FOUR
Harry crawled to bed at five-thirty in the morning and by avoiding breakfast was able to sleep until fifteen till nine. He dragged himself out of bed, stuffing last night's muddy clothes under the bed ruffle so that the boys' dorm housemaid Honorah Flunce (b. 1630-d. 1666) wouldn't find them and bring up the matter with the head housemaid Nancy Reilly (b.1477-d.1505), dressed in his work robes and headed downstairs, late for sixth form Arithmancy. Professor Pontifus gave him a hard look, but since he had not yet called role Harry was able to slide into his seat without comment.
Second period Harry slipped early into the empty classroom, forehead on his desk, and slept for what felt like an hour but was in reality about fifteen minutes before the doors banged open and Professor Trewlaney began demanding homework. A little puddle of drool had formed on his desk in the meanwhile and unfortunately his rather nasty Slytherin seatmate chose to put his elbow in it. Apparently he assumed Harry had done it on purpose. All through the period Harry found himself being pinched on the hip and upper arm until he whispered a countercharm to stop it.
Third period he sought out Hermione.
"What is it, Harry?" She whisked off her reading glasses and tucked them away. "I'm nearly late as it is."
"Ten minutes early is nothing like being nearly late. I want you to tell me everything you know about banshees."
"Can it wait? I've got to get to Defense Against the Dark Arts. I want Professor Evensong to check my thesis statement. Better still, you might ask her between classes. She could tell you anything you wanted to know."
"I don't want to ask her. I don't want to come within twenty feet of her. Can you live without your lunch today?"
"Sure. Harry?" She brushed aside his black bangs and laid her wrist on his temple. "Harry, are you feeling all right? You're very warm."
Professor Evensong drifted by with her graceful, almost noiseless tread, dressed in simple white robes trimmed in blue which brushed against the stone floor with a ghostly whishing. A sweet, cinnamony smell hung around her hair and robes,. For some reason the smell reminded Harry of breakfast. "Good morning, Miss Granger. Good morning to you, Mister Potter."
"Good morning, Professor." Under cover of proximity Hermione nudged Harry into grunting a sound vaguely like 'hullo'.
"Oughten you best be getting to your class, Mister Potter? The bell's in five minutes." She reached out as if to rumple Harry's head--a temptation Hermione had to resist several times a day, as Harry's hair all but begged to be rumpled--then hesitated, smiled, and turned to Hermione. "I'm looking forward to delivering today's lecture, Miss Granger. I'm sure you'll find it interesting."
"I'm sure I will, Professor."
The two of them stood aside as Professor Evensong swept into class.
Harry's voice was deeper and more urgent than normal. "I'll meet you in the library at during the lunch hour. At our regular study table."
"Ah," she said brightly. "The darkest, most dubious-looking table in the shadows at the very back wall next to the Grimoires Best Left Unnamed shelf?"
He gave her a pale, grim grin, wiping his face with the back of his hand. "That's the one. Bring your books. And your notes. And anything else you can think of."
"Harry!" But he was walking away. "Harry! What have you got next, Magical Beasts? Skip it and go to the hospital wing. You're white as a sheet."
If he heard her at all, he didn't turn around. Hermione shook her head, donning her reading glasses once more. "Silly boy." And headed into class.
* * *
Harry waited in the library for close on forty minutes before Hermione--puffing under the weight of several large volumes, clutching a sheath of papers between her teeth, and with her player and headphones attached to her belt-made it to the back table. Harry made no move to help her as she wove and swayed across the room with her load. The whole pile fell with a bang on the study table, and Hermione refrained from a scalding remark as soon as she got a close look at his white face and the grey hollows under his eyes.
"I've brought everything, but Harry, I really think you need to see Madam Pomfrey. You're definitely coming over with something."
"Probably," he said, and coughed. "Spent most of last night out in the rain."
"Whatever for?"
He shook his head and, taking the topmost book from the pile, opened it. The page was a selection of fifteen-letter-long words containing no consonants and surrounded by random accent marks.
"Oh, don't bother. It's in Irish Gaelic." She patted her tape player. "That's what this is. Professor Umlaut of the Foreign Languages Department gave me a recording to help me research my thesis. Learn Seventeen Magical Tongues At Once in Only Five Days." She cleared her throat and spoke in a perfect Irish accent. "Bim ag imirt leadioge. I often play tennis."
"I hope you've gotten farther than the tennis-playing bits, otherwise you're not going be much help."
"You said you wanted to know about banshees, right? Ahem. 'Banshee' comes from the Irish Gaelic word bean-sidhe, meaning 'faerie woman.' The term has been widely if inaccurately ascribed to a type of evil or Unseelie faerie that should be properly referred to as 'baobhan sith,' a hideous and haglike faerie who delights in tormenting mortals and who is not related to the true banshee. The most common myth is that good or Seelie banshees attach themselves to specific mortal families and sing requiems if a member of their family is about to die; however, thanks to recent scholars we now know that banshees are territorial, and are in reality attached to places and the individuals who reside there, rather than the individuals themselves. And that's as far as I'm going without an explanation."
"Do banshees ever leave their territory?"
Hermione ran her thumb and forefinger across her sealed lips, then pretended to lock them at the corner and throw the key over her shoulder.
"Oh, all right." Harry dug both hands into his hair. "I decided to follow Snape and Evensong last night."
"You what!"
The librarian shhhed at them. Hermione dropped to a fierce whisper.
"You what? Harry, how could you?"
"Look, Hermione. If I've learned anything in the past six years it's that when Snape does anything shady, one of us has to keep an eye on him. It never fails to pay off, and this time it paid off in spades."
"And if I've learned anything in the past six years it's that when Snape has done anything shady it generally ends up saving your life. What is it this time?"
In hushed tones he explained how he'd gone looking for Snape and Evensong in Hogsmeade, turned back in the storm, and gotten shut into the greenhouse with them.
"And then?" Hermione sounded disgusted.
"Then . . . " He pressed his temples, trying to think. All that came back was the sense of something dreadfully wrong. "Then I don't know. I thought . . . all I remember is that my mother was singing."
Hermione glanced away, looking sad and vaguely guilty, as if she were somehow responsible for having both parents when Harry didn't.
"Harry," she said softly, "are you sure you didn't fall asleep?"
"I did fall asleep, but that was later. It's like there's a big black spot in my head where the memory should be."
A big black spot . . . a pool of darkness billowing on the air like black silk under water . . . and his mother's voice.
A shiver of cold enveloped him, as if he had walked into a draft. He pulled his robe tighter around his body. "I was under the Japanese forgetfulness tree. Might that have anything to do with it?"
"They're all dormant now. Their pollen is only potent for a few days in high spring. I can't believe you followed them! Harry, why?"
"I'm damn well glad I did. Something's going on. Snape said he was going to tell Dumbledore today that he was leaving school. What attracts a banshee to a territory, anyway?"
"High concentrations of magical energy. Magically inclined people and families. In fact, the true banshee has the property of replenishing magic in a depleted area, which is why they're so valuable to our magical ecosystem. I found that out researching my thesis."
"Yes, but do they ever leave once they've found a territory?"
"There's a ceremony called a laying which can be used if the banshee is disturbing or troublesome. The Bath and Wells incident is a famous case wherein a banshee attached herself to a particular mudblood bishop who was unaware that he possessed any magical abilities. The bishop concluded he had an evil spirit. She left only after an unsuccessful exorcism convinced her that she was unwanted."
"Would Hogwarts be considered an area of concentrated magical energy?"
"You bet your life it would. An area with all these students and teachers, all those creatures in the Forbidden Forest, herbs and potions and spells going off every minute, why, it's positively crammed--" She broke off without warning. "Harry. I don't like where you're going with this."
"Is it possible Evensong's attached herself to Hogwarts? Or to Snape?"
"If she has, then Snape is the safest now that he's ever been. Banshees don't harm people they've attached to; they try to protect them. They can be fiercely loyal, loyal enough to kill anyone who crosses them. I half-expect that's why Dumbledore hired her on to begin with: extra magic to ward off You-Know-Who now that he's on the prowl again. Harry, you look really bad."
Harry touched his face, right next to the scar. His brow had broken out in sweat, and his bangs and sideburns were drenched with it.
Hermione reached out and laid her hand on his. "You need to go to the infirmary, Harry."
"I need to go to class. It must be nearly time. No, damn it! I've got Evensong next. I'm not going anywhere near her until I'm certain what she and Snape are up to."
"Oh, come off it, Harry. She's not going to blast you in front of an entire classroom of witnesses. Besides, you wouldn't want to raise any suspicions until you know for sure, right?"
"You're just trying to keep me from missing a class."
"Too right, I am. Schemes and plots come and go, but demerits go on your permanent record."
He gathered up half of Hermione's books while she took up the rest, and they walked quietly among the tall stacks toward the library commons.
"What about this other sort of faerie--bayvan shee?"
"Baobhan sith," Hermione corrected. "Oh, they're entirely different. They're--look out!"
It was as if the books he carried suddenly gained an extra hundred pounds. They tumbled out of his arms, and Harry collapsed on top of them. A nearby Slytherin shrieked. At the other end of the library Professor Bailia heard the clatter and rushed to kneel beside him. She touched his wrist for a pulse, then laid her hand to his face, observing his dead-white clammy skin.
Close to tears, Hermione paced the floor beside him. Students were gathering round from all points of the library. "I told him earlier to go see Pomfrey. He was out in the rain all night. He's probably gotten pneumonia!"
Professor Bailia turned her dark face toward a pair of Ravenclaw boys. "You two. Go to the hospital wing. Fetch a litter and Madam Pomfrey. And run, don't walk."
As the boys burst out of the crowd and made a race for the door, Bailia shook her head at Hermione. "No, my dear. It's not pneumonia. Looks like this lad's been upwind of a very nasty curse."
