5

Harriet had never thought she would see the day when food would be sitting in front of her and she wouldn't want to eat it. Meals at the Dursleys were often sparse and small because Aunt Petunia wouldn't feed her, not because the food was inedible, and it was unthinkable that she could ignore the food at Hogwarts. Even the prospect of Snape's classes right after lunch, which still made her food less tasty than usual, didn't take away her appetite completely.

But it had totally disappeared after Professor McGonagall had descended on Gryffindor table to give Harriet and Ron their detentions. The words Miss Potter, you'll be with Professor Snape this evening had sucked absolutely all the taste out of Harriet's steak and kidney pie.

"Whatever happened to lines?" Ron said once McGonagall had left. "Or manuring the greenhouses? Cleaning out bedpans in the infirmary? Fred and George got that one more than a few times, but they never got a whole evening spent with Snape!"

Hermione fussed with her bookmark in Voyages with Vampires but said nothing. She didn't have to, though. Hermione could be unspeakably loud without saying a word.

"If I hadn't already learned my lesson, this'd teach me," Harriet said, pushing away her plate with a grimace.

Hermione's deafening silence seemed to say, Well, you did break the rules. Harriet loved her more than anyone else in the world, but right then she was just as glad to leave Hermione reading fifteen chapters ahead of their homework assignment and head off with Ron for their evening of misery. She already had detention with Snape; she didn't need Hermione suggesting she deserved every bit of it on top of that. It was bad enough to know she deserved it. Her stomach coiled like a dying snake every time she remembered that Mr Weasley was facing an inquiry at work because of her and Ron.

"Good luck, mate," Ron said to Harriet as they parted at the great staircase: Ron to climb to the trophy room, Harriet to descend to the dungeons.

Snape's dungeon. She thought of the jars of ghastly floating things he liked to decorate with and shuddered.

She'd never been in the dungeons at night before, but discovered they ought to be creepy enough during the day for anyone's taste. The long, icy corridor oozed with shadows in the flickering torchlight, reminding her what castle dungeons were originally built for. She wondered if Hogwarts had included them for the same reason.

Considering her destination, she could have done without thinking it.

The door to Snape's classroom creaked ominously. She wondered if he made it do that.

Peering inside, she searched the darkness for the only bit of him you could sometimes see, i.e. his sallow face, but she didn't see anything this time. The greenish light from the walls somehow made the shadows worse, and it was horribly cold down here.

"Shut the door."

Snape's icy voice came from out of nowhere, making her jump in her skin.

He melted out of the wall, floating behind him a steel barrel that was nearly as tall as Harriet. No—not out of the wall, stupid, she told herself: he'd only been in his storeroom.

She shut the door, wishing she hadn't noticed how bad-tempered he looked. Or how the bang of the door echoed like the dot-dot-dot on the sentence: "And then something happened, something so horrible that . . . "

Snape dropped the barrel in the middle of the room, where a few desks had been pushed aside in a kind of polygon. The clang echoed off the bare walls.

"Well?" he said, waving his wand to slide the lid off the barrel. It gave a nasty, ominous scrape as it came free, and she smelled the tang of formaldehyde.

Instead of looking in the barrel, which she was certain contained something really disgusting, she glanced up at Snape's face and straightaway regretted it: his eyes were glittering in a malicious yet satisfied way that she didn't like at all.

"These are horned toads," he said.

She looked at the barrel and wished she hadn't eaten so much at dinner.

"You will disembowel them."

Or anything, really.

"Without gloves," he finished.

She stared at him. He smiled in a way that shouldn't have been called a smile, and handed her a small knife with a serrated edge.

"The whole barrel," he said softly.

Harriet wondered (as their guts caked beneath her fingernails) if disemboweling horned toads was better than, say, helping Lockhart answer his fan mail or something. She wasn't sure. Snape now made her horribly nervous, but he didn't make her want to tear her hair out. Still, she reckoned Lockhart would probably faint at the idea of anyone gutting a horned toad, if only from what it would do to their nails.

All this past week Lockhart had kept turning up wherever she went, winking roguishly and trying to give her advice on fame. Partly this was Colin Creevey's fault: he had memorized her timetable and arranged his route to classes to cross with hers so that she ran into him about six times a day. Whether Lockhart turned up so often because he wanted to talk to Harriet about how famous he was or simply because he knew she was stalked by a fanboy with a camera and he could get into the photos, Harriet wasn't sure, but she wished Colin would just transfer his obsession from her to Lockhart. It would save her a lot of embarrassment.

Lavender and Parvati were very jealous and simply tuned Harriet out when she said they could have Lockhart and Colin for the asking.

"He's so handsome," Lavender would sigh.

"I hope he comes out with that range of hair care products he talks about in his book," Parvati said. "His hair always looks amazing . . . "

"Just find out what he uses now and yours'd look the same," Harriet retorted.

"I know he's got the wrong idea about you," Hermione would say when Harriet complained that her teacher was stalking her, "but think of all the inside information he could give you on everything he's done!"

"Harry doesn't need to listen to that idiot talk more about himself," said Ron, looking horrified at the very thought (and offending Hermione).

Harriet snorted at the memory.

"I said disembowel them," said Snape's cold voice, "not inhale them."

Harriet looked up warily. Snape was sitting behind his desk with a small mountain of marking spread out in front of him in messy piles. She knew it was marking because he was writing from a huge bottle of red ink. It gleamed on his quill tip like blood.

Snape's narrow eyes glittered at her past clumps of long, greasy hair. With that great beaky nose and the red ink staining his fingertips, he reminded her of a vulture. Ron said Neville had nightmares about him. Small wonder.

"Remember you've the whole barrel," he said, and went back to his marking.

Grimacing, Harriet pulled the toad's guts out of its belly and let them dribble into the bowl Snape had given her to hold them. She wondered if Snape actually needed these for potions or if he just kept the toads so he could give out really disgusting detentions. This made Ron's slug-spewing problem look downright cute.

She dropped the gutted carcass into the rubbish bin and reached back into the barrel. The whole thing? She'd already done about half, but she had no idea how long she'd been here, since Snape didn't keep a clock. It felt like six weeks.

She pulled out the next toad and tried not to look too closely at it. At least it was dark down here.

As she pushed the dirty knife into its underbelly, she heard the voice.

"Come . . . come to me . . ."

She froze, staring down at the dead horned toad as the voice, cold like venom that had been trapped in ice for a thousand years, like hatred that cut to your bones, pierced into her head and streamed into her thoughts—

"Let me rip you . . . let me tear you . . . let me kill you . . ."

She jumped back from the toad, the barrel, all of it, dropping the knife with a clatter.

" . . . kill . . . so long . . . "

She pressed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.

" . . . kill . . . KILL . . . "

"Miss Potter!"

Her eyes flew open. Snape was standing over her, his expression fierce yet somehow odd.

"What are you doing?" he said, gesturing at her hands.

She lowered them from her ears, heart pounding, but the dungeon room was silent. She stared at the barrel of horned toads but heard nothing.

"I . . . " Had she imagined it? Yes . . . that's probably what it had been: gutting those dead toads, down here in Snape's creepy dungeon, him sitting there like a half-full vulture—it was no wonder she was hearing voices.

Really horrible voices . . .

"Nothing," she muttered, seeing Snape still looking at her with his narrow, bottomless eyes. "I thought I heard something but I think . . . I think I was just hearing things."

"You think you heard something . . . because you heard something," Snape repeated.

"Yeah," Harriet said, a touch defiantly. "Like audio hallucinations?"

"I know what 'hearing things' means, Miss Potter." But Snape kept staring at her. "What exactly did you hear?"

"The horned toads talking," she said.

He stared at her a moment longer, almost incredulous, then glanced over his shoulder at the barrel. "The very dead horned toads?"

"Yes," she said defiantly.

"The ones with or without their intestines?" he asked with an air of mockery.

"The one I was cutting into," she said, not quite daring to glare but settling for a glower.

Snape sighed. It was very quiet, but it was definitely a sigh, the sort Mrs. Weasley gave when the twins weren't behaving but hadn't blown anything up yet.

"Very well. That will do for tonight," he said. "Know that the next time you decide rules are for others, the rest of the barrel has your name on it."

"Yes, sir," she said, in a tone of voice that was just rude enough to make him raise his eyebrows.

"Would you like the next time to be now?" he asked, softly menacing.

"No, sir," she said, deciding it was much safer to stare at her shoes.

"A good answer, Miss Potter."

She heard the lid scraping back onto the horned toad barrel. "Wash your hands," Snape said.

Harriet scrubbed underneath the icy jet from the gargoyle's mouth for several long minutes, trying to pick the gunk out of her nails.

"I haven't got all night, Miss Potter," he said from where he stood beside the open door with an air of slightly scornful impatience.

She hurried forward, wiping her hands on her jeans, and stopped in surprise when he followed her out. He shut the door behind himself and moved his wand in a soft motion that made the door glow golden.

"Well?" he said, now waving his wand at her in an obvious shoo. For a split second, she expected to grow horns or something. "Get a move on."

"Er?" she said when he followed her.

"It's past midnight," he said. "You have a curfew. Unless you would rather Filch entrap you with another detention already?"

"No," she said quickly. "Sir."

He walked her up to the Pink Lady in silence and waited until she was climbing in through the portrait hole before sweeping away without a backwards glance.

After he had seen the girl slip, bewildered, behind her portrait, he went straight to the headmaster's office. It was past midnight, but he knew Dumbledore would still be awake.

"Good evening, Severus," he greeted, looking up from where he was, to all appearances, knitting a sock for someone eight feet tall. Well, there was always Hagrid. "I trust you arranged something suitably appalling for Harriet's detention?"

He was smiling as he said it, and Severus was reminded of his amusement over Lockhart's bragging. He scowled.

"The reckless little brat deserved it," he said. "You've already forgiven her, of course."

"I try to remember what it was like to be young," Dumbledore admitted. "But it is easier to forgive others when we have learned how to forgive ourselves. You, of course," he pulled a ball of aquamarine yarn from a basket at his feet, "have still not forgiven yourself for offenses committed when you were fifteen."

He sounded like he regretted this, which made Severus unspeakably angry for a reason he didn't care to define at the moment.

"I didn't come here for a bloody therapy session," he snarled. "I came to tell you Miss Potter had a fit."

Dumbledore blinked. "Dear boy, what did you have her doing?"

"Because she was hearing voices."

Dumbledore sat up a little straighter, his gaze suddenly as piercing as an arrowhead. "Tell me."

Severus described seeing her jump and drop the knife, her face white, shocked and disturbed, and then press her hands over her ears, Lily's eyes screwed shut.

"And you heard nothing?" Dumbledore said when he'd finished.

"Not a thing. The door never opened, the ghosts cannot make themselves invisible, and Peeves would never be so subtle. With the gloating, if nothing else."

Dumbledore looked troubled. "And so you thought—"

"Yes," Severus said shortly.

Dumbledore rubbed the knuckles of his left hand absently, still watching Severus as he thought. "The house-elf must have been behind the business with the sealed barrier," he murmured, even though they'd decided this on the night the girl flew a fucking car into the Whomping Willow. "And though he couldn't give you any more information . . . "

No, and Lucius had given him nothing. When Severus had said, If you're planning something at Hogwarts . . . he had only looked supremely self-satisfied and said, I'm not planning anything, Severus, nothing at all, in that way that was as good as gloating. We mustn't press it, Severus, Dumbledore had told him. We must tread carefully, lest we show our hand. Lucius is clever, clever enough to keep himself out of trouble all these years, and for that reason alone he would be a good ally to Tom . . .

Although it had been barren of particulars, that visit to the Malfoys had confirmed one thing: there was something dark coming to Hogwarts . . . and now the girl was hearing voices, voices that Severus hadn't, or couldn't hear. The elf had risked detection to warn her specifically, and Lucius had seemed so satisfied with himself and secure in the apparent knowledge that his own son would not be harmed . . .

But if the Dark Lord hadn't contacted Lucius, which Severus was sure he had not, for Lucius wouldn't have come out of such a meeting unscathed, then Severus couldn't see what the man could possibly gain. Why this particular timing? If all he'd wanted was retribution on the girl, he could have sought it last year. He would have known when she was due for Hogwarts.

The information that would illuminate everything was remaining stubbornly opaque. He hated it when life got like that. All the Houses were suffering the lowest tally of points in recent history because of his foul temper, and this was only Saturday of the first week. On Friday evening, Flitwick had even gone so far as to ask him if he was feeling quite all right, and Minerva's conversation was becoming distinctly frost-chipped.

"It's good you accepted Lockhart's application after all," he said to Dumbledore. "The way he's been following her about, if anything attacks her, it might kill him off first."

Dumbledore's mustache twitched. "Severus, your sense of humor remains irreparably morbid."

"This, coming from you, Headmaster?" Severus said pointedly. "After you've been courting the society of that obnoxious cretin?"

"I have never been able to refuse the allure of the ridiculous," Dumbledore admitted.

"With him it's practically an art form."

"He is something of a masterpiece," Dumbledore agreed.

"I maintain that he's a creep of the first order," Severus said, well aware that practically everyone at Hogwarts, even Flitwick, would probably describe him the exact same way, six days out of seven. At least.

"Well, yes," said Dumbledore. "But, in the way I believe you are thinking, relatively harmless. I'm quite sure he will never have half the interest in anyone that he does in himself. His attention to Harriet is predominately a need to pit his fame against hers."

"It had better be," Severus said bitingly, even though he agreed. He'd been watching, and when there wasn't a camera involved, Lockhart wasn't interested in the girl at all. At mealtimes, when she sat well within sight, Lockhart always spent the time admiring his own reflection in his silverware.

Because he was a bizarre man, Dumbledore smiled warmly at Severus. "I assure you, Severus, were it otherwise—should I have the slightest suspicion that Harriet or any of the children was in danger—I would dismiss Gilderoy Lockhart and take the Defense position myself."

Severus glared. "Don't trust me, do you," he said, ignoring his Inner Hufflepuff's attempts to point out that Dumbledore oughtn't and he knew it.

"The school could bear to lose me," Dumbledore said. "Minerva would make an excellent Headmistress, and in these times that, I am sure, will grow gradually darker, you, Filius and Pomona have my utmost confidence in keeping the students safe from harm. If the curse didn't finish me off—"

"That bloody curse again," Severus said.

"The curse is very real," Dumbledore said, serious for the moment. "And you must remain at Hogwarts, Severus."

He didn't add You know this, because Severus did know and Dumbledore knew it. But that didn't mean Severus had to like it, nor would the knowledge prevent him from bitching about it.

"At least we only have to put up with that garish twit for three terms," he said.

"There's the silver lining." Dumbledore smiled. "I knew you would find it."

By Halloween, Harriet knew she hadn't been hallucinating about the voice.

The really obvious clue came when she, Ron and Hermione found Mrs Norris hanging apparently dead by her tail from a torch bracket next to a message painted in blood on the walls. Harriet was glad Mrs Norris wasn't actually dead, if only because that might have gotten Harriet expelled.

Dumbledore was very firm that she, Ron and Hermione couldn't have had anything to do with it, but Snape seemed to doubt it: after the Petrified Cat incident, he was more horrible to Harriet than he'd been so far, and took to following her around the castle and snapping at her if she did something he disapproved of. Because Things Snape Disapproved Of ranged from going to the library to eating dinner to walking up the stairs, Harriet had very little means of behaving herself.

If she'd wanted it, she had all the satisfaction of knowing she'd been right: making an enemy of Snape was a fate she could've done without.

"Miss Potter," he said one day as everyone in Potions readying to make their escape, "you will stay behind."

"What? Why? Sir," she added, because it was amazing the way Snape could make his stare feel like nails.

"Good bye, Miss Granger, Mr Weasley," he said without looking at her friends, who were hovering behind him at the door. Hermione shot Harriet a deeply sympathetic look as she dragged an indignant Ron out of the room.

"Do you see these desks, Miss Potter?" Snape pointed at them.

Harriet was tempted to say something pretty sarcastic but couldn't bring herself to be so suicidal. "Yes, sir?"

His tone became even more mocking. "Do you see what's on them?"

She grimaced at the flaky remains of their potions' ingredients. "Erm . . . tubeworms?"

"Very good," he said, in a tone of voice that wasn't anything like a compliment. "They need scraping off."

Harriet had no choice—she wouldn't had with any teacher, but somehow being ordered to do something by Snape was more binding. But she fumed as she gouged at the crusty tubeworm leftovers, honestly wondering why Snape suddenly had it in for her so bad. Was he that attached to Mrs. Norris?

Actually, it started when you flew the car, said a helpful voice in her head. At least it was nothing like that horrible, hissing, echoing voice that had led her to the scene of Mrs. Norris's Petrification, to that evil message on the walls.

But why should Snape care so much about a flying car that didn't even belong to him or anything? Everyone else has already got over it . . .

Professor Dumbledore said he didn't like Dad, didn't he? And he only worked so hard to protect me last year because he owed Dad a debt.

Maybe now that Snape had watched out for her last year, he was okay with singling out Harriet with his temper now? But then why had he looked so angry when he saw how she lived at the Dursleys'? Aunt Petunia would love a postcard of Harriet scraping up tubeworms. She'd probably frame it . . . or maybe not, because that would mean having a picture of Harriet in the house.

Grown ups were very strange.

"Very well, that's enough," Snape said a few minutes later as he closed the last cabinet where he'd been putting things away. "Get up to lunch before it's over."

As if it had been her idea to hang around in his dead creepy classroom prodding at tubeworms. She grabbed her bag and ran out the door before he could change his mind.

"Miss Potter!" he shouted after her. "Five points from Gryffindor for running!"

Grinding her teeth, she slowed to a walk as she approached the stairs, and then jumped when she noticed Snape billowing up behind her. She thought of the way he'd looked after he'd Apparated them from Privet Drive to Hogwarts, with the sun bursting golden against the pale sky and whorls of magic sinking around him like ink and water, like he could summon shadows everywhere he went.

"What did I do now?" she blurted.

"Seeing as it's lunchtime," he said with an expressive sneer, "I assume we are heading to the same place."

"Oh," she said, not sure whether she should feel weak with relief or hot from embarrassment.

"Well?" He shooed her forward and followed her into the Great Hall like a malevolent shadow.

She found Ron and Hermione waving at her from halfway down the table and walked as quickly as she could, definitely not running, to meet them.

She squeezed in next to Hermione, who pushed a plate of shepherd's pie in front of her. "Thanks," Harriet said fervently.

"What did he want this time?" Hermione asked anxiously.

"Does it matter?" Ron scowled up at the High Table. "What is with that greasy old git?"

But Harriet, who'd started to nurse the fear that Snape could not only hear a pin drop on the other side of the castle but also read minds, made a frantic shushing motion. "He'll hear you!" she hissed, watching anxiously as Snape cut savagely into his lunch.

"Honestly, Harry, he can't hear across the hall," Hermione said, but she sounded a bit doubtful all the same, and they all huddled down a bit, counting on a group of fifth-years to shield them from Snape's view.

"Where's Ginny?" Harriet asked. There were four bright patches of Weasley hair at the Gryffindor table, but none of them were Ginny's. "She wasn't at breakfast either . . . "

"Maybe we should go look for her when you're done eating," Hermione said, looking troubled. "She's been looking rather unwell lately . . . And Ron didn't help," she added with a nasty glare.

"Whaf?" Ron managed to ask around a huge mouthful of treacle tart that made his cheeks bulge like a chipmunk's who was storing for winter.

"Saying it was a shame Filch hadn't been Petrified along with Mrs. Norris—"

"She juf nobbin onna wrong fide ofilch et—" Ron swallowed. "—that's all," he finished sagely. "Once he's tried to get her with detention for tracking mud up the corridor, she'll feel differently."

"Well, I've known Filch for more than a year and I don't think it's funny to joke about people being Petrified, no matter who they are—"

Harriet let their bickering float past and concentrated on her lunch. It was extra tasty today. She wondered if house-elves had baked it.

"Oh!" Hermione said. "Thank goodness it's come!"

Harriet looked up as a magnificent tawny owl swept down overhead, so close the beat of his wings fluttered the hair on her forehead. He landed on the table with a reverberating thunk owing to the large package tied to his feet.

"Whaffaten?" Ron said, chewing.

"A book," Harriet guessed, and not just because it was being delivered to Hermione: it had a definitely bookish shape to it.

Ron wiped his chin with his sleeve. "More books? Have you read the whole library already, then?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Hermione looked amazed, though whether this was because they hadn't guessed what she was up to, or from Ron's table manners, Harriet wasn't sure. "I've been trying to find out about the Chamber of Secrets, of course! Only everyone else is, too, and I had to leave my copy of Hogwarts: A History at home because of all the Lockhart books—Mum's just sent it to me—here, could you give him a treat, Ron, Mum's tied the twine too tight—"

By the time the owl had been fed some scraps of Ron's leftover lunch and sent off, Hermione had found the right chapter in the index. She read it out to them—the founding of the school, Slytherin's prejudice, his fight with Gryffindor and leaving, his secret chamber with a monster that could only be found by his very own heir, and which never had been found . . .

"Blimey," Ron said as the bell rang and the noise in the Hall grew even louder as everyone got up to leave. "I always knew Salazar Slytherin was a twisted old loony, but I never knew he started all this pure-blood rubbish."

"Honestly!" There were bright patches of pink on Hermione's cheeks, maybe at the idea that Salazar Slytherin would have considered her untrustworthy. "It's no wonder everyone in his House is perfectly horrid, with a founder like that! Bringing a monster into the school, to purge it of the unworthy—"

"And you heard Malfoy," Ron added darkly as they headed into the shadow of the Entrance Hall, making for the Grand Staircase. "'You'll be next, Mudbloods!' Joyful time for him that'd be, the slimy little snake. I wouldn't be in Slytherin if you paid me. Bunch of nutters, they are."

"Yes, and they . . . Harry?" Hermione put a hand on her arm. "Are you all right?"

Harriet had been thinking about Snape. His cold black eyes had followed them out of the Hall, his expression shuttered. "I'm fine," she said, turning back to her friends. "Well . . . at least now we know what Dobby was warning me about."