EIGHT
At a special assembly in the morning, Hermione's original suspicions were confirmed as it was announced that an agent of Voldemort had attempted a security breech. The agent--unnamed, although it was made plain that it had not been You-Know-Who himself--had gotten as far as the sub-cellar before being apprehended, so yes, he had been in the school and yes, it was perfectly all right to have a moment of real panic. Said moment having been observed, it was then declared that all trips to Hogsmeade were prohibited for the remainder of the school year (groans from the student body) and students were to not to venture out of their dorms after sunset, with double points taken from anyone caught doing so and swift, merciless, non-negotiable consequences, up to but not excluding torture, for second offenders. After this ominous remark everyone was dismissed to first classes. Of course, after a proclamation like that, pursuit of higher learning was the farthest thing from anyone's mind.
Before Harry could completely escape the assembly hall, Dumbledore caught sight of him through the crowd. He nodded softly. Harry tapped Hermione's arm, told her to wait, and then proceeded to the headmaster.
"Those rules go double for you, Harry," said Dumbledore. "You know why, don't you?"
"Because whomever it was in the sub-cellar last night was trying to get to me."
"Yes. Fortunately we had heard that there might be such an attempt, although we never expected anyone to make such a bold move. Evensong stated that it appeared to be only a spy who was driven off easily. Outside school grounds, it might have been something worse. So no slipping out after dark. No midnight crusades, no espionage. Which is why I must ask you to give over the cloak."
Harry blinked a few times, hoping he looked sufficiently surprised. "What cloak?"
Dumbledore sighed. "The cloak that every teacher in Hogwarts has known about since I gave it to you six Christmases ago. You'll get it back at the end of the term, but for now I must ask that you hand it over. You can bring it to my office after class today. The password is 'chocolate frog'. If you don't, McGonagall will be in your room to confiscate it at seven o'clock this evening."
"Don't bother," he muttered. "I'll give it over, sir."
"Thank you, Harry, for being reasonable."
"Why didn't you tell me earlier, if you knew that Vol--You-Know-Who would be trying something this year?"
"Well, for one thing, we didn't want you to walk around in a bubble of fear all year, did we? Especially since we didn't know exactly what might happen, or when. In most cases it's best to err on the side of caution."
"So you hired on Professor Evensong as extra night security." Instantly he wished he could take it back. There it was, all his suspicions laid out in ten words or less. He did his best to make himself relax. On second thought he hadn't said half of what he thought he might have said.
Dumbledore only nodded. "Yes, we did. Evensong is very fond of you already, Mister Potter, and she's equally devoted to protecting Hogwarts. With her kind, that's a fortunate thing. You've no cause to be worried. Your safety is very much my highest priority." Dumbledore patted Harry's back. "Now go to class before Pontifus rips you limb from limb."
Harry headed glumly back to the main passage, where Hermione waited expectantly near the door, a puzzled look on her face. He filled her in on Evensong as they both headed through the Old Wing, then added the grim news of the looming cloak confiscation. She was so cheered by the former that the news of the cloak seemed to bounce right off her. Harry reminded himself to tell Ron, who at least would have the fraternal courtesy to commiserate.
"Then they are using Evensong as a watchdog, I knew I was right," Hermione said.
"I told you. Even when you're wrong, you're right. I almost feel sorry for the person she caught, whoever he was; he'll be deaf for life. We'll never know, though. They never tell us what really goes on around this place."
"I'll find out," Hermione said with such confidence that Harry looked cynical. "I have sources in high places. How else do you think I find these things out?"
"You have Hagrid, who tells us everything then tells us that he shouldn't have told us."
"Well, yes. But I have a few other tricks up my sleeve. You'd be surprised what information people are willing to volunteer when you look at them like this." Hermione put on a beseeching facade, pushed her reading glasses to the very tip of her nose. Her brown eyes glazed over to a mawkish puppy-dog shine. "Professor, couldn't you just tell me a bit more about what happened last night? You know I'll keep it absolutely to myself; when has your top pupil ever disappointed you?"
"You git!" Harry said, laughing. "I always knew there was something more to the good-girl act than trying to get better grades."
"Of course there is. You can't improve on perfection."
He was close to replying with something snide, but instead he shook his head and changed the subject. "Hermione, something's been bothering me. You know what you said last night, about the Aging Immunity ruling? How exactly does that work?"
"I don't know. And don't ask me to find out. You still owe me a favour for all the other research I've done for you lately."
On the verge of Harry reminding her that she'd taken on half the research of her own volition, Hermione took his sleeve and drew him to the edge of the corridor. Evensong was passing on the far side, going the opposite direction, talking in low tones to Madame Hooch. Harry had heard the two of them were getting close, but had never seen them together. Evensong had her hood drawn over her face; from this angle there was no getting a good look at her expression. Hooch, on her way to first period flying lessons, wore her usual black-and-white referee's robes, with a silver whistle on a long chain around her neck.
"Well, I must say his mood's definitely improved," Madame Hooch was saying.
"I've heard stories of his famous moods ever since I came here. Dumbledore warned me from the start that he'd try to run me out of my position. Why does he want the Dark Arts job so badly?"
"Because he'd be really good at it," said Madame Hooch archly. "You know he was connected with You-Know-Who's lot for a while."
"Yes, I know," she said, though her thoughts were obviously elsewhere. "Calpurnia, I don't understand why the controversy. I never asked the man to quit. I even told him I thought he should stay. But he said it was what he wanted. It troubles me. I almost could believe . . . . "
Evensong dropped to a more confidential voice as the pair of them continued down the hall, but before Hermione and Harry could get any nearer, the Draconian Army swept by with Malfoy at its centre, armoured within a tight knot of his cronies and his arm around his latest girl, Antoinette: a sleek, sharp blonde who resembled nothing so much as a particularly lethal breed of swan. Antoinette took most of the same Advanced classes as Hermione, and as far as Harry knew the two girls had the same sort of relationship as he and Draco did, albeit with more hair-pulling. Antoinette deliberately brushed shoulders with Hermione as they passed each other, just as Goyle knocked into Harry on the other side.
"Have a good night's sleep, Potter?" Malfoy called.
"Yeah," Harry muttered to himself. "Like Carrie had a good prom." The reference would have been lost on Malfoy, he knew, and with all the rest going on he didn't want to add Malfoy to his escalating list of Things to Avoid Like Plague.
Hermione let out her breath once Antoinette had safely passed. "Phew. And I've got to go to next class with that walking Sindi doll."
"About the Aging Immunity. Something's struck me as fishy about it. Snape is listed as having been teaching here for sixty years."
"All right, all right, I'll look it up. Catch up to me after classes, okay?" She tapped Harry's shoulder and started off down the hall. "See you in the Commons with the latest."
Without much hope, Harry headed into Arithmancy like a prisoner headed up the scaffold to the hangman's noose.
* * *
Evensong entered class swathed in her dark cloak, the hood drawn forward so that its purple shadow fell over most of her face. Her voice possessed a sharper edge than was customary, the brogue more abrasive and pronounced. For the first time since she arrived she did not immediately request that someone open the curtains, but went to her podium and launched into a vehement lecture on Hungry Grass (a round patch of grass, generally a dark greeny-blue compared to the surrounding area, caused when a victim of the Irish Famine fell dead of starvation, which drained the strength of any person who trod on it) and what could be done to counteract it (remove the victim to a safe location and immediately supply them with food, especially apples; burn over the patch of Hungry Grass with white-fire oil and sow the earth with salt). She had brought a cultivated sample of the Grass with her in a potting tub, and was looking for volunteers to be victims and rescuers. Needless to say, she got none.
"Come on, you lot. You are being graded for participation. Don't make me start calling you up." After a few more impatient taps of her foot, she shook her head. "Fine, then. You."
Her voice changed to that commanding, ringing tone as she levelled a finger at Julie Hulme, a nervous little midge of a thing and the shortest sixth year in Gryffindor, a good head shorter than even Harry. Julie jumped to her feet as if she'd sat on a hot stove, though she looked entirely uncertain as to what she was doing. "You're the first victim. And you, Mister Potter--" Harry's head lifted up from his determined please-don't-pick-me prayer. "--you can rescue her. Both of you, to the front. Now. The rest of you, watch closely."
Dead white beneath her thousands of freckles, Julie clambered onto the tub of grass. After half a minute, she started looking as if she was going to lose her lunch; a minute more, and she looked as if she hadn't had any lunch for about a week. Her knees buckled. She swayed back and forth before her eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled into a small heap of skirts, skinny limbs, and brown plaits. The class gasped in alarm, leaning forward--then burst into a round of applause.
Evensong held up her hands for quiet. "Under normal circumstances it would have taken nearly half an hour for Miss Hulme to reach her current state, as Hungry Grass in the wild suppresses the natural desire to step away from it. The longer the victim stays, the weaker she grows, and the weaker she is, the greater the desire to remain in the same spot. As you see, this patch is working much faster than normal, and its strength increases with every victim. I understand Professor Sprout's been feeding this one on rabbits for several months now. Mister Potter, move Miss Hulme clear of the Grass."
Harry linked his arms under Julie's armpits and lifted her about an inch before her whole body slumped, heavy as lead, and slid out of his grip. He tried again, then tried pushing her, then rolling her. Her slight body seemed as firmly lodged as a rock.
"Oh, dear." Evensong sounded worried. "Keep hold of her arms, Harry, I'll take her legs. Ready on three. One . . . two . . . . oof!"
With both of them straining on either end, Julie became barely transportable. They carried her to an empty chair, Evensong speaking calmly as they went.
"As Mister Potter has just demonstrated, the body of a victim seems to get heavier the longer it remains on the Grass. I didn't expect the pull to get quite so strong so quickly, or I would have had you removed Miss Hulme at once. Any creature trapped by Hungry Grass finds itself immune to a standard mobilicorpus spell, so it's important to lift or drag away the victim as quickly as possible. But, as we travel farther from the source, will you describe to the class what you are currently observing, Mister Potter?"
"Getting lighter," he said. "She's almost back to normal again."
"This is a sign that the victim is coming back around. Help me sit her in the chair, please." She snapped her fingers, and a dainty china plate of fresh apple slices manifested in her hand. She held the plate under the girl's nose, and the scent seemed to rouse her; Julie made a sleepy sound, eyelids fluttering. "Good rescue, Mister Potter. You may take your seat."
"Yes, Professor," he replied, settling Julie's arm into a comfortable position in her lap. Without thinking he glanced up at Evensong and for a moment saw directly into what lay beneath her shadowy hood.
Evensong's face was white--not merely pale as before but deathly, leprous white tinged with bottle green. Her mouth seemed caved in, as if there were no teeth behind the lips; the single strand of hair that fell beside her face had gone from snowy blonde to a straggly yellow-grey. Cavernous brown shadows deepened the hollows in her cheeks, around her temples, and her sockets of her eyes, and the eyes themselves were bleary-red with burst vessels radiating from the piercing blue-grey irises. He should have looked at her eyes first; they were bright as blood, staring directly at him, taking in his expression with wild, barely restrained anger.
"Take your seat, Mister Potter," she whispered.
From between them there was a loud whimper and both of them looked down just in time to see Julie's head loll backwards before her body glided off the edge of the chair to the floor--passed out yet again. Apparently she, too, had gotten a good look under the hood.
* * *
As the last toll of the six o'clock bell faded, Harry shut his book (Topsell's The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes--for Hagrid, of course), stood from his desk, and went to his trunk, where his cloak lay on top like a folded sheet of moonlight. He shook it out to its full silvery length and gazed on it in sad contemplation. "Moment of silence for my cloak, please, Ron."
Ron whipped off an imaginary cap and began humming 'Taps.'
"Ha-ha." Harry addressed the cloak. "Well, cloak, we've had some amazing adventures together whenever I could get Ron and Hermione out of my hair for ten minutes. [Ron stuck out his tongue.] We have travelled this ancient halls, old friend, and in the dead of night you have taken me to places that have lain unexplored and unexploited by any other Hogwarts student, except for maybe Ron's brothers. May you sleep comfortably in whatever dusty locked trunk Dumbledore intends for you, and flights of mothballs sing thee to thy rest."
"Amen," said Ron. "You know, you have a couple of hours left with each other. Shall I leave you two alone?"
"Nah. It deserves a dignified end, not the Holy Terror sending the prefect up for it. From my hands to Dumbledore's, and then . . . ." He folded it back into a bundle and sighed. "Well, I'll have it back for the summer, anyway. I can still terrorise Dudley." Folding the bundle over his arm, he started on the final long trek to Dumbledore's office.
"That's right, Harry, keep looking ahead." Ron bent over his books again.
* * *
Through the windows of Main Hall, the winter sky was fully dark. The enormous statues of Hogwarts professors long dead and gone lined the hall, narrowing it to an uncomfortable closeness, and their bizarre realism always gave the impression that they were all too aware of people passing between them. Rumour went that all these effigies has been crafted at great expense to offset the floor, which curved ever so slightly inward. It was never reassuring to know that the perfect equilibrium of several thousand tons of marble depended on the mad architects of Hogwarts. As he came up the path, a shadow flicker on the far wall, growing larger as it approached.
" . . . ask you for help? Did I ask you for anything at all?" It was impossible to mistake that clear, ringing voice for anyone else.
The nearest thing at hand was a twice life-sized statue of Lord Edward the Slightly Confused. Harry ducked into the niche between the statue's base and the wall and squeezed himself as far back as he could, just as Evensong moved swiftly around the bend in the corridor, dressed in white, the most visible thing in the dim hallway. As she passed his hiding spot, Harry saw that her eyes were closed, her lips pressed tight together; she was walking as fast as she could without breaking into a jog. The light was too gloomy to tell if her face had returned to normal, although it had that smudgy look around the hollows of the eyes that made him think it had not. If she hadn't been speaking as she approached, he never would have heard her at all; she moved like one of the house ghosts, as if she never touched the floors at all.
Close behind her followed Snape, who all but exuded a dark cloud of rage. With an extra lunge of speed, he caught up to her and seized hold of her wrist, forcing her to face him. She pulled her arm through his fingers as if he had tried to clutch a handful of fog.
"You were the one who said you didn't want to speak to me, so why are you still following me?" she said.
"I think I've said quite too much to you already. It's time I had a few explanations."
"I'm supposed to be on duty. Anything you want discuss can wait until morning."
He moved himself into her path, making it clear there would be no avoiding him. From the looks of him he might throw her against a wall if she tried to step away from him. His dark eyes caught a gleam of torchlight, turning them a pale orange. "You know as well as I do that nothing more will happen. We'll discuss it now."
They were drawing dangerously close to his spot behind the statue when Harry remembered he was carrying the cloak. Under cover of their conversation he drew it out and slipped it on.
Evensong's eyes narrowed. "You sound so certain of that, Severus. And you were first on the scene last night, weren't you? It's enough to make one think that you knew something about it."
"I did know something about it, and you of all people should know why."
"Which is why I thought you would use better judgement and be fashionably last instead of standing right next to me while the others filed in the door. Calpurnia mentioned it to me this morning, and Calpurnia Hooch generally doesn't give a toss for faculty gossip." She shook her head sadly. "He's using you again, Severus, the way he's always used you. Both of you. As long as any shadow remains on you--"
"You wouldn't be any better against him now than I was then, Yvaine. This is much bigger than the both of us. Surely you understand."
"I understand perfectly." She sounded contemptuous, and when Harry got a glimpse of her face in profile she looked so full of wild, ferocious pride it made him feel that his whole life was useless, that he'd not yet cracked the cover of a book she knew by heart. "Mortal folks playing games, that's what I understand. Shifting each other like pieces on a chessboard, risk a rook to take a knight, give up a knight to take a queen. And in between the poor pawns like that child run about and die for you. You and your potions . . . Dumbledore and his midnight missions . . . and him . . . you're all three the same, at the bone of you."
Snape cut her off short. "Watch what you say, Yvaine."
"The Fair Folk do not need all the bits and bobs you mortal wizard sorts seem to fancy," she said. "None of us have ever had a need for spells or wands or potions. They're traps, they're toys, they're nothing but trickery. When I was a child we made fun of those ridiculous humans who studied for years to learn a tenth of what we were born knowing. When someone who was still coming to his full power flubbed a simple pishogue or glamourie, we'd laugh and say perhaps he needed a few more years at Hogwarts--or Durmstrang, or Bride's, or whatever school seemed the biggest joke at the time. Why should we care? Why should we care for magic written in books when we are magic--when we are written of in books?"
"But, oh, we're not at all bitter," said Snape.
She seemed to come out of it at last. "Why do you think I took the Dark Arts position? I couldn't very well teach anything else. But you--you led me right in the thick of this mess. They warned me of you when I came here. I never should have trusted you."
"And I never should have trusted you, either. You promised me you wouldn't go meddling with anything I didn't care to share with you, and yet you did. Because it's in your nature." Snape towered over her, close enough to spit in her face, his voice growing deeper and louder as she shrank away. "If I had a Galleon for every time some bitch told me it was in her nature to do something, I could buy Gringotts!"
"Lower your voice." It was that tone again. She went on in a scalding whisper, "Besides, you told me yourself it wasn't time yet. If I'd been prepared I never would have sounded such an alarm. I could have called for you then and we might have--"
She paused in mid-word, her eyes flaring a pale red. Without hesitation she turned swiftly to face the exact spot where Harry crouched.
"Harry Potter is in that corner behind the statue," she said calmly. "Just there."
This caught Harry so much with his guard down that he stupidly opened his mouth to protest that he wasn't. He checked himself at once, sticking the side of his hand in his mouth and chomping down. Her nostrils were flaring; she must have smelled whatever everybody else seemed to smell on him.
"Doesn't surprise me at all, actually." Snape cast Evensong a look of such heavy significance that she bowed her head, looking ashamed. "You might as well come out, Potter. This concerns you too."
In the long silence that followed, Harry sat perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe too loudly, and wondering if there remained even the remotest chance of slipping past the both of them, if not back to the dorm then at least to Dumbledore's office. Before he could steel himself to move, Evensong cleared her throat and solved the debate for him. "Harry. Show yourself and come here."
Against that command he had no control. His hands unfastened the clasp, and the cloak slid from his back as he stood and stepped out of the shadows.
"That was unnecessary, Yvaine."
"It worked, didn't it?" Evensong's face was still haggard, though not so much as before, yet with a scowl on her face she was unassailable, terrible, every inch something that should be feared. It didn't help that she was still obviously fuming at Snape. "Harry, didn't I ask you to leave us alone?"
"I didn't mean to run into you. I was on my way to Dumbledore's office."
"I'd hardly call curling up behind the statuary 'running into' people. Accio." The cloak flew from its heap on the floor to Snape's outstretched hand. "And you felt the need to wear a Cloak of Invisibility to visit the headmaster?"
"I know this all looks bad, but Dumbledore asked me to give over the cloak so he wouldn't have to worry about my sneaking out after hours with the ban on. I only put it on when I heard you two coming because I didn't want you to think I was spying on you again." Irony, that.
"I see. A great chain of coincidence."
"Hush," said Evensong. Her eyes had gone from grey to red again, and her look reminded Harry of the time when he'd tried to use sunlight through a magnifying glass to set fire to a heap of shredded paper. At last she said, "He's telling the truth. Or at least, he's telling so much of the truth as to make no difference to the rest. You might want to tell him now, Severus, while we're here together."
Snape looked as distressed as Snape could ever look. A double crease settled on his forehead as his black brows drew together. "The thing in the sub-cellar last night was a Death-Eater. One that escaped detection for quite some time, actually, and a former student at Hogwarts when your father was still alive. One who knew the ins and outs of this place as only a student could."
"Tell him all of it," Evensong insisted.
"He doesn't need to know all of it," growled Snape. His arms drew across his chest, and his body seemed to fold in on itself, untouchable, like a panther. He addressed Harry again. "I warned Dumbledore earlier this year that the time was coming when this . . . this student . . . would attempt an attack. At the time I thought I knew exactly when and where, so that I could be there when it took place and stop it. But instead, Dumbledore hired Professor Evensong to protect you, and afterwards I caught her alone, told her about the attack in detail, and made her promise secrecy. I didn't know that would . . . change things between us."
In the silence that followed Snape turned away from the both of them. Unable to stop herself, Evensong placed both hands on his shoulders, only to have him shift a step beyond her reach.
"May I ask a question?" said Harry. He made himself look at Evensong. "Are you a baobhan sith?"
"No!" she snapped, as if it were a dire insult. Her eyes went red again, so bright they looked like molten gold. "Whatever led you to think such a thing?"
"Apologise, Potter," said Snape without looking up. "Yvaine is Seelie. You've just done the equivalent of asking her if she's involved with the Dark Lord."
"I'm sorry, Professor. I only wanted to know."
He could see her forcing herself to compose herself before she spoke, and even then her words had a deadly bite. "No. I am bean sidhe--a servant of my King, and Seelie blood. No more, no less."
"Then what did I see in the greenhouse?"
Snape answered sharply. "A Repellment. Which I was unaware she had decided to perform. So I must thank you for one thing, Potter--I had suspected Yvaine had used a Repellment on me, but as I had no memory of the event I didn't want to accuse her. When you told me what you'd seen, I knew for certain."
"Look, are you going to start in with that again? It was for your own good. If you hadn't stopped me--"
"Yvaine, I have warned you a hundred times about interfering where you're not needed. If I had wanted--"
"Shut up!" Harry raked through his hair. The last thing he wanted was Snape and his hellcat girlfriend tearing into each other in front of him; he could only imagine how nasty things could get if both he and she started firing curses. "Jesus, you two are almost as bad as Ron and Hermione. Get over yourselves."
Evensong looked terribly discomfited. Snape only mumbled something below his breath.
"Harry," she said, "the point is, the situation is over now. Snape had told me this particular intruder would only make the attempt once. I was able to hold him off. You are safe. Anything you might be thinking of doing can only cause unimaginable damage, and could get one, both, or all three of us killed."
"I wasn't thinking of doing anything. If you two want to be left alone, by all means, have fun. I'm not interested in you, but I am interested in anything that involves Voldemort--"
Snape cleared his throat.
"Sorry, You-Know-Who, with him trying to kill me. Basically, everything you've just said means nothing to me because I have no idea what you're talking about." He might as well have been speaking Gaelic, for all the attention they paid him. At least if he'd been speaking Gaelic, Evensong would have noticed.
"Your friend Miss Granger has been walking around lately with the Registrar of Teachers," said Snape. "You may already suspect that something's amiss with the pattern of things here at Hogwarts. I am asking you not to try to figure anything else out. It won't help you to know, and it won't change anything."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Don't go stirring up the past. It's dead, it's done with. There's nothing you can do to change what's gone on before. And if I catch you trying to alter anything, so help me, I will do my best to make sure you are removed from this school and sent back to live with those wretched relations of yours for the rest of your life. And I'll see to it you are never taken back into the wizard world again--ever. You won't be able to get within six feet of a wand without the Ministry of Magic breathing down your neck."
"Are you two deaf or something over there? I haven't done anything, I don't intend on doing anything, and even if I was, I wouldn't do it now because something's out there trying to kill me--again."
Snape sighed, and the two of them stepped away, excluding Harry as completely as if he'd left the room hours before. "I told you, Yvaine. Useless. It's got to happen, because it has already happened. And it's got to come to him naturally or it might disrupt things more."
"I should have known better," she agreed. "I suppose he's going to have to go on with it. We'll have to make certain he doesn't close the flow. Can you handle that?"
"We'd have to let Albus in on it. No doubt he'd be able to think of something. I dread telling him though; he's going to wonder why I didn't say something sooner."
"Tell him the truth, then."
"See?" said Harry wildly. "You're doing it again. Why is it that every wizard in this school knows more about my business than I do?"
Snape gave Harry a bemused, are-you-still-here look. Incredibly, he appeared to be smiling, although it could have been a trick of the light. "Because we're more equipped to handle it. Everything is inevitable, Potter, even the inevitable. You'll learn that directly."
He cupped his hand on Evensong's hollow cheek. "I'd best start working on the Transtempulary potion, then. You'll need it soon enough. I do wish you'd let me handle this, Yvaine."
"You can't," she said. "The last thing you can risk is letting him see you. Time's no matter to me; I'd not be taking such a chance as you would be."
"You're stubborn."
"I'm stubborn, you're stubborn, the world is full of stubborn people. As my students would say, deal."
Over Evensong's shoulder, Snape's caught Harry's eye and gave a small, circular motion of the head that said, clear as the words, turn around and face the wall a moment, won't you? Harry smiled and shook his head no, but politely averted his eyes for the few moments needed for the two of them to say their goodbyes.
As Snape left, Evensong's eyes followed him. One thin, ghostly hand crept up to cover the spot where his hand had rested, as if she were holding in his warmth, and kept it there long after he was out of sight. She spoke as if in a trance. "Were we really behaving so badly, Potter?"
"Afraid so."
She chuckled, more to herself than to him, and more to the absurdity of the circumstances than anything. "I do care for him, you know. I don't know what it is. Sometimes . . . he just seems to brush me the wrong way, do you understand how it is?"
"I have been acquainted with the condition, on occasion," he replied soberly.
She gave him a smile, a real one, warm and open. On her ravaged face it looked ghastly: a smiling skull, a corpse with teeth. The moment passed, and she became a professor yet again. "I really shouldn't be discussing this with you. You're still a boy. Give you a few years to fall in and out of love a few times and you'll understand what's going on."
As she spoke she gathered her hood in her hand, shaking it free of her braid, and covering herself with it until all that could be seen was her mouth and chin.
"What happened to your face, Professor?" Harry asked softly.
Evensong reached beneath the hood, touching her face with deep regret. "Nothing happened to my face. This is how I've always looked. The face I put on for the students is nothing but glamourie--faerie illusion, so that no one runs screaming in the other direction while I'm trying to teach a lesson. Last night in the sub-cellar . . . . the friendly neighbourhood assassin struck me with a spell, thinking he could kill me."
She gave a little chuckle, as if these memories were richly amusing, but her stance was withdrawn and unfeeling. "He didn't know he what he was dealing with, so he aimed the spell at my glamourie. It missed me entirely but dispelled the charm. Moonlight will heal it, but the moon is waning just now, and I'll have to wait another two weeks to look normal again." Her voice belied her tiny smile. "But Severus doesn't seem to mind me so, and he's the only one I'm concerned about. I am sorry, though, Harry. About the Repellment. If I'd known you were so near . . . ."
"I've had worse." After facing down Voldemort, lesser injuries took on a new perceptive. "I'm sorry I thought you were a baobhan sith. I didn't know it would hurt you."
"If I'd seen what you'd seen, and not knowing, I'd have thought the same of me," she said. "But that's water under the bridge. I can't believe a man would be so stubborn about such a little thing. I see it in his eyes, Harry. The power leeches from him, steals his sleep. And yours too, I would imagine. You two are very much alike, in some ways."
Which, if true, was the worst insult he'd ever been paid, but he could not say such a thing to her. Watching them together had softened him to Snape.
"Why Snape? Why of all people Snape?"
She said nothing for a time, for so long in fact that Harry was unsure she'd heard him at all. When she spoke, the words came slowly. "'When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with the night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.'"
She swirled away, a dervish in white, and turned the corner before Harry could move from the spot. By the time he thought to follow, she had disappeared
* * *
Hermione was in the Commons when he returned from delivering the cloak--thank God, because without it he had no way of sneaking into the girls' dorm to fetch her. Another one of those huge unwieldy books of Gaelic made a dent in her lap; near her right hand sat a quill, inkpot, and a scroll half-covered with vocabulary words that did not involve playing tennis.
"Any word on the sub-cellar?" he asked.
"Nobody was much up for the cute act. I thought Evensong was my best bet, but she was in such a foul temper this morning that I could only assume she was having the painters in. I didn't dare get with arms' reach of her to ask. I got a little out of Hagrid, though. He said that whoever it was had been driven back the way he had come by the time he and the other teachers got there. And then he told me he probably shouldn't have told me that."
"So whatever it was is still on the loose?" She nodded. "Possibly still in Hogwarts?" She nodded again, more slowly. "And people are still letting me wander around loose? Does everyone here just want me dead?"
"You being dead would save loads on their security costs. Dementors one year, a baobhan sith the next--it adds up. If electricity worked here they could just install motion detectors."
"She's not a baobhan sith. Please don't ask for the whole story; I'm too worn-out to be coherent." He dropped into a chair and rubbed his temples. What Snape had told him still echoed in his head. Something was amiss in Hogwarts . . . something in the past that couldn't--shouldn't--be altered. Hermione managed to unload her book from her lap and thunked it onto the desk with a groan of relief.
He looked up. "Hermione--that book from the library. The one with all the teacher's records."
"The Registrar of Teachers? What about it?"
"Does it have anything about student enrolment? Who was here when, when they graduated, anything like that?"
"No, but I know where that one is. I can get it for you easily when the library reopens."
Harry nodded slowly. Already he was thinking that perhaps he couldn't be bothered to wait for the library to finish de-mothing. "Another question. How good are you at Arithmancy?"
"Top of the class." A touch of the old Hermione pride came back.
"Good. Maybe you can answer me this." He leaned in close to her. "How could Snape have been teaching here sixty years when he was a student in the same year as my parents?"
Situation not withstanding, Harry got a good bit of grim satisfaction from the look on Hermione's face just then. For once in her life, she didn't have a single thing to say.
