Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent

At the center of Harry’s scream was the terrible not-knowing. Had the killing curse hit someone? Who? Harry remembered Sirius agreeing with Snape that if two Lucius Malfoys showed up when Voldemort summoned the Death Eaters, that would be a disaster.

And that was exactly what had happened.

Harry sat up, his head filled with a blinding pain.

Was Draco Malfoy dead?

Was Lucius Malfoy? Was Snape? Sirius?

Sweat was running in rivers down Harry’s face, his neck, his chest and back. He clutched at his basilisk amulet, thinking Ginny, Ginny. If Malfoy was dead because of him, she would hate him.

All my fault. All my--

“Harry!” Hermione cried. He heard her stumble into the room, panting, sounding like she had run as fast as she could down the stairs to the girls’ dorms and back up the boys’ stairs. She parted the bedcurtains, finding him sitting up, perspiring profusely, looking fevered and ill. She hadn’t put her slippers on, nor her dressing gown over her blue flannel pajamas. Her curls were wild and her eyes were blazing. She held her wand before her, with the end lit.

“Harry!” she said again. “Are you all right?” She put her hand on his cheek, then tentatively moved a finger to his scar. He cried out again, knocking her hand away, putting his head in his hands and crouching on the bed, rocking back and forth. She backed up. After a few seconds he glanced up at her. He could tell she was frightened. He swallowed.

Harry tried to sit up, ran his fingers through his hair. The room looked strange in the light of Hermione’s wand. There were no clouds at Dover, in his dream, but at Hogwarts the sky was covered with a grey blanket; another snow storm was coming. No moonlight penetrated the clouds; the room would have been pitch black without the wandlight.

He looked at her. “Going to the lav,” he said shakily, standing slowly, moving toward the door as if he’d just learned to walk. She sat on the edge of the bed to wait.

Harry crossed the hall, holding onto the door frames, staggering into the small, tiled room. The magic that was Hogwarts detected his presence and the candles on the walls and hanging from the high ceiling flickered to life. (Not everyone thinks of taking a wand to the lavatory.) The light hurt his eyes, and he staggered to a sink, squinting, leaning on it heavily, looking down. It looked like all of the Hogwarts sinks. It looked like the sink in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom that led to the Chamber of Secrets, where Ginny--and he--had almost died.

At the time, it had felt like the worst day of Harry’s life, when he had found out that Ginny was in the Chamber, probably dead. Sitting in the common room with her brothers, waiting, with that rising feeling of dread in his chest...

Since then he had slain the basilisk and saved her, and saved Sirius and Buckbeak the hippogriff. And then--there was Cedric.

Harry turned on the cold tap, holding his hands under the water, leaning over to splash it on his face. He cried out when it touched his scar; the water drops that landed there immediately turning to steam. He winced, looked in the mirror. Even though he wasn’t wearing his glasses, he was close enough to the mirror that he had no trouble seeing himself. His scar was red and seemed to be throbbing. The skin around it was slightly pink and inflamed. His pupils were very large, leaving only a thin sliver of green iris around the blackness. He had a slight shadow on his face; he would just use his wand to shave in the morning, like Ron did. No transfiguration.

After splashing water over his torso too (“Sorry, Sandy.”) and drying off, he returned to his room. He went to the silver pitcher near the window to pour himself a drink of water, then turned to face Hermione.

“Voldemort,” he choked. “Killing curse--my scar--”

Hermione nodded, rising and putting her arms around him. He gathered her to him. It was so comforting to have her warmth pressed against him, to feel her breath on his skin, her hands caressing his back. He kissed her on the forehead, then moved to get back into bed. When he was lying down on his back, his arms behind his head, wondering how he was ever going to sleep again, she reached for the music box she’d given him that morning; she wound it up and opened the lid. The lullaby floated out of the little box. Harry smiled at her and she smiled back, stroked his cheek.

He thought she was going to go back to her dorm then, but she pulled back the covers and climbed into his bed with him, snuggling up to him, lying on her left side. She put her head on his chest, her right arm--still holding her lit wand--across his stomach. He looked down at her, kissed her forehead again.

He would tell her everything, he knew. She had to know.

He soon felt rather than heard her breathing peacefully, slumbering on his chest, and he took her wand from her hand, saying, “Nox,” and put it on the bedside table. He wrapped his arms around her, feeling safe and protected somehow, now that this slip of a girl was with him, by his side.

The music box stopped just before the end of the lullaby--only one note was left unplayed.

Tomorrow he would tell her everything.

Although he lay back for long periods of time with his eyes closed, he slept only sporadically. He felt comforted by the warmth and weight of Hermione beside him, in the dark. Near sunrise, a soft grey aura started to break through the blackness in the room, and in this predawn light he saw that she’d turned over on her side, with her back to him. He rolled over beside her, spooning her, putting his left arm around her waist, pressing against her, feeling her back against his chest, the backs of her thighs against the fronts of his.

He watched her sleep, watched her dream, her eyes moving back and forth beneath her eyelids. What are you dreaming about, Hermione? He caressed her hair with his left hand, then rested it on her hip, feeling tired enough to doze off again at last, unable to keep his eyes open any longer, to resist the lure of sleep.

When he woke again, he could tell it was much later, although the flat grey light was not appreciably different from the dawn. There was a slight hollow in the mattress where she had been lying, an indentation on the pillow where her head had been. But when he put his hand on the place next to him where she’d lain, it was cold. She’d been gone for a while.

Harry looked at his watch; it was nine-thirty! Not only had he not woken early enough to run, but he’d let Hermione down. He was supposed to help her make breakfast for the elves. He threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, slipped on his sneakers without untying them and retying. He practically leapt out the portrait hole, running down the stairs to the kitchens so rapidly, his legs in such a repetitive rhythm, he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop at the bottom.

He arrived at the painting of the bowl of fruit breathing hard, and tickled the pear to open the door. Upon entering the kitchens, Harry was surprised to see, not a bustle of activity, but a calm breakfast being enjoyed by Dumbledore, Hagrid, Moody and Roger Davies.

“Good morning, Harry!” Dumbledore greeted him. “Sit down, sit down. You missed the elves’ breakfast, but we’ll get you up to speed by lunch! Dobby has them outside playing in the snow right now, if you can believe it. I think I’ll check on them soon, make sure they’re not trying to clean the windows or shovel paths to the greenhouses!”

Harry smiled; convincing the elves not to work was not half the battle--it was pretty much the whole battle. He sat next to Dumbledore, who passed him a plate of toast and some jam. Harry poured himself some orange juice.

“So,” Dumbledore said softly, once Harry was eating. “Hermione mentioned something about your scar.” Harry nodded. “We’ll go upstairs to talk when you’ve eaten.” Harry nodded again, as he drank.

He saw again the circle of Death Eaters in the moonlight, Malfoy’s face when he thanked Voldemort for burning the Dark Mark into his arm....He’s got nerve, Harry thought. I’ll give him that.

“So, Harry,” Hagrid said to him. “Did yeh like yer present?”

Harry smiled at him. “Definitely. Thanks, Hagrid. Did you like yours?” Harry, Ron and Hermione had jointly given Hagrid one of Colin’s photos, another copy of the one Hermione had received for her birthday, in a frame they’d bought in Hogsmeade that was bordered by all manner of magical creatures: unicorns, hippogriffs, centaurs, dragons, griffins (the usual kind, not the Gryffindor kind) and other things--but no Blast-Ended Skrewts.

Hagrid smiled in that way he had that made it seem that he was about to cry. “Yeah. I loved it,” he said, sniffing for a second.

“Potter!” Moody said suddenly. He was sitting across the table from Harry, eating a sausage he’d speared on the small knife he carried with him at all times. His blue magical eye was swiveled to the side, perhaps watching to see who might come through the door next (or who was on the other side of it), but his normal eye was fixed on Harry, small and dark and beady.

“Sir,” Harry replied, swallowing his juice quickly and setting down his goblet.

“I expect you to take the lead in class after the holiday!” he informed him. “Been letting Weasley and Longbottom get all the points with their essays! I expected better of you!”

Harry squirmed, wishing he were not saying this in front of Dumbledore and Hagrid, not to mention Roger Davies, who suddenly seemed to be listening intently with an expression on his face that looked designed to give him the appearance of not listening at all.

“Yes, sir,” Harry responded, hoping that would be the end of it.

“I mean, that Hamlet essay,” Moody went on. “About him being jealous of his uncle because he wished he had had the nerve himself to kill his father and bed his mother! Where the hell did you get that idea?”

Unexpectedly, Dumbledore came to the rescue. “Actually, Alastor, that’s a pretty standard Oedipal interpretation of the play...quite a few other people have come to the same conclusion.”

Now Moody fixed both his regular and his magical eye on Harry. “Oh? You don’t say. So! Potter! Not beneath a little plagiarism?”

“No! I mean, yes! I mean--”

“Now, now, Alastor, just because other people have thought of it before doesn’t make it plagiarism. I’m sure Harry had some original points to make as well, didn’t you Harry?” Dumbledore looked at him, and Harry squirmed again. Nothing like having the headmaster and a professor dissecting his work in front of others...

“Well, I did notice something about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...”

Now Moody brightened. “Yes! That’s true, you did. Pity you didn’t focus on them. I did like that; they can’t say, ‘I think, therefore I am!’ For them it’s more like, ‘I am summoned, therefore I am!’”

Dumbledore smiled and nodded. “I like that. Very Tom Stoppard.”

Harry frowned. “Who?”

Dumbledore put his hand on Harry’s shoulder, getting to his feet. “Well, Alastor, you can’t accuse him of plagiarism if he hasn’t heard of Stoppard, can you?”

Moody looked slightly disappointed, as though he’d been dearly looking forward to stringing Harry up for academic dishonesty. Dumbledore looked at Harry.

“Coming, Harry?”

“Um, yes sir,” he said with his mouth full. He picked up another piece of toast to bring with him and followed Dumbledore out of the kitchens, looking over his shoulder quickly at Moody, who was surveying his sausage with his good eye--but his magical eye was aimed right at Harry. Harry quickly turned to look in front of him again, following Dumbledore.

They did not speak while climbing the numerous staircases necessary to reach Dumbledore’s office. Once Harry was seated in one of the chairs before Dumbledore’s desk, the headmaster lit the fireplace with his wand and then turned and scrutinized him with concern in his usually-twinkling blue eyes.

“Before I say anything else, Harry, you should know: Professor Snape and Sirius are both safe. Sirius contacted me as soon as they returned to Remus Lupin’s, where they’ve been staying. Sirius told me you knew a little of what they were planning. I won’t ask how you knew.”

Harry closed his eyes and heaved a sigh of relief. “Then no one was killed! Oh, thank--”

“I didn’t say that.”

Harry opened his eyes. “I had a dream. I saw Voldemort with the Death Eaters. But it ended when he did the killing curse. My scar hurt so badly--”

“I know. Did you think no one could hear you outside of Gryffindor Tower?”

Harry looked at him, not wanting to ask, but compelled beyond any instinct of self-preservation or fear. “Who was killed?” he asked quietly.

“Karkaroff.”

Of course! Harry thought. It had taken months for him to be tracked down; Voldemort would not want to take the chance that he would go unpunished. Even though he didn’t get to torture him as much as he would have liked.

“Who--who was there? Was it Sirius or Snape?”

“There was a--complication. I’ll let Sirius explain it to you. He should be calling any minute--”

And sure enough, there suddenly appeared in the fireplace the head of Sirius Black.

“Hello, Harry. Hello, Headmaster.”

Dumbledore smiled. “Why is it so difficult for former students to call me Albus?”

Sirius colored. “Called up on the carpet too many times for that, I suppose. I’ll work on it.”

“Well, I promised Professor Sinistra I’d help with cleaning the tablecloths from breakfast. Must be going. You two have a nice chat,” he said, as though Sirius had called to pass the time of day with Harry instead of talking to him about life-and-death issues.

When Dumbledore had gone, Harry crouched by the fire, a million questions buzzing in his brain. “Who was there, Sirius? Was it you or Snape? Which one was real? The Lucius Malfoy who was already there, or the one who came later? Where’s Draco Malfoy?”

Sirius waited for Harry to settle down. “We ran into a snag, Harry. Snape was unable to procure a hair from Narcissa Malfoy. That meant that he had to transform into Malfoy and Apparate to the meeting of the Death Eaters without having me in the Malfoy house to serve as a distraction, to delay or prevent the real Lucius Malfoy from going. Our backup plan was for Snape to go a little bit later, to create the impression that the impostor had gone first, after preventing the real Lucius Malfoy from going, and that the real Malfoy then got away and managed to Apparate to the site.

“Snape had hoped he’d be able to make it in time to prevent Draco Malfoy from getting the Dark Mark, but evidently that wasn’t the case. He had also hoped to save Karkaroff--we had heard rumblings that they’d finally run him to ground in Kent--but Voldemort got him with the killing curse.”

“Dumbledore told me.”

“As for where Draco Malfoy is now--I assume he’s home with his father. After Voldemort killed Karkaroff, Snape stunned Draco, then Apparated out of there. I’m assuming that the Malfoys still aren’t clear on what happened. At least, I hope they’re not.”

“I saw him get the Dark Mark.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I saw everything that happened up to the killing curse. In a dream. Because of my scar. It’s happened before.”

Sirius looked quite grim. “I see...tell me everything you remember.”

So Harry told him about Karkaroff talking about educating Voldemort’s heir, and Draco Malfoy putting the Hara Kiri curse on him and saying that he and Voldemort had the same enemy--him.

“I have a thought about Voldemort’s heir, Sirius.”

“Which is--?”

“I think it’s--Viktor Krum.”

Sirius looked shocked. “Krum! Are you sure?”

“Well, of course not. But it makes a lot of sense, especially his going after Hermione, and the way he couldn’t really explain how she’d gotten back after her abduction.”

Sirius was lost in thought. After a minute he spoke. “Well, that won’t be too difficult to check. I can probably manage to get something from his father and his mother, and from Krum. Hair or skin or some such thing. Unregistered Animagus, you know. Then we can put the samples through magical tests that will show whether those two can be Krum’s parents. Snape knows how to do it. It’s even more reliable than a Muggle DNA test. We’ll soon know whether Krum’s father isn’t really his father. Although proving that Voldemort is will be slightly harder.”

“Sirius,” Harry said quietly. “I have something else to tell you. I--I told Draco Malfoy to cooperate and get the Dark Mark, to become a Death Eater. I told him to feed me information so that his dad would go to Azkaban.”

“What? Harry, this isn’t a game. What makes you think he did it because you told him to? This has been coming all his life; even if he’d wanted to fight it, he would have been killed. You said yourself Voldemort talked about killing him. And why should Draco Malfoy do anything you tell him, anyway? What incentive could he possibly have?”

“Well--”

“Yes?”

“A girl.”

“Aahh,” Sirius nodded. “Ginny Weasley?”

Harry’s mouth hung open. “How did you--? Oh, yeah, that’s right,” he said after a moment, remembering that Snape had told Sirius that Draco Malfoy and Ginny were in the Potions Dungeon working, and Snape saying he though Malfoy’s hormones put him up to it.

“So, Harry--do you think he’ll really work against his father?”

“I hope so. If Ron finds out that Ginny’s involved with Malfoy, and I knew and didn’t tell him...”

“You’re taking a bit of a chance, aren’t you Harry? He could just as easily pretend, just to get you off his back.”

“Well, I have a theory--I think he didn’t put the Cruciatus Curse on Karkaroff so that he couldn’t be sent to Azkaban. He used something he knew would be painful, and that Voldemort would approve of, but he technically stayed within the law. And I think that was for a reason.”

Sirius considered this. “I hope you’re right, Harry, I really do. I still think you should treat any information he feeds you with the utmost suspicion, and contact me so I can vet it. Do you think it’s totally impossible he’s just playing you?”

“No, of course not. But because of Ginny--I can hope.”

“All right. I’ll try to come visit you in person before the new year. I understand almost no students stayed at the school...” he trailed off, smiling slightly.

Harry grimaced. “Well, Hermione had this Boxing Day idea...”

“Dumbledore told me,” he smiled.

“And I guess it kind of scared everybody off. Not exactly a huge success.”

“Ah, well, Harry. It benefits them to have house elves toiling invisibly behind the scenes, doesn’t it? You and Hermione grew up in Muggle households, and I’ll wager you’ve done a lot more Muggle cleaning than she has, based on what you’ve told me about the Dursleys. She has a keen sense of justice, has Hermione. Why do you think she’s in Gryffindor, and not Ravenclaw?”

Harry’s brow furrowed. “I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose you’re right. Just based on academics, you’d think Ravenclaw...”

“And based on my behavior in school, you’d think I would have been in Slytherin,” he laughed.

Harry made a face. “It’s Wormtail who should have been in Slytherin.”

Sirius sighed. “I’ll not argue with you there. But I need to go. Snape tells me you approached him about a Dueling Club. Sounds like a good idea. Although I can’t believe you asked him, of all people. Not that he wouldn’t be good; I just can’t imagine you two being civil to each other.”

Harry smiled. “Well, if you two can do it--”

“Did I say we’d been civil to each other? Oh, damn--” His voice dropped. “He just walked in the room,” he whispered, then he began speaking rather loudly again. “All right, Harry. Glad you liked your Christmas present.” Although Harry hadn’t said. “See you soon.” And his head disappeared from the fireplace. The flames danced before Harry’s eyes. He leaned back on his haunches, his arms wrapped around his knees.

....do you think he’ll really work against his father?

Everything depends on it, Harry thought. Everything.

Especially Ginny’s safety.

Harry went back down to the kitchens to wait for Hermione. The moment he walked in, he met a scene of pandemonium.

There were house elves everywhere, of all ages, scrubbing the large central table, blacking the stove, polishing silver, mopping the floor and cleaning the windows. Harry was speechless. They all worked desperately, whether because they couldn’t believe how filthy everything had become in the few hours since the day had begun, or because they were going through extreme withdrawal from their cleaning addiction, Harry couldn’t tell. It looked like they were all in the grip of some mass psychosis. He watched with his jaw dropped.

“Move, please!” said a squeaky voice behind him, and he jumped. An elf was trying to mop the floor where he was standing. Water sloshed into his sneakers.

“Hey!” he yelled, taking the mop from the elf, who look quite miffed, popped out of sight and appeared a second later with another mop, continuing as though nothing had happened. Harry shook his head, threw the mop aside and ran over to the large table. He pointed his wand, crying, “Accio!” causing the cleaning flannels to leap from the hands of the small dynamos. Unfortunately, he didn’t figure on what to do with over twenty cleaning flannels, all hurtling quickly toward him. In moments, he was covered with them and couldn’t see, but they were immediately retrieved by the elves, who resumed work. All right, he thought; the old-fashioned way. He put his wand away and started going down the table, yanking them out of the elves’ hands one by one, having to fight a couple who were ready for him. But in seconds, it seemed, they all had their cleaning flannels yet again and were going at it once more. He grunted with frustration.

Dobby came running to him. “Harry Potter! Help! I isn’t able to stop them! All they is wanting to do is clean, clean, clean!

“Well, what do you think I’m trying to do?” he snapped at Dobby.

Suddenly, the door opened and closed behind him, and he turned to find Hagrid with Hermione, carrying a bucket and mop. She was wearing jeans, a stained blue shirt, and a bandanna tied over her hair, and she smelled strongly of soap. She looked around at the elves, and Harry saw her eyes begin to fill. Oh, no, he thought. No, no, no...

“Help me!” Harry called to them, and soon the three of them were running around the kitchen, fighting with the elves to get their mops and scrubbing brushes away from them. Hagrid was soon covered with elves who had sunk their fingers into his clothes, trying to climb up his body to reach the dustpans he was holding over his head, out of reach--until one of the elves used a hover charm on Hagrid, and he began to float toward the high ceiling.

“STOP!” Hagrid bellowed loud enough to make the castle crumble. The elves did in fact stop, but only for a split second. They looked with extreme disinterest to see who had shouted, and upon seeing, went right back to work, looking, if anything, more desperate than ever.

This, thought Harry, is a disaster.

Harry pointed his wand at Hagrid, breaking the hover charm and simultaneously bringing him back to the floor safely. When he was standing beside him again, he said to Hagrid, “You’re the only one loud enough to get their attention. Say something else.”

Hagrid thought for a second, then bellowed, “THE NEXT ELF WHO CLEANS ANYTHING GETS CLOTHES!”

Every elf froze.

Harry cleared his throat, wishing he knew what to say. He looked at Hermione for a second, at how miserable she appeared (she stopped wresting a large cleaning flannel from a surly-looking elf who was about a foot high). He turned back to face the throng of elves, unsure how to begin.

“Elves of Hogwarts!” he cried, wincing as his brain told him how stupid that sounded. “Today is Boxing Day. You are not supposed to work! You have an excellent work ethic--no one anywhere could fault you on that! But--you have no self-respect!”

Suddenly, Harry knew just what he wanted to say, and he picked up speed and confidence, the words spilling out of him. “How much pride can you have in working when you are not free, when it’s what you must do? What’s there to be proud of in that? If you were free, and working for wages, then you’d have a reason to be proud! Then that would show your work ethic! If you were free, you could still work here at Hogwarts if you wanted, for wages. Families could stay together, you could have days off, you could buy yourself and your children things with your wages. And most of all--” he looked at Dobby, thinking of Lucius Malfoy. “--you could exercise your consciences. If any of you have ever served a dark wizard, you know what I mean.”

He looked at Hermione, who was both glowing at him and looking like she was going to cry. Hagrid was crying, blowing his nose on a handkerchief the size of a tablecloth. Harry felt exhilarated, and continued. “You each have an obligation to yourself to choose whether to support good or evil. Voldemort has returned--” gasping from the small creatures, but Harry didn’t care “--and we wizards and witches will need your help. But it has to be given willingly, not because you’re in service. On New Year’s Day, when Dumbledore asks who wants to be free, and work here for wages, I hope you all say you will. And then, when we need you by our sides, when we’re fighting against Voldemort and the Death Eaters, I fully expect to see a mighty army of elves, willingly doing what’s right because each one followed his or her own conscience and made a choice!”

Silence.

The elves looked at each other. No one had ever said these things to them before. Think for themselves? Decide whether to support good or evil? The looks being exchanged between the elves were uncertain, confused. None of them moved to resume cleaning, however.

Harry felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Dumbledore beaming at him. Moody stood by his side, a look of approval sitting very strangely on his distorted features. Harry hadn’t heard them enter the room. Dumbledore turned to the elves, saying, “Now, go play! The kitchens are in good hands! Don’t come back until tomorrow!”

Still looking uncertainly at each other, one by one, elves began disappearing, the pops! coming slowly at first, then picking up speed, until the sound of elves popping out of the room was almost deafening. Dobby was last to go. He gazed up at Harry.

“Thank you, Harry Potter,” he said simply, softly, his homely face wreathed in smiles. Then, with a pop! he too was gone.

“Your reward is coming,” Sandy hissed under his sweatshirt. That was good to know, Harry thought; usually, he felt she was so cryptic and difficult to fathom. Despite the inexactitude of this prediction, he felt it at least was an optimistic one. His reward. That had to be good, right?

“Quite the orator, Harry.” Dumbledore smiled.

Moody shook his head. “Never thought I’d see the day when I’d want house elves to be free--but you made some good points, Potter,” he growled. “Let’s say--ten points for Gryffindor. Makes up for that Lord of the Flies quiz.” Harry winced; he’d bungled that one mightily, gotten the names of some of the major characters mixed up. The week of the quiz he’d done very little studying, as it was the week he’d spent outside with the golden griffin. Now he knew what his reward was. Oh, well, he thought.

Dumbledore, Moody and Hagrid left. When the door closed behind them, Harry turned to Hermione, seeing her gazing up at him with the most amazing expression he’d ever seen on her face. Suddenly, she was in his arms, she had thrown her hands around his neck and he was holding her tightly and she was kissing him deeply. He bent over her, holding her head up to his face, her bandanna slipping off the back of her head. Perhaps this was what Sandy had meant by his reward...

Harry wasn’t sure how long they kissed. They finally drew their mouths apart slowly, and Hermione’s eyes bore into his in that way again. He smiled at her.

“If you’re going to respond like that every time I make a speech, I’m going to wind up making so many speeches you’ll get really tired of hearing the sound of my voice.”

“Well, if I ever do get tired of the sound of your voice, I know what to do,” she said, kissing him quickly again, just as they heard a loud pop! nearby. They turned to see a very surprised-looking Dobby. Harry thought he might actually be blushing.

“Oh, Harry Potter and Miss Hermione, I, um, oh, never mind...” he trailed off, leaving with another loud pop! Harry laughed.

“There you go; we’ve actually made Dobby speechless!”

Hermione grinned up at Harry, and they both laughed.

“Come on. We have work to do.” But as they cleaned, whether waving wands or using Muggle methods, Harry couldn’t help think every time he looked at her how glad he was that she’d had the Boxing Day idea, and that it had kept most of the students away from the castle for the holidays.

They had an exhausting day, cleaning and cooking lunch, cleaning up again, cooking dinner, cleaning up again...

Harry changed his mind about being glad about the other students not staying. In addition to providing more hands to do the work, he thought they all could have used a taste of the work that the elves accomplished for them all on a daily basis. Maybe if they knew what it was like, more of them would have joined S.P.E.W., he thought.

Dumbledore seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself, as did Professor Vector, with whom Harry had never spent any time, and whom he liked quite a lot (Hermione seemed quite gratified by this; Harry suspected that after McGonagall, Vector was her favorite teacher). Professor McGonagall rivaled Hermione for wanting to make sure everything went just so, and Professor Trelawney spent an inordinate amount of time predicting that disaster would accompany every chore. Harry steered clear of her as much as possible; once when it was unavoidable, she said to him, “The stars have told me that we shall study augury after the holiday.” The stars! Harry sneered inwardly. She’s the professor! (Although, in his opinion, she was only nominally a professor--much the way Malfoy felt about Hagrid.)

Harry and Hermione bade the other students and the professors good night and staggered up to Gryffindor Tower. Although he had promised himself the night before that he would tell Hermione everything, Harry felt too exhausted to do anything more than give Hermione a good-night kiss on the forehead and drag himself up to his room. He took off his shirt and jeans, crawling into the bed in just his drawers, basilisk amulet and Sandy, not bothering with pajama pants. At the last minute, he remembered to take his glasses off and put them on his bedside table, then dropped off as soon as his head hit the pillow.

After a little while, the bed shook. “Wha--” Harry started to say, trying to open his eyes. All he could see was pitch blackness. But he could feel and smell someone familiar and warm getting into the bed with him, sliding under the covers; he felt smooth bare legs against his, a crisp cotton nightshirt against his bare chest. He thought groggily for a moment about the fact that he was wearing only his drawers, but he decided he was too tired to care. She curled onto her side, and he curled up against her back, as he had that morning, putting his arm around her waist. He buried his face in her hair for a moment, then came up and whispered in her ear, “Why are you here, Hermione?”

“I’m not leaving you alone, Harry, not after last night. If--anything else should happen with You-Know-Who, I’m going to be right by your side.”

“You’re liable to go deaf from me screaming about two inches away from your ear...”

He heard her give a little laugh in the dark. “I’ll take my chances. I’m not going anywhere, Harry Potter. Get used to it.”

Hmm, thought Harry. I like the sound of that. He tightened his arm around her; she grasped his hand and brought it up to her lips, kissed it, making him shiver. Maybe he should stop worrying about Ron stealing her away....

She put their entwined hands around her waist again, and then they both put their heads down and were almost immediately fast asleep.

“Good morning,” she whispered, kissing him lightly.

“Good morning,” he said groggily, having forgotten she would be there. She had a lopsided smile.

“Sleep well?” she asked him, putting her hand on his chest and moving it in dreamy circles. He nodded, trying not to show how her touch affected him, glad the covers were pulled up to his waist. He fingered the basilisk, watching her curiously, wondering how long she had been watching him sleep. “So,” she went on, “you never sleep with shirts on anymore?” She looked at him appreciatively.

He returned her lopsided smile. “Never.”

She flattened her hand now, her palm so warm against his stomach that he had to suddenly inhale through his nose and stifle a groan in his throat. “Not that I’m complaining...” she said softly, the edges of her mouth turning up slightly. But then her brow furrowed as she looked at the amulet he was touching lightly. “Do you also never take that off?”

Harry glanced down at the amulet Ginny had given him. “Just about.”

“Even in the shower?” He wondered fleetingly whether she wanted to find out from personal experience...

“Even in the shower. It doesn’t seem to have hurt it any,” he said, inspecting it for damage.

“That’s not why I asked,” she said vaguely.

He examined her face; she looked terribly young, suddenly, and insecure. He knew he couldn’t put off telling her the truth about everything any longer.

“Hermione,” he began earnestly. “Sandy wasn’t the only thing I was keeping from you. I want to come clean. You should know what’s going on, because I’m probably going to need your help. The trouble is--it means keeping some things from Ron.”

She grimaced. “Well, we’re already doing that, aren’t we? Or did you think we’d tell Ron about where I slept the last two nights as soon as he gets back? Or sooner, with owl post?”

“No, of course not. And there are some things we can tell Ron.” He explained to her about being in the Potions Dungeon in his Invisibility Cloak (leaving out the bit about Ginny and Draco Malfoy). He told her what Sirius and Snape had said to each other, including Snape being his mother’s boyfriend when they were in school. Hermione’s mouth hung open in shock. Then he told her about Ginny and Malfoy getting together after she saw him in the hospital wing (and their fight in the dungeon), and how he’d found them in the conservatory at the cottage in Hogsmeade during the Christmas party. He told her about his ultimatum to Malfoy, about helping Harry to put Lucius Malfoy in Azkaban. She gasped.

“Harry! You didn’t!” He nodded. “But--but, his own father!”

He looked grim. “Ginny was shocked too. But he agreed to do it, for her.”

She looked at him shrewdly. “You mean, he was all set to break up with her, and you encouraged him not to do it and talked him into turning on his father?” She was incredulous. Then he told her about the dream, and seeing Malfoy receive the Dark Mark, and Karkaroff being killed and Snape getting away after stunning Malfoy.

“But doesn’t this mean that Dumbledore knows that Draco Malfoy is a Death Eater? Do you seriously think he’ll let him stay at the school?”

“He seems to be doing just that. But you know Dumbledore--he doesn’t give reasons for things. You can ask until you’re blue in the face. I asked him my first year why Voldemort wanted to kill me in the first place, and he wouldn’t tell me.”

“Well, it sounds like you’ve found out, now.”

“Found out what? That I’m supposedly part of some prophecy? I still don’t know anything. What was the prophecy? And Malfoy and I are only two of the three people in this prophecy. Who’s the other one? I don’t feel any better informed than I was on my eleventh birthday when I first found out I was a wizard and Voldemort killed my parents.”

Hermione stared into space thoughtfully. “Harry,” she said softly, “do you really think Ginny is safe with Malfoy? A Death Eater? And if Ron found out--”

“Well, that’s one of those things we’re not going to tell him, isn’t it?”

She seemed uncertain. On the one hand, she had appeared encouraged that he had prevented Malfoy from breaking up with Ginny, but on the other hand, Ginny was her friend, and Ron’s sister...How was it different, Harry thought, from fixing up Cho Chang with Viktor Krum? It was different, he knew. This was Ginny.

Finally, he told her about the Pensieve, and about Snape giving him the password to his office. “Have you used it yet?” she asked anxiously.

“No,” he said vaguely. He’d thought about going down the morning of Christmas Eve, and again on Christmas day, but something had stopped him. Did he really mean for Harry to be able to look at what he’d put in the Pensieve? Harry couldn’t shake the idea that he had no right to do this to begin with, it was private. “I haven’t even looked at the parchment he gave me. It’s right there,” he said, indicating a small folded wad on the bedside table.

Hermione picked it up and opened it; Harry thought of grabbing it from her, remembering Snape saying that Harry was the only one besides Dumbledore who had the password, but then he realized that if he did decide to go down to Snape’s office to use the Pensieve, he wanted to have her with him.

She was staring at the slip of parchment with a strange expression on her face. “What is it, Hermione?”

She raised her eyes to his. “Here,” was all she said, handing it to him. He took it, turned it around and read the password with a lump in his throat.

Lily Evans.

Snape was trying to tell him something. Harry both wanted to know and didn’t want to know. Learning more about his parents had been a goal of his since he came to Hogwarts, and now suddenly he wondered whether he was better off not knowing. There was still probably time before Snape would be back...he would think about it later.

Harry put the parchment back on the table, shook his head to clear it and checked his watch. “Well, we’d better get up and go running. Didn’t do it yesterday.” His voice sounded hollow. He swung his legs out of the side of the bed away from Hermione and walked over to the wardrobe. After standing at the open door for a moment, he glanced down and realized that he was walking around in front of her in just his black boxers. He hadn’t bothered asking her to leave, as he had during the summer. Of course, she had opened the door again after that and caught him, looking much the same as he did now.

He peered over his shoulder, seeing her staring at him. Her eyes weren’t on his face, they were significantly lower. She didn’t seem to have noticed that he was looking back at her. She had a dreamy smile curling at the corners of her mouth. He smiled, amused.

“Hermione!” he called softly, as though trying to wake her.

“Hmmm?” she said, distracted, moving her eyes to his face now.

“Go get dressed for running.”

She smiled and headed for the door. “I was just--for a while you’ve been wearing trousers to run, instead of shorts. I haven’t seen your legs in a couple of months.” She grinned broadly and closed the door behind her. Harry looked down at his legs. Okay. Didn’t know girls looked at guys’ legs...but then he remembered Parvati on the day she’d cut his hair. Some girls did, obviously.

He glanced at the bed, glad that he could let the house elves do the work again, and wondering what they would make of his bed, obviously having had two bodies lying in it, and Hermione’s bed not being used. Then he thought of all the teenagers who had been at Hogwarts over the years, and realized that the house elves had probably seen it all...

Every morning for the rest of the week, Harry put the slip of parchment in his pocket when he dressed after his morning shower, thinking today I’ll go. He and Hermione had stepped up their running; after almost six months, they could handle more, and so they were rising earlier to run for about half-an-hour longer. Each night, Hermione curled up in his bed with him. They were getting into a routine.

When they weren’t outside in the snow, they spent their days with Roger and Hannah and Ernie practicing charms and hexes for the Dueling Club; they had all signed up. By Saturday, Roger was getting quite peeved with Harry and Hermione; he had yet to best either one of them in a duel. Hannah and Ernie had not bested them either, but Roger seemed to feel it was his right as Head Boy to do this. Harry sensed trouble coming, from Roger’s out-of-control ego. He found himself unaccountably missing Percy Weasley.

Every so often, Sandy told him what was coming during the dueling, but she usually said exactly what he was thinking was coming. He whispered to her that he appreciated her help, but didn’t need it, thanks. She stayed quiet after that.

Sunday was New Year’s Eve. Following the afternoon dueling practice in the Great Hall, Harry was leaving when Hannah came running after him.

“Harry! You dropped something.” She handed him the parchment with his mother’s name on it. Somehow it had fallen out of his pocket.

“Oh, thanks,” he mumbled, staring at it. Just go.

He glanced up at Hermione, who nodded at him. They watched Roger, Hannah and Ernie walk up the marble staircase, then, without another word, they walked side by side, not touching, down the stairs to the Potions Dungeon.

When they reached Snape’s office door, Harry shook with nervousness. Hermione smiled encouragingly at him, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the door. She gently took the parchment from him and said the password.

Nothing happened.

They looked at each other, then Hermione said, “Perhaps he charmed it so that it would only recognize your voice and Dumbledore’s.”

Harry nodded; he’d been thinking that too. Hoping that his voice would actually sound normal, he prepared to say a name he realized he’d never before in his life uttered out loud.

“Lily Evans.”

The door opened, creaking on its hinges. They entered, then closed the door carefully behind them. Flames sprung up on the candles on the walls. His eyes moved to the desk, to the Pensieve sitting there. He walked to it slowly, still resisting, he realized, still reluctant. Next to the Pensieve, there was a parchment. It was not directed to anyone, nor signed. It said: “Don’t ask questions if you don’t want answers.”

Harry vaguely remembered his once saying that to Snape--or had Ron said it?--when Hermione had been trying to answer questions in Potions class that he’d been directing at Harry....He smiled. Did this mean that Snape actually had a sense of humor? he wondered.

Don’t ask questions if you don’t want answers.

Harry wanted the answers and didn’t want the answers. He had never felt so conflicted. He was glad Hermione was there. She was being very businesslike and brisk, that take-charge aspect of her personality he especially liked when he was feeling wishy-washy and indecisive.

“So,” she said, “how does this work? You’ve done this before.”

“Well,” he said, remembering the Pensieve in Dumbledore’s office, “I put my wand into the--the stuff in the bowl and it started to swirl around. Then I leaned over and when my nose touched it, I sort of--fell in--”

He put his wand to the moving surface as he spoke, then bent over, shivering when he felt the cold, smooth Pensieve contents touch his skin....

Suddenly, he was falling, with a worse feeling in his stomach than when he’d ridden on Fridwulfa’s hand. With a crash, he found himself sitting in a heap on the floor of the Potions classroom they’d just walked through to get to Snape’s office. A second later, Hermione came crashing down onto the floor next to him. They both rose, brushing off their robes, then looked around.

Under his robes, Harry heard a hissing: “A serpent and a griffin with be allies.” Sandy sounded like she didn’t care for this prediction at all. He remembered her reaction to the golden griffin.

Hermione gasped. Standing on the other side of the room were two students, working together at the same table, sharing a bubbling cauldron. One was a beautiful girl, about sixteen, tall and willowy, with long dark-red hair and sparkling green eyes. She smiled up at her companion, a tall, pale boy, also about sixteen, slender but muscular, with shining black hair swept back into a ponytail, and a black beard and mustache he had obviously just started growing giving his face shape and character, accentuating his high cheek bones and his lantern jaw. His black eyes sparkled down at the beautiful girl, and he returned her smile.

Beside him, he saw Hermione’s shock. He didn’t care for the appreciative look she was giving his appearance, especially since it was--

Severus Snape.