9

Hairy Potter, the Heir of Slytherin," Pansy said. "What rubbish . . . "

Pansy was jealous of Potter because she was famous and Draco would talk about her sometimes, when Pansy only wanted Draco to talk about herself. She bitched forever about how ugly Potter was, with her nightmarish spectacles and her even more nightmarish hair. But sometimes at night, when she thought the other girls were asleep or too busy in their bedtime routines, she would stare and stare at herself in the mirror, touching her own face, as if wondering what Draco saw in Potter that he didn't see in her.

"Well, the talking to snakes is impressive," said Tracey said coolly. Tracey did everything coolly. She also had a flat, unimpressed stare for everybody. No one had ever seen her open her eyes all the way, but sometimes she raised her left eyebrow very slightly. She did not care two straws about Potter. She said Potter was just a dumb girl jock.

Pansy glared over her own shoulder at Tracey, through the mirror. "She was making that up. She's a disgusting little show-off faker."

Tracey moved her eyebrow. "Then how did she get that cobra to back off of Granger?"

"Potter can't be a Parseltongue, Trace," Pansy said, as if this should be obvious to anyone with half a brain. "Obviously. Only Slytherins can be Parseltongues, and she's just a daft, stupid, fatheaded Gryffindor jock."

"I suppose if you say it, it must be true," said Tracey like she didn't care.

"Everyone knows it's true," Pansy snapped.

"Draco doesn't think it's Potter either," said Daphne from her own dresser. She always slipped into Pansy and Tracey's fights like that, right before it got too ugly. She also shuddered when she saw Potter. Her hand would always fly to her long yellow hair, smoothing it down even though it was always perfect.

"Thank you, Daffy, I know what Draco thinks better than you do," Pansy told Daphne. She couldn't bear even for another Slytherin girl to have a piece of Draco's attention. "He tells me everything." She picked up her brush and started her ritual of pulling it through her long dark hair, one hundred times on each side. "He'd like to know who it is, the Heir, so he could help them—and so would I. A school rid of Mudbloods and their ugly, stupid faces would be a paradise, not like this sordid place at all. It's positively crawling with Mudbloods."

"Surely not Slytherin," said Tracey coolly.

Pansy's mouth hardened. Of course, it was always sort of hard. "Well, of course not Slytherin. That should be obvious."

Everyone wanted to know who the Heir of Slytherin was. Draco's father had warned him the Heir was coming to Hogwarts but wouldn't tell Draco who it was. The older Slytherins didn't talk to lowly second-year girls, but even the seventh year prefects knew that if Draco didn't know, nobody would.

Millicent didn't think it was Potter, either, but nobody asked her opinion. They never did. Pansy would just sneer and snap anyway. She was their leader by right. Tracey was only a half-blood, and it was a witch's half, at that; everyone knew that was worse. Daphne's family was pure-blood but so poor they'd been punting on tick for two generations now, as Millicent's Da said; no clue how they'd marry off those four daughters. Mr Greengrass couldn't let any wager pass, not even if it was backing a kappa in a race against a grindylow. At least the Greengrass girls were all beautiful.

Millicent's branch of the Bulstrode family was made up of nobodies, as Pansy was always keen to remind her. Mum had just hung her apron on the door and left one day, and her father worked for no pay in a job nobody respected. He was just a door-to-door salesman, selling stockings he'd never be able to afford, even if he'd wanted to buy any for his daughter. But he never would. And silk stockings would look a joke on Millicent, everyone'd say. Pansy would be first to say it.

A couple of days earlier, Pansy had held up her copy of Holidays with Hags and said, "Doesn't this look like you, Millie," laughing at the square-jawed woman on the cover, like she was telling a joke.

"Oh, Pans," Tracey had said coolly, "did you hear what Claudia Dearborn said about you? She said you looked like her grandmother's pug bitch. Her words, not mine."

"Oh, no," Daphne had said, "I think I'm getting a pimple. . . Trace, look . . ."

But Millicent did think she looked like the hag on the cover. That's what made the joke so mean.

At least she would be away from Pansy for the holidays. She was going to visit her grandmother in Dublin. It smelled like gingerbread there, and she liked reading all the static Christmas cards lined up on the mantle and watching the programs on the telly. She didn't care that it was a Muggle flat. All her grandmother's Muggle friends pretended that she was pretty and told her grandmother how lucky she was to have such a sweet granddaughter. And there was a girl named Olive who lived in the flat below. She knew Gran, so she was always stopping by to chat. Millicent didn't think Olive would ever call her a friend, but to Millicent it was almost like having one, talking like you could like each other if you knew each other better.

"I was so sick with disappointment that Mudblood Granger didn't get it in the neck from that cobra," said Pansy—almost word-for-word what Draco had said after the Dueling Club earlier. "I can't believe Professor Snape was so mean to poor Draco about it."

"Yes," said Tracey, not looking up from her book. "He really overreacted. He must've forgot that Slytherin's monster could kill Granger any day now."

"Draco was only helping Slytherin's monster, Trace. Professor Snape ought to be doing the same!"

"You should really tell him that."

"It's a shame that Lockhart is so wet," Daphne said, smearing a goopy green cream across her cheekbones. She had turned thirteen only last week but she already looked like the Muggle film stars that played on Gran's telly in black and white. "He really is frightfully handsome."

"I think Professor Snape is handsomer than that Lockhart ponce," Millicent said.

Daphne accidentally put her elbow in her jar of green goop. Tracey actually looked up from her book. Even Pansy turned fully around on her stool so she could stare, forgetting to keep brushing her hair.

"You think what?" she said, her mouth hanging open. Millicent wasn't sure whether Pansy was more shocked by what she'd said, or that she had a thought of her own, or that it was a thought that Pansy Herself hadn't approved.

"I think Professor Snape's much better-looking than Lockhart," Millicent repeated.

"No, you don't," Tracey said. "You can't possibly."

"Yes, I do," Millicent said stubbornly. "Lockhart's got his head on backwards, he talks out the back of his fat neck. He couldn't find his arse with both hands. Or without telling you how he helped a whole village in Lapland how to find their arses. He's too sheep-brained to be good-looking. He's a twat."

"You must be joking," Daphne said faintly. Pansy's mouth was still hanging open.

"All right," Tracey said. "I'll give you that Lockhart has cabbage for brains. But Professor Snape is . . . look, I like him, he looks after all of us. But he looks like Dracula."

"What's a Dracula?" asked Daphne.

"A vampire," said Tracey.

"He looks interesting, all right," Millicent said.

"So you fancy Professor Snape," said Pansy. A familiar light curved over her face, the light of Millie is so big and stupid, isn't it funny. "This is enlightening, Millie."

"Didn't say I fancy him," Millicent said truthfully. "Said he's better-looking than that Lockhart twat. Not the same thing."

"Oh no," Pansy said with false enthusiasm. "No, you don't need to hide it from us, Millie. You can count on our support, always. Do you have the names of your babies all picked out?"

"Please don't let any of them be 'Pansy,'" said Tracey. "I hate that name. Present company excluded, of course."

Pansy's eyes stared hot hatred at her. Daphne said, "Lockhart was wearing a gorgeous shade of turquoise, wasn't he? I loved the gold trim . . . it set off his hair . . . his eyes . . . you know, I think he has those kind of eyes that change from blue to green depending on what he's wearing . . . "

It was no wonder, Millicent thought, that she couldn't really be friends with her roommates the way Potter and Granger were friends. It was never a good idea for her to talk around Pansy. And honestly, if they couldn't see how bacon-brained Lockhart was, especially compared to Professor Snape, she didn't think much of their standards. It was like Tracey said: Professor Snape looked out for them. If Lockhart had ever looked at anybody but himself, then she was a pixie. Lockhart paid attention to people who were famous like Potter or who asked for his autograph and told him how amazing he was, but nobody else. Professor Snape knew all the Slytherins' holiday plans. It was the way people treated you that counted, not the way they looked.

Someone had told her that, so long ago she didn't remember when. She'd held onto that. She wanted to believe it was true. She thought it was. She felt nothing when she saw Lockhart's beaming smile, except for wanting to punch him in the teeth. But when she had signed the paper to go home on the train and Professor Snape had said, "To your grandmother's?" that had felt nice. And the way her gran's friends wrote their Christmas cards to her, too. And Olive asking her what her favorite subject was.

It must be the nicest feeling in the world, Millicent thought, to have a best friend who would jump in front of deadly snakes for you. She'd like to have a friend like that.

The days marched on toward Christmas, through constant sleet and snow. Harriet couldn't wait for the holidays. She, Hermione and Ron had signed on to stay over, and Harriet was looking forward to a school empty of so many people pointing at her and whispering not-so-quietly, drawing away from her in corridors and treating her like the carrier of a terrible plague.

In this case, the plague of Slytherin.

"It'll get better," Hermione assured her, with a dirty look for Lavender and Parvati, who had, with a great show of nonchalance, hung special charms all around their beds to keep away Slytherin's monster, Just in case, of course, they'd assured Harriet.

Is Slytherin's monster afraid of onions, then? Harriet had snapped, and refused to speak to them for several hours. Since her ignoring them only made them looked relieved, though, she hadn't got much satisfaction from it.

"Yeah, it'll get better," said Ron, glaring at a pack of Hufflepuff first years who were passing in a wide-eyed clump. "When all these stupid gits go home for hols. What are you pointing at?" he asked one girl rudely. She squeaked and collided with her friend in a hurry to get away from him.

But then everyone's trunks were packed, the carriages rattled round to take them to Hogsmeade station, and Harriet, Ron and Hermione were left virtually alone in the school, with only a few straggling students and the teachers for company. They spent a lot of time in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom overseeing the Polyjuice, and even though Myrtle wailed almost constantly, Harriet found herself becoming more cheerful. Soon they'd have the truth out of Malfoy about the Chamber of Secrets. Soon the danger would be over . . .

After Percy had caught them coming out of Myrtle's bathroom a few weeks past, they'd taken turns checking the coast was clear before they all left. On Christmas Day, it paid off. If they'd all come trooping out that time, they might have lost all opportunity to question Malfoy. She and Ron might even have got expelled.

At the time, Harriet walked boldly out the door, because it was silly for a girl to look guilty coming out of a girl's lavatory. She looked casually left, then right, as if considering which way to go. And then she heard the voice.

Not the disembodied voice, but the other one: the voice that struck cold fear into the heart of every Hogwarts' student.

"And just what, Miss Potter," said Snape above her head, "do you think you're doing?"

Harriet was glad she was facing away from him because it gave her time to paste an expression onto her face that she hoped was innocent enough before she turned around. But Snape didn't look convinced. If anything, he seemed to think she'd just confirmed all his worst suspicions.

"Oh, hello, Professor," she said, like it was nothing remarkable, them meeting here. "I was just . . . " She waved at the peeling door of Myrtle's bathroom. "You know."

Snape looked at the door mockingly, as if it had just put forth as feeble a story as Harriet's. "Really," he said with heavy sarcasm. "And I suppose this particular lavatory's being in this particular spot had no bearing on your decision?"

Right—this was where the first message had been, Mrs Norris and the spiders. Snape would remember.

"Well, when you've got to go . . . " Harriet said. It was really embarrassing, talking about this with one of your professors, especially Snape, but the darkest alternative was him going in there and finding the Polyjuice. While she wasn't sure if conning a note out of Lockhart to make a potion that was listed only in a book from the Restricted Section was something that was normally totally against the rules, she and Ron already had black marks on their record that would make it look pretty awful. Even like an expelling offense, maybe. And if Snape wouldn't connect Polyjuice to the boomslang skin they'd stolen (and the firework Harriet had thrown), then he'd been replaced by an impostor who would start handing out kittens for presents at Christmas dinner. Only that sneer was too mean and sarcastic to be anything but authentic Snape.

"Do you know what I think, Miss Potter?" Snape asked in such a way that made Harriet absolutely sure she didn't want to know what he was thinking. "I think this looks like amateur sleuthing and borderline rule-breaking. You remember, I dare to hope, what the Headmaster promised would happen should you break any more rules?"

"How is it rule-breaking?" Harriet blurted, because even for Snape this seemed a bit much. Well, without any evidence.

Snape's cold, suspicious eyes narrowed. "Do you want me to keep looking until I find out?"

Harriet didn't, but she was at a loss for a way to respond that wouldn't incriminate herself. Heart beating hard, she cast about for some solution, any . . .

Then her eyes fell on Myrtle's bathroom door. Her heart beat faster. It would be even more dangerous . . . it could be a disaster . . . a huge gamble that could backfire like Ron's wand . . .

She seized her courage in both hands and strode over to the bathroom door, pushing it open. "See?" she said. "Just a loo."

Snape looked at her, his eyes still narrowed, and then shoved the door all the way back and swept inside. Harriet's heart just about stopped when he went over and started banging open the cubicle doors, and she tried her hardest not to glance at the cubicle where the Polyjuice cauldron was . . .

Then Snape pushed it open anyway and glared inside. Harriet closed her eyes in horror. This was it. She was going to be expelled, and stuck with the Dursleys forever . . .

Her eyes flew open when Myrtle shrieked. Snape was glaring inside the next cubicle. He'd left the one with the Polyjuice potion alone.

"You're not a girl!" Myrtle screeched from within the stall.

"Oh, well spotted," Snape said acidly, banging the door shut. He swept over to Harriet with a glare that said he hadn't found anything on her yet, but he knew there was something, and when he did . . .

She stared up at him dumbly, wanting to clutch at her throat the way ladies did in old black and white movies when they'd had a nasty shock.

"Students shouldn't wander the corridors alone," he snapped. "With me."

Mystified, Harriet followed him. She didn't dare look behind her. Snape glared her along the empty corridors to Gryffindor tower, then glared her into the portrait hole. Even after the Fat Lady had swung shut, Harriet could feel him glaring at her through the layers of paint and canvas.

She didn't dare go back outside again. She collapsed into an armchair where she could see the entrance, and about fifteen minutes later a blushing Hermione and a scowling Ron clambered in.

"How—" Harriet said.

"Your cloak," Hermione whispered, looking shaken. "We climbed up on the toilet and threw it over us and the cauldron—"

"Brilliant," Harriet said, impressed and weak with relief. "I'm so so sorry—I thought he'd give it up if I acted like I wasn't hiding anything, that's why I showed him in there—"

"It's not your fault he's a bleeding suspicious creep," Ron said with feeling. "He was waiting outside the Fat Lady for us! Can you believe it?"

"Of Snape, yeah," Harriet said, shuddering at the narrow escape.

"If he's keeping watch on us," Hermione said, chewing her lip, "it'll be harder to find out what Malfoy knows . . . maybe we oughtn't do it tonight . . . maybe we should wait until Snape's lost interest . . . "

"Which could happen, you know, never," Ron said. "Snape could make a grudge die of old age, I'd bet. We've got to find out what Malfoy's up to, Hermione—we can't let that slimy old git stop us."

"I guess one of us'll just have to keep Snape distracted," Harriet said slowly. "Think about it," she said when they stared at her in alarm. "Crabbe and Goyle'll be the easiest to get hairs from, but that leaves one of us needing to impersonate some other Slytherin anyway, and that could get too complicated. Especially if Snape's looming like a . . . a what was that thing that had a thousand eyes?"

"Argus Panoptes," Hermione said promptly. "Only it was a hundred, not a thousand."

"Right." Harriet nodded. "That thing."

"I suppose . . . " Hermione said reluctantly.

Harriet steeled her courage. "I'll do it. Distract Snape, I mean. He's got it the worst for me, if he's minding me he might not care where you two are."

"Blimey, Harry," Ron said, whistling low. "You know, I think I'd rather face Slytherin's monster."

Severus didn't bother informing Dumbledore that the girl was up to something. Dumbledore would only smile and twinkle, and Severus was in no bloody mood for smiling or twinkling.

Normally he enjoyed the Christmas holidays, or at least what passed for enjoyment with him. Anyone else would have said he was as dour and crotchety as ever (the other teachers frequently did, although with more subtlety), but he felt more relaxed with most of the students cleared off. He didn't have to attend meals with the other professors unless he was just dying to, which he surely never would be; he didn't have classes or grading to suffer; in short, he had the days mostly to himself. It was as close to content as he ever nearly got.

Usually.

The tension in the air this year was as thick as the cold, however much they all tried to downplay it for the students' sake. The Dueling Club had been an attempt at allaying the children's fear, but it had only bisected the problem. Now, in addition to worrying Slytherin's monster, everyone thought they knew the identity of Slytherin's heir. Adrenaline shot through the gossip like impurities through crystal, fear mixed with excitement.

Severus was also displeased to find that the Malfoys wouldn't be back from Brussels in time for Christmas. They had been visiting Lucius's mother there for several weeks, a prospect so grim and unnerving that Narcissa had spared her son in the only way she could, by leaving him at Hogwarts for the break. Severus had hoped for the regular invitation to the manor so he could induce a tipsy Lucius to brag about his successes, such as they were (or perhaps complain that they hadn't been greater); but Lucius had to be such a disobliging wretch as to answer his mother's commands to visit Belgium for the holiday. Well, at least Severus knew Lucius was suffering.

And as ever, there was the girl to worry him.

Even if she hadn't been wearing that laughably pseudo-innocent expression, Severus wouldn't have bought for one second the story that she'd been loitering around that bathroom for no more reason than the obvious. She radiated disobedience. Maybe it was the hair.

No; it had been the look on her face after Dumbledore had shown her the Petrified Creevey boy. It had said, Slytherin's monster, you're on my list.

If she went after any legendary monsters, now or later, he was going to wring her glory-seeking Gryffindor neck.

She looked quite innocent right now, eating Christmas pudding. She'd got on some woolly, scarlet jumper with an intarsia Gryffindor lion woven on the front; the sleeves were too long, so she'd rolled them back from her (much too) bony wrists. All the Weasley children were wearing something similarly hideous.

He could see the drama of adolescence already settling in across the table, missing only Crabbe and Goyle. Draco was sulking about something; the Weasley female looked ill and was only picking at her food; her eldest brother was making sheep's eyes at one of the Ravenclaw girls. Granger, Weasley and the girl were sitting clumped together in their usual design, engrossed in private whispering. Severus wondered how long it would take before that friendship succumbed to a teenage love triangle.

Then the three of them glanced up the table, right at himself.

I knew it, he thought, though he was unsure whether he felt more satisfied or disquieted. He'd never met three children who were more adept at scheming themselves into life-or-death situations or more ungrateful at being preemptively extracted from them. If one of the little pustules hadn't been Lily's daughter—if he hadn't had debts as deep as Hell to pay—he'd have bloody left them to it.

What disobedience could he pin on them on Christmas Day? He could fabricate an excuse in his sleep, but today was the one time when Dumbledore might interfere . . .

"Christmas cracker, Severus?" said the meddling old pseudo-do-gooder in question, proffering a cylinder of iridescent crimson and emerald paper.

"Yes, that looks like one," Severus said.

Minerva, who was sitting across from him at the single long table set up for everyone, rolled her eyes. She'd probably had quite a bit of the spiced eggnog by now.

Dumbledore merely twinkled at him. "I thought so! Now, remind me what I'm supposed to do with it?"

"Offer that end to Minerva and have her pull on it."

"Such a stick in the mud." Sprout whacked him on the arm, probably harder than she'd intended. Her cheeks were almost as red as the tinsel she'd stuck to the brim of her hat, which was almost falling off her ear. "I'll pull it with you, Albus."

"Thank you, Pomona," Dumbledore said meekly, but his eyes were laughing at Severus.

Sprout reached across Severus to take hold of the cracker. It split open with an ear-ringing bang, and he had to close his eyes against the cloud of red and green smoke that erupted from it. He felt something living land in his lap in a coil—a bright green garden snake—at the same time somebody dumped their drink down his arm.

"Oh!" said a high, girlish voice. "I'm so sorry!"

The girl stood next to his chair, clutching an empty goblet, her face as red as her jumper and equally guilty. If it hadn't been for her expression, Severus would have assumed she'd come to ask something of Dumbledore and been startled by the exploding cracker, but her face said she'd upended her drink on purpose. He couldn't see why she should have. Well, perhaps for vindictive pleasure, considering how he'd been hectoring her all term, but she didn't look pleased that she'd succeeded; on the contrary, she looked like she'd rather be falling under a bus than standing next to him.

"Aha, raining in here, is it?" Sprout said, and dissolved into semi-drunken chortles.

Wordless, Severus took out his wand. The girl's wide eyes fixed on it, but she didn't back off, even when he pointed it at her—or appeared to. His intention was to dry off his arm, but he wanted to see what she'd do if she thought he was about to curse her.

She clutched her goblet but stayed her ground.

Still saying nothing, he waved his wand down his sleeve to dry it, watching his silence have the desired effect of making her look even more nervous.

"There," Dumbledore said cheerily. "No harm done. My, what spectacular prizes came out of this cracker. Belgian chocolate, Severus? Harriet?"

"Oh—thanks," the girl said blankly, and took one from the bright pink box Dumbledore was holding out.

Belgian chocolates and snakes. Severus flicked through the rest of the prizes that were lying scattered across the table . . . one of which was an ornament in the shape of a fawn. He drew his hand back slowly.

"Oh," the girl said, her voice now soft and her fingertips coated in chocolate. "That's like my dream."

"This, do you mean?" Dumbledore asked, holding up the fawn. It was blown glass, glazed white.

"That night I fell off the stairs." She'd noticed her fingers were chocolatey and was licking it back off. "I had a dream about a deer made up of stars. It was really lovely."

Dumbledore glanced at Severus, who busied himself with his goblet, monetarily wishing that he ever permitted himself to drink something stronger than water.

"Then perhaps you should have this," Dumbledore said to the girl with a smile in his voice; from the corner of his eye, Severus saw him hold out the fawn to her. "It seems to have been meant for you."

"Oh," she said for the fourth time, now sounding surprised. "Thank you, sir."

It was then that Severus, scanning up the table to avoid meeting Dumbledore's eyes, noticed that Granger and Weasley were gone. Indeed, all of the other children were. Only the girl was left, and she didn't seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere. She was now sitting contentedly next to Dumbledore, in a chair he'd drawn for her, going over the flavors in the box of chocolates with him. ("Hazelnut, I think I had the cherry crème, what's Moroccan?")

The absence of her two inseparable sidekicks was significant, Severus was sure of it; but as long as she was in plain sight, not getting herself killed, he did not care so much about the rest.

His peace of mind lasted until Dumbledore started twitting her about the deer in her dream.

"Was it doing anything in particular?" he asked her, patting his mustache clean with his napkin.

The girl frowned it over. "Not really. It was just there. I was . . . I could tell I was in the hospital, but it was like I was just dreaming about being there, with the deer. Then it sort of . . . melted away. It was really—I was sort of sad it was gone, but at the same time there was a nice feeling . . . " She trailed off, looking embarrassed, and took another chocolate with a lot of self-conscious rustling.

Severus's nail jarred as he picked at one of the emeralds set into his goblet.

"As a matter of fact," Dumbledore confided, "I've seen something similar myself."

Severus almost ripped his nail off, scraping at the goblet. The old man wasn't seriously going to—

"Have you, sir?" the girl said. It was ridiculous how wide her eyes could go.

"Only a handful of times," Dumbledore said. "But each one was an honor."

Severus would have left the table if it weren't for needing to keep a hard eye on the brat. He didn't know what Dumbledore was playing at, but he didn't need to listen to it.

"Is it like a ghost or something? I could see through it—only it was brighter . . . "

"It is something like a ghost, you could say. It is a piece of very powerful magic, some of the most powerful in the world, and rarely glimpsed in that particular form. You were very fortunate to see it."

"Why did I?" The curiosity was plain in her voice, but Severus wasn't looking at her or at the Headmaster; he was staring across the hall at the enormous Christmas trees glittering to either side of the doors, wanting this damned mortifying conversation to be over.

"That, I cannot tell you, my dear, for I don't know. But were I to guess, I would say it was because that very powerful force of which I spoke just now was protecting you."

The girl was silent. Severus prayed that she would now go away and cause mischief. Then he would have an excuse to leave—and to be cruel and vindictive, to rid both her and Dumbledore of the notion that he was doing any of this from any motive more shining than soul-wracking guilt.

"Are you enjoying your Christmas, my dear?" Dumbledore said to her now.

"Oh, yes, sir."

"That would appear to be a Weasley jumper you are wearing. They're quite famous, did you know?"

"Mrs Weasley knitted me one last year, too. They're ever so warm."

Severus found himself wondering if Petunia had denied her warm clothes in addition to everything else she'd withheld.

"Molly Weasley does have quite the talent," Dumbledore told her. "I have tried knitting my Christmas gifts on and off again throughout the years—socks, mostly, for no one can never have too many socks—but I have never been able to turn the heel when I should. I always wind up giving them scarves out of necessity. Severus has several of them, don't you, Severus?"

Severus thanked him with a cold stare. Dumbledore was twinkling again, and the girl looked like she was trying not to laugh, lest it should get her detention. It probably would.

"Mine do have heels," Severus said. "But you forgot my legs aren't six feet long."

Dumbledore laughed.

"But, my word, how I've been monopolizing your time, my dear," he said suddenly, as if he'd just noticed how much time had passed. Severus knew his surprise was faked; Dumbledore could keep time in his head down to the half minute. "I'm surprised your friends haven't come to rout me. But perhaps they were at the door and heard me talking of my knitting, and wisely stayed away."

"Nah," the girl said. When she grinned, she looked like Lily or Potter or both or neither; it was impossible to say. "I think Fred and George were planning something for Percy—Ron and Hermione probably got roped into it. But I should probably go. Thanks for the chocolates, sir, and the ornament—"

"Not at all, my dear. I thank you for the pleasure of your company. Are you going, too, Severus?" he asked, with equally false surprise, as Severus stood from his chair.

"Yes," he replied. "Now that Miss Potter is escaping your knitting stories, it would fall to me to listen to them. I'm getting out while the getting is good."

Dumbledore looked extremely amused. The girl . . . did not looked alarmed or displeased, as he'd been sure she would. In fact, she looked satisfied, even relieved, about the fact that he was clearly intending to follow her out. What was she up to?

Once they were out of the hall, she surprised him further by asking, "Does Professor Dumbledore really knit six-foot long socks?"

"Yes," Severus said shortly. "Which was an improvement over the twelve-foot ones."

She started climbing the Grand Staircase in silence, not saying anything as Severus followed her up, nor looking remotely surprised that he stayed with her. So she had no plans to misbehave for the present . . . but they'd been whispering together, she and the other two . . .

Ah. One possibility crystallized out of the ether of his suspicions: Granger and Weasley were up to something, and the girl was the diversion. But he had no idea what Granger and Weasley could be doing that was harmless enough for the girl to leave them to it with no apparent anxiety, but adequately dangerous that they didn't want him finding out about it. They clearly weren't worried about the other teachers or the girl would have lingered longer in the Great Hall.

It was something to do with the boomslang skin that had gone missing, he'd bet. That would explain the firecracker, too. But why they would be brewing advanced potions, Severus had no idea. Neither the girl nor Weasley was interested in Potions, and he was fairly sure that Granger only tried so hard because she was a desperate overachiever.

"I'm probably not going to get attacked by Slytherin's monster," the girl said out of nowhere.

Severus just stared down considerable nose at her. This usually had the desired effect of unnerving his victims and making them babble on to what they really wanted to say. But the girl stared back at him—quite boldly, all things considered—and said, "I'm half-blood, I mean. Slytherin's monster is supposed to rid the school of Muggle-borns, isn't it? Hermione's in more danger than I am."

A look of anxiety flitted across her face at that, but then it was subsumed by determination once again, just like the night in the hospital wing. So that's what it was. She was fretting for her friend's sake. It surprised him. He wouldn't have thought she realized that something so abstract as "a danger to Muggle-borns" signaled "a danger to Hermione Granger."

"I'm glad to have the matter explained to me," Severus said, with enough sarcasm to make her blush. "Tell me then, Miss Potter, as I still seem to be in the dark—what caused the Bludger to attack you, and the barrier at King's Cross to seal itself against you? And—yes, I believe there was the matter of a strange house-elf warning you, specifically you, against a great danger at Hogwarts? Despite this insoluble protection of your bloodline."

The girl flushed. "I didn't say there wasn't other stuff, I just said Slytherin's monster wouldn't hurt me."

"Yes," Severus said coldly. "Because legendary monsters are really so discerning about blood purity."

"Well, that's the whole point, isn't it?" she asked, in a tone that said That is the whole point, duh.

"It is a legend, Miss Potter. In legends, myths and stories, the truth is neatly packaged. In real life, however, madmen are always willing to accept what they call collateral damage."

She looked confused. The desire to continue, to make her understand that nothing was protected from deranged evil, warred with the knowledge that she was probably too young to understand.

"But everyone's saying I'm the heir of Slytherin anyway." Was that a tinge of bitterness in her voice?

"Have you set a legendary monster on Mr Creevey and painted threatening messages on the walls in rooster blood, then?"

"No, of course I—wait, it was rooster blood?"

It wasn't until she repeated it that Severus realized what he had just said. Of course . . . Hagrid had been losing those birds to human sadism . . . but there was something else, something about roosters, that was still niggling at him . . .

"It was," he said absently, trying to dig up the connection.

"Well, of course I haven't been doing that stuff. But I can talk to snakes, and that's what Slytherin was famous for, wasn't it?"

"Yes?" he said, but his mind was elsewhere. His thoughts were unfolding, exposing the core; and when they did, when he saw what he had been failing to see, he felt like the greatest fucking fatwit walking. Dead roosters—Slytherin—Parseltongue—Petrified bodies—Dumbledore had probably figured it out as soon as Severus told him about the Parseltongue, at the very least. He might even have known all along.

Slytherin's monster was a fucking Basilisk. That's why the girl had heard it when no one else did; to anyone else, the hissing would have registered only as meaningless noise, not as words—

A small, cold hand grabbed his. "Professor," said her high, frightened voice.

Halfway up the shadowed corridor, a body was lying on the floor, and a ghostly, opalescent shape was suspended above it in midair. In the first moment of dread, Severus thought it was the spirit of whoever was lying on the floor; but then he realized it was the Gryffindor ghost, his head sagging off his neck, his face blank and motionless, the way people looked when they were dead and gone.

The girl struggled in Severus's grip, which was when he realized he'd pushed her behind him.

"Stay where you are," he snarled. "Did you hear that voice again? The one you heard in detention with me?"

"N-no," she said shakily. "Who is it on the floor? Is it Her—"

"It's too big to be Miss Granger," he said, and felt her sag with relief. "Tell me if you can hear the voice now, Miss Potter."

She stopped speaking or moving, apparently listening, and then said in a confused voice, "No, but why—?"

"If I am to take your word for it, Miss Potter, you had best be very sure."

"I'm sure, I can't hear anything. Why would I—"

Ignoring her questions, he dragged her after him over to the body on the floor. The hair lying across the face was long and curly, and for a moment he feared he'd told her false—but in the torchlight the curls were the wrong shade, too pale; and Miss Granger had been wearing corduroy trousers, not a long blue gown.

He shifted the hair off the student's face and felt relief trickle down through his limbs. She was only Petrified.

And thank Christ, by the way, that he hadn't dragged the girl over to see a dead body.

"Who's she?" the girl asked in a hushed, subdued voice.

"Penelope Clearwater," he said. "A Ravenclaw." He reached into his pocket for the moonstone all the teachers carried for emergencies, in case they needed to call each other, and summoned both Dumbledore and Flitwick.

"Was she . . . was she Muggle-born?"

"As far as I am aware." He knew the histories of all his Slytherins, but on the other students he was less informed. He knew of no wizarding family by name of Clearwater, though.

"What happened to Nick?" she asked. The ghost's opalescent light reflected off her spectacles. He was rotating slowly in place, but other than that he did not move.

Severus felt a chill that had nothing to do with being in close proximity to a ghost. If a Basilisk could kill what was already dead . . .

"I mean," she said, "he looks dead . . . I mean, of course he's dead, 'cause he's a ghost, but he looks—"

"I know what you meant, Miss Potter."

Her face was very pale. "What could kill you twice?"

Footsteps pattered against stone down the corridor behind them: Dumbledore and Flitwick. Their expressions, which had been confused and alarmed, changed when they saw what they had been summoned to.

"No," Flitwick whispered. Severus thought he hadn't meant to.

"She's only Petrified," Severus said shortly. He was watching Dumbledore, whose face was grim. Indeed, grimness radiated out of him like an aura, tangible in the pearly light cast off from the Gryffindor ghost.

"You found her like this?" he asked Severus, who nodded curtly. Then, with no softening of expression, Dumbledore's eyes traveled to the girl.

"I think Harriet ought to be returned to her dormitory," Dumbledore said a few moments later, his voice resuming its kindness. "Severus, if you will—?"

Severus nodded and swept the girl on her way. Madam Pomfrey passed them at the next corner, hurrying toward the scene he had just left, her face frustrated and upset. Minerva and Sprout were with her. They didn't say anything to him since the girl was there, but their expressions flickered as he and the child passed them by.

The girl was silent the rest of the way to the tower. Severus was debating the wisdom of telling her to leave it to trained, adult wizards. He suspected that it might not be wisdom at all. Both Lily and Potter had been the type of people to feel they knew better than those around them, and Severus had never met a piece of advice he'd had the patience to take. He felt quite sure that telling the girl to keep her nose out of it would only galvanize her.

He thought of the look on her face and the tenor of her voice the two times that she had said, It's not Hermione, is it. He could practically feel the danger; as if they stood at a crossroads and he alone saw the double path, and his only hope of steering her onto the safer road—down which she wouldn't go looking for a great bloody Basilisk—was so inchoate, it slipped through his fingers even as he tried to grasp at it.

"They all think I'm the heir of Slytherin, don't they," she said abruptly.

This was so unexpected that Severus almost said, What are you on about?

"Isn't that what you were telling me not ten minutes ago, Miss Potter?" he asked instead.

She darted a fleeting look up at him, but then stared fixedly away, and he understood.

"The other professors? Miss Potter, don't be absurd."

"I saw the way they looked at me just now," she said with a flare of hot defiance.

Severus opened his mouth to tell her in detail how ridiculous this was . . . and then remembered Dumbledore's troubled silence after the debacle of the Dueling Club. Good God, he didn't really think—?

"Even were they so fatheaded," he said, "you have an alibi, do you not? You have been in the Great Hall, and now with me. You couldn't possibly have done it."

The girl looked up at him again, her eyebrows furrowed, and then to his astonishment her expression cleared. He'd probably never had a non-Slytherin student look so relieved by something he had said. Certainly not a Gryffindor.

"You'll tell them I didn't?" she asked anxiously, and he was reminded of how young she was. Or rather, he was reminded of what being young meant.

"If you insist," he said.

She nodded, quick and eager. He wondered whether she was worried because she was a child and didn't know that he couldn't possibly withhold an alibi, or because she wouldn't put it past him to be so vindictive. Well, he couldn't really have faulted her for the latter.

The Fat Lady had been drinking with a trio of fifteenth century Flemish nuns and refused to believe the password was Rumplestiltskin the way the girl insisted it was. She looked very offended, in a drunken way, at Severus's telling her to stop swilling and open the damn portrait, but she finally let the girl into the tower.

Severus left to hunt up Dumbledore and find out what he was thinking.

As much as anyone could, with Dumbledore.