Harry Potter and the Slytherin Spy

Harry Potter and the Slytherin Spy

Christine Morgan

Chapter Nine - Hangman's Nott

The next morning came awfully early, because it was already well into the next morning by the time Harry got back to the Leaky Cauldron.

He was exhausted, his head aching from the revelations of the previous hours and his body aching from the fight with Kreacher. He was glad that, upon returning with him to the Diagon Alley inn, Tonks brushed off everyone else's questions and declared that Harry needed his sleep.

And sleep had claimed him almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. It was deep and restive, and when someone knocked on his door at eight, Harry had to almost physically drag himself to wakefulness.

"Yeah," he groaned.

The door opened and Ron's tousled red head poked in. "Harry, you awake?"

"More or less."

"Mum says we have to be ready to go by nine thirty, to be in time for the train."

"Fine."

Ron came in, shot a stealthy look over his shoulder, and closed the door behind him. "Where were you last night? What happened? Mum was in a right state when we found you were missing."

"Your mum needs to stop worrying about me so much," Harry said, sitting up and squinting at the daylight as he fished around for his glasses.

"Her, stop worrying?" scoffed Ron. "Might as well wish for Hermione to stop being bossy, or Hagrid stop making that treacle fudge what glues your teeth together. Hey, you're hurt!"

"Oh. Right." Harry reached around and felt the bandage on his shoulder. He had shed his torn and bloodstained pajama top. "It's nothing."

"The hell it is. Where were you? What were you up to?"

"Didn't Tonks tell?"

"Not me, she didn't. Dunno what she said to Mum and Dad."

Another knock, this one a brisk series of efficient raps. "Harry?"

"Just a minute, Hermione," he called dutifully, and got out of bed to put on some clothes.

"Is Ron with you? We have to be ready by -"

"Nine thirty, yes, we know," Ron said, and shook his head.

At the mirror, Harry twisted as best he could to look at the white pad taped to his back. He peeled it off. Ron whistled at the sight of the wound, which was a reddish dash-line of scar about seven inches long. But Gwenna's Coagulating Charm had worked nicely, and it barely hurt at all.

Harry dressed, looked at his hair - black, unkempt, too long, just like always - and combed it with his fingers. "Come on in," he said to the door.

It opened to admit Hermione, and behind her was Ginny. Crookshanks sauntered in, eyed Hedwig with catlike insolence, and sprawled out on the bed like a large ginger throw rug.

Like Ron, the door had no sooner latched than they were asking him the same questions. Harry told them an edited version, but even that contained enough jaw-dropping details to leave all three of them momentarily speechless.

Ginny spoke first. "Sirius Black's lost love! That's the most tragically romantic thing I ever heard!"

Hermione dismissed any notions of romanticism with a sniff. "Haven't I said, haven't I been saying all along, that this is just the sort of thing that happens when people treat house-elves so abominably?"

"Come off it, Hermione," Ron said. "Harry never mistreated Kreacher."

"No, not Harry himself," she acknowledged, "but after a lifetime of it, is it really so surprising Kreacher should lash out like that?"

"Well, he won't have another chance," Harry said, and Hermione gaped at him, horror-struck. "I didn't mean that," he hastened to add. "Tonks might've said she wanted to wring his neck, but she wouldn't really."

"What did you do with him, then?" asked Ron. "Clothes?"

"Couldn't," Harry said. "But once he heard that I was giving everything to Arcturus, he settled right down."

"I thought you said Gwenna wouldn't accept," Ginny said.

"She will, once she's thought it over," Harry said. "Besides, we didn't tell Kreacher that part. Lupin convinced Kreacher that, as a faithful house-elf, it was his job to keep the place in good order until Arcturus was ready to live there full-time. He got Phineas Nigellus to back him up, too. You know, that former Hogwarts headmaster, who's got one portrait in Dumbledore's office and another at Grimmauld Place."

"And old Kreacher was all right with that?" Ron made a skeptical face. "Or did he just say so, and he's biding his time to have another go at you later?"

Harry shrugged. "He got what he wants, the house belonging to a rightful Black again."

"What I can't believe," said Ginny, "is that you took Jane Kirkallen with you. I know, Harry, I know, we talked about all that so you don't have to give me that look. But taking her to Grimmauld Place? Letting her hear everything? Isn't that extending the hand of inter-House fellowship a little far?"

"Whether you like it or not, it's done," Hermione said.

"Thanks, Hermione," Harry said, grateful for her support.

"D'you fancy her or something?" Ron asked. "Jane, I mean?"

"No!" Harry said. "And even if I did, I wouldn't do anything about it. I need more girl troubles like I need another scar on my head. I learned that lesson last year, thank you very much."

"You should pack," Hermione said. "We all should get breakfast. You can tell us about this new teacher on the train."

The girls left, and Ron, saying he had to finish his own packing, did too. Harry shooed Crookshanks out and set about loading his school books and supplies into his cauldron, his clothes and other belongings into his trunk, and Hedwig into her cage.

He heard someone come in as he was headfirst into the trunk, trying to make everything fit. Reckoning that it was Ron, he didn't turn, until he heard the intruder speak.

"You're not going to get away with this, Potter. You're going to pay."

Harry cracked the back of his head on the underside of the trunk lid as he scrambled hastily up and around. The voice had been only vaguely familiar, but the menace in it was unmistakable.

A boy stood just inside his door, a thin boy with a sharp nose and sharp chin and generally pointed features. Long hair the color of dirty dishwater straggled over his collar. Bony wrists and ankles protruded from clothes that were even shabbier than Ron's hand-me-downs.

Though they'd never really spoken much before, Harry knew him on sight.

"I'll kill you for what you've done to us," this scarecrow apparition said.

"What I've done? It's your father who did it, Nott. Your father who chose to follow Voldemort."

Theodore Nott's shoulders hunched and he drew his sharp chin in and down, rather like a turtle recoiling into its shell, as Harry spoke the name.

Months ago, when Hermione had persuaded Rita Skeeter to write a tell-all interview and Luna Lovegood's father to publish it in the Quibbler, Harry had indeed told all. He'd named names. And one of the names he had named was that of Nott, a Death Eater who had answered Voldemort's summons on that horrible night in the graveyard.

Once the article had seen print, the younger Nott and the other students whose fathers had been mentioned - Crabbe, Goyle, and of course Malfoy - had huddled together plotting their revenge against Harry. It hadn't gone so well on their part.

"My family has lost everything because of you and your big mouth, Potter," Nott said. "Had to sell the house, all the furnishings. We're no better off now than those scummy Weasleys. My mother's drunk herself half to death thanks to you. My sister was supposed to marry into the Farnsworth family, but as I'm sure you can imagine, her fiancé dropped her like a dead snail once your story hit the papers."

"Do you expect me to apologize?" Harry asked, the old familiar anger rising in him like a tide. "How many lives were ruined because of people like your father? How many families? Don't you stand there and whine to me, now that you're getting what you deserve."

"They should have finished you that night!"

"They tried," Harry said. His fists were clenched so tight that his arms were quivering.

"But I'm going to succeed where they failed," Nott said. "I'm going to kill you, Potter. None of these stupid schoolboy jinxes like Malfoy tries to hit you with ... I'm going to kill you."

"And you're telling me first?" Harry cocked an eyebrow. "That's not very Slytherin of you."

"I'm not telling you in any spirit of 'fair play,' so get that idea out of your mind," snarled Nott. "I'm telling you so that you can think about it. Wait for it. Wonder when I'm going to strike, how, and from what direction."

"Oh, save it," Harry said. "I've been threatened by worse than you, Nott, and I'm still upright and drawing breath. I won't be losing any sleep over your rubbish."

Nott's eyes narrowed into deadly little slits. His hand plunged into the sleeve of his robes, going for his wand.

Harry had his out in a flash. "If this is how you want it," he said, "take your best shot. Right here and right now." With his other hand, he waggled his fingers in invitation.

Wand halfway out of his sleeve, Nott paused. He might not have been there when Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle were foolish enough to ambush Harry outside of a car full of D.A. members, but he would have heard about the oozing, drippy fate that had befallen his fellow Slytherins. Even with Harry alone, Nott wasn't confident enough to meet him face to face.

"When I'm ready, Potter," he said, mustering what dignity he had left. "Not when you are."

"Suit yourself," Harry said, putting his wand away. "Now, though, if you're done wasting my time, I have to finish packing."

Nott, clearly disgruntled at an encounter that hadn't gone at all the way he'd anticipated, stormed out. Harry snorted.

He was almost looking forward to seeing Draco Malfoy again, seeing the simmering frustrated loathing in Malfoy's pale eyes. Of course, the Malfoy family hadn't suffered the way the Notts evidently had ... Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father, would be much too canny to organize his affairs in a way such that any single catastrophe could ruin them. As pleasant as it would have been to see haughty Narcissa Malfoy left penniless, Harry didn't think it would happen.

When everything was packed and ready to go, except for one item he had removed from his trunk and put in his pocket, Harry headed downstairs for breakfast. He could smell bacon frying, and was hungry enough to eat a heaping platter of it, with eggs and potatoes and toast as well.

The common room had been tidied, with the signs of last night's mess were only there for someone who knew where to look. The table, for instance, that Harry had blasted to splinters, was replaced by a board laid across two barrels, the whole makeshift construction draped with a tablecloth. The shelves were far less full of mugs and glasses than they had been.

None of this interested Harry much, though. The long table with a buffet breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, toast, muffins, oatmeal, fruit juice and waffles drew him like a magnet. He saw Jane there, wearing a dark green corduroy jumper over a black turtleneck. She looked very much the Slytherin girl now, even her ponytail threaded through a wooden ring that had been carved and painted to resemble a snake.

Many other students and their families already crowded the room. Harry moved along the buffet table, piling his plate. He came up alongside Jane as she was debating the relative merits of muffins, purposefully bumping her as if he wasn't looking where he was going.

"Sorry," he said, as he surreptitiously slipped the item he'd taken from his trunk into the deep pocket of her jumper.

Playing her part, she twitched away from him as if being so close to any Gryffindor, let alone the vaunted Harry Potter, was as distasteful as a trip to the dentist. She chose a muffin - blueberry - and retreated to a corner table. He thought that she looked tired and wan this morning, as if she, unlike him, had not slept at all well for what had remained of their hectic night.

The Weasleys were impossible to miss, especially as Fred and George and Lee Jordan had joined Ron, Ginny, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and Hermione for an impromptu morning farewell party. Theirs was the table with the liveliest chatter, the most laughter, and the occasional puff of multicolored smoke or fizzing bubble of light as the twins demonstrated some of the newest merchandise from their shop.

Harry wedged himself in between Ron and George, greeted everyone, and tucked into his bacon and eggs.

Now that the day had arrived, he found himself brimming with the thrill of returning to Hogwarts. He hadn't thought he would feel that way, given his earlier brooding on how unimportant school was in the greater scheme of things, but with the air around him all abuzz with other students eagerly discussing the start of classes and another season of Quidditch, the dire troubles of the rest of the world seemed to recede.

At the end of the table, Mr. Weasley was flipping through the Daily Prophet, while Mrs. Weasley fussed over last-minute things. "Ginny, did you remember your good quill? Oh, Ron, I hope those new dragonhide gloves we bought you are the right size; I wish you'd taken the time to try them on in the shop."

Glancing over at Jane, Harry saw her picking listlessly at the blueberry muffin. She had the distant demeanor of someone whose thoughts were miles away ... and were dark thoughts at that. He didn't think that she had even checked to see what he'd put in her pocket yet, let alone read the note.

He wasn't sure just what had compelled him to do it. Of all the people he could have given the second magic mirror to, why Jane?

But he had, and with the note describing what it was and what it did. All she'd have to do, if she wanted to contact him, was to hold it and speak his name.

Tonks' triumphant capture of Kreacher the previous night had come just as Jane had seemed about to unburden herself of some troubling truth, something she'd guarded for a long time like an oyster with a pearl.

Something about her parents.

In retrospect, he shouldn't have been surprised that the vicar wasn't her father. Who, though, had her real father been? A wizard ... what wizard? What had happened to him?

As if she'd heard his unspoken questions, Jane looked up. Her eyes met his across the room and Harry was rocked to the heels by the pain that he saw. Not physical pain, but a stark mental anguish similar to that he'd seen in his own reflection after Cedric's death.

Similar ... but not the same. As if it was not some horror she'd witnessed that haunted her, but some horror she'd done.

Jane got up, leaving her breakfast all but untouched, and hurried from the room. No one else particularly noticed her going.

He wanted to go after her and knew that he couldn't.

A miniature firework - Weasley's Pocket Bombs, Amaze Your Friends! - went off in front of him, a glittery bang of electric blue that sifted glowing sparkles into his scrambled eggs. Harry jumped, and turned to see George Weasley with an impatient expression.

"Are you at home, Harry?"

"I'm here. Uh ... what?"

"Fred and Lee and I wanted to know, were you going back on the Quidditch team? That stupid ban of Umbridge's was officially revoked weeks ago. Ludo Bagman himself came by the shop to tell us. Bought twenty Galleons' worth of joke wands and trick sweets, too."

Ginny, across the table, was no longer listening to Hermione complain about having to put up with Parvati and Lavender's silly giggling crushes on Firenze the centaur. She was staring at Harry, holding her breath, apprehensive.

"Don't be daft," Ron said. "Of course he's back on the team."

"Actually ... I thought I'd ... give it a miss," Harry said.

Now even Hermione, who normally ignored all Quidditch talk, stopped mid-sentence and looked at him in amazement.

"But you love Quidditch," Ron said. "What do you mean, give it a miss?"

"The team's got a perfectly good Seeker," Harry said, inclining his head toward Ginny.

"Harry, no, really, I thought I'd try for Chaser this year, I don't mind," Ginny said in a rush.

"You've got to go out for something," Ron said doggedly. "You could be Chaser, maybe. It won't be the same without you."

"Oh, Ron, leave it alone," Hermione said. "If Harry doesn't want to be on the team, that's his choice. Besides, it wouldn't hurt him to spend more time on his lessons."

"Cheers, Hermione," Harry said. "I know I can always count on you to lift me up."

She pinked, but didn't back down. "You know I'm right. All that practice never left you enough time to really concentrate on your homework."

"And what about me, then?" Ron asked. "I should quit the team too, I suppose, and become a slave to my schoolbooks like you are?"

"You never did your homework even before you were on the team," she retorted. "It's a miracle you scraped through with any O.W.L.s at all."

Fred and George leaned back with identical smirks of amusement.

"I did all right!" Ron was scarlet to the ears.

"Only because I took pity on you and loaned you my notes," Hermione said. "I won't do it again."

"You always say that," Harry said. "You never mean it."

"I do this time."

An eerie ringing chime cut through the amiable noise.

In the far corner of the dining room was a massive grandfather clock of such dark-stained wood and carved with so many crawling imps and slavering gargoyles that it might have been bought at Voldemort's rummage sale. Harry counted himself and Jane lucky that Kreacher hadn't tried to tip this monstrosity over on them. They might still be crushed beneath it if he had.

Its hands had been frozen at ten to midnight, its pendulums and gears motionless. According to old Tom, the proprietor, the clock had stopped at the exact minute of his wife's death, thirty years before. It only ever chimed these days, Tom had once told Harry in a ghoul's whisper, when someone in the building died.

It was chiming now. The tone vibrated in Harry's bones and chilled him from the inside out.

Around the room, everyone fell still and turned toward the clock. Tom had halted in the doorway, a steaming bowl of porridge in his hands.

"Ah, nuts, not again," he said into the hush. "You'd all best move along while I sort this out."

Mrs. Weasley hopped to her feet and did a lightning-quick head count around the table. She closed her eyes and exhaled in inexpressible relief that it wasn't one hers, or Hermione or Harry.

"Oh, dear, what's this, what's the trouble?" Mr. Weasley also got up and went over to Tom. "You're not telling me that's true, your story about that old clock?"

All around the room arose a babble of voices and the scrape of chair legs on floorboards as everyone abandoned their tables. The mood was a tapestry of curiosity woven through with a few threads of fear, and Harry saw more than one person glance anxiously toward the posters with the photos of the Death Eaters.

Then it hit him - Jane wasn't here.

"No," Harry said, so low that only Ginny heard him and shot him an inquisitive look.

From a side door came a shrill and piercing scream.

The room was a mad conflicting rush, some people trying to move away from the source of the scream, others toward it. Harry was one of the ones moving toward it.

The side door opened onto an odd little side courtyard, on the borderland between London proper and Diagon Alley. It was all of sooty brick and the walls fit together in angles and corners that somehow hurt the eye, or the mind.

Tom led the way, Mr. Weasley at his side and a cluster of people - mostly Gryffindors - at their heels.

On the steps that led down into the courtyard was a blonde-braided older girl Harry recognized as one of Cho Chang's Ravenclaw friends. She was on her knees with her hands over her face, sobbing hysterically.

Harry scanned the courtyard, but he didn't see any bodies crumpled on the bricks. At the far end was a second archway guarded by a wrought-iron fence, the space in the arch shimmering faintly. On the other side, Muggles passed back and forth, on foot or on bikes or in cars, never so much as looking through the arch thanks to a permanent Aversion Charm.

"There, there now," Mr. Weasley said, patting awkwardly at the girl. "Molly, could you ...?"

Mrs. Weasley pushed through the crowd. "Poor dear," she said comfortingly. "Can you tell me what's the matter?"

The Ravenclaw girl clutched Mrs. Weasley, sobbing harder. "Duh ... duh ... dead!"

"No, please, no," said Harry under his breath.

"What's happened?" he heard Jane say in a flat, dull voice.

He spun, and there she was in the throng, hair drawn back in the wooden snake ring, face pale, eyes so dark. But alive. Unquestioningly alive.

"Up there!" whimpered the Ravenclaw girl. She was shaking so that her extended hand and finger jogged all around.

Mrs. Weasley looked up. Her mouth fell open and the color drained from her face, leaving her white as milk.

"Mum?" Ron, Fred, George and Ginny said as one.

"Molly?" Mr. Weasley said.

She keeled over in a faint. Her husband caught her, and then took his own look up in the direction that the Ravenclaw girl had more or less pointed. His lips pressed down into a line.

"Bugger!" Tom said, staring upwards as well.

From his vantage point, still at the top of the short flight of steps, Harry couldn't see. Neither could anyone else, and they all realized this at the same time. There was a surge of movement as they all spilled into the courtyard, turned, and tipped their faces up.

Several of the girls screamed, and more than a few of the boys did, too.

Above them, a length of rope extended from one of the third-floor windows. The coarse rope was tied into a hangman's noose. Dangling from it, his head bent at a severe sideways angle, was Theodore Nott.

Nott's face was purple as a ripe plum. His tongue protruded, and spit dribbled from the corners of his mouth. His eyes bulged round and glassy. His hands swung slack at his sides.

The third-floor window was open, the rope emerging through it as if tied to the bedpost or some other heavy piece of furniture within. The second-floor window beneath Nott was a spidery web of cracks, as if his heels had struck the panes when he fetched up at the end of the rope.

Did it count, Harry wondered, to see a dead body? Or did someone actually have to witness the death in order to then be able to glimpse the elusive thestrals? If it was the former, two dozen more students would be able to see the otherwise-invisible beasts when they pulled the carriages from the Hogsmeade station up to the castle this year.

No, it had to be the actual death. Otherwise, everyone who had been present when he'd reappeared with Cedric Diggory's body in tow - and that was everyone at Hogwarts - would have been affected. He knew for a fact that wasn't true, because only a few of them had raised their hands during Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures class.

"All of you, back inside," Mr. Weasley ordered. "Hurry it up. There's no need to stand around gawking. Fred, you know the neighborhood, go and see about finding a healer -"

"It's a bit late for that, Dad," Fred said.

"Do it anyway! And you, George, get these children out of here. They shouldn't be seeing this. Ron, Ginny, help me with your mother. Lee, take this young lady inside and pour her a brandy."

Lee and the twins looked as stunned as everybody else, but absurdly flattered by being treated as adults in the midst of the crisis. They hurried to obey. Old Tom, meanwhile, had shoved his way back through the crowd and into the building, presumably going upstairs to investigate the room.

Harry, having been given no instructions, retreated with Hermione to the dining room with the other students and parents.

"I can't believe it," Hermione said. "Why would anyone hang himself on the first day of the new term?"

This was such a very Hermione thing to say that Harry couldn't hold back a harsh bark of laughter. "D'you think he should have waited until right before exams?"

"This isn't funny," she said, glaring icily at him.

He was on the verge of telling her about his recent encounter with Nott, but stopped himself in time. How would that look? Nott comes to Harry's room, threatens him, and then turns up dead? People might think he had something to do with it. Which was patently absurd ... though of course patent absurdity hadn't stopped half the school from deciding he'd been to blame for the basilisk attacks.

Nott certainly hadn't seemed suicidal, that was the thing. It bothered Harry. Nott had been angry, vengeful. Wanting to get back at Harry for the drastic downturn in his family's fortunes. He had not been despairing, and surely Nott couldn't have imagined that his death would hurt Harry's feelings or something. That was another absurdity.

The room was a babble of speculation. Some people hurried out to spread the word, and others, hearing it, crowded in to try and see for themselves. A few official-looking wizards showed up, and were escorted upstairs by Tom.

Fred Weasley returned with a healer. George marshaled the younger students into a semblance of order, taking advantage of his near-legendary status as one of the rebels who'd openly defied the hated Professor Umbridge. Many older girls flocked around the shaking blonde-braided Ravenclaw as she sipped at the large knock of brandy that Lee had poured.

After depositing Mrs. Weasley in a side chamber with Ginny to take care of her, Mr. Weasley went upstairs and Ron rejoined Harry and Hermione. The three of them drew back into a nook in the fireplace corner.

"What a madhouse," Ron said. "All for Nott, too."

"Ronald," scolded Hermione.

"What?"

"This is not the time nor place for puns."

"Huh?" His expression was so honestly baffled that Hermione relented.

"Never mind," she said. "I can't believe he did it."

"Look, can I tell you both something?" Harry asked.

Ron groaned. "I hate it whenever you open with a remark like that, Harry, I really do. It always means bad news."

He told them, in a hushed voice, about how Nott had paid him a visit. "I just think it's weird. The way he was talking, murder was more on his mind than suicide."

"Maybe he came to his senses," Ron said. "Realized that he wouldn't stand a chance against you. Opted for the easy way out."

"People have been saying he's been on the edge lately," Hermione said, gesturing around at the room. "Even so ..."

"Even so, he didn't sound depressed," Harry said. "Why would he kill himself? Why here, and now?"

"We'll never know, unless he left a note," Ron said. "Pity it wasn't Malfoy, though. But he'd never do the world the favor."

"Your attitude is abominable, Ron," Hermione said. "We shouldn't be joking. A boy is dead. A schoolmate of ours."

An expectant silence spread through the dining room, and everyone turned toward the stairs as the officials came down. Mr. Weasley was with them, his normally cheerful face grave. Tom, on the other hand, scanned the crowd greedily and seemed to be calculating in his head how good this tragedy - complete with chiming clock! - would be for his business.

"Did he leave a note?" called someone in the throng who must've been thinking along the same lines as Ron.

One of the officials, a thin wizard in forest-green robes, cleared his throat, but before he could speak, Tom waved something in the air above his head.

"Left this, he did! With his wand snapped in two and sitting on the pages to hold it open. Guess he thought it'd be note enough, at that!"

The object, fluttering in his grasp, was a copy of the Quibbler.

As everyone correctly surmised just what issue it must be, Harry felt the uncomfortable prickle of their gazes turning toward him.

**