Girl Most Likely

Girl Most Likely
by LizBee

Ladies and gentlemen, the second act. In which the plot grows murkier and darker, and just a little bit denser. Okay, a lot denser.

When we left our intrepid hero, Harry was standing guard over Severus Snape's unconscious daughter. Hours before, he had saved her life in an attack on Diagon Alley, and he has just received a note suggesting that the attack was really aimed at Snape ... who is in France, and out of reach.

My Intrepid Crew of Betas has had an addition: Aashby, author of the lovely Snape/OC fic "Brave New World".

Act 2
You are a little mystery to me

Chapter Six

Time slowed as Harry stared at the note in his hand; it felt like hours had passed - though surely it was only a few minutes - when the guard returned and put his head in the door, looking worried.

"Mr Potter? Uh … these wards have been strengthened-"

"I've just increased this patient's priority standing. I may have duties to attend to. See that she's not left alone."

"Yes, sir." The young man took up his position on the other side of the doorway. Harry settled down to wait.

Hours seemed to pass before Lilith woke, but it was only just gone four when she stirred and opened her eyes. She betrayed no sign of emotion or vulnerability as she looked around, though there was a flicker of relief when her eyes met his.

"Potter," she breathed, "what happened?"

"There was an attack on Diagon Alley. You were in the centre of it."

She sat up and stared at him intently. "You saved my life."

"Not really."

"You threw me away from the blast. I remember." She hesitated. "Thank you."

Well, you're a damn sight more gracious than your father, Harry thought. "I have reason to believe that you were the target of the attack." He showed her the note. She paled as she read it, her fingers clenching around the parchment.

"Why would anyone do this to me?" she demanded, "What could possibly be in it for them?"

"I don't know. Revenge rarely follows normal logic, I've found."

"Is my father safe?"

Harry tried to sound reassuring. "Well, the hospital has been unable to contact him--"

"He could be someone else's prisoner. Or dead."

"No. This attack on you was obviously meant to hurt him. Whoever's behind this wants Snape alive." He made a mental note to have someone track Snape's old associates in the Dark Order; surely someone among them had the capacity for this. Few had survived the Fall of Voldemort, but of those who did, many had fled to Europe.

"What about Aunt Arabella?"

"Her injuries were more serious than yours. I'm told that she'll make a full recovery in time."

"'In time'?"

"A matter of weeks," Harry said quickly.

Lilith hugged her knees, looking younger than fifteen. The earlier unsettling image of womanhood had been replaced by a scared little girl.

"What will happen to me?" she asked finally.

"Nothing. I won't allow it."

"You can't promise that." Now the cynical teenager had returned; he couldn't fathom her at all.

"I'll protect you. I'll enlist the Coterie - the entire College if I have to."

"You don't even know what you're protecting me from."

"Anything. Everything. To the death, if necessary."

Her smile was a tremulous attempt at coquettishness, more endearing for its failure than its intent. "That won't be necessary, I hope."

"So do I. Your father would derive far too much satisfaction from it, and I doubt I'd have the pleasure of haunting him."

Their shared amusement was interrupted by the clearing of a throat. Ron stood in the doorway, an odd expression on his face.

"I've just been taken off duty," he said to Harry, "stopped in to make sure you're okay."

"Fine," said Harry, oddly annoyed by the invasion. "This is Lilith," he added unwillingly. "Lilith, this is Ron-"

"Weasley. We've met. I can see that Mr Weasley didn't pass my greetings on to you."

"No," said Harry slowly, "he didn't." He raised his eyebrows at Ron, who shrugged.

"Had a lot on my mind." He ignored Lilith, dislike radiating from his very pores. "The press are going mad over the attack - the WWN's saying it's connected to the Weather Mages. Hermione's livid - says there's no connection."

"She's right." Harry handed Ron the note.

"Bloody hell. When'd you get this?"

"An hour ago. Had a close encounter with an Invisibility Cloak. Looks like owl post's not good enough for these chaps."

"Lovely." Ron looked at Lilith. "First an intruder, now a postman. You've certainly found the right Auror for the job - Harry comes with his own Invisibility Cloak."

"Intruder?" Harry asked.

"Last week," said Lilith. "He was going through Dad's office. Aunt Arabella was looking into it."

"Damn. She won't be conscious for a few days." Harry ran his hands through his hair. "Lilith, do you have any idea what they might be after?"

"No. None."

Harry glared at her as she concentrated on her blankets. He was annoyed, but unsurprised, that she'd kept the secret to herself; her father was notoriously self-sufficient. Especially when he's hiding something, Harry found himself thinking.

"Ron," he said, "I need a word."

Out in the corridor, Ron spoke before Harry had a chance.

"Are you out of your mind? You can't just promise the protection of the College - we're Aurors, Harry, not bodyguards! The rules--"

"The College will let me do what I want."

Unwilling to discuss the issue, he turned, ignoring Ron's calls as he walked away. Harry ducked around a corner and opened his battered old backpack. A search of the outer layers revealed only a change of clothes, his wallet and some month-old Everyflavour Beans. Swearing, he abandoned the crowded hallways and, finding a bathroom, locked himself into a cubical.

Transfiguring his backpack back into an Auror's trunk was a pain - he'd have to replace all the weight-lessening charms before he could return it to its altered form. Next he had to spend a good ten minutes searching through the inner chambers. He was ready to give up and go home, when he found the tools he was seeking.

Turning the trunk back into a backpack and fixing all the charms - there had to be a way to make them permanent; he'd ask Hermione next time he spoke to her - took another fifteen minutes. Finally, checking the last of the clips and clasps, he straightened up.

It was time to break into Snape's house.

***

In the absence of residents, the Snape home seemed even colder than before, and faintly forbidding. It had taken Harry nearly two hours to deactivate the anti-burglary wards around the house, backbreaking work while he was concealed in his Invisibility Cloak. The years had obviously not lessened Snape's paranoia, and now he had Arabella egging him on.

Harry wasn't sure what instinct led him to search this house, except for the nagging sense that he needed more information. Something about Lilith tickled his senses, made his hair stand on end. He'd gotten pretty good at recognising Darkness over the years, and it was all over her. Now was the time to consider his instincts, before familiarity blurred his perceptions.

The rooms downstairs were largely unchanged from Harry's last visits, aside from a plate sitting in the sink, and a notable lack of Dark books.

Upstairs, Harry found three bedrooms, a spare, a master bedroom, and Lilith's room.

Snape's room was sparse: a neatly made double bed with a dark blue eiderdown and a pile of books on the nightstand.

Lilith's room was more revealing. Harry had been in exactly two teenage girls' bedrooms in his life. Hermione's room had been as much an office and library as a sleeping space, although it was overlaid with a sense of disuse from her years at school. Ginny's room was shabby, warm and comfortable. The Weasley jumper of interior decoration, she called it.

Lilith's was similar to both rooms, but different at the same time. Posters and pictures covered most of the wall-space: sullen rock stars with artfully messy hair falling into their eyes, and miserable, pouting women posing with guitars or pianos. Quite a few appeared to be Muggles, though the current wizarding fad for still photography made it hard to guess.

Every flat surface, including the unmade bed, was covered in books. Textbooks, notebooks, novels … Muggle novels, too, Harry noticed. All were dog-eared.

Music, Harry found, were almost as plentiful as books, with equal emphasis on Muggle work. Harry wasn't familiar with most of the artists, but he knew the genre, moody alternative rock. He found a Sony M-player on the desk, stamped with the tiny m that indicated it had been approved for magical charms.

Beneath a green and silver muffler, he found half a dozen copies of Pandora, the feminist witch's journal that Morag MacDougal had started in their seventh year. The January 2012 issue contained an article by Hermione: Witch-Queens versus Mothers of the Muggle-born: Myth, repression and anti-Muggle sentiment. Unsurprisingly, it was over Harry's head.

In the lowest desk drawer, concealed beneath an old Viktor Krum figurine and a signed photo of Oliver Wood, Harry found a cache of notebooks. None had been charmed for privacy. The notebooks were part diary, part fiction. The earliest was dated 2003, but gaps abounded. Either Lilith took long hiatuses between diaries, or the rest were missing.

Fragments of childish poetry vied with scribbled rants -- Billy said that my nose is ugly, I HATE him and if he weren't a Muggle I'd curse him if I had a wand - and notes for stories. Harry was no judge of literature, or child development, but he guessed that Lilith had been fairly precocious. Occasionally, there were comments in Snape's handwriting: this is good, that could be improved, pay more attention to punctuation… The comments became more caustic as she grew older, and Lilith had sometimes responded in kind: a father-daughter argument, preserved in handwriting.

The preponderance of Muggle material was explained by a collection of photos tucked into one notebook: Lilith in Muggle school uniforms, or at birthday parties with Muggle children. Not even a peach party dress could make her seem less solemn or strange.

Makes sense. Send the child of two Death Eaters to Muggle schools, make her mix with Muggle children... He wasn't sure it was necessarily effective - Tom Riddle had grown up in a Muggle orphanage, after all - but he could see the point. Harry entertained a brief, amusing fantasy of Snape dropping the child off at school, lingering with the other parents, hosting birthday parties...

But no, Mrs Figg had probably done all of that. Snape had taken no time away from Hogwarts for his child.

The last thing Harry found in Lilith's room was a shoebox of letters from Snape, beginning when she was very young. The earliest were formal and awkward, but the last ones, sent in the year before she started at Hogwarts, were didactic and honest, if unforgiving of Lilith's faults.

I do not wish to discuss Harry Potter, read one. That he is a powerful wizard no one can deny, but I will not have you embracing blind hero worship like one of the dunderheaded adolescents I teach. Think critically, Lilith: the Final Battle was a great achievement, yes, but Voldemort's forces had been all but decimated in previous weeks, and Potter certainly had nothing to do with that.

"Nothing" was an exaggeration, Harry thought with a touch of indignance; hadn't he duelled Lucius Malfoy? Hadn't he trapped Goyle Sr. in a cave, ready for the Aurors to take; hadn't he injured MacNair?

Snape went on, I am immune to the alleged romance of Harry Potter, his brilliant career, his fairytale marriage, his loyal friends, his noble parents. Potter is a man, not a Messiah.

Harry replaced the letter, feeling oddly dirty. He knew about Snape's attitudes, of course, but it was strange to see them committed to paper and transmitted to the next generation.

If you go around snooping in other people's mail, you deserve everything you get, he told himself, and went downstairs.

Potter is a man, not a Messiah…

I'm glad someone got the bloody message.

Harry had saved Snape's study for last, but it was an anticlimax. Snape's Dark Arts library had grown since Harry had seen it last, but it was all kept under the protective charms required by the Ministry. The Dispensation for Academic Study, issued from the Auror's College in Enid Zabini's hand, was in a file, along with tax paperwork and potions recipes.

He doesn't know that Lilith can break the charms, Harry decided. Carefully, he replaced everything he'd moved, and then used a charm to remove any trace of his visit.

Aurors made the best housebreakers. In the early Middle Ages, they'd been thugs and standover merchants as much as Dark Wizard catchers. A sensible wizard would pay a small fee to the College, to stave off accusations of Dark Magic.

What a fine tradition you follow, Potter. Torturers and thieves.

I'm not a thief. There's nothing I want to steal.

Not yet.

On that last, unsettling thought, Harry Disapparated.

to be continued