THREE

Now, thought Harry, if I were two wizards in love, where would I go on a stormy night?

The invisibility cloak did wonders for keeping him invisible; it did nothing for keeping out the wet. The fierce storm tapered to a dull drizzle, but Harry had been caught in the thick of it. The cloak was like a damp carpet thrown over his shoulder, making it hard to breathe, and his glasses clouded up several times before he recalled the opaquetis finis spell that had proven so useful to spectacle-wearing wizards since the beginning of spectacle history. Slowly the glasses un-fogged.

Hagrid passed about two feet away, dressed in brown oilskins, stepping silently out of a bank of fog like a ship at sea. Fang followed. As the dog trotted by he stopped, snorffled in Harry's direction, and gave a happy whine. The dog would have found Harry by scent alone, and no doubt would have begged the boy to play, if Hagrid had given a shrill whistle to send him jogging along again. Mentally Harry wiped his brow and heaved a sigh of relief.

The first stop was Hogsmeade, which seemed the logical choice. Rain ran in the gutters, from the rooftops, and the old-fashioned gaslamps raised a garish yellow haze on Hogmeade's narrow main street. Every time Harry came here by night he nearly expected to see Sherlock Holmes headed one way and Jack the Ripper headed the other. It was just that of street. Only one spot--the Leaky Cauldron--was still open at this hour, filled wall to wall with merrily drunken young leprechauns trying to pick fights with merry and equally drunken young goblins. Hardly the place to take a lady friend. A quick look round proved that they weren't there.

Harry began to feel slightly foolish. Sixteen years old and running around to spy two professors on a date, risking expulsion or murder at the hands of Snape or at least a bad head cold. Foolish and impulsive, risking all that just to show off. He was curious about Evensong and Snape, but more than that, he had wanted to impress Ron by going out and doing something daring and impressively stupid, just to win points in his friend's favour. That wasn't worth getting expelled for, either. And it was Snape, after all, who hardly seemed worth any of the above. Plus the fact--and he felt this more and more--that if Professor Evensong and Snape really were out doing something . . . intimate . . . Harry didn't want to know. The last thing he needed at this point in his life was to start seeing all his professors as human beings.

He checked down all of Hogmeade's main streets, so at least he could tell Ron he'd made the effort, then headed back toward Hogwarts. Water soaked into his sneakers, causing froggy-sounds as he walked.

Maybe they really are in love, he thought, walking up the muddy path toward the school. That might actually be nice. That would also put things safely in the realm of being None of His Business. Snape in love would mean a preoccupied Snape, a Snape with other things on his mind than the systematic destruction of the spirit of every student who passed through the doors of Potions class. Unless she broke it off with him, in which case Snape would be more loathsome than ever.

Without warning a bolt of lightning cracked the clouds and sizzled down, shearing a limb from the old oak that Harry had practically been standing under. He jumped, then ran up the path, just as the rain began pounding down, flecked with bits of sleet that stung even through the thick cloak. One icy ball caught the back of his hand hard enough to draw blood.

He looked around frantically for cover, bouncing on his heels to stay warm. If he'd been on the other side of Hogwarts he could have taken refuge with Hagrid; even as a professor Hagrid probably wouldn't report him to McGonagall. Probably being the pertinent word. His only other options were the Forbidden Forest and Professor Sprout's greenhouse. In other words, he had only one option, because be damned if he would go into the Forest again.

Another lightning bolt slammed to earth hard enough to tear up clods of soil, and the sound of it filled his ears and his head and his scar with the whining crack of electricity. He bolted for the greenhouse. Please, let Professor Sprout have forgotten to lock up again.

One hand rubbed his scar, which tingled in the same way a nine-volt battery tingles if you touch it to your tongue: a dry, icy burn. The close brush with lightning had woken it up. Fate was kind, and Professor Sprout was as distracted as usual. As luck would have it, she had cast a weatherproofing spell on the glass roof after last winter's hailstorm; instead of striking the roof, the ice and rain was repelled from it, running in torrents down the walls, and lightning tended to curve to one side. It would be dry and safe, if not warm. Harry scurried in and slammed the door behind him.

"What was that?" said a voice.

Harry whirled around, startled enough to forget about being invisible. The dark shape of leaves, of trees, the sweet smell of flowers and the dry dusty odor of lavender and thyme overwhelmed his senses in a way he never noticed in class, when there was only miles of fusty plants to label and memorize and remember in Latin. Now the smell was somewhere between a damp cardboard box and a fruity breakfast cereal--not exactly a bad smell, but an overpowering one. He was alone, breathing hard. The cloak was miserably damp and his fingers went to his throat to unfasten it.

Suddenly the dark leaves stirred, and a glimmer of lantern light shone through briefly before branches fell together again and hid it.

"I was certain I heard the door." The tall lean figure of someone who could only be Severus Snape drifted like a black paper cut-out into Harry's range of vision. Snape stepped over some ceramic pots, knocked one over, and cursed. Harry dropped to his knees and fought to keep his breath under control as Snape drew closer. The professor rattled the door handle, then turned the inside lock.

"It was just the storm, love," said a sweet, husky woman's voice. "Come back to me. I'm cold."

Oh no, oh no, Harry thought. Please be discussing school matters. Please be discussing school matters.

Snape lingered a moment, drawing close enough to the glass door that a flash of lightning lit his thin face from the side. "I see it. It got the oak at the bottom of the path."

"Then come back." Yes, it was quite definitely Professor Evensong: that rich banshee's voice.

She sounded so small, so beseeching, that Harry wanted to grab Snape by the collars and shake him, demanding he go back to her. The more he thought about, the more it seemed like a good idea, and the more he thought about it being a good idea the more it seemed like the only possible course of action. It was all he could do to hold himself back, telling himself firmly, over and over again, that there were many less painful ways to commit suicide and once he was out of here he could try any one of them he liked--anything but let Snape know he was here. Harry shrank into his small place, wedged between a Japanese forgetfulness tree and a Whomping Willow so young it was barely able to do more than flap a branch at him before yawning and curling back to sleep.

"It's the students," Harry heard Snape say. "You never know what they'll get into around here. You'll learn soon enough: every time you hear something, find out at once what it is. I've had to keep a silence spell on my rat, just to keep from mistaking him from a noise in the passageway."

"Hush. Don't be silly. No child in its right mind would be out on a night like this."

That's the truth, Professor, Harry thought, shivering from damp and cold.

"There's always the chance, darling. It wouldn't have to be a student. It could be Filch, or the groundskeeper. Anyone." He sounded odd--nervous, almost hunted.

After one last, penetrating look over his shoulder, Snape paused, reached into his inside pocket, and produced a cigarette case and a lighter. Acrid smoke cut through the greenhouse smell.

Snape chuckled. "Forgive me for saying so, Yvaine, but I think the best part of this will be telling Dumbledore I'm leaving."

Harry flinched at Evensong's dark, rolling laughter, which seemed to big for that white, fragile body. Investigative journalism suddenly lost its charms, and all he wanted to do was get out of here undetected and in one piece.

"Are you sure you want to do this now, Severus? I have time. I can wait. Waiting is nothing to me."

"I don't have your time, Yvaine." His voice was sharp, but sad, almost unrecognizable. "I've been here sixty years--I've got a decade over McGonagall, and that's saying something. I can't put it off forever. I want you now, while I'm still young enough for us to have time together."

"Oh." Something in her sigh made Harry want to cry for her. "Oh, my Severus. I forgot. I always forget."

"Don't forget." That tone Harry recognized from class--it was the one Snape tended to save for students like Neville Longbottom.

"Don't be upset." That dark laughter again. "Come here to me, love. Come."

There was thunder, a great persistent boom that shook every pane in the roof. Harry cringed. He would have risked making a run for it then and there, but a new sound crept through and over the storm--a low, musical crooning sound without words. It was . . . it was like the purring of a mother cat. No, it changed again; now it was like a single humming note on a violin. It changed again, twice more, and suddenly Harry knew the song. He had known it all his life, but had forgotten it. It was here again; he never needed to be separated from it any more.

His mother's voice.

Hushabye . . . don't you cry . . . go to sleep my little baby . . . When you wake . . . you shall have . . . all the pretty little horses . . . .

Harry cried out, stumbling blindly toward the source of the sound, filled only with a desperate, inarticulate cry: Mother, Mother! But his cry was smothered by a deeper groan from the throat of a grown man. Snape. In pain.

Harry shoved aside bushes, pushed over pots recklessly, not caring about the noise. In the mellow light of a lantern Evensong held Snape in her arms. She pushed back his head, lowering her own mouth near his, as if for a kiss, then let it hang open and waiting above him. That weird humming sound went on, merging into music, to words, to the waver of a cello.

A halo of darkness, like silk under water, slowly drifted from Snape's nostrils and mouth. Evensong made a delighted sound and Harry heard her sharp inhalation as the blackness--whatever it was--flowed out of Snape's and into her. Evensong's white-blonde hair hung loose and floated wildly around them like sea anemones. The humming throbbed in Harry's breastbone, in his head, his scar was throbbing, and it wasn't the lightning anymore. Snape made that horrid low groan again, but Evensong's song rose to drown it out.

Harry collapsed between his potted plants again, sobbing in absolute silence, hunching his shoulders and racking under the force of barely constrained screams. He heard his mother, singing a cradle song she must have sung back then, before she was killed. He wanted her badly, more powerfully than any other time in his life.

He wanted his mother.

* * *

Thunder boomed again, softer this time. The storm had almost passed over. Against the windows the grey dawn light turned the lawns of Hogwarts to pearl.

Harry stretched himself. His knees were weak from so long spend in a cramped position. For a moment he thought he was back in the cupboard under the Dursleys's stairs; he remembered how often he woke up there thinking his legs would never uncurl themselves. Then he smelled lavender, saw the light through the ceiling. He remembered where he was, but not why he was there. He knocked over a pot as he stood.

Then he heard a moan. "Oh God . . . my head."

"You fell asleep, Severus. I didn't have the heart to wake you."

"God. It must be five o'clock in the morning. I have class in four hours."

"Will you tell him today?"

"I . . . yes. Yes I will."

He saw them standing, silhouetted by the faint light: Evensong with her hair floating around her knees, Snapes stroking the pale line of her cheek.

"We must go back. I've got class in four hours too, I suppose." She yawned and stretched, prettily, like a cat.

A cat? Last night, before he dozed off, wasn't she purring? And singing at the same time? No, that had been a dream, his mother . . . .

Snape leaned , pressed him lips to Evensong's. Her hands crept up, and the hair on the back of Harry's neck rose as she began to murmur again. Not that sound again, not that singing again. But she was only whispering something: some endearment, or just goodbye.

It was all the motivation Harry needed: as soon as the two professors were out the door he was up and gone, flying back to Gryffindor like a shot.