I woke up the next morning in a terrible mood, nervous and with a buzzing head. I woke up the next morning in a terrible mood, nervous and with a buzzing head. Having dressed, I went to breakfast, maintaining absolute indifference to the eyes that pursued me. It was Saturday, the students were in no hurry to go to class. No one spoke to me, and I was not particularly upset. On the contrary, maybe for the better - after all, I can be rude inadvertently. At the Gryffindor table, the first thing that caught my eye was my girlfriends. Lou and Ginny, one on the left, the other on the right, were clearly pressing on Hermione with some question. She resolutely denied, shook her head in protest and even twisted her finger at her temple.
"Hermione, I told you..." Ginny urged her as I approached them from behind.
"Hello, girls!" I said hello in a more annoyed tone than I intended, "what is such an active discussion about?"
Judging by the way they simultaneously jumped up and blushed, the active discussion seemed to be about me. However, I did not expect a detailed answer from them.
"That was a great speech, Harry," Lou changed the subject at once.
"Yes, Churchill and his Fulton is't even close.," I grinned languidly, "but you weren't there yesterday."
"We were," Ginny said, "we were in the middle. You just did not notice us, we stood on the sidelines."
I silently started eating breakfast. I didn't want to eat - the food seemed tasteless rubbish, although the elves, I'm sure, cooked everything perfectly as always. Nerves, nerves... I wonder if magicians restore nerve cells?
"Harry, we wanted to call on you after you left," Hermione said softly, "but Lou said you could send us to hell in this state."
"I can," I agreed, swallowing a piece of casserole. Then turned to her and said, "I'm sorry. I'm just tired of all this stupidity."
She was about to tell me something, but owls began to fly into the hall with morning mail. Not many subscribed to Prophet, but Hermione was one of them because she liked to be in the know. I returned to food - the newspaper did not interest me today, all the more. It took me a moment to notice the tension spreading through the Hall. Someone behind me gave a strangled gasp, and the fourth-year student, sitting opposite me and buried in a newspaper, suddenly bulged his eyes and, having strongly pushed his neighbor, thrust the sheet of paper under his nose.
"Harry," Hermione said in a rather high voice, and I realized that it was about me again.
But when she gave me the newspaper and I read what was written there, I realized that I was mistaken.
"...For several months now, we have periodically covered the life of young Harry Potter - the hope of the entire magical world in the event of the revival of You-Know-Who, as some optimists and idealists believe. As readers will remember, we have already mentioned the character traits of the Boy-Who-Lived and his dubious behavior at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which is looked down upon by both his official guardian, Sirius Black, and the headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, whose competence has long been questionable. They also look through their fingers at the young hero's obvious passion for dark magic - and moreover, from a trusted source, we learned that Harry Potter owns parseltongue - a rare gift to speak with snakes, which since ancient times was considered a sure sign of a dark wizard. This ability was possessed by the legendary Salazar Slytherin, and also, according to some sources, by You-Know-Who. Who will we get as a result, we ask the question, is it not a new black sorcerer who dreams of seizing power in the country? Of course, many may say - how can the son of such worthy parents go down a crooked path? But let's see what kind of people surround him. His godfather is the infamous Sirius Black, about whom much has already been said, the last representative of one of the most noble families associated with dark magic. But there is another person with whom the young Potter has the closest friendship since early childhood. This is Patrick Random, the closest friend and adviser in all his affairs. This last name, of course, is not known to the magical public, but perhaps many will remember his mother, the outstanding sorceress Michelle Preston, an employee of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, who was killed by minions of You-Know-Who when her son was not even a year old. The boys' stories are similar, aren't they? Except for one moment - the father of this young man is the notorious Severus Snape, Professor of Potions at Hogwarts, who (as few people know) himself was a Death Eater, and was not convicted and sent to Azkaban only because of the intercession of the same Albus Dumbledore... "
"Bitch!" I stated too loudly and somehow too coolly, crushing the newspaper in my fist.
The Prophet clearly went from hand to hand. Everyone forgot about breakfast. But Skitter miscalculated on one point - I would swear by anything that the statement about the family connection of my friend and the Potions Master completely overshadowed my alleged fascination with dark magic and the ability to speak with snakes. Quiet astonished whispers, glances jumping from Pat to Snape, someone's rather loud statement at the Ravenclaw table - "I told you!", For some reason, the embarrassed faces of the teachers. The stone face of Severus Snape, which did not betray a gram of emotion.
"How did she know?" Hermione whispered softly.
"Well done Snape," I remarked unexpectedly to myself, turning to her, "I could not make such an impenetrable face."
Lou looked only at Pat. He was just reading the ill-fated newspaper. His face darkened and paled at the same time as he read. Yes, now not only Lou, many looked at him. If Pat laughed now, as then, in the library, no one would believe it. It would be gossip, but nothing more. Despite his apparent resemblance to his father, the average Hogwarts student was unable to imagine Snape as a happy dad. To submit that that there was a connection with a woman, most simply would not have enough imagination. But when Pat finished reading the article, he threw the newspaper away from him, sighed impulsively, and covered his face with his hand, almost desperately. It was tantamount to official recognition.
"L.E.," I read the letters scrawled on the bedpost as I brushed off the dust, "L. E., L.E. and so two more times.
"What can this mean?" Lou thought, looking at the cobweb-covered ceiling.
"I'm afraid it's a medical history," I smiled sadly.
A strange, pleasant sadness filled my chest—the evidence that James Potter had once trodden the ground usually had the most soothing effect on me.
"Snivellus, wash your hair!" - Pat read with indescribable sarcasm in his voice from the boards with which the windows were boarded up, - the signature is Padfoot. "Look - how many years have passed, but the advice does not lose its relevance," he added thoughtfully.
"Like he'll ever read it," I chuckled.
"It's ho…ho… Hachoo!" Hermione sneezed loudly. "It's cold. And dusty."
"Hermione, are you a witch or what?" Lou was surprised, "we need to kindle fire"
"Exactly," she mumbled.
Well, it was difficult to call it a fireplace. I would say hearth. Why he is a reincarnating werewolf is very difficult to understand. But it is even more difficult to understand why he needs a huge four-poster bed, chairs, a table...
"So that there is something to destroy," my friend suggests.
When Hermione kindles a fire in the hearth, it becomes unbelievably cozier. Well, if not cozier, then definitely warmer. We were in the Shrieking Shack, as you might have guessed. I understand that normal people won't go there - everyone is afraid of ghosts. But we know that there are no ghosts here, and never have been. Pat and I wanted to get here for a long time, but somehow our hands (or rather, our feet) did not reach. And now there was a wonderful reason - to hide from the obsessive interest of the entire Hogwarts. When, after the appearance of an article that really stunned the students and half of the teaching staff, we approached my friend, his first words were:
"I don't want to hear anything," he put out his hand, as if warning us, "not now. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, someday, but not now. Let's get out of here somewhere or I'll have to ask you for an invisibility cloak, Harry."
I personally supported the idea of the Hut. I wanted to get out of the school at least somewhere, because with all my being I felt this pressure of inquiring glances, which seemed to reach even in our beloved Room of Requirement. When we went to the living rooms for warm robes, Hermione asked me with an extremely worried look:
"But how did she know, Harry? I can't understand it at all."
"She must have been told by someone who knows," Lou shrugged.
"Who knows?" Hermione frowned. "About Pat and Parseltongue?"
"You never know," I muttered, "it seems to us that everything is a secret, but in fact, someone could always hear something."
"Yes," she agreed, "but who needs it? If Malfoy Sr. turns everything that happens, then one option suggests itself..."
"It's off," I shook my head.
"Why not?" Lou was surprised.
"Did you see his face when the news spread through the Hall?" I turned to them, "it seemed to me that he was ready to jump away from Pat for two tables!"
"That is, for ours?" Lou stated.
I laughed against my will, vividly imagining Malfoy in two jumps at the Gryffindor table.
Since Pat had vetoed any talk of the morning's incident, everyone quietly went about their business, for which it was not necessary to go to the Shrieking Shack. My friend took out a heavy tomin with some terrible name "Inorganic Compounds" and something else, and tried to leave the world along the usual route - having climbed headlong into science.
Lou was playing solitaire. Hermione decided to finish her Numerology homework. I, not finding myself a more worthy occupation, began to wander around the room, hoping to find some more evidence of the activities of the Marauders. So far, besides those two inscriptions, I have found only evidence of a werewolf being in this room - gnawed legs of chairs, for example...
"What do you have there?" Lou asked as I crawled under the bed.
I got out covered in dust, but with a box covered in cobwebs.
"Nothing special," I put my hand inside, "candles, look."
I rummaged some more, but there was mostly rubbish - scraps of parchment, long-dry inkwells... At the very bottom, a tattered book and something wrapped in a rag were found. When I unwound it, I laughed again.
"What are you laughing at?" Pat raised his head.
"Marauder's stash," I explained to him, and showed him an open bottle of firewhiskey.
"I hope you're not going to drink it now?" Hermione raised her eyebrows. Her appearance said that she was seriously considering the possibility of such actions on our part.
"What for?" I reassured her, "I'll give it to Sirius. Or to Rem. They'll love it."
"Are you sure there's whiskey in there?" Pat looked suspicious.
I uncorked the bottle and sniffed.
"Yes."
"What could be there?" Lou whispered in mock fear.
"Yes, you never know what they could knock on the head to pour there," shrugged Pat.
"Come on!" he waved his hand recklessly, and some demon who ran past jerked me just as recklessly to take a small sip.
"Pat almost died before your eyes, and you slurp don't understand what!" Hermione screamed, not jokingly angry, jumping up from her chair, "if there is poison or some other disgusting thing, we won't even be able to help you!
"This is..." I tried to explain that the maximum you can expect from the Marauders is some kind of stupid joke, " this is... There is nothing there!"
Pat silently got up, walked over to me and took the bottle away. Then he splashed some on the table and frowningly passed a stick over this puddle. There was dead silence.
"There is no poison here," my friend declared.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Know" he muttered, "the fucking extreme…"
Hermione sat down in her chair with a pout and went back to work. Feeling like an idiot, I looked at the book I had left lying on the bed. It was old, the binding parted from constant dampness, the pages turned yellow. The name was undecipherable. But when I revealed the contents, I whistled.
"Whatever you find there," grumbled Pat, "don't drink, don't eat, and don't chew. And don't sniff. And just in case, don't touch it.
"Know thy essence," I read, "a universal guide to animagus. We haven't read this yet.
"Truth?" my friend immediately started up, let me take a look."
We flipped through the worn out pages. It was another hello from the past - the margins were full of notes written by four different people. The handwriting of Sirius and Rem, though changed, was recognizable. The third and fourth, of course, were my unforgettable dad and Pettigrew.
"Did he try it himself?", "Some kind of nonsense", "It could be easier", "I don't want to go to McGonogall" These blurry inscriptions in places were much more interesting to read than the book itself, which was indeed quite delusional.
"I know!!!" Hermione suddenly yelled. We all jumped. I dropped the book. Lou scattered the cards.
"You're crazy," Pat whispered, "yelling louder than Sirius' mother!"
But our headman didn't even notice us. She smiled, her eyes sparkled victoriously, and she looked so inspired, as if she had just proved Fermat's theorem.
"I know!" she exulted, "I know how Skitter sneaks into the school!"
"Does she sneak into the school herself?" I asked.
Imagination helpfully slipped me a picture of a plump blonde with a bulldog jaw, dressed in a ninja costume and war paint on her face, sneaking through the night corridors of Hogwarts.
"Yes!" Hermione exclaimed, as if she had just noticed our presence, "no one is giving her information! She gets it herself! What, don't you understand? She is an animagus! Unregistered Animagus!"
"…or better, let him eat it!" - finished listing the brutal methods of reprisal against Rita Skitter Pat.
He listed them in my right ear, so I constantly got lost. We wrote to Sirius. I wrote it myself, Pat's eyes gleaming villainously, Hermione was in nirvana over her discovery, and Lou was treading water impatiently. Even Hedwig hooted joyfully - she caught the full importance of the moment.
"Do you think Sirius will turn her in?" Lou asked when we sent the owl with our important message.
"Nah," I drawled, "it's more likely to intimidate. Such compromising evidence is not lying on the road."
"How much do you get for illegal animagus?" My friend asked suddenly.
We all exchanged glances. Indeed, it turned out quite interesting. We were going to blackmail this journalist with the same misdemeanor that we ourselves were going to do.
"It's stupid, really," Pat continued reasoning, "why is this considered a crime? This is an experiment on yourself, and not on others?"
With such reasoning, we left the owlery. Unfortunately, the fact that Hermione revealed Skitter's secret didn't help reduce the conversation. Which is to be expected. But everything this bitch could do, she did. The news of Snape's paternity was a topic of conversation throughout Hogwarts. I suspect that even the teachers were whispering in the corners, especially those who caught the time of the Marauders. The most acute moment was that no one dared to speak about it in full voice. Professor Snape was terribly furious, deducting points at the mere suspicion of discussing a sore subject. I felt sorry for him - but my friend aroused much more compassion in me. In all his years at Hogwarts, he had never called so much attention to his person. But if Snape was simply stared with amazement, because no one expected such tricks from him, then Pat was more often looked at with fear. All that day we carefully hid. We spent the whole evening at Lupine's. The full moon was approaching, and Rem was pale and nervous, and because of the horse waking up in me, goosebumps periodically ran down my back. And yes, I felt pretty weird. I would say a little overexcited. I could not sit still, I wanted to do something, go somewhere, look for something... What exactly I wanted to look for, at first I myself did not understand.
"Stop giving all the girls that hungry look," Pat advised as we walked down the hallway.
"What?" I didn't hear, staring too intently at the passing group of fifth-year students from Ravenclaw.
There was a chuckle and a whisper.
"Nothing," my friend chuckled mockingly, "you just look like a young setter that was released for the first time to hunt. Ears perked up, eyes burning..."
"What are you saying?"
"Hormones have a bad effect on your brain," Pat informed me, "of course, I understand you, but mind you, friend, you won't be enough for everyone."
...But sooner or later you have to go to the Gryffindor tower, not to spend the night in the school corridors. It was even more nauseating for Pat to descend into his dungeons, especially since he did not have a guard of two militant girls. The living room was, of course, full of people and everyone immediately stared at me. Oh, how I got tired of playing the role of a guest star! I was not going to endure it and went into the bedroom, on the way in a completely cheeky way winking at an old acquaintance of Miss Wayne, who was sitting surrounded by her girlfriends. The voice of reason squeaked - why, why did you do it? Her expression immediately became pleased.
"Potter, is it true?" the same seventh-year student who yesterday accused me of insulting the faculty called out to me at the entrance to the stairs.
"Really?" I asked in a stone voice.
"About Snape," an unfamiliar voice clarified.
I turned around and looked around at everyone. Deja vu. It happened before. Exactly, it was.
"Even so," I said indifferently, "offer to burn my friend because he didn't get lucky with his dad?"
I turned around again and went to the bedroom, feeling tired and completely overwhelmed. I took a bottle of firewhiskey out of my bag, wondered why I hadn't given it to Lupin, stuffed it into my suitcase and safely forgot about it for a while. After reviewing the entire stormy collection of dreams a la "I'm sixteen, I'm in puberty" at night, I woke up with a feeling of a slight hangover in my head. The second half of yesterday seemed to me somehow blurred and unreal. Lying in bed and thinking about yesterday's behavior that was not quite normal for me, I made the only right decision - to get up, take a cold shower, eat and sit down to do my homework, which my hands didn't reach yesterday at all. I came to breakfast late, there were no girls at the table. While eating, I fought courageously not to bark out loud: "Why are you staring?" Nobody was sitting next to me. Apparently, by this morning, both my dark magic and my parseltongue were remembered, coupled with friendship with Snape's son, a Death Eater. Which, by the way, flopped down next to me on the bench and crookedly, quite in the spirit of his dad, smiled at the surprised and frightened looks.
"Good," he greeted.
"Hey. How are you?"
"Oh, wonderful!" Pat grinned, "except that half of the school looks at me as the Antichrist, then you can live."
"It's just that for some reason everyone decided," I grinned back, "that only his son can be scarier than Snape.
"People don't care anymore, how to wash the bones of professors," grumbled Pat, when we had already left the Great Hall, "that's the whole problem of boarding schools is the isolation of space. Everything is boiled here in one boiler... Ugh!"
He was silent for a few seconds and then added:
"Slytherin is in such a mess right now. Soon already, probably, wall to wall will begin."
"Because of you?" I was surprised.
"I think this is the last straw," Pat grunted gloomily, and continued in an angry voice, "when I came yesterday, everywhere, of course, whispers, sidelong glances.
I somehow don't really want to endure this, so I decided to interrupt everything in the bud. I got up and said: "Yes, it's true. Professor Snape is my father. Anyone who wants to know the details, you can contact him yourself!"
"So what?"
"Nothing, there were no volunteers. But the jaws drooped in many. They thought I was going to fight back. Malfoy shied away from me like hell from incense. Can you imagine," he rolled his eyes and laughed, "they are afraid of me!"
"I wonder what Snape will do?" I asked.
"What should he do?" Pat frowned.
"Well, think for yourself," I was a little embarrassed, "what a stupid position he is in now. There is a son, unrecognized and has a different surname, and everyone knows about it. Ignoring the situation is stupid, and acknowledging you now, after this article, is also..."
Pat thought.
"Damn, I didn't think about it at all," he admitted, and added in an almost frightened voice, "what if he wants to recognize me? Does my opinion matter in this case?"
"You are an adult," I slapped my friend on the shoulder, and said solemnly, "you are now a full citizen and no one... Hello Professor McGonogall!"
We said this already in chorus to the dean who passed by. She said hello and went on, recalling tomorrow's essay.
"Did you see the way she looked at me?" my friend asked sourly, "half of the professorial staff is staring at me like that at an abandoned kitten. The female part collectively now probably definitively considers Snape a monster. You know, only here I understood the almost sacred meaning of my last name. No, not for nothing that my aunt and uncle decided to give it to me. By the way, where are the girls?"
They ended up in the library. When asked what they were doing there early in the morning, they showed us a large leather-bound album with the title "Hogwarts. Issue of 1978.
"Lavender and Parvati watched it before us," Hermione commented distantly.
"I don't think Snape has ever been the subject of this kind of gossip," Lou added.
We sat down at their table, and Pat silently opened the album to a group photo of the Slytherins.
"What a scarecrow," he said almost affectionately, looking at his seventeen-year-old father, who did not try to climb into the foreground.
No, they weren't all that similar. Yes, the same sharp features, the same lean physique. But Pat has never had such a hunted-embittered expression on his face, and he always keeps his back straight. And he would never have become a Death Eater, something inside me added. Pat turned the page back and looked at the photo of Ravenclaw with a smile. Looking at the openly smiling Michelle Preston, it was impossible to believe in reality. White and black.
"I'm sorry, Pat, but your father is just a nerd," Lou said in general, "tell me, what did he lack?"
Pat smiled wryly, but said nothing. The story of the difficult and confusing relationship between our parents has remained between us. I turned another page back.
"Wow!" Hermione shuddered and uttered the most banal phrase I've heard in recent months, "how you look like your father, Harry."
Yes, at least there is no doubt whose son I am. It's impossible to make a mistake. This physiognomy, excluding small details, I see every day in the mirror. Mom is nearby. Sirius, "obscenely handsome," as one of my acquaintances put it. Remus, already shabby-looking...
"Let's stop complaining and get it done." I sharply slammed the album
"What are you shouting?" Lu looked at me carefully.
"We have McGonogall's essay tomorrow and I don't have a line," I said.
Hermione immediately jumped up and began frantically emptying parchment and ink from her backpack.
"That's right, I completely forgot! I need to check out some books..."
I got up to take the album back to its place. Once I literally forbade myself to think about my parents. And then in my then situation it was possible to die from self-pity. I was eleven and it was the night before I started my new school in London. I was scared to the point of nausea, because not only did I have to go in worn-out clothes, stupid glasses and not a single penny in my pocket for pocket expenses, I also considered myself a terrible redneck in the eyes of the inhabitants of the capital. That's when I forbade myself to feel sorry for myself, dreaming about what would happen if my parents were alive. And the next day I met Pat, and my life was completely different. And now I have to put someone else's past on the shelf. Because I'm not there, but the more you climb there, the deeper you get bogged down in it, like in a swamp. And the more painful and harder it is to get out of it. The past will not return. The dead will not rise. I told Dumbledore myself that I don't worry about what was and could be.
So there is no need to start.
But on this day, an event occurred that made Hogwarts forget about Snape's newfound paternity, about strange events in the wizarding world, about Harry Potter and about much more. What would later be called the April Slytherin Mutiny took place, and despite their essentially trifling content, these events had great consequences. But everything is in order. Dinner was in full swing. Most of the students are in the Great Hall. "Thunderstorm" no one then expected. At least those who did not know what was happening in the Slytherin dungeons, and very few people knew this at all. But during the evening meal, more and more students began to pay attention to the Slytherin table. It was as if someone had drawn a dividing line there - there was a free buffer zone between the two warring factions, and there was an active quarrel between both sides. Pat and Malfoy were sitting close to the "border" and, judging by their angry faces, the conversation had already turned personal. Actually, all my friend's supporters looked like people ready to storm Buckingham Palace. In short, brought to the handle by Malfoy, stupid Slytherin "traditions" and in general the whole school.
When Draco Malfoy had completely dispersed and recited, looking askance at my friend, something to his friends, from which I heard only "when father becomes Minister ..." (from Ron, who was sitting not far away, I heard "what a freak"), Pat threw away the spoon and jumped up.
"I'm sick of sitting at the same table with you, Malfoy!"
He threw furiously and rather loudly, picked up the robe that lay next to him, and left the Hall.
For a second there was silence, and for that moment the face of the son of the future Minister lit up with triumph.
But not for long.
"That's right," Jay McNair barked, and in the silence that followed, everyone could hear him. And he got up and left after my friend. And then something unimaginable began. Deirdre stood up in proud silence and walked out of the Hall. And so one by one, everyone who took Pat's side. They stood up and calmly and busily walked out of the Great Hall. Each student, and indeed all the professors, looked at this truly bewitching action in dumb bewilderment. Only the director looked at it differently - his face expressed the feeling that something so good was happening that he did not dare to hope for even in his wildest dreams. It really was a revolution. There were no shouts, slogans and banners. There were no sabotage and militant crowds. Everything happened in the most eloquent form in which it was possible to express it - in silence. Silent protest. Simple, quiet, and damn spectacular. Half of the Slytherin table was empty.