody, even Albus, ever asked him what was wrong; but inside all was confusion.

There was Harriet. James and Lily, too. The echoes of them all around the school—in their daughter—in everything.

And there was Snape.

Now, confess, Severus: you do like Miss Potter.

Remus had wondered what was going on there. Why should Severus Snape care enough to threaten him for posing a danger to Harriet in particular? He'd puzzled over that from the start. And then there was that business over the holiday, with Snape taking Harriet down to his private lab and shutting them both inside for several hours. She'd stayed with him over the summer, too. He did not act as if he liked her, but his behavior toward her was inconsistent, by turns protective and caustic, though not remotely indulgent; and yet he let her get away with a great deal more than Remus would ever have imagined.

It was when Minerva had said, You do like Miss Potter, that Remus had—not remembered, exactly, because he'd said it to himself at the beginning of last term—but that he'd recognized the importance of Snape's having once been friends—of wanting to be more—with Lily.

In the staff room, the discovery had seemed so momentous. . .

And then the certainty had faded, even the surety of what that momentous discovery had really been. Was he supposing that Snape was grafting his old feelings for Lily onto her daughter? He didn't know Snape well enough to say whether it was likely. That had been almost twenty years ago, and such a measure would take a great perversion of sentiment, a kind of obsession that augured a diseased mind. He'd never positively liked Snape, but was he prepared to think him capable of that kind of incestuous pedophilia?

At the next meal, Remus watched Snape, and Harriet, too. Snape seemed as cold and dour as ever, while Harriet sat with Hermione looking quite happy. If Snape glanced over at the Gryffindor table several times, he glanced all around the Great Hall, too, and quite often at the Slytherin table.

As far as sleuthing went, the evidence was pretty inconclusive.

Remus decided to take a more direct approach.

"How did Harriet do?" he asked Snape across the empty seat Filius had recently vacated. "At her meeting, you know."

"No," Snape said, "I had no idea. Given Miss Potter's reputation, she might have slain a dragon some time in the past hour and I'd just failed to hear about it."

If Snape didn't despise him, Remus would have thought he was making a joke.

"I'm sure we'd never have missed hearing about something like that," he replied, smiling.

Snape only gave him a disdainful look and drank from his goblet. He had no food in front of him except a bowl of broth, and he seemed to think it was better to stir it inattentively than to eat any of it.

"How did she do?" Remus asked.

"What does it matter to you, Lupin?"

"I'm only curious."

"You might ask her, then."

"But I'm very curious, and think how odd it would look if I went down and seated myself at Gryffindor table. I'd have to wait till dinner's over."

"Yes," Snape said, "you will." And, pushing back his chair, he stood and stalked out of the hall.

Remus pondered whether this extreme reaction had some other source than Snape's simply despising him so much that even the slightest conversation made him leave the room.

"I'm proud of him, you know," said Albus on Remus' right. "He's trained himself to walk away. As a younger man," his eyes twinkled, "he'd have flung the contents of his goblet in your face."

"And how long ago was that got over?" Remus asked, amused in spite of his worries.

"I believe he was thirty when he at last managed to conquer that impulse. Of course, it came after we'd gotten past the swearing. I find myself missing it sometimes, though. Severus has a most versatile grasp of language. Only my brother Aberforth could surpass him."

"Severus' vocabulary was always extensive, even as a boy—particularly in that way."

"Ah yes," Albus said cheerfully. "You would have been on the receiving end a time or two."

"Deservedly, too." Like most shameful acts, those became progressively more unpleasant at the end of another years' reflection.

"But what were you asking about?" Albus went on. "Some meeting with Harriet?"

"He's having her bond with Asteria Greengrass."

"Ah, yes," said Albus again, this time thoughtfully.

"It seems unlike him," said Remus, as innocently as he could. "Minerva and Pomona were saying so earlier—twitting him a little. Now I understand better why he so suddenly left the room then, too."

Albus chuckled.

"Harriet looks cheerful," he observed, glancing at the Gryffindor table, where Harriet was settling into a second helping of trifle. "I think it's safe to assume the meeting went well. By the bye—I'd heard you were in the library looking up Locating Charms?"

Remus wondered how he knew that. A brief yet gut-clenching fear seized him that Albus might be keeping as close an eye on him as Snape purported to be doing, only far more discreetly. If he'd observed Remus' long afternoon walks—

"I was refreshing my memory," Remus said, preserving his calm, "and brushing up a little. It had occurred to me to wonder why nobody thought to try and locate Black magically?"

"We did think to," Albus said mildly, examining a magnificent strawberry cake that had appeared on the table between them. "But it didn't work. No one has been able to determine why. . . "

"Even outside of Hogwarts?"

"Even so. But," Albus speared a sugar-glazed strawberry, "if Sirius Black can escape Azkaban and penetrate Hogwarts' defenses with no one being much the wiser, it's safe to assume he possesses powers we know not of."

Very true.

That was what Remus' research had yielded: Locating Charms worked only on humans. Animagi, when transformed, were far enough from human that they confused the focus of the magic.

There are Dark spells, however, Remus thought, thinking of the flaking old books he'd checked out of the library, that might prove more useful. . .

Remus did not know any Dark magic.

But there was one person at this school who was always supposed to have been quite good at it.

The plan he'd been forming was dangerous, both to Sirius and himself, and even to Snape. But if it could be done—if he could carry it off—

The temptation of success would be worth the risk, grave as it was.

Though Remus knew how very steadfast his own powers of concealment stood, he was equally aware that he wasn't a good liar. His lies tended to be wild and feeble. He was far better at keeping secrets than spinning probable falsehoods. It was unfortunate, then, that Snape had always been clever and cunning, with an uncanny knack for sniffing out deceit and a tenacious, even a bloody-minded, follow-through. He wouldn't be able to prove or disprove anything Remus said, but for the plan to work, the integrity of his reason would need to be a little overpowered by the temptation of catching Sirius for himself.

Sirius' consent to the plan would not be difficult to obtain: Remus would simply have to tell him nothing about it.

He was confident, at least, that if it weren't for involving Snape, the extreme risk of the plan would surely have made Sirius approve it wholeheartedly.

Monday morning, as Harriet was going through her routine of preparing herself to endure Divination—by eating a lot of breakfast, mainly—something unexpected happened.

Hagrid did not usually eat his breakfast in the Great Hall: whether from the poor success of his class, which he'd never quite got over, or from his regular grounds-keeping duties, or even from the smallness of the chairs and tables and portions of food, he wasn't usually seen there in the mornings. But that morning he came in, his wild hair tangled and powdered with snow, and edged along behind the staff table towards Dumbledore.

It was hard not to notice Hagrid, who, when trying to be furtive, became more noticeable. Harriet watched him bend down to speak to Dumbledore, who nodded and turned to Professor Lupin. He looked looked surprised but pushed his chair back and left the table with him.

Snape stared after them, his expression deeply resentful.

Harriet was still wondering what all of this could possibly mean when she noticed Hagrid shuffling along the gap between the House tables, headed towards her.

"Summat fer yeh at the gate, Harry," he said, bending down as if trying to say it only to her. His voice, though, was as incapable of whispering as he was of going unnoticed. Half of Gryffindor table and some of Hufflepuff looked over.

Bewildered yet curious, Harriet followed Hagrid out of the Great Hall. She stole a peek at Snape as she went, but it wasn't necessary: he stood abruptly as they passed the table, and followed them out of the Hall.

"Mornin', Professer," Hagrid said, sounding friendly but confused, because Snape was now walking with them toward the front doors.

"Yes, it is," Snape said coldly.

"Where are we going?" Harriet asked as they stepped outside. A sleety mizzle was dribbling down from the sky. She had her cloak with her—the corridors were draughty—but it wasn't heavy enough for a long walk.

"I'll take her," Snape said to Hagrid, not sounding like he relished the prospect, but he never sounded like he relished much except taking points from Gryffindor.

"See yeh in class, Harry," Hagrid said, waving to her.

"Bye." She let her hand drop as he loped off toward the caretaker's hut, the snow so deep it covered the tops of his boots. "Where are we going?"

"For the moment we are waiting here."

Snape was looking down the sloping track toward the front gates. Harriet followed his gaze, her stomach clenching and dropping at the same time, because the Dementors were at the gates. She couldn't see them, but she knew they were there.

"I still haven't got it," she blurted.

"The Headmaster has. Watch your footing, the stairs have iced."

He cracked and vanished the ice with a spell. Harriet stepped gingerly down the steps and into the snow, but that was even tougher going: students' footprints had packed it down, and the icy rain had frozen it over, making the walk very slippery.

Snape held his arm out without a word, and she grabbed onto it gratefully and let him tow her down the path.

Professor Dumbledore was standing at the open gate talking with a goblin who was wearing a spruce, old-fashioned suit, the kind with a tailcoat and a lacy cravat. Professor Lupin had walked up the path a little beyond the gates and was staring up at the rainy sky overhead, his wand in his hand.

Harriet didn't feel that drowning cold or hear her mum's voice, not even faintly.

The goblin watched Harriet approach. He was standing next to an enormous, ancient-looking, battered trunk.

"Oh," she said as the penny dropped.

"This is Griphook, from Gringott's," said Dumbledore to Harriet as soon as Snape had steered her down to them.

"Name?" asked the goblin. His eyes were almost completely black, only a sliver of white showing at the very edges, and they looked both clever and merciless.

"Harriet Lily Potter."

Griphook pulled a scroll out of a pocket that looked much too small to hold it: the pocket was barely wider than his hand, and the scroll was at least a foot long and quite thick, sealed tightly on both ends with scarlet wax.

He held it out to her. Cautiously, she took it—and almost dropped it in surprise when her hand tingled all over, as the entire scroll shimmered in an explosion of golden sparks. The wax on the top end cracked straight down the middle.

"We are satisfied that you are who you say you are," said Griphook. "You will find your inheritance in precise order. Should you have any further questions, they may be directed to our public relations office. Good day."

He did not bow; he just vanished without a crack, only a ripple in the air.

Harriet blinked a few times.

"Goblins are always so refreshingly to the point," Dumbledore said cheerfully.

"How is she supposed to get that monstrosity up to the castle?" Snape asked.

Harriet had to agree with him. The trunk was almost as big as she was.

"But it won't weigh anything to her," Professor Lupin said.

"And I suppose that's every logistic taken care of," Snape said. "All the snow melted away and the path easy going. The goblins have enchanted the trunk and solved every difficulty of the weather."

"Why won't it weigh anything to me?" Harriet asked, before he could really get going. "It's enormous."

"Because it belongs to you," said Dumbledore, smiling. "Try and lift it."

Feeling silly with all of them looking at her, Harriet bent and tugged on one of the handles. To her great surprise, that end of trunk lifted well out of the snow. The whole thing weighed about as much as a stack of parchment.

"Cool!"

"It's too bulky," Snape said. "How is she supposed to carry that?"

"I'm rather surprised Griphook left when he did," said Dumbledore. "He deprived himself of all the enjoyment of watching us dither."

"We'd have asked him to help, that's why," Snape said. "He can imagine it well enough."

"We could transfigure a wagon," Professor Lupin offered. "It's a Muggle—"

"I know what a wagon is, Lupin. A toboggan would be better, with the snow."

"The trunk cannot be charmed or enchanted," Dumbledore explained to Harriet, while Professor Lupin hunted for a piece of wood suitable for transfiguring and Snape rejected them all as not being good enough. "And if any of us tried to lift it, we could not get it off the ground so much as a centimeter. Even Hagrid could not."

"How did Griphook get it here?" Harriet asked, looking at the trunk with greater respect.

"Goblin magic." Dumbledore twinkled. "The magic of goblins is as different from ours as a house-elf's or a centaur's."

Harriet wished they taught more about the different types of magic in school, more than the nothing that they did teach.

"Would he really laugh at us?" she asked, thinking of Griphook's shrewd eyes.

Dumbledore glanced at the other professors: Professor Lupin had accidentally transfigured a sled instead of a toboggan, and Snape was describing the difference between the two in a sarcastic, carrying voice, while Professor Lupin listened with polite interest. Dumbledore's mustache twitched.

"Their sense of humor is. . . singular. But I think this is a scene that might be enjoyed by many."

Finally the sled was transfigured into a satisfactory toboggan, Harriet pushed her trunk onto it, Professor Dumbledore conjured rope to lash it down, and, walking in the snow and not on the ice-path of doom, she was able to tow her things quite easily up to the castle. Other students looked at them curiously as they passed by, on their way Herbology.

At the doors, Professor Lupin had to excuse himself to make his first class. He gave Harriet an odd smile as he left. She remembered what he'd said, and Hermione too, about it being difficult to talk about her parents. Did that mean remembering them, too? Even seeing their things?

Snape didn't appear concerned with getting away. He must have his free period first.

(If he was bothered by the idea of her mum's jewelry, she couldn't tell.)

"I believe we've made you quite late for class, my dear," Dumbledore said. "Which do you have first?"

"Divinations, sir."

"Then Trelawney will already have foreseen it," Snape said coolly, giving Harriet an odd sense of déjà vu: it was exactly what she herself had said a while back. "Which is just as well, because she's now got to get it to Gryffindor Tower."

The three of them looked up the endless vault of staircases. It went up so high, you couldn't see the ceiling from the ground floor.

"Maybe I'll just start living down here," Harriet said.

"I'm sure there are smaller boxes within the chest," Dumbledore said. "The key should be in that scroll Griphook gave you, Harriet."

She picked the split seal open and dropped the halves into her pockets. When she tipped the scroll, a large gold key with an intricate head and complex teeth slid into her palm. It tingled her hand and shimmered like the scroll had. So did the padlock when she touched it.

The inside of the trunk smelled like nothing at all, and was neither damp nor dusty. Dozens of smaller boxes were packed inside, in all different colors, some leather, some velvet. Harriet picked up the one on top, a case made of old, cracking leather, and opened it.

"Whoa," she said at the sight of enormous rubies set in a leafy gold metalwork.

"Sixteenth century, unless I am mistaken," Dumbledore said. "Though Potter was not the family name as yet, I think."

Sixteenth. . . that meant this necklace was four hundred years old.

Head spinning, she very carefully shut the case and placed it with extreme care back where she'd got it.

"If the individual pieces can be transferred to another receptacle," Snape was saying to Dumbledore, "that could easily be given to the house-elves."

"Why didn't we think of that earlier?" Dumbledore said merrily. "But I wouldn't have given over the toboggan scheme for anything in the world."

In the end, Snape's idea worked: Harriet moved the cases into another trunk, which two house-elves came to transport to Gryffindor tower. Only Harriet could take anything out of the trunk to put into the new one, though she could hand the cases off to anyone. Once the Gringott's trunk was empty, anybody was able to move it.

Dumbledore seemed delighted with the whole process. Harriet enjoyed it, too. She'd been picturing a little, shallow metal box owled to her, and instead she'd got an enormous trunk, delivered by a condescending goblin, enchanted so that only she could touch or handle it. Missing Divinations was just a tiny bonus, really. She loved magic.

And if opening the trunk and handling the jewelry had left her feeling a little like she was both so happy and so very sad, well. . . maybe she could understand Professor Lupin's silence a little better. But not entirely. She'd much rather have the trunk—and that feeling—than nothing at all.

Harriet was rather distracted all the way through Transfiguration, and somehow transfigured her sow's ear into a seashell instead of a silk purse. Professor McGonagall assigned both her and Neville extra work for homework, after he made his start singing a soprano opera.

"You missed such a lot in Divinations," Hermione said as they sat down to lunch. The look on her face was so sarcastic, Snape might have awarded a point to Gryffindor if he'd seen it.

"Please tell me we're done with Palmistry soon," Harriet groaned. "I'm sick of her flinching every time she looks at my hands."

"Since you weren't there, she was picking on Neville."

They both glanced up the table to where Neville was sitting a little apart from the others, staring into his bowl. He scooped up a spoonful and raised it to his mouth, but most of the stew slipped off the spoon without his noticing, and he stuck the empty spoon in his mouth without any change in expression.

"She's so heartless," Hermione said, her eyes blazing. "Why everyone can't see what a horrid fraud she is, I'll never understand, but they enjoy listening to her foretelling you and Neville—where are you going?"

"Come on." Harriet picked up her bag and her bowl, and scooted down the table to sit next to Neville.

"Hi, Neville," she said when he went on poking at his stew without seeing they'd sat down next to him.

He looked up, blinking owlishly, and then went brick red. "H-hi."

Harriet searched for something to say, and realized she didn't know much more about Neville than she did about Asteria. Despite sharing a House with him for more than two years, all she really knew was that he lived with his grandmother and was scared of Snape more than anything else in the world.

"How's Trevor?" she asked, feeling very feeble.

"Sluggish," he mumbled, his face still very red. "He doesn't like the cold. It's hard to get him to come out of the bed. . ."

They chatted (a bit awkwardly) about Trevor until lunch was over and it was time to head for Magical Creatures. Neville had a hunch-shouldered way of walking, like he was trying to make himself shorter.

Harriet saw Asteria as she was leaving the Great Hall, caught her eye and waved. Asteria went as red as Neville. Daphne, who was with her, made no sign that she'd seen Harriet at all.

As they all struggled through the snow to class, Harriet saw a glow below the horizon: Hagrid had built up a huge bonfire for them, full of salamanders who basked right in the flames.

Harriet realized hadn't had much contact with Hagrid this year. The secret of Snuffles, and the threat of Sirius Black, had kept her rather away; and what with growing apart from Ron, and Hermione being so busy, there had been almost no time for visits with Hagrid. Looking at his tired, unhappy face, Harriet felt a sudden, intense surge of guilt.

As everyone collected dry wood to add to the fire, she waded over to him.

"Hi, Hagrid," she said, wishing she could think of a better opener.

"Harry." He patted her gently on the shoulder. Hagrid's gentle pat was still like a soft wallop. "Yeh doin' okay?"

"I'm fine." Though now she felt worse, at his asking her. "You look tired."

"Ahh, well." He wiped his nose with his coat sleeve. He could have just been cold, but she thought it was something different.

"How's Buckbeak?" she asked, with another dose of déjà vu.

Hagrid sniffed louder than ever.

"H-he's—poor Beaky—"

Harriet patted him worriedly on the arm. She felt a flash of anger when she saw Pansy Parkinson looking over with an expression of malicious pleasure on her face.

Hermione walked past Pansy with a load of firewood in her arms, and accidentally clipped her on the ear with a branch.

"Watch where you're going, Mudblood," Pansy snapped. Hagrid, who was blowing his nose in a handkerchief as large as a small tablecloth, didn't hear.

"I was," Hermione said coldly, with a look of pure disdain, and strode over to the bonfire to add her wood to the growing pile. Ron, standing a little ways off, watched her furtively, an unreadable look on his face.

"What's wrong with Buckbeak, Hagrid?" Harriet asked, keeping half an eye on all her friends (and enemies).

"I don't want ter worry yeh," Hagrid said, mopping his eyes. "Yeh've got enough on yer plate, what with Sirius Black an' all—"

Harriet wasn't sure she'd ever felt so small. It didn't have anything to do with Hagrid's being so much taller than herself.

"I'll worry anyway, especially if you tell me you don't want me to."

Hagrid's eyes leaked. "Not here, love," he said gruffly. "We'll. . .we'll have tea on Friday, or Saturday. It's nothin' that'll change between now an' then."

Harriet nodded. "How would the afternoon be? On Saturday, I mean. I have to do a project for Sn—Professor Snape in the mid-morning." First thing in the morning was Quidditch practice. Bloody Oliver.

"That's fine, love. Yeh need to take care of yerself. What project has he got yeh doin'?"

She explained about Asteria. When she'd done, Hagrid looked rather thoughtful.

"Professer Snape normally don't let anyone handle his Slytherins but himself. He's been known fer it from the start. Yeh should feel proud, Harry. Migh' not seem like it—and Professer Snape's often seems like—well—but yeh ought ter feel proud."