A.N.: I'm onto writing (or rather, completing) chapter 36, so I thought I'd post a bunch more chapters! I'm having so much fun writing this fic! I may even finish it! I can't say that for any other of my stories except the one-shots! Tonks's toyboy, I love your name!
Please note the use of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and the amazing link I created between Harriet and a Clabbert! I was so impressed with myself when I thought of it!
S.P.E.W.
After dinner, Hermes dashed off to the library again, just as he had after every meal the entire week, and Harriet made her way upstairs with Rhona, who only spoke to say she guessed they should probably start working on their predictions for Professor Trelawney, if Harriet had her lesson with Dumbledore the next day, and neither of them wanted to spend precious weekend hours working for Trelawney, and Padfoot, who retained his dog form but kept giving Harriet very worried glances. They were early upstairs, early enough that Rhona could pick out their choice of worktable: she chose the one nearer the fire, by the sofa, so Padfoot could sprawl on the hearth without being too far away from them, close enough to listen to their conversation.
Upstairs, Harriet had offered to get Rhona's stuff upstairs while she kept their table, and Harriet found Norah, sitting alone in the dormitory. She was sitting in bed, propped against her pillows, with a large book open in her lap. She looked a lot calmer than she had done when Moody had performed the Cruciatus Curse, but, like Harriet, her eyes were red.
"Hi Norah," Harriet said, noticing her voice was still quite throaty. "You alright?"
"Oh!" Norah glanced up; she was smiling to begin with, then her eyes flickered over Harriet's face. "Yes, I'm fine, thank you. Are you alright? You look terrible."
"Rough lesson, huh," Harriet sighed, going to Rhona's untidy trunk and rifling through it for her Unfogging the Future textbook. Now that she looked at Norah—sitting in her bed, which was surrounded by Norah's plants (the bright marigolds were Harriet's special favourites of Norah's collection), Harriet realised she hadn't seen Norah at dinner.
"Why weren't you at dinner?" she asked.
"Oh…Professor Moody and I had tea in his office," Norah said. "He lent me this—" Harriet read the title of the book Norah held up; Magical Mediterranean Water-Plants and Their Properties, "and apparently, Professor Sprout told Professor Moody that I'm really good at Herbology." There was a faint note of pride in Norah's voice Harriet had rarely heard there before—the only time, actually, Harriet had ever heard Norah that self-confident was after tackling Remus' Boggart, their first Defence lesson of last year. Norah was rarely told she was good at anything.
"Well, you are really good at Herbology," Harriet said honestly, smiling, and Norah beamed at her.
"Professor Moody thought I'd like this," she said quietly. Telling Norah what Professor Sprout may or may not have said, it didn't matter, was a very good way of cheering Norah up; it was the kind of thing Remus would have done. "I think he might've wanted you to come and join us, because he was a bit worried about you," Norah said quietly, eyeing Harriet's face concernedly. "He said he wasn't quite sure he did the right thing in showing us all the Avada Kedavra curse like that without warning us what would happen."
Harriet nodded, and toyed with the dilapidated spine of Rhona's second-hand Unfogging the Future book. "It's what he used to kill your parents, isn't it?" Norah said quietly, and Harriet nodded, and turned to her own trunk, pulling out Unfogging the Future and her notes from last lesson.
"Well, me and Rhona are gonna be up 'til midnight working on Trelawney's predictions," she sighed, waving the books. "If you want to come down and sit with us…" Norah smiled and nodded, and Harriet went back downstairs, thinking of Remus, and wondering what advice he would have to give if she wrote to him and told him about Avada Kedavra. Rhona grumbled and put away the letter she was penning to her mother, and by the time she and Rhona had set up their things, the common room was crowded and noisy as usual; Fred and George were, as usual, at the heart of the commotion.
An hour later, they had made no progress, though their table was littered with calculations and star charts and sums and symbols on scraps of parchment and crumpled up attempts.
"I don't know what the hell this lot is supposed to mean," Rhona said, her eyes magnified because she had borrowed Harriet's glasses to read the fine print on her star-chart, and her hair was standing on end with a few streaks of ink because she'd run her blotted hands through it so many times. "Maybe it's time to get back to the old Divination standby."
"What?" Harriet asked, picking her head up off her textbook and blinking blearily at Rhona; she picked her little compact mirror out of her bag, tossed her contact-lenses into the wastepaper basket in the corner of the fireplace and slipped her glasses on. She pushed them up her nose. "Make it up?"
With a great sweeping gesture of her long arm, Rhona cleared their table, pulled out a fresh bit of parchment, dipped her quill in her inkpot, and started to write, her tongue between her teeth—"Next Monday, I am likely to develop a cough, owing to the unlucky conjunction of Mars and Jupiter—you know her, just put in a ton of misery and pain, and she'll lap it up."
Harriet crumpled up her fifth attempt and threw it over the heads of a group of second-years playing gobstones, and grabbed a fresh sheaf of parchment. "Alright…on Monday, I will be in danger of—erm—burns."
"Too right! We're seeing the Skrewts again on Monday," Rhona said darkly. "Tuesday…I'll…"
"Lose a treasured possession," Harriet said thoughtfully, scanning the index of tea-leave translations.
"Excellent—because of…erm…Mercury. You could get stabbed in the back by someone you thought was a friend," Rhona suggested.
"Good one! Because…Venus is in the twelfth house," Harriet scribbled. "And on Wednesday, I think I'll come off worst in a duel."
"Oh! I was going to have a duel! Alright—I'll lose ten galleons in a bet, and be beaten up on Thursday by the debt-collector," Rhona said.
"You could bet I'll win my duel," Harriet suggested, leafing through Unfogging the Future.
If there was ever a way to lift Harriet's mood, she had found it in making up ways with which she was to reach her demise. For the next hour, Harriet and Rhona continued to make up predictions for the coming month—which grew steadily more ludicrously tragic, until the point where Harriet was being drawn, quartered, disembowelled and then hung to death by a group of deranged Smoads who had "mistaken me for a—erm—
"A Clabbert!" Harriet laughed loudly, flicking through her old copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which she had tucked into an inside pocket of her schoolbag sometime last year and forgotten about. They threw their heads back, laughing, "because 'the pustule in the middle of its forehead…turns scarlet and flashes when it senses danger'," Harriet read out, roaring with laughter, Rhona paralysed in her chair, her cheeks shining, "because the Clabbert is the Smoads' mortal enemy!"
When Fred and George, who had migrated to a quiet corner of the common room half an hour beforehand, and who had been sat huddled together, poring over a piece of parchment, and who Harriet overheard saying, "No—that sounds like we're accusing him. Got to be careful…" went to bed, only Harriet and Rhona were left, and Sirius felt it safe enough to transform back into a human, grinning from ear to ear and picking up Harriet's predictions.
"Not going to have a very good month, are you," he grinned, his eyes twinkling.
"I'm forewarned," Harriet sighed, waving a hand expressively.
"You appear to be forced to remain bedridden due to menstrual cramps here twice, a fortnight apart."
"Have I? Oh, buggaration!"
"You haven't put anything about magic-crippling mortification at the hands of the man you love," Sirius remarked quietly, sitting down and handing her predictions back with a very sly smile. Harriet glanced at him shrewdly, and chose to ignore the glitter in his eyes.
"What do you—No!" The portrait hole had burst open, and they all froze, then relaxed, breathing sighs of relief; it was Hermes. In one hand, he held a sheaf of parchment, and in the other, a small wooden box whose contents scratched and rattled as he walked. Crookshanks arched his back on Sirius' lap, purring at the sight of Hermes.
"Hello!" he smiled. "I've just finished."
"Me too!" Rhona sighed, stretching and groaning luxuriously, after throwing down her quill. Hermes' smile was replaced by a wary frown, and he tugged Rhona's predictions up from the table. He glanced at Sirius, frowning at the older man.
"Have you been encouraging them?" he asked tartly, a hand on his hip.
"No," Sirius grinned, heat making his face glow. "They're bad enough on their own!"
"Yeah!" Harriet said indignantly.
"Stop being such an arse, Hermes," Rhona sighed, shaking her head. "We've been doing our homework. Where've you been, hm?"
"Hey, Hermes, how do you think I should fill the space between sleep-napping naked around the Great Hall and being shot by a quiver of the centaurs' arrows?" Harriet asked, sucking on the end of a sugar quill, a box of which Parvati's mother had sent to her this morning. Hermes just blinked at her, looking quite Professor McGonagall-ish.
"I know!" Harriet grinned, snapping her fingers. "I'll be the unfortunate victim of a love potion, in which the hair of a man whose head was transfigured to that of a donkey has been slipped into, and recover only in time to save myself from saying 'I Do' at our wedding!"
"Ah, if only your mother could say the same thing," Sirius sighed happily, his dimple winking playfully at them, as Rhona almost fell out of her chair for laughing.
"Here, Sirius, there's a copy of the Night Owl here if you want it," Rhona said, who had been digging through a pile of stuff a group of fifth years had left behind when they went up to bed. The Night Owl was a satirical publication which mocked Daily Prophet articles and tore the Ministry to tatters, which Harriet had greatly liked in months past, with regards to their articles on Sirius, which were almost as ludicrous as her predictions. Sirius grabbed Rhona's quill before Hermes had pointed out to Rhona that she was drowning twice, and started on the Nastily Taxing Crossword at the back of the newspaper with the satirical comic strips.
"Don't you think it's a bit obvious you've made these up?" Hermes asked, going over Harriet's predictions.
"How dare you!" Harriet hissed, jumping out of her chair, wand ready, as if she had been mortally offended and had to defend her family's honour.
"We've been working like house-elves here!" Rhona said, in mock-outrage.
"Well—I just meant—attacked by a swarm of Smoads! They don't even exist," Hermes tried to mollify them, but Sirius chuckled, shaking his head at the hopelessness of him being best-friends with two women.
"For all we know, they could do," Harriet said tartly. "Read the bit about the Clabbert," she said, tapping her parchment in Hermes' hand. She watched him mouth the wording from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and he rolled his eyes, looking mildly amused.
"Oh, yes, very clever," he said tartly.
"Fred and George thought so," Harriet said, as if that settled the matter. "What's in the box?"
"Funny you should ask," Hermes said, giving Rhona a look. He took the lid off the box and showed them the contents—inside were about fifty small badges that resembled Cedric's Prefect badge, all of which were brightly coloured, the shape of a tri-corn coat of arms, heavy and all bearing the same lettering—S.P.E.W. in gold or silver.
"Um… 'Spew'?"
"It's not spew!" Hermes said impatiently, glaring. "It stands for the Society of the Promotion of Elfish Welfare."
"Never heard of it," said Sirius, taking out a crimson and gold badge and examining it.
"Well, of course not—I've just started it," Hermes said proudly. Harriet caught Rhona's eye, and they both cringed.
"How many members have you got?" Rhona asked, smirking slightly.
"Well, if you two join, Rhona, Harriet, three," Hermes said. "I'd ask you, Sirius, but you're—"
"Supposed to be a dog," Sirius nodded.
"And you think we'd like to walk around Hogwarts wearing badges that have 'spew' on them, do you?" Rhona smirked, laughing softly.
"S—P—E—W! I was going to write Stop the Outrageous Abuse of Our Fellow Magical Creatures and Campaign for a Change in Their Legal Status—but it wouldn't fit. So we're the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, and what I just said is the slogan in our manifesto."
"I'm not getting involved in any socialist party, thanks," Harriet said, finishing off her retrieved predictions with her own death—by choking on her porridge during breakfast, due to a shock from a freak collision between two owls overhead.
"It's not a—Oh! You two!!" Hermes sighed heavily, glowering at them. "You're both joining. I don't want your excuses. You're my friends—friends support each other."
"So how come you wouldn't support me by buying me a new set of dress robes when I asked to borrow the money, hm?" Rhona asked, surveying Hermes with the air of one who is Holier Than Thou.
"The robes your mother bought you are perfectly fine, Rhona, all you need to do is use a Brightening Charm to make the lace a lot lighter," Hermes said huffily. "They'll look as good as new."
"Oh, really? Would you want to go out in public with me if I was wearing them?" Rhona asked tartly, crossing her arms over her chest. Hermes looked like a trapped rabbit, and Sirius snickered quietly, biting his smirking lips.
"Rhona, I have seen you covered in sweat, blood, slime, dragon dung and God knows what else," Hermes said contemptuously. "I hardly think those dress robes could put a damper on our relationship." Rhona's eyes were narrowed to slits, and she was giving Hermes a very Mrs Weasley-ish glare, which either Hermes didn't notice when he addressed Harriet, or he chose to back away from. Either way, he turned to Harriet.
"I've been researching elf-enslavement in the library—apparently it's been going on for centuries," Hermes said passionately. "I just can't believe no one's done anything about it 'til now."
"That's because they like it," Rhona said loudly.
"Our short-term aims," Hermes read, flicking his parchment flat with a flourish, "are to secure house-elves fair wages and regulated, S.P.E.W.-approved working-conditions. Our long-term aims include changing the laws of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures with regards to non-wand use, and trying to get an elf into the Department itself, because they're shockingly under-represented."
"And how do you plan on doing all that?" Sirius asked, looking mildly interested.
"We start by recruiting members," Hermes said, over Harriet's whisper of, "Don't encourage him!"
"I thought two Sickles to join, which pays for the badge and puts forward money to go to the leaflet campaign," Hermes said happily. "Harriet, you're Secretary, as you have the best handwriting, and Rhona, you're Treasurer."
"You're putting Rhona in charge of the money!" Harriet laughed, and Rhona tried to smack her with the collecting tin Hermes had shoved at her.
"Yes—well—Harriet, you'd better write everything I'm saying now as a record of our first meeting," Hermes said, beaming at her expectantly.
"Hermes…" Sirius said slowly, reading over Hermes' manifesto. "Have you ever been down to the kitchens?"
"No—I hardly thought students were supposed to—"
"Well James and I went down there at least twice a day," Sirius said, handing the manifesto back. "I think you'd better take a better look at the working-conditions some of the house-elves are under before you go off accusing everyone of mistreating their help."
"Their slaves—" Hermes began hotly, but Sirius overrode them.
"House-elves are not bought and traded like cattle, Hermes," he said sharply. "If that's what you think happens, you have a lot more research to do before you can take these aims public." Rhona was fidgeting with delight, her expression delightedly incredulous and loving at the same time as she glanced between Hermes and Sirius, who was perusing Rhona's predictions with a small smile. Hermes turned to Harriet, with an expression which was, at once, fiercely determined, pitiful and annoyed. She was forced out of guilt and friendship to part with two Sickles, but refused to wear the S.P.E.W. badge pinned to her chest.
Rhona and Hermes, still disagreeing over S.P.E.W., went to bed first, but Harriet stayed down in the common room with Sirius. She was ashamed to say she had almost forgotten that she had someone here to turn to for advice whenever she needed him; she didn't have to write to Remus about Avada Kedavra, though she knew she would anyway. So Harriet, very quietly, and speaking to her twisting hands, told Sirius about Moody's lesson—or the first twenty minutes of it she had seen.
"He showed you the Unforgivable Curses?" Sirius said dangerously, and Harriet nodded, wondering if she should have just waited to write to Remus.
"He said Dumbledore has a higher opinion than the Ministry of our nerves," Harriet said quietly. Sirius quirked an eyebrow thoughtfully, and nodded. He sighed, glanced at Harriet, and cradled her cheek in his palm, caressing his thumb over her cheekbone.
"And what do you think?" he asked gently, peering at her concernedly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. Harriet shoved her glasses up her nose and sighed miserably.
"I think someone should've told me what happened to Mum and Dad," she admitted quietly. Perhaps not Sirius, nor Remus—they were both still far too emotional about that night, about their friends, to tell her the facts straight up. But Professor Dumbledore—he should've told her. Maybe when he hadn't told her why Lord Voldemort had wanted to kill her, Harriet, maybe he should've told her why and how her parents had been killed. So she hadn't been so horrifically shocked today, when she saw it right in front of her on that spider.
"It's not something a lot of people have accepted yet," Sirius said quietly, his voice hoarse but gentle. His eyes glistened sadly in the firelight. "It was a horrible day, when they went away. James and Lily were very, very popular. A lot of people still can't comprehend that they're gone. It isn't something a parent would want their child to know—how they were murdered."
"Yeah, but it wasn't fair—he shouldn't—I wouldn't've—" He shouldn't have shown her like that, shouldn't have just assumed she'd want to know that way. Blunt, brutal: Matter of fact.
Sirius pulled her into his lap, securing his arms around her in a strong hug. Harriet had no memory of being hugged like this, as if by a parent. She snuggled closer to Sirius, nestling her chin against his shoulder, and swallowed the lump in her throat that had risen when she'd told him about the curse.
"Did you talk to Diggory about this?" he asked quietly, stroking her hair. Harriet nodded.
"Tried to cheer me up," she sighed, smiling slightly to herself as the vision of Cedric giggling and writhing because she'd been tickling him came into her head. Sirius, playing with her new S.P.E.W. badge (purple and silver) glanced down at her thoughtfully.
"You like this boy, don't you," he said quietly, glancing down again. Harriet felt her cheeks flushing, and Sirius nodded thoughtfully, discerning her blush to mean she did like him. "You smile a lot more often when you're talking to him."
"He makes me happy," Harriet shrugged, speaking honestly. Sirius made a thoughtful noise.
"He's easy on the eyes, too, huh!"
Harriet grinned, and she felt Sirius' chuckle reverberate in his chest.
A.N.: I do love Sirius being around. It makes so much more sense—why J.K. felt the need to have him live off rats in a cave when nobody but Dumbledore and the kids knew he was an Animagus I don't know!