27

With the promise of Patronus lessons spurring her on, Harriet was able to get back to work on everything else. The next Hogsmeade visit was on the very last weekend of term, and although everyone else was excited for the day out and the chance for Christmas shopping, Harriet was hoping that soon she might never have to hear her mother's dying words ever again, except in the darkness of her own heart.

She didn't talk to anyone else about the Patronus. The only person she would have told was Hermione, and it was difficult to talk to Hermione at all these days with all the books and parchments trying to bury her alive. Harriet had long since given up hope of learning how she was making it to her classes; Hermione was being too careful to conceal it, even as she stressed and fretted black circles under her eyes. She was taking three more classes than everyone else and still managed to be the only person to finish Snape's werewolf essay, before Professor Lupin returned to class and told them they didn't have to do it.

But Harriet didn't want to share the Patronus, not even with Hermione. She wasn't sure why, but the Patronus felt like a very private thing. She wondered, sometimes, as she pored over the pages she'd copied from the books, whether Snape hadn't really not-answered her about the Patronus because he didn't want to talk to her about it.

On the morning of the last Hogsmeade weekend, Harriet woke up to a world covered in snow. For once the rain had stopped, the mist had pulled back, and left everything a glittering, opaline white beneath a pearly-gray sky. Hermione and Ron pulled on extra jumpers, their cloaks and scarves and hats, and crushed a path through the snow from the front doors to the road, while Harriet climbed back to the Tower to read over her Patronus material one more time.

But on the third floor:

"Psst! Harry!"

Looking round, she saw two identical freckled faces peering at her from behind a half-closed door, and two identical hands waving her over. Nonplussed, she let them drag her into the room with a lot of furtive glances up and down the hall, and shut the door with a great show of conspiracy.

"Shouldn't you be blowing things up in Zonko's?" she asked. "From what I hear."

"All in good time, Harriet, my lass," said George.

"Thought we'd give you a bit of festive cheer before we went," said Fred, reaching into his jacket. Harriet eyed him warily, but he only pulled out a piece of blank parchment.

"Early Christmas present," he said, and laid it on an empty desk with a flourish.

Harriet looked curiously at the parchment as best she could without getting any closer. It really did seem to be completely blank.

"What's that supposed to be?" she asked.

"This, dear Harriet, is the key to our success," George said with a fond look at the thing.

"It's a wrench, giving it to you," said Fred, "but we decided last night, your need's greater than ours."

"What do I need with a bit of old parchment?" Harriet asked.

"A bit of old parchment!" Fred grimaced like Harriet had dealt him a mortal offense. "Explain, George."

"Well . . . when we were in our first year, Harriet—young, carefree and innocent—"

Harriet snorted at the idea that Fred and George were ever innocent.

"Well, more innocent than we are now, anyway—we got into a spot of trouble with Filch. He hauled us into the office and started threatening us with all the usual—"

"—detention—"

"—disembowelment—"

"—flaying of limbs—"

"—and we couldn't help noticing a drawer in one of his filing cabinets marked Confiscated and Highly Dangerous."

"Gosh, what did you do?" Harriet said, unsure whether she most wanted to grin or roll her eyes.

"What any self-respecting trouble-maker would have done," said George seriously.

"We dropped a dungbomb, whipped open the drawer, and grabbed this." Fred waved his hand at the bit of blank parchment.

"We don't reckon Filch ever found out how to work it," George said, "though he must've guessed what it was, or why else would he have confiscated it?"

"But you figured it out," Harriet guessed. "Naturally."

"Naturally," Fred said with a modesty so thick it couldn't have been faker, and he and George smirked identical smirks. "This little beauty's taught us more than all the teachers in the school."

Harriet folded her arms, raising her eyebrow. She'd finally got the trick of raising only one. "Go on, then," she said. "Impress a girl."

"She may be a titchy one," Fred said to George, "but what she lacks in inches, she makes up for with her demands."

George grinned at Harriet. Touching his wand to the parchment, he said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

A drop of ink welled up beneath the wand's tip and then started to spread outward, like a spill; but instead of running any-which-way, the inky lines crisscrossed, fanned out, intertwined, and as they darted to every corner of the parchment, a few spun together as words:

Messers Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs

Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers

are Proud to Present

THE MARAUDER'S MAP

It was a map—a map showing every detail of the Hogwarts castle and grounds, right to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. There was the Owlery, Gryffindor Tower, even Hagrid's hut and the Whomping Willow . . . and through the inky corridors and in the sketched-in classrooms were tiny ink dots, labeled "Professor Dumbledore" (pacing in his study), "Mrs Norris" (prowling the second floor), and "Peeves" (wrecking the trophy room). As Harriet finally moved closer to the map to see, she noticed, set into the walls, passages she'd never known existed, and many of them seemed to lead—

"Right into Hogsmeade," said Fred, tracing one of them with his finger. "Now, Filch knows about these four, but we're sure we're the only ones who know about these. We don't reckon anyone's used this one, especially since the Whomping Willow's planted right over the entrance. But this one here, it leads right into the cellar of Honeydukes, we've used it loads of times. And as you might've noticed, the entrance is right outside this room."

"Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs," sighed George. "We owe them so much."

"Noble men, working tirelessly to help a new generation of rule-breakers," said Fred.

"Right." George pushed the map reverently across the desk at Harriet. "Don't forget to wipe it after you've used it, or anyone can read it."

"Just tap it again and say 'mischief managed,'" said Fred, "and it'll go blank." Then he smiled. "So, young Harriet," he said, suddenly sounding and looking almost exactly like Percy, "mind you behave yourself."

They left, smirking and winking.

Harriet stared at the map, tracing her fingers down the passages and across the dots. Hagrid was in his hut. Professor Lupin was walking round the grounds. Snape . . . wasn't anywhere on it.

She searched all over the map . . . and then she noticed something missing.

Except for the Potions classroom and Snape's office, the dungeons weren't on here. Then she remembered, from Hogwarts: a History: Salazar Slytherin had made the dungeons unmappable. If Snape was anywhere else in the dungeon, he'd be literally off the map.

And then, as she was watching Professor Sprout puttering in the greenhouse, a thought came to her. . .

She looked on the parchment for a dot labeled Sirius Black.

He wasn't anywhere that she could see. But if he were in the dungeons, or even in the forest, maybe—or off the map into Hogsmeade—she would be able to see him. . .

Unless he came back to Hogwarts.

She shivered.

It would have pleased Hermione very much to know that the next thing to occur to Harriet was that a teacher would surely like to see this. In fact, Snape would probably wring her neck for not thinking of it first thing.

But Fred and George gave it to me so I could go to Hogsmeade. They'd be upset if the first thing I did was hand it over to . . . to Snape.

They should have handed it over to an adult, said the brisk, Hermione-like voice of her common sense. The night Sirius Black attacked the Fat Lady. You should go turn it over right now.

She knew she really should.

But she thought Hogsmeade with an aching longing, and of the really very generous thing Fred and George had done, giving her this wonderful map. If she gave it to a teacher, she'd certainly never get it back. Fred and George might actually be angry.

Maybe . . . maybe she'd enjoy it . . . just for a little while. She'd been unhappy enough lately. It would be nice to have something. . .

She chewed her lip, thinking, battling with guilt and reluctance.

"Kitchens?" she whispered at it.

A little dot named Harriet Potter appeared right where she was standing, and then a path of tiny footprints, leading from that very room, back down the stairs, along to the Entrance Hall, and down the marble stairs. . .

She followed it, marveling, eating up her own footsteps. They stopped in front of a wall, and a little bubble popped up that read: Tickle the pear.

Harriet looked up, right at a giant still-life of a bowl of fruit. The pear was at least as big as she was. Reaching out, she cautiously tickled its side with her fingertip. It squirmed, giggling—like a pear might possibly giggle, at least—and the whole portrait groaned quietly and unlatched, swinging ponderously out.

Awed, Harriet whispered, "Mischief managed," and stuffed the map into her cardigan. She edged around the portrait and slipped through the gap as it started to swing shut again.

The kitchen was the size of a cavern, with rough-hewn walls and a high ceiling, warm and bright. The smell of food was so thick she could taste it on the air, which shimmered from the haze of so many cooking fires. And moving round the fires, their outlines flickering from the steam, were more house-elves than she'd ever seen in her life.

While she stood, amazed, several of them closest the door noticed her. Instead of looking shocked or displeased, they immediately dipped into low bows. One of them stepped forward, reminding her of a butler, and said in a high, squeaky voice, "How may Miss be served?"

"I. . . I wanted some food," Harriet stammered. A ripple was crossing the whole cavernous kitchen as the elves noticed her and all began to bow. "I—didn't mean to interrupt—"

"Whatever Miss wish—" said the elf, or started to say, but a squeal of "HARRIET POTTER!" cut him—her?—off.

"Oof!" Harriet grunted as something barreled into her waist and latched on. "Dobby?"

"Miss Harriet Potter, miss!" Dobby's eyes were leaking tears of joy. "Dobby has wished for this day!"

"I've missed you, too," she said, grinning. "Since you're not trying to kill me anymore. Are these your new clothes?"

He was wearing a child's football shorts, a lurid orange-and-green patterned tie over his bare chest, an all-black sock and another with yellow and purple polka dots, and tea cozy for a hat. The whole effect was pretty stunning.

The other elves were looking extremely disapproving, though Harriet didn't know why, and at the mention of "clothes" they all averted their eyes.

"What brings Miss Harriet Potter to the kitchens?" Dobby asked, vibrating with happiness and oblivious to the others.

Harriet looked around at the other elves, their dozens of simmering and steaming cauldrons, the knives chopping vegetables by magic, the bottles sprinkling herbs in midair.

"Well," she said, lowering her voice and bending down (at least she was taller than house-elves), "it's sort of a secret. . . You can keep a secret, right, Dobby?"

She struggled out the front doors and into the snow carrying the basket in one hand and the map in the other, searching for a Sirius Black dot. None appeared. Several times she almost dumped the food in the snow, and when a gust of snow-laden wind ripped the map out of her hand, she said, "Oh, f—"

It blew into the trees. She lurched after it, but then stopped on the edge of the forest, because inside the shadows something had moved, eyes glinting—

"Snuffles!" Her heart somersaulted with relief. He shambled forward, his shaggy, matted coat dusted with snow, the map gripped in his mouth. "Good boy," she said, taking it from him and stuffing it in her pocket before she could lose it again. "Good, good boy . . . you hungry?"

He scarfed down the roast beef Dobby had packed. She wondered what he ate during the times she couldn't feed him. Rats? Squirrels? Whatever it was, he didn't seem to be getting enough of them; when she patted his flank, she could feel his ribs.

Checking her watch, she saw it was almost her lunchtime. Snape had told her to meet him right after. "I'll leave you the basket, Snuffles," she said. "But I've got to—yow!"

She jumped as a load of slushy snow landed on her head and dumped itself down the back of her neck. Wiping it furiously off, she looked up and got another load of snow right in the face. "Crookshanks!" she said angrily.

His yellow eyes glinted at her from the pink branch overhead, and he lashed his tufted tail with the same air that Malfoy might have sniggered.

Snuffles growled, a long, low, drawn-out sound. Crookshanks did not hiss or puff his tail; instead he casually washed his face, climbed up the tree, and disappeared into the branches overhead, leaving the rest of the snow where it was.

"You're tough stuff," she said to Snuffles. "That cat's the terror of Gryffindor Tower. All right—I've got to go." She scratched him once more behind the ears; he whined. "Enjoy your lunch."

She plowed away, back along the path she'd trudged through the snow. So much had fallen in the night, and she was, as Fred said—again—still so small that even without the basket it was hard going. The drifts on the path buried her up to her waist. She took out her frustration on the snow, kicking and pummeling it. Hermione said she was probably so undersized from being kept in a cupboard and not fed properly, that she'd grow eventually, but Harriet had been getting decent meals for a while now and still nothing was happening. She hadn't started—you know—it (although, as Hermione pointed out, this was a good thing until she grew upward some more), nothing was getting any bigger, and the other girls kept filling out like an artist sketching Greek goddesses.

Life could be so unfair. It probably wouldn't make her any less of a target for Dark wizards if she was taller and had real breasts and straight hair, but it'd still be nice to have those things.

"Harriet?"

She looked up, squinting in the snow dusting down from the clouds. Professor Lupin, wrapped in a tatty cloak that would've looked too threadbare in springtime, was wading through the snow to her right. He smiled.

"I thought that was you," he said. "I couldn't quite be sure under all the layers. How are you doing?"

Mrs. Weasley had also sent her a bobble hat and earmuffs, and she'd wrapped the lower half of her face in her Gryffindor scarf. She pulled it down to say, "'S'cold."

He smiled a little more widely. "Is it my imagination, or is it almost lunchtime?"

"Yeah. That's where I'm going."

"That's a relief," he said. "I was starting to see roast chickens everywhere. I was getting worried I'd come down with some hallucinatory disorder."

He walked in front of her up the path (or where she guessed the path was), carving a trench that made her going much easier. But it reminded her. . .

"Professor Lupin?" She pulled down her scarf again. "Why didn't you let me fight the Boggart?"

He turned to look at her with surprise. Snow flecked his hair, which the wind blew across his eyes. "I would have thought that was obvious, Harriet."

Harriet blinked, equally surprised. She'd expected him to deny it. "Why?"

"Well," he said slowly, "I assumed that if the Boggart faced you, it would assume the shape of Lord Voldemort."

Harriet stared—not only because this was the last thing she'd expected, but because Lupin had actually said Voldemort's name out loud.

"Clearly I was wrong," Lupin said, still looking at her curiously. "But I didn't think it was a good idea for Lord Voldemort to materialize in the staff room. I imagined that people would panic."

"I did think of Voldemort first," Harriet admitted. "But then—then I thought of . . . of the Dementors."

"I see." Lupin sounded thoughtful. "Well . . . I'm impressed." He smiled down at her. "That suggests that what you fear most of all is—well, fear. Very wise, Harriet."

Harriet didn't know what to say to that, but as they reached the front doors to the Entrance Hall, she didn't have to. Professor Lupin dried the snow off their knees (or, in Harriet's case, from her waist down) with a spell like a hairdryer that left the air steaming around them as they headed into the Great Hall.

She sat by herself at the Gryffindor table, mulling over what Professor Lupin had said, and over the map (in her head—she didn't want anyone to see it just yet). Maybe if she talked to Fred and George and they all agreed to hand it in. . .

Snape wasn't at the High Table, even though it was past noon. Pushing her plates away (they cleaned themselves and vanished), she walked to the staircase that led to the dungeons and down several steps before pulling out the map and checking it.

Severus Snape said a tiny dot in his office.

Harriet headed toward it.

"What in the name of fuck was I thinking?" Severus demanded of Lily's photograph. But she just gave him a chiding look for his language and brushed her hair back from her face.

"Patronus lessons," he said, for the fiftieth time since he'd agreed. "Jesus Christ."

He knew it was unreasonable to feel this. . . this panicked. If the girl asked to see his Patronus—which she probably would, the nosy little runt—he could simply refuse her. He was good at refusing people what they wanted.

But what if he couldn't refuse her? A nasty suspicion had formed inside him, had been forming for some time, that he was developing a weakness where she was concerned. When Lily had been alive—when she had still been speaking to him—all it had taken was a scolding from her to tie him into a miserable knot; he'd have done whatever she wanted just so she'd stop being angry with him. Anyone else's displeasure (except his mother's, because she'd terrified him), all their reasoned or impassioned pleas, had crashed ineffectually against the battlements of his indifference. Even Lucius's occasional ire had made him more angry than anything else. And since he was sixteen, there had been no more Lily to bar him from doing and saying whatever he wished.

Until now.

Goddamn it.

He'd first become aware of it during her first Potions class of the year. Abusing Longbottom's stupidity—he'd always done it, and it had always riled the Gryffindors, presumably the girl among them, though from his habit of ignoring her he had no real idea. But that day, he'd looked away from sniping at Granger (the aggravating little show-off) and seen the girl glaring at him, not simply in anger but with an edge of I expected better of you, and he'd . . . faltered.

He'd let Longbottom off the hook with a vague threat (though unable to restrain his swamping irritation with Granger), and when the girl had left in an obvious dudgeon he had felt—anxious. It had made him irate, and he'd skipped lunch to skulk in the staffroom, trying to read his book and failing miserably, his mind choosing to dwell masochistically on the girl's angry, disappointed face and his own perverse sense of injury. Why should he care if anyone's spawn was upset, period, let alone with himself, for being as he always was?

And then Lupin came trooping in with the pack of Gryffindors, the girl naturally among them, and by that time he'd worked himself into such a state of wounded resentment that he'd delivered that Parthian shot toward Longbottom and Granger. The girl's double-walled glare should have been satisfaction of a job well done, but instead he'd only felt worse.

Wretched brat.

After Lupin, the two-faced little shit, had pulled his stunt with the Boggart, Severus had returned to tormenting Longbottom with less restraint than he normally observed. He could feel the misery and unhappiness rolling off the girl in waves, but he'd kept on: to spite her, to spite himself, his own discomfort, because he shouldn't care.

He shouldn't.

"Please," she'd said. Please.

I could have died

In his office that morning she had looked like she was barely recovering from an illness. There had been so many Dementors on the field. Had she heard . . . more?

He lay awake at night, wondering what she'd heard.

So he'd agreed.

What were more lies and torments, after everything?

Harriet found herself staring at Snape's wood-grain like she was trying to memorize it. And staring. And staring. And. . .

"This is stupid," she muttered to herself. "Just knock."

It had interesting curly-cue patterns set into double panels. . . that one looked like a seahorse. . .

Taking a deep breath, she raised her hand, and jumped when the door swung open of its own accord. Then she danced backward when Snape came walking out and almost tripped over her.

He ground to an abrupt halt, just like he had when he'd strode out of Professor Lupin's office on Hallowe'en. For a moment he stared down at her, almost blankly. Then he said:

"You're late" in no very welcoming voice—pure Snape.

"Erm." Harriet wasn't going to tell him she'd been on time, but had stood there for at least five minutes without knocking. "I'm sorry."

"If my time is of so little importance to you," he continued coldly, "I fail to see why I should give it up."

"I'm really sorry," Harriet said, her heart sinking. He was going to tell her to go away, wasn't he?

He glowered at her through narrowed eyes, and then he said, "Well? Don't just stand there," and stalked away from the door, back inside his office.

Harriet edged in after him and very carefully shut the door. She was reminded of her detention last year, the one she'd got for flying into the Whomping Willow, when she'd felt like she was shutting the door on light and life. Snape's office was just as creepy as she remembered, with those eerie, floating jars, only at least now a fire was lit in the hearth. A weak, feeble fire, it was true . . . and it really didn't do much to make the place more cheerful. . . in fact, it did even less.

"Well?" Snape said. "I have no idea what you want me to teach you, so you will have to tell me what you're looking for."

Harriet had prepared for this. In fact, she'd guessed this was how he would be. Just like in the summer, when his weird blandness had unnerved her and his return to sarcastic sniping had calmed her, she felt herself becoming less nervous. Snape was supposed to be scary and forbidding, in his creepy office with the light from the fire cutting the planes of his face into light and shadow.

"I've been practicing," she said. Taking out her wand, she pictured Ron, Hermione and herself playing Exploding Snap in the infirmary that weekend, and forced out of her mind the memory of why she'd been there. She was going to do this—she was going to show Snape she could, and she wasn't going to let those Dementors get to her ever again, she wasn't going to let Voldemort—

Focus, focus, concentrate—

"Expecto Patronum," she said fiercely, rather louder than she'd meant to, thinking hard about Hermione's face as she'd laughed when Ron had thought he'd got a Royal Straight Flush but mistook the Joker for the Jack—

—and when Ron had said Oh bugger, an expression had come over Hermione's face that Harriet had never seen before, certainly not while she was looking at Ron, and Harriet had felt a deep pang of—

Then she noticed that a slight, silver mist had risen from her wand, and she gasped in surprise—

But just like that, it was gone. She'd lost it.

She dropped her wand, feeling dejected.

The sound of Snape's voice made her jump. She'd nearly forgotten he was there.

"At your age," he said, like he was straining to say this, "even a Patronus that indistinct is . . . an achievement."

She looked up at him. He had his arms crossed over his chest and was glaring at her, as if daring her to say, Thank you, that's a very nice thing to say. Well, for Snape it was. For Snape it was practically a glowing compliment.

"But I'm trying really hard," she said. "I should be able to get it."

He looked at her a moment in silence. Then he said, in a voice she had difficulty interpreting (though it certainly didn't sound nice), "It does not have so much to do with ability—although that is certainly part of it. State of mind is also a factor. Certain cases have found that confidence affects their casting. You are allowing doubt to hinder you."

Harriet blinked. "You mean I have to believe I can do it?"

"You are letting too many negative emotions interfere with your recall of perfect happiness. This charm takes mental and magical discipline, and that is not learned overnight."

Harriet felt even more cast down than before, if that was possible. "Then what am I supposed to do?"

"Keep trying," Snape said flatly.

"But you're saying I can't do it."

"I am saying that you have not yet figured out how," he said impatiently, like she was failing to follow the directions spelled out cleanly on the board. "If you stop wallowing in your self-pity and failure, you might accomplish something."

Anger and hurt flared in Harriet's chest like a firework. You wouldn't say that if it was your mum you had to hear dying, over and over, until you passed out—

And then she remembered, as clear and bright as crystal, what Aunt Petunia had said. If it was true, if he had been—if he knew—he wouldn't say that, he would have to understand—

"Were you friends with my mum?" she asked.

Snape went so white she saw it, even in the dimness of his office.

"What did you say?" he asked in a voice so sharp and dangerous that several of her organs tried to collapse. It was like a whip cracking over her head and it made her legs actually feel like jelly. Neville probably would have fainted outright.

"Were you friends with my mum?" she repeated, willing her voice not to shake. She was glad the light in his office was so poor; then he might not see her wand-hand trembling.

"Where did you hear that?" His voice wasn't as loud as it had been, but it was no less dangerous. His eyes had a funny light in them. Her heart was going as fast as a rabbit's.

"Aunt Petunia told me. She knew who you were. She said you grew up in the same neighborhood."

Snape stared at her. She felt for some reason as if he was staring at her from very far away.

Long moments tangled in the air, not passing. Everything was completely silent, except for the faint crackle of the fire as it settled. Snape looked. . .

Harriet had no idea what to do. This was somehow her fault. If she'd been using her wand, she would have thought she'd Stunned him or something. He wasn't moving, and she wasn't even sure he was really present, not mentally. There was something hollow behind his eyes, like the part that was Snape been removed.

Why would asking about her mum have done this?

"I. . ." she said eventually, when Snape continued like a stone. "I'll . . . I'll just—go. . ."

When he didn't reply or even move, not so much as a blink, she turned and walked to his door on trembly legs. As she slipped out, she peeked over her shoulder. He'd turned his back to her and was looking down into the fire (she guessed; she couldn't see).

She shut the door behind her and walked slowly down the dark corridor and up the stairs, above ground, wondering why she felt almost as hollow as she had the first time she'd passed by the Dementors.

Some time in the night, the sound of breaking glass finally stopped. Shards lay across the floor, gibbous moonlight refracting off their edges. All across the floor, to all four walls.

He'd broken even the glass in her picture frame.

Then he'd repaired it, and spent the night with it cradled in his hands.