Harry Potter and the Gift of the Seraphim or Curse of the Stars

Chapter 5- Of Truth and Secrets

Neville used to be the self-doubting one of the Fifth Years, but he hoped that that would change. As of today, he decided, everyone will know why the sorting hat chose me for Gryffindor. I’ll show them all. Concealing his emotions, he put on a bright grin as he heard Seamus walked into the dormitory, all smiles and incredibly rumpled.

"Why, Neville, what are you doing awake?" he asked cheerfully, throwing open Neville’s curtains. The cold shoulder he had been throwing Neville had apparently been forgotten.

Surprised at his friendliness, Neville checked his Muggle wristwatch his fourth cousin had bought him. "Seamus, do you have any idea what time it is?" He watched as the energetic boy shook his head ’no,’ sending his sandy brown hair askew all over his head. While Neville was staring in disbelief, wondering how anyone could have so much energy at 9 o’ clock in the morning without having slept the whole night! "It’s 9 in the morning, for Merlin’s sake! Where have you been all night?" As Neville peered at Seamus scrutinizingly, he thought he saw a smudge of purple lipstick on his cheek and shirt collar.

"Where I’ve been is classified information, mate," he announced, slapping Neville on the back as an old pal might. As he sat down on his perfectly made-up bed, he patted the covers. "But let’s just say I didn’t need this last night."

"So where did you sleep, in the Common Room?" Neville asked, rising from his bed. He bent down on all floors and crawled underneath his bed, looking for his shirt he reserved for Saturdays.

Seamus laughed. "Of course not, I haven’t done that since third year. But let’s just say that I found a more comfortable bed to sleep in last night."

Startled, Neville tried to lift his head and hit it on the underside of the bed. "You mean to say," he asked doubtfully, "that you’ve spent the night in someone else’s bed?" He looked up at Seamus from the ground.

Again, Seamus laughed. "Yes, that’s exactly what I meant, my dear naïve friend!" he said, becoming excited again. He bounced off the bed and whipped off his cloak, which was buttoned improperly.

Neville became agitated. "I am not naïve."

"Sure, sure, whatever you say," said Seamus in a careless tone. He took off his shirt and headed to the bathroom. But he was obviously preoccupied, and instead of going in the direction of the bathroom door, he headed to the dormitory entrance. As he put his hand on the doorknob, whistling merrily, it suddenly opened, pulling Seamus with it as it swung backwards.

"Woah," cried Harry, catching Seamus as he swung past. Seamus, however, was still inattentive and continued with his whistling. He did look up, and saw Harry grinning down at him.

"Hullo, Harry," he greeted him, righting himself. "I seem to have taken a wrong turn. I was looking for the sinks."

With a wide grin of amusement, Harry replied, "Yes, I think you may have. Usually, they’re the other way, opposite this door." Smiling still, Seamus said thanks and took the right path to the bathrooms. Unable to resist, Harry called behind him, "Who’s made you so happy, Seamus?"

Seamus turned around and stuck his head out of the bathroom, through the door. "You love Lavender too?" he asked happily. "Well, I don’t blame you. She’s wonderful." He then closed the door, and all you could hear was the running of the showers and an occasional whistle.

Chuckling, Harry made his way to his bed, not noticing Neville sitting on his looking extremely scared. This had been his expression around Harry ever since his confrontation with him more than two weeks ago. He hadn’t said more than two words to him either, except the occasional "excuse me" or "thank you," when Harry passed (or rather, threw) him something in Potions. It hasn’t been so bad there lately, though, because Professor Snape was said to be ill and there had been a different substitute every day for almost a week now; he wasn’t able to partner them up on purpose.

Harry sat on his bed and began to read a letter that Neville hadn’t noticed was in his hand before. He studied Harry’s expression as his smile turned to a thin line of worry. When he was done reading the letter, he threw it down on the bed and opened up his trunk, using five different unlocking charms. Neville strained to hear the passwords and incantations, but Harry whispered them so quietly Neville almost hit his head on the side rail of his bed, which he was still underneath, trying to hear.

After Harry had grabbed his Firebolt, he turned to leave the room. Sighing with relief, Neville squirmed out form underneath the bed. His first intention was to finish dressing himself, but while he was pulling his pajama top over his head he became entangled and stumbled sightlessly around the room, bumping into things and knocking items over. Finally, he tripped, and fell. Luckily, he landed on something soft. Unluckily, he realized it was Harry’s bed. Damn, he thought. Do I have to be plagued by bad luck? He yanked the top off of his head and scrambled to get himself as far away from the bed as possible. In his haste, he knocked the discarded letter off the bed and onto the floor. Throwing a quick look at the door, he cautiously picked up the letter and slowly began to unfold it. If there were anyone in Fifth year that would have a cursed letter, it would be Harry. Feeling more at ease as the seconds passed and nobody burst into the room, he began to read the letter.

And that was as far as Neville got. Suddenly, the door flew open and Harry stormed in. Petrified, Neville dropped the letter and tried to force a look of nonchalance about his face. When he looked at Harry’s angry expression, he was certain it hadn’t worked and that he was once again caught. But, to his surprise, Harry didn’t stop to look at Neville, who was in such close proximity to his belongings. Instead, he whisked past him and swept the letter up from the ground, not noticing it had been moved from his bed. As he stood up, he gruffly told Neville, "Excuse me," shoved him a bit, and stormed back out of the dormitory. Neville was pushed off his feet and flew back into a nightstand just as the door slammed. Wincing in pain as he stood up, he was all the more determined to show everyone who he really was. And the first person to see would be that stingy Potter.

"Galadriel, please stop! We need to talk!" cried Severus Snape as he watched the woman with long red hair storm out of his dungeon. "This may be our last chance!"

Abruptly, the woman turned around. "First of all, let’s get things straight. I am not Galadriel to you, I am Professor Fletcher and you are Professor Snape. Secondly, there is no "our." The only thing we share is the Potions class, and I am assuming this is not what you want to discuss. And third, we do not need to talk. I have spoke all I need to say to you for the rest of my life." She turned to leave once again, but once more turned around. "Also, Professor Snape, I have just realized I am not the one who needs to be exiting this classroom. Don’t you have a Portkey to catch at noon? I have a class to prepare for on Monday, and your bags are packed. You are the one who needs to be leaving."

Snape didn’t not move, or even blink. Finally, he took a deep breath. Listen, Professor Fletcher," he said delicately. "I don’t think I can leave this room without us talking about what happened."

"What happened, Severus?" Galadriel asked meanly. Snape just sighed. "Oh, that!" she said, feigning surprise and innocence. Quickly, her voice changed to one of malice. "When you became a Death Eater?" She smiled sweetly on the startled Potions Master.

"What in the world are you talking about!" cried Snape, nervously glancing around. Taking a step closer to Galadriel, he whispered harshly towards her. "We are not to speak of that condition unless we are in a secure area with just cause!"

"Oh, but Severus, this is just cause, and I can’t think of a place more secure than Hogwarts. After all, this is what you wanted to talk about isn’t it? Why I left you?" Not even giving him a chance to answer, she continued to talk. "Well, look on your arm. There’s reason number one why I left you Severus. And that’s just one out of many."

"Please, Galadriel, I don’t want to drag up the past again. I just want to talk peacefully with you before I go," pleaded Snape. He backed up and shut the door softly. "I need this before I leave."

"Fine," said Galadriel. Severus looked startled at her agreement. "I’ll talk peacefully, and you can listen." Assuming that was better than nothing, Severus took a seat at one of the student desks and prepared to lend an ear.

She started out softly. "I thought I loved you, Severus." As if he had been hit, Snape recoiled in the desk. The first words were the words he had dreaded most. If he had known she was going to start with that, he would have been the one to storm out five minutes ago. Not noticing, or maybe deciding to ignore his reaction to her first six words, she continued, as quietly as she had begun. "When I first met you, I was a young, impressionable witch from America. I had never had any real guidance and I foolishly clung to the first person that seemed to accept me. Unluckily, it turned out to be you.’

‘You took me under your wing, so to speak, and I didn’t need anyone else. You were everything to me, Severus. After six months, I moved in with you. You were gone all the time, but it didn’t matter, When you were there, I was fooled into thinking you loved me.’

‘Finally, the day came that I had been waiting for. The proposal. I was so excited that I spit out the ‘Yes’ before you finished the question. For a few days, I was in seventh heaven. Living out every girl’s dream- planning a wedding, my fiancé had a steady job with great money and we were supposedly in love. Ha," she scoffed. "I was deeply disillusioned. The day came when you took me to se your ’work.’ ‘I work for a great man,’ you had said. ‘The best on Earth.’ ‘Dumbledore?‘ I asked. That is who I had heard was the greatest man on Earth. Is that when you had betrayed him? I don’t even want to know. But, then I met him. Voldemort." Galadriel spit the name out like it was a poison on her tongue. "This was your great leader? A murderer? But I loved you, Severus, and blindly I followed.’

‘My initiation was to be the day before or wedding. ‘Two simple tasks,‘ you said, ‘and you shall belong in the greatest union ever to be created.’ I was proud, Severus, because you seemed proud of me. Then I got to the ceremony.‘

‘You were there. You know what they made me do," said Galadriel, her voice escalating with everyone. Severus just sat, concentrating on her with rapt attention while he listened to her monologue. "You know what they wanted, Severus! They asked me to-"

"Stop!" cried Severus, overturning the desk. He held his hand out. "Stop!" he repeated. "I’m leaving, Galadriel. Maybe we shall never meet again." She didn’t respond; she just looked away, a tear shining in her dark green eyes. She blinked, trying to hold it back, even as more rushed to the tip of her lash. Tears were weakness. She brushed them away with the back of her hand as she watched Severus leave the dungeon.

As he passed over the threshold, he whispered to himself, "I thought I loved you too."

He tried to walk as quickly as he could to the front doors. He had no good-byes to say to anyone, his goal was just to leave as quickly as possible. That’s why he groaned when he saw Ginny Weasley reenter the school through the two doors. Even if she did not talk to him, she was bound to spread some rumor about him when the students finally noted his absence.

To his relief, the annoying Weasley child did not speak. Instead, she rushed past him, eyes overflowing with tears. She was headed straight for the Slytherin Common Room, whether she knew it or not. It didn’t matter; he was leaving anyway. House Points and disputes were no longer his troubles. Voldemort was.

As he walked down the steps, he was bowled over by Hermione Granger, looking furious. She was so angry she didn’t even see whom she had knocked over and she didn’t care. She pushed open one of the large doors and fled up four flights of stairs to Gryffindor Tower. When she got there, she locked herself in her room. On the verge of tears, she flung herself underneath her covers, shoes and all, and cried herself to sleep.

"Harry!" A voice could be heard distinctly through all the Saturday night chatter in the Common Room. "Harry, over here!"

Harry half slid, half pushed his way through the large crowd as he made his way to Ron’s table in a secluded area of the room. "Have you seen Hermione at all?" he asked as soon as Harry had pulled out a chair.

"Not even a good day? You haven’t seen me since breakfast but all you can think about is Hermione."

Ron brushed off the teasing. Usually they were fighting words, almost anything about Hermione was, but he was acting unusually serious. "I haven’t seen her since breakfast either."

"So? You weren’t worrying about me, were you?" If Ron keeps this up, thought Harry, I think I’m going to feel a little neglected.

"I’m not sure," said Harry, leaning back on his chair and putting it on two legs. "I only have one idea." Ron leaned in closer. "We could use the invisibility cloak and sneak up there."

"Brilliant idea!" cried Ron. He grabbed Harry by the arm and started to pull him to the circular staircase that led to the boy’s dormitories. Harry had to yank a bit to grab his Firebolt, which he had laid on the table. He was dragged up the stairs and then thrown on his bed, where he tried t nurse his wounded arm.

"Ron are you crazy?" he asked, giving his friend an annoyed look. "This is my catching arm! You’re on the team, you know how important it is!"

"Sorry, sorry," said Ron dismissively. "But hurry, find your cloak!"

"Find your cloak, find your cloak," muttered Harry underneath his breath in a singsong voice. He pulled his wand out of his pocket. "Alohomora," was the first of the five spells. He then said another simple locking charm, a French variant of Alohomora. "Admetezz." You had to have the correct accent or all of the charms would return, and you would have to start form the beginning. The third one was a secret password, "Socks," he whispered into the lock. You could hear a clicking noise as one of the bolts moved back. Number four was fitting his wand into a specially made keyhole, sent from France by Remus. The last one he had made on his own. He had pasted a small picture of a snake on his trunk, right above the lock. Concentrating, he imagined the snake to be moving. He slithered "Open," in Parseltongue, and the lid of the trunk gently popped up. At the same moment, so did Ron’s head.

"Harry!" he said. "What are you doing?"

Harry motioned toward his trunk. "Following your orders, Ron."

"No, not that," Ron waved his hand. "You were speaking in Parseltongue!’ His eyes were wide. He knew Harry was a Parselmouth, but he wasn’t very comfortable with it.

"It’s just an unlocking charm, I made it myself," said Harry as he rummaged through his messy trunk. He knew the invisibility cloak was somewhere near the bottom.

"That can’t be one, Harry," said Ron emphatically. "You can‘t just come up here talking like a snake any old time you want to. It’ll start rumors again."

"So?" asked Harry, still searching for the cloak.

"But now no one can get in but me. I’m the only Parselmouth at the whole school," Harry reasoned.

"Harry, nobody else wants to get in!" Harry gave him a skeptical look. "Well, nobody would know the other passwords anyway. You’ve been a bit paranoid since the whole Neville thing, haven’t you? He’s learned his lesson, I think. Maybe we could be a bit nicer to him too."

Harry triumphantly threw the invisibility cloak over to Ron, who watched his legs disappear underneath the once silvery cloak. "Maybe…If he learns to stop snooping around." Harry shut his trunk, replacing only four of the charms, leaving off the Parselmouth one. "I meant to show you this letter Sirius sent me earlier. It’s one of the reasons why I was out flying today." He reached into his cloak pocket to retrieve the letter that had been balled up in frustration. Just before he passed it to Ron, his expression changed to one of fury. "Ron!" he cried. "We have to kill him!"

"Kill who?" shouted Ron back in confusion. "Harry, what in the world are you talking about?"

"He knows," said Harry, his green eyes wild. "Neville knows about Sirius."

To be continued…