I do not own Harry Potter, he, and all his affiliations, belong to J.K. Rowling.
Chapter 22: Half and Half
Harry, Hermione and Ron accompanied Hagrid and Tainn as they led Tilt back to a small shed that had been set up for the Pegasus' use during his stay at Hogwarts castle. It was put together like, and very much resembled, Hagrid's own hut, and had a sense of unexpected permanency about it.
Hagrid did not need to inform them that paddocks would be useless, but he did tell them that Tilt was well trained and would not stray far from the castle grounds. At least, so his owner had assured him.
" Shay tol' me tha' shay took 'im 'roun' tha edge o' tha grounds, so 'ee'd know where they were bein'." He gave Tilt an affectionate pat as he passed. "Smart li'l bloke."
Tainn listened as he slipped off the well-groomed, though still dumpy looking, Pegasus' halter and hung it on a peg, then retreated to an affectionate butt of the head before Tilt turned to a manger filled with mash that smelled strongly of honey.
He was a dainty eater, Harry noticed, taking little bites then chewing them thoroughly, his eyes on Harry and his friends as though asking them if they didn't have anything better to do than watch him eat.
Tainn trotted over to the wall where a set of dark gray robes were hanging, and made a face when he pulled them down off the peg. They smelled of hay and horse.
Tainn didn't seem to mind the aroma as he pulled them on, only that he was more comfortable in his own casual clothes. But they were too muggle for the great hall. He still didn't bother with the shoes though, and padded lightly beside the students and Hagrid as they made their way back up to the castle.
Now that class was over, he seemed a little antsy, alternating between chattering with the others and glancing around in quick, jerky movements.
"What's the matter?" Ron asked curiously, "You're making me nervous."
Tainn grinned at him, though he was smiling like a crocodile with a toothache. "Full moon already."
"But you're not..." Hermione protested, her eyes wide.
"Just makes me a bit jumpy, somewhat temperamental. Mood swings you know." He passed a hand across his forehead, and peered at it as though surprised to find it damp. "But not until the moon is up. Still it's rather nerve-racking."
Hermione had the strangest little smile on her face, but Harry was cautious to ask about its source.
"Wha's all this yere?" Hagrid boomed, having expressed his joy over seeing Harry and the others alive and well earlier.
"Why, didn't anyone tell you?" Tainn looked shocked and amazed. "I'm part werewolf, my mother was one, you see?" He performed a little hop in place when Hagrid stopped suddenly.
"Yer a werewolf?" Hagrid was clearly astonished. He peered down at Tainn over his bushy black beard.
"Yeah...you got a problem?" Tainn asked with a lift of his eyebrow, suddenly belligerent. "I loved my mother." He shook his head and looked momentarily confused, his eyes unfocused.
" 'S jus..."
"I don't become a werewolf, but I do have a bit of wildness in me. It shows itself in strange ways." Tainn jigged in place, happy spirits resumed. "Some say it makes me a bit fey. I think it makes me more interesting."
Hagrid was silent for a moment. Then he began walking again, leaving them to catch up. When they did, he said in a soft voice, "I un'nerstan'. Me mum, she were dif'ernt too."
"Giant, was she?" Tainn asked without censure, showing that there was a mind working behind the wild smile and odd ways.
"Yeah." Hagrid replied after a long moment, but then he became quiet again, moving off quickly and leaving them to follow after him.
Tainn glanced at Harry, then trotted ahead to catch up with Hagrid, whose shoulders were lower than usual.
Harry hesitated a moment, then slowed his step and his friends fell in with him, allowing Hagrid and Tainn to converse in relative privacy. He thought that Tainn, despite his actions, could reach Hagrid in a way that he could not, being that they both shared blood with what most of the wizarding world considered dangerous creatures.
Harry only hoped that perhaps Hagrid would take Tainn into his confidence and depend on him instead of Harry and his friends on the occasions that Hagrid was unable to care for 'Grawpy'.
By the time they reached the castle, the spring was back in Hagrid's step and his beetle-black eyes twinkled as they had before. Tainn's face was deliberately expressionless, but he gave Harry's questioning look a small half smile before following the gentle half-giant up to the main table.
A few minutes later, Harry saw Texi enter the room. She looked pale as she took the seat next to her brother, who smiled at her in greeting. They looked up at the enchanted ceiling in unison, where the clear view of the evening sky still lacked the silvery orb of the moon, then fell into an apparent one sided conversation.
Dinner progressed as dinners often do, with food and conversation. Harry felt an odd sort of pride when all the members of the DA came and sat around him, not even discussing the club most of the time, but comparing notes on homework, those who had had them, discussing the new professors, most agreeing that they seemed to be pretty good.
They wouldn't upgrade their opinions on professor Lanya until at least week two, a result of the bad conditioning they had received from the past five years of Defense professors.
Lavender and Parvati were particularly glowing in their compliments on the assistant Care of Magical Creatures professor's lecture and practical demonstration. They alternated between blushing, giggling, speaking and glancing towards the head table. Harry wondered if they were intending to SHARE Tainn between themselves. He also wondered if Tainn would even mind the arrangement.
Towards the end of the meal, it was they who brought Harry's attention back to the Head Table, for Tainn was standing up. He turned and offered his hand to Texi, solicitously helping her to her feet and tucking her arm in his own as he guided her out the door.
Harry heard Hermione and Ginny stifle their laughter at the sight of Lavender and Parvati's faces. Other than Harry, Ginny, Hermione and Ron, none of the other students seemed to have the faintest suspicion that the two of them were related in any way.
Ginny, and most of the rest of the DA, starting teasing them about it, while Harry continued to watch the two head out the door, wondering if they were going back up to their apartments.
At first he thought he was the only one who noticed the shadow that had been waiting outside the door, silent and still. One wouldn't have noticed him if they weren't watching closely, or knew that he was in the castle. He saw the shadow flit out and move across the doorway, and the three of them made their way away from the hall, but not in the direction Harry had expected.
He had thought he was the only one who saw Sarven meet his friends, but then, when he turned back, he saw Neville watching the doorway as well, a puzzled look on his face.
"Harry, did you see...something? Something there in the door?" He asked.
Harry didn't exactly want to lie to Neville, but he couldn't have been entirely sure that the shadow WAS Sarven, it was just highly likely. And Sarven, for some reason of his own, didn't want many people of his presence, or even his existence. He had asked Harry and his friends to not even say his name in conjunction with Texi's.
"Couldn't say for sure, Neville." He said finally. He saw Hermione nod on the seat across from him, and Luna Lovegood, who was sitting next to her and Ron, glanced between the three of them with her usual dreamy look.
"Must have been a Gogglebunser." She said airily.
No one deemed that worth an answer, even Hermione, who usually would have contested that claim loudly. But she wanted to draw attention away from the subject, Harry gathered.
Lavender was moaning into her napkin. "The second day, and I've already missed my chance!"
Parvati, looking equally distressed, was patting her on the back. "You're much prettier than her," only a little lie, "I'm sure if you work on it you can make him see that. After all, it's not like he's a REAL professor."
Ginny had to hide her face behind a fold in Harry's robes. He could feel her shaking in laughter against his side. Ron looked confused, but Hermione was having a great deal of trouble hiding her smile, her lips writhing as she tried to keep them pinched disapprovingly.
"He might not be a professor, but he still is a member of the staff," Hermione pointed out.
"You just can't appreciate the allure of an attractive, older man." Lavender said scathingly, she added under her breath, "bunny hater."
Hermione looked astonished, she obviously hadn't thought Lavender remembered that from their third year. "I don't hate bunnies." She sighed. "And I'd rather not talk about what kind of man I appreciate."
Lavender looked doubtful as she pushed a piece of cake dejectedly around her plate. "I never even see you look at a guy, your nose is always buried in a book."
Parvati was equally unconvinced, "Yeah, other than going to the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum. Have you EVER fancied anyone?"
Hermione blushed and made several attempts to forestall them, until she caught the look on Ron's face. He looked at her as though she had punched him in the nose and stolen his puppy. She stared at him, remorse coloring her cheeks, then looked down at the tabletop.
"Well?" The two girls asked in unison.
The curly haired teenager sighed, shrugged her shoulders, and lifted her hand. Which was entwined with Ron's and had been all through dinner. Harry had been amused by his valiant attempts to shovel food into his mouth with the wrong hand the entire night. The other girls had been too busy ogling Tainn to even notice that Ron had suddenly become left handed.
The girls stared at them, stared at each other, then stared at them again. Then they started to giggle, exchanging meaningful glances.
Hermione stared right back with a quelling scowl, while Ron looked over everyone's heads, embarrassment, or perhaps pleasure at Hermione's admission, coloring his ears a bright red.
"I knew it from the first second I saw the two of them." Luna Lovegood provided. "Like Helma Finklestein and Jorge Nemquist."
"But those actors weren't involved. They both were married, to other people." Lavender said with a lift to her eyebrows. "Plus, Helma died twenty years ago, when Jorge was fifteen! They never even played in the same opera house."
It seemed that Lavender was quite the opera aficionado, Harry mused. He hadn't even known such a thing had existed until she mentioned it.
"But her soul possessed Jorge's wife when she read an incantation to change the flavor of 'Wizard Pops' incorrectly off the back of the cereal box." She said, unperturbed, "It's in our June issue."
"And she was his GRANDMOTHER!" Lavender protested.
Harry shook his head at the mention of the Quibbler. The magazine had had its uses, but the stories were just too out there.
He ignored the ongoing argument, with Luna maintaining the story was completely true, while Lavender tried to persuade her that she was out of her mind. Harry was leaning towards Lavender's point of view.
Ginny was watching the two of them with interest, her elbows propped on the table a safe distance away from the butter dish and her chin cupped in her hands. Her brown eyes flashed with suppressed amusement.
Hermione looked disgusted, while Ron tried to maneuver a spoonful of mashed potatoes into his mouth with his left hand. He didn't show any signs of wanting to release Hermione any time soon, however.
Harry, stuffed completely full and waiting for his friends to finish, listened to Lavender's assertion that no matter how you read it, that incantation couldn't do what Luna claimed, with half an ear as he looked around the room. He only noticed a few glances his way, and decided to ignore them.
At the Slytherin table he spotted the familiar hulking bulks of Crabbe and Goyle, looking terribly grumpy. And between them was the smaller blond figure of Draco Malfoy.
The pale boy was looking even whiter than Harry remembered, and even from this distance he could see dark circles underneath his eyes. He had his eyes on his plate, poking whatever it held despondently with his fork.
But even if Harry had tried, he could not have found it in himself to feel sorry for him. He wanted him to suffer, he found. He wanted his enemy to know the pain he felt. He didn't like this side of himself, but he couldn't deny that it was there.
Malfoy, as though feeling eyes upon him, looked up with a jerk, and his eyes met Harry's. The pure hatred contained within their silver depths was palpable for the long moment that their eyes locked. Then he broke the contact and stood abruptly, his cronies, like faithful hounds, trailing after him as he strode out of the hall.
Harry shrugged his shoulders, heaving off the weight that the stare had left him with. He hadn't even seen that sort of hatred directed at himself from his Potions professor. Not so virulent. He felt a cool shiver move down his spine.
Before he turned his gaze away from the Slytherin table, something caught his eye. It was the Slytherin from his NEWT level Defense Against the Dark Arts class. The young man raised his hand in greeting as he pushed his heavy dark brown hair out of his eyes.
Harry only hesitated a moment before returning the salute. Then he turned away, placing his attention elsewhere.
Since he had been thinking of his Potions Professor so recently, his eyes almost automatically found him at the staff table, sitting, again, next to Professor Lanya. From the looks of it she was again making a noteworthy attempt at a conversation.
From Snape's expression, he wanted to shove a roll in her mouth to stop her from trying to be friendly as he answered her in repressive monosyllables.
Harry watched the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, curious that Snape's manner had not put her off of him as of yet. Usually, by now, whichever professor who was sitting next to Snape would make it a point NOT to speak to him unless absolutely necessary.
Once, when Snape turned away from her, Harry saw a fleeting look of unhappiness flit across Professor Lanya's face, though it was gone a split second later when he gave her the dish that she had apparently requested.
Harry was just about to look away when another strange look passed over her face, a far-away look, then a great horror that gleamed from her purple eyes. She gasped inaudibly, then stood, wavering unsteadily on her feet.
The look of horror had disappeared so suddenly that Harry thought he had only imagined it. Instead there was a cool, calm look, so calm that Harry suspected it was a mask to hide what the others in the Hall should not see.
A mask like the one he so often wore.
Snape, apparently thinking she had seen something, half-rose with his hand in his robes to grasp his wand.
She turned to him, then, after pressing her hands to her stomach in a nervous, unconscious gesture, said one audible phrase before she left the Great Hall hurriedly.
"The secret is broken, it has been removed."
Dumbledore, his face grave, stood a moment later and followed, while Snape slowly retook his seat.
Harry turned to look at his table-mates, but it seemed that none of them had noticed anything out of the ordinary. He was half-inclined to forget that it had even occurred, but the other half of him, the one that loved a mystery, the insatiable curious side of him wondered.
What exactly had been removed?
Please, please, please review! Your reviews are what keep me going!
Chapter 22: Half and Half
Harry, Hermione and Ron accompanied Hagrid and Tainn as they led Tilt back to a small shed that had been set up for the Pegasus' use during his stay at Hogwarts castle. It was put together like, and very much resembled, Hagrid's own hut, and had a sense of unexpected permanency about it.
Hagrid did not need to inform them that paddocks would be useless, but he did tell them that Tilt was well trained and would not stray far from the castle grounds. At least, so his owner had assured him.
" Shay tol' me tha' shay took 'im 'roun' tha edge o' tha grounds, so 'ee'd know where they were bein'." He gave Tilt an affectionate pat as he passed. "Smart li'l bloke."
Tainn listened as he slipped off the well-groomed, though still dumpy looking, Pegasus' halter and hung it on a peg, then retreated to an affectionate butt of the head before Tilt turned to a manger filled with mash that smelled strongly of honey.
He was a dainty eater, Harry noticed, taking little bites then chewing them thoroughly, his eyes on Harry and his friends as though asking them if they didn't have anything better to do than watch him eat.
Tainn trotted over to the wall where a set of dark gray robes were hanging, and made a face when he pulled them down off the peg. They smelled of hay and horse.
Tainn didn't seem to mind the aroma as he pulled them on, only that he was more comfortable in his own casual clothes. But they were too muggle for the great hall. He still didn't bother with the shoes though, and padded lightly beside the students and Hagrid as they made their way back up to the castle.
Now that class was over, he seemed a little antsy, alternating between chattering with the others and glancing around in quick, jerky movements.
"What's the matter?" Ron asked curiously, "You're making me nervous."
Tainn grinned at him, though he was smiling like a crocodile with a toothache. "Full moon already."
"But you're not..." Hermione protested, her eyes wide.
"Just makes me a bit jumpy, somewhat temperamental. Mood swings you know." He passed a hand across his forehead, and peered at it as though surprised to find it damp. "But not until the moon is up. Still it's rather nerve-racking."
Hermione had the strangest little smile on her face, but Harry was cautious to ask about its source.
"Wha's all this yere?" Hagrid boomed, having expressed his joy over seeing Harry and the others alive and well earlier.
"Why, didn't anyone tell you?" Tainn looked shocked and amazed. "I'm part werewolf, my mother was one, you see?" He performed a little hop in place when Hagrid stopped suddenly.
"Yer a werewolf?" Hagrid was clearly astonished. He peered down at Tainn over his bushy black beard.
"Yeah...you got a problem?" Tainn asked with a lift of his eyebrow, suddenly belligerent. "I loved my mother." He shook his head and looked momentarily confused, his eyes unfocused.
" 'S jus..."
"I don't become a werewolf, but I do have a bit of wildness in me. It shows itself in strange ways." Tainn jigged in place, happy spirits resumed. "Some say it makes me a bit fey. I think it makes me more interesting."
Hagrid was silent for a moment. Then he began walking again, leaving them to catch up. When they did, he said in a soft voice, "I un'nerstan'. Me mum, she were dif'ernt too."
"Giant, was she?" Tainn asked without censure, showing that there was a mind working behind the wild smile and odd ways.
"Yeah." Hagrid replied after a long moment, but then he became quiet again, moving off quickly and leaving them to follow after him.
Tainn glanced at Harry, then trotted ahead to catch up with Hagrid, whose shoulders were lower than usual.
Harry hesitated a moment, then slowed his step and his friends fell in with him, allowing Hagrid and Tainn to converse in relative privacy. He thought that Tainn, despite his actions, could reach Hagrid in a way that he could not, being that they both shared blood with what most of the wizarding world considered dangerous creatures.
Harry only hoped that perhaps Hagrid would take Tainn into his confidence and depend on him instead of Harry and his friends on the occasions that Hagrid was unable to care for 'Grawpy'.
By the time they reached the castle, the spring was back in Hagrid's step and his beetle-black eyes twinkled as they had before. Tainn's face was deliberately expressionless, but he gave Harry's questioning look a small half smile before following the gentle half-giant up to the main table.
A few minutes later, Harry saw Texi enter the room. She looked pale as she took the seat next to her brother, who smiled at her in greeting. They looked up at the enchanted ceiling in unison, where the clear view of the evening sky still lacked the silvery orb of the moon, then fell into an apparent one sided conversation.
Dinner progressed as dinners often do, with food and conversation. Harry felt an odd sort of pride when all the members of the DA came and sat around him, not even discussing the club most of the time, but comparing notes on homework, those who had had them, discussing the new professors, most agreeing that they seemed to be pretty good.
They wouldn't upgrade their opinions on professor Lanya until at least week two, a result of the bad conditioning they had received from the past five years of Defense professors.
Lavender and Parvati were particularly glowing in their compliments on the assistant Care of Magical Creatures professor's lecture and practical demonstration. They alternated between blushing, giggling, speaking and glancing towards the head table. Harry wondered if they were intending to SHARE Tainn between themselves. He also wondered if Tainn would even mind the arrangement.
Towards the end of the meal, it was they who brought Harry's attention back to the Head Table, for Tainn was standing up. He turned and offered his hand to Texi, solicitously helping her to her feet and tucking her arm in his own as he guided her out the door.
Harry heard Hermione and Ginny stifle their laughter at the sight of Lavender and Parvati's faces. Other than Harry, Ginny, Hermione and Ron, none of the other students seemed to have the faintest suspicion that the two of them were related in any way.
Ginny, and most of the rest of the DA, starting teasing them about it, while Harry continued to watch the two head out the door, wondering if they were going back up to their apartments.
At first he thought he was the only one who noticed the shadow that had been waiting outside the door, silent and still. One wouldn't have noticed him if they weren't watching closely, or knew that he was in the castle. He saw the shadow flit out and move across the doorway, and the three of them made their way away from the hall, but not in the direction Harry had expected.
He had thought he was the only one who saw Sarven meet his friends, but then, when he turned back, he saw Neville watching the doorway as well, a puzzled look on his face.
"Harry, did you see...something? Something there in the door?" He asked.
Harry didn't exactly want to lie to Neville, but he couldn't have been entirely sure that the shadow WAS Sarven, it was just highly likely. And Sarven, for some reason of his own, didn't want many people of his presence, or even his existence. He had asked Harry and his friends to not even say his name in conjunction with Texi's.
"Couldn't say for sure, Neville." He said finally. He saw Hermione nod on the seat across from him, and Luna Lovegood, who was sitting next to her and Ron, glanced between the three of them with her usual dreamy look.
"Must have been a Gogglebunser." She said airily.
No one deemed that worth an answer, even Hermione, who usually would have contested that claim loudly. But she wanted to draw attention away from the subject, Harry gathered.
Lavender was moaning into her napkin. "The second day, and I've already missed my chance!"
Parvati, looking equally distressed, was patting her on the back. "You're much prettier than her," only a little lie, "I'm sure if you work on it you can make him see that. After all, it's not like he's a REAL professor."
Ginny had to hide her face behind a fold in Harry's robes. He could feel her shaking in laughter against his side. Ron looked confused, but Hermione was having a great deal of trouble hiding her smile, her lips writhing as she tried to keep them pinched disapprovingly.
"He might not be a professor, but he still is a member of the staff," Hermione pointed out.
"You just can't appreciate the allure of an attractive, older man." Lavender said scathingly, she added under her breath, "bunny hater."
Hermione looked astonished, she obviously hadn't thought Lavender remembered that from their third year. "I don't hate bunnies." She sighed. "And I'd rather not talk about what kind of man I appreciate."
Lavender looked doubtful as she pushed a piece of cake dejectedly around her plate. "I never even see you look at a guy, your nose is always buried in a book."
Parvati was equally unconvinced, "Yeah, other than going to the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum. Have you EVER fancied anyone?"
Hermione blushed and made several attempts to forestall them, until she caught the look on Ron's face. He looked at her as though she had punched him in the nose and stolen his puppy. She stared at him, remorse coloring her cheeks, then looked down at the tabletop.
"Well?" The two girls asked in unison.
The curly haired teenager sighed, shrugged her shoulders, and lifted her hand. Which was entwined with Ron's and had been all through dinner. Harry had been amused by his valiant attempts to shovel food into his mouth with the wrong hand the entire night. The other girls had been too busy ogling Tainn to even notice that Ron had suddenly become left handed.
The girls stared at them, stared at each other, then stared at them again. Then they started to giggle, exchanging meaningful glances.
Hermione stared right back with a quelling scowl, while Ron looked over everyone's heads, embarrassment, or perhaps pleasure at Hermione's admission, coloring his ears a bright red.
"I knew it from the first second I saw the two of them." Luna Lovegood provided. "Like Helma Finklestein and Jorge Nemquist."
"But those actors weren't involved. They both were married, to other people." Lavender said with a lift to her eyebrows. "Plus, Helma died twenty years ago, when Jorge was fifteen! They never even played in the same opera house."
It seemed that Lavender was quite the opera aficionado, Harry mused. He hadn't even known such a thing had existed until she mentioned it.
"But her soul possessed Jorge's wife when she read an incantation to change the flavor of 'Wizard Pops' incorrectly off the back of the cereal box." She said, unperturbed, "It's in our June issue."
"And she was his GRANDMOTHER!" Lavender protested.
Harry shook his head at the mention of the Quibbler. The magazine had had its uses, but the stories were just too out there.
He ignored the ongoing argument, with Luna maintaining the story was completely true, while Lavender tried to persuade her that she was out of her mind. Harry was leaning towards Lavender's point of view.
Ginny was watching the two of them with interest, her elbows propped on the table a safe distance away from the butter dish and her chin cupped in her hands. Her brown eyes flashed with suppressed amusement.
Hermione looked disgusted, while Ron tried to maneuver a spoonful of mashed potatoes into his mouth with his left hand. He didn't show any signs of wanting to release Hermione any time soon, however.
Harry, stuffed completely full and waiting for his friends to finish, listened to Lavender's assertion that no matter how you read it, that incantation couldn't do what Luna claimed, with half an ear as he looked around the room. He only noticed a few glances his way, and decided to ignore them.
At the Slytherin table he spotted the familiar hulking bulks of Crabbe and Goyle, looking terribly grumpy. And between them was the smaller blond figure of Draco Malfoy.
The pale boy was looking even whiter than Harry remembered, and even from this distance he could see dark circles underneath his eyes. He had his eyes on his plate, poking whatever it held despondently with his fork.
But even if Harry had tried, he could not have found it in himself to feel sorry for him. He wanted him to suffer, he found. He wanted his enemy to know the pain he felt. He didn't like this side of himself, but he couldn't deny that it was there.
Malfoy, as though feeling eyes upon him, looked up with a jerk, and his eyes met Harry's. The pure hatred contained within their silver depths was palpable for the long moment that their eyes locked. Then he broke the contact and stood abruptly, his cronies, like faithful hounds, trailing after him as he strode out of the hall.
Harry shrugged his shoulders, heaving off the weight that the stare had left him with. He hadn't even seen that sort of hatred directed at himself from his Potions professor. Not so virulent. He felt a cool shiver move down his spine.
Before he turned his gaze away from the Slytherin table, something caught his eye. It was the Slytherin from his NEWT level Defense Against the Dark Arts class. The young man raised his hand in greeting as he pushed his heavy dark brown hair out of his eyes.
Harry only hesitated a moment before returning the salute. Then he turned away, placing his attention elsewhere.
Since he had been thinking of his Potions Professor so recently, his eyes almost automatically found him at the staff table, sitting, again, next to Professor Lanya. From the looks of it she was again making a noteworthy attempt at a conversation.
From Snape's expression, he wanted to shove a roll in her mouth to stop her from trying to be friendly as he answered her in repressive monosyllables.
Harry watched the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, curious that Snape's manner had not put her off of him as of yet. Usually, by now, whichever professor who was sitting next to Snape would make it a point NOT to speak to him unless absolutely necessary.
Once, when Snape turned away from her, Harry saw a fleeting look of unhappiness flit across Professor Lanya's face, though it was gone a split second later when he gave her the dish that she had apparently requested.
Harry was just about to look away when another strange look passed over her face, a far-away look, then a great horror that gleamed from her purple eyes. She gasped inaudibly, then stood, wavering unsteadily on her feet.
The look of horror had disappeared so suddenly that Harry thought he had only imagined it. Instead there was a cool, calm look, so calm that Harry suspected it was a mask to hide what the others in the Hall should not see.
A mask like the one he so often wore.
Snape, apparently thinking she had seen something, half-rose with his hand in his robes to grasp his wand.
She turned to him, then, after pressing her hands to her stomach in a nervous, unconscious gesture, said one audible phrase before she left the Great Hall hurriedly.
"The secret is broken, it has been removed."
Dumbledore, his face grave, stood a moment later and followed, while Snape slowly retook his seat.
Harry turned to look at his table-mates, but it seemed that none of them had noticed anything out of the ordinary. He was half-inclined to forget that it had even occurred, but the other half of him, the one that loved a mystery, the insatiable curious side of him wondered.
What exactly had been removed?
Please, please, please review! Your reviews are what keep me going!
