Harry sat and stared at his little black book, reciting Sharlen's last message in his head. I'll visit you later tonight; wait for me. Did she really mean it? His roommates slept around him, but he wouldn't be able to sleep that night, whether she showed up or not. Too many questions were locked up inside of him.
He glanced over at Ron's tuft of red hair peeking out from underneath the comforter and felt instantly guilty. Normally Ron was the first person he told everything, but he had never let his friend know about Sharlen. When she'd left him it created a deep wound that, in a way, was still healing. He had completely shut her out.
A soft tapping at the window alerted him and he quickly turned. He glimpsed the silhouette of an owl and quickly opened the shutters to allow her entrance, stepping aside. He shut the window after she was in and then turned back to her; she had transformed back into her body and was already strapping earmuffs over the others boys' ears, having stolen the stash from her dorm mates.
Sharlen turned back to Harry and sighed; she was still pretty pale. Harry walked toward her, eyes moving steadily around her face; she wasn't looking back at him. "What happened to you?" In the moonlight she seemed even more sickly, the blue glow of the darkness distorting her features.
She shook her head and he saw her eyes flick up to his. "It's not important now. I know you have many, many more questions." She strode over to his bed and sat down, and he did the same.
He kept his eyes locked on her, disbelief still coloring his aura. He took her gloved hand on the bed. "I just can't believe you're here."
Sharlen's chest felt as though inflated with air. "I can't explain how many times I've imagined this," she whispered. "For years all I've wanted is to see you again."
"How is it you're here right now?" he asked, searching her face. "We were together for years and no one could ever see you. I've been telling myself you were some kind of good dream and now you're here answering questions in Potions and turning into an owl. Why here? And why now?"
Sharlen nodded, biting her lower lip and looking down at the bed. She kept hold of his hand. "I expected as much," she told him quietly. Steeling herself, she met his eyes again. "Harry, that day we met, my Master brought me to you and told me I was imaginary. It had just been the two of us up 'til then… but he brought me to that meadow, told me I was to be your friend, and put a spell on me so no one could see me. That's… all I knew, too," she confessed, shrugging her shoulders. "And when you sent me away… he didn't let me return."
"Your master? Do you mean Snape?" Harry asked, eyes narrowed.
Sharlen laughed a little, embarrassed. "I keep forgetting that's a weird thing to call someone. Consider it a habit."
"But why would he assign you to me like that?" he prodded further, leaning forward slightly. His mind was racing through the past five years he'd known Snape, and everything he knew of his relationship to his parents. It just didn't make sense.
"Well I think…" She paused, a little lost for words. She didn't want to restart their relationship with a lie, knowing she already had so much to omit. But the whole truth was too dark and too close to revealing her true origin. "I think we both needed each other and he didn't know what else to do with me. I had to be… introduced to the world slowly."
"And when I sent you away…" he said slowly, looking down at the bed, "he took you away." To punish me, he finished in his head, and he's been punishing me ever since. Sharlen nodded, squeezing his hand momentarily. Harry scoffed lightly, amused. "All this time, I really thought you were… well…"
"Your imaginary friend?" Sharlen submitted, grinning.
Harry grinned as well, almost bashfully. "Yeah."
"I did too," she admitted. "I believed I wasn't real."
"For all that time?" he asked, mildly horrified. "Why would he do that to you?"
"Is the Snape you know an overly kind person?" she asked, with a small smirk.
Harry tucked a curtain of her hair behind her ear, watching her eyes grow white in the dim light. She kept still until the vision passed: centaurs running through a dark forest. "So you didn't want to leave me?" he asked, more a statement than a question. He shifted so he was closer to her, and leaned back so that his arm curled almost around her waist. Sharlen's heart began to beat faster and faster, louder in her ears, restricted in her throat. The thought of his lips on hers made her flush.
"Oh Harry, you can't believe it was my choice," Sharlen said hurriedly, sitting up straighter and clutching his shirt sleeve. "That's… you didn't think that, did you? This whole time?"
"I didn't know what to think," he admitted, looking away from her, "You were the only person I could ever talk to, and then I told you to go away, that I hated you…" Sharlen could see the pain in his eyes, and she willed him to stop talking, but she said nothing to end the words. "The next thing I knew you were out of my life. You were always real to me until that moment. Ever since, I've been telling myself it was all just a dream. I never quite forgave myself… or you."
"I never wanted to leave," she assured him, turning his face back toward her. She blinked back the image, whatever it was, and tried to focus wholly on him, and him alone. To no avail; she saw the day Snape told her that she couldn't see him anymore. The day she introduced him to darkness. "I wanted to stay by your side. I had no control over my coming and going. All you need to know, for now, is that I've come back to help you." Harry glanced at her lips and then quickly back to her eyes. "And I'm not going anywhere."
Sharlen watched the images play as Harry kissed her. Happy memories, like when they first met when their lips came in contact, them holding hands on the way home when he drew her nearer and cupped her cheek, them playing on an abandoned playground when his tongue parted her lips.
When they finally pulled away, Sharlen leaned against him and closed her eyes. How long had she waited for this? Time seemed to no longer be a factor at all. For so many years she had willed her life to go faster, wishing to advance to the point of seeing him again. Now she wanted to stop it entirely.
"Hey," Harry said into the darkness, still holding her to his chest, "Why is it you'll touch me but not anyone else?"
Sharlen laughed softly. "So you know of my powers, then."
"I already knew about some of them," he muttered into her hair, "but Hermione's kind of done some research on you and I was wondering."
"Hermione Granger?" Sharlen sat up and looked at him, curious. He shrugged and she nodded. She didn't like the idea of nosy people. "Well, some memories are painful," she began, choosing her words carefully, "but some are like dreams. Touching you is like bringing back the old times. Like you're still pushing me on that swing. Like we're still lying in the Charlesbrooke Meadow, watching the clouds and naming their shapes."
Harry laughed as well. "That really was a long time ago, wasn't it," he said, again more of a statement than a question.
Sharlen placed her hand in his and laced their fingers, eyes going blind to the room around them as they grew white with another vision. "Too long."
Harry leaned his head down to see her eyes staring forward, seeing nothing. "What vision are you seeing?" he asked quietly.
"Flying," she answered quietly, unblinking and still. She smiled. "It's much different for you than it is for me. It looks like… Quidditch, right?"
Harry nodded before realizing she couldn't see him and answered aloud. "I can't imagine being able to fly like Hedwig. How did you become an Animagus?"
"I was created before I came to be with Snape," she answered. "I wasn't born. As far as I know, I've always been this way."
Sharlen felt Harry stiffen slightly at her words. She sat forward and turned around to face him, eyes searching his aura to see hints of suspicion. She knew he had seen someone created before-her father, when Wormtail brought him back to power.
"Not common magic, as far as I understand it," he said cautiously.
Sharlen nodded. "It's safe to say I'm the product of Dark Magic."
For a long stretch, they just looked at each other. Harry had always followed his instincts, often finding himself practically incapable of ignoring them. But his scar felt completely normal. Sitting with her felt effortless, simple. Sharlen saw in her peripherals that his suspicions had melted away.
"I guess you could kind of say the same about me," he said, a small smile on his lips.
Sharlen laughed, covering her mouth. She brought her fingertips up to trace his scar lightly.
"So it was about seven years ago you disappeared on me," Harry said, changing the subject. He seemed playful and happy, and Sharlen couldn't believe her luck. She willed this not to be a dream. "What have you been doing?"
Sharlen raised a hand to the ceiling and drew a small flame in her palm. "Learning magic, of course," she said, extinguishing it with a flick of her wrist. "Same as you, just much more experienced. I've been studying magic a lot longer than you have. Even all those years ago when we were together, I was learning magic."
Harry laughed, a look of disbelief on his face. "I meant where have you been? Snape's taught at Hogwarts longer than I've been here, and he's always at the castle. Where were you?"
"Alone," she answered simply.
Harry's face fell considerably. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I was alone," she repeated. She suddenly looked even smaller to him in the moonlight. "He was home in summers, but during the school year he would leave me at home with the day's work, come home after his last class and leave again for dinner, and show up again some time in the night. I never really knew when he'd be home."
Harry thought of all the times he'd run into Snape around the castle, even at night. You couldn't Apparate on the grounds. Had he really been going back and forth from the castle, every day, for as long as he'd known him?
"Why wouldn't he just let you be here, with your peers?"
"It… was decided that I be kept away from people," was all she offered. "I finally got my way."
"Why didn't you… leave?" Harry asked incredulously.
"There was no leave," she said with a small shrug. "If I could have left that place, back to you is where I would have gone."
Harry pulled her back in for a kiss, holding her face in his hands. She let herself fall into it, forgetting about time and place, forgetting about the complications of their worlds.
"Tell me about you," she implored with hooded eyes as they broke away. "I want to get to know you again."
Slipping through the window Stacey had agreed to keep unlocked for her, Sharlen arrived back at the dorm hours after leaving, but apparently before any tragedy could occur. Sure, they were having some sort of screaming fit on the other side of the room, but no one seemed to be in pain, or trouble. In truth, she hadn't wanted to leave Harry's; she explained to him that Stacey supposedly had Draco patrol under control – "He sneaks into your dorm while you're all sleeping?!" – but he insisted that, in case something had gone wrong and back-up was needed, or her presence, she had to go. He said she looked like she needed some rest as well. All seemed just fine though.
She'd thought too soon. The second the window was closed again, the girls stirred, and pounced.
They drowned her in seas of reds, oranges, and browns. Somewhere in the background Stacey tried to push her way past Pansy, Rachel, and Millicent and get them to lay off; she was nothing but a yellow tipped cherry aura in the distance.
"Why is Draco sneaking into our dorm to see you?" Pansy asked angrily, hands on her hips as she jabbered her outrages.
"How dare you steal our stolen earmuffs!" Millicent Bullstrode screeched at her, seizing the front of her robes. "We need our beauty sleep! How are we going to achieve that if all we can hear is that one?" She tossed a glance at Stacey, who was tapping her incessantly on the shoulder. Sharlen didn't even have a chance to ponder about how Millicent Bullstrode thought any amount of beauty sleep would save her; Rachel had a go at her, too.
"You show up here out of the blue and think you're better than everyone! You've got five years of catching up to do before you belong here. You can't just leave in the middle of the night, nor can you have boys sneaking in! We have dignity to maintain; your screw ups and bad judgments affect all of us, you know!"
"Girls, please, back off, it'll be fine," Stacey called, trying to make her way between the three angry roommates and Sharlen, who looked weary and out of it. She was unsteadying as the yelling continued. "We're fine, we didn't get caught, and it won't happen again! You're going to wake up the whole tower for crying out loud…"
"Stay away from Draco you awful wench!"
"Where are our earmuffs?!
"Who do you think you are?"
"Girls, stop, please!"
"BITCH! SLAG!"
"EARMUFFS!"
"DIGNITY!"
"Please, SHUT UP!"
The girls emotive colors got into her system, blended, and rendered her unconscious. She felt her head hit the window sill on the way down, sealing the deal, and then the blended auras made black and there was nothing.
When she awoke in the hospital wing the next day, she reflected on how being conscious was simply odd. Normally when she was in skin-to-skin contact with someone, she saw the past or future, but when unconscious and touching someone she saw what she was missing presently. The image she'd seen of Master Severus cradling her in his arms and rushing her down to Madame Pomfrey came back to her, and she turned away from her mind. She wasn't so sure it had really happened, but she'd learned long ago that her visions were always true—without exception.
If he had carried her down to the infirmary, he was a fool. All his lectures of how she had to keep up her image and how hard it had been to get her in… He was drawing attention to the two of them. Sharlen held her head, reached for the pack of Tarot cards she'd had Stacey steal from Professor Trelawney, and set them up.
Three cards stared back at her, all from the Major Arcana; Justice, the Emperor, and the Hierophant. True enough, she had done it incorrectly; Sharlen never used the Minor Arcana unless it was her own deck, which she'd led Stacey to with her words, but the girl had not been able to find them. The Minor Arcana held so many cards she just felt they worked more effectively if they were her own. Besides, the Major Arcana could stand alone, she found; with the common settings of the three cards she'd pulled then, she was sure of it. She took their reversed meanings to heart, knowing there was nothing positive going on outside these walls involving her; to even consider the cards upright meanings would be ignorance.
Justice reversed: false accusations, bias, abuse.
The Emperor reversed: immaturity, petty emotions, lack of strength.
The Hierophant reversed: repeated errors, vulnerability, impotence.
Rumors.
To be absolutely sure, Sharlen seized the Minor Arcana portion of the original deck and shuffled them in, setting back up and giving the drawing another try. The same three cards faced her.
Rumors about her were all over the school. Sharlen bent her head to her knees and clenched her body up tight, all her muscles getting a workout, all her strength being drained. Her father would not be happy she'd drawn so much attention to herself. She shook so much in effort that the feel of a steady hand on her shoulder made her scream.
Sharlen had heard from almost everyone she'd bothered to ask (a.k.a. Stacey) that Madame Pomfrey was all business all the time. She didn't allow any nonsense, and was firm in her commands, yet not heartless. Sharlen felt heartless herself at seeing the look on Madame Pomfrey's face as she leapt away from her. She stared, holding a vile of potion in her hand, her eyes wide open and her face drained of color. Her aura glowed a bright lemon-yellow, which gave away that she was fearful of her handle over herself, and struggling to keep control in the inner band; the second band of her aura was a kind of dirt brown overlay for insecurity. Sharlen panted, her eyes searching the school nurse's, suddenly aware of the sheets disheveled and ravaged, her messy hair, the stolen Tarot cards now lying on the floor around the bed. Madame Pomfrey gave her the look she knew all too well… the one that told her of a specific fear, of a thought that ran through everyone's head: This is Voldemort's daughter, right before me, staring me down. Get the hell away before she turns on you.
"I'm sorry to startle you," Madame Pomfrey muttered, setting down the vile and scampering away from the bed. "I've been instructed to see that you drink that."
She didn't see that she drank it. She hadn't even stayed long enough to hear Sharlen's refusal to do so.
Her head throbbed as she raised a hand to gather the cards that had fallen in her shock and set them back on the bedside table in a neat pile. The liquid in the vile was clear, so she knew it wasn't the normal potion she regularly took from Snape; that one was a bright scarlet. She took the vile and went to dump it out in the infirmary bathroom, but, who should stop her but Snape himself? "I instructed Madame Pomfrey to give that to you," he explained, holding her wrist steady so she could not be rid of the contents. Sharlen saw Snape's memory of the previous night when she'd collapsed, felt his fear of retribution, his worry.
"Under the Imperius Curse?" she joked darkly. Sharlen took a closer look at the clear liquid. "Veritaserum?"
"I've taught you well." Snape led her back to her bed and stood over her as she lay back down. He took the vile and held it to her lips but, like a child, she kept her mouth clamped shut. "Sharlen. Now."
Leaning her head away and making sure the vile was a safe distance from her lips before speaking, she muttered, "Do you have permission to give me that? What is it you want to know that you don't trust me to say?" Snape gave her a look that seemed to imply it was obvious. She continued, "I don't exactly remember what happened last night that would make you suspect me of something to a point where you'd need to use Veritaserum, but—"
"Not last night," Snape corrected, an excuse not to answer her. "The night before."
Sharlen's face fell. "What? I've been out for a whole day?"
"You don't remember?" came a voice from the end of the hall. Sharlen craned her neck around Snape and saw Stacey coming towards them, smiley as ever. "You woke up for a while yesterday, told Madame Pomfrey to let me in so I could get the cards for you, and then you passed back out." Sharlen thought about that and remembered how Madame Pomfrey had refused to allow her visitors (per the insistence of Snape, she believed) and she'd had to scare her a little to get Stacey in. Ahh, right. I already knew I couldn't have been asleep all yesterday, because of the cards. Snape's got me all messed up...
"Miss Davis," Madame Pomfrey hissed from the doorway, glancing at Sharlen and not daring to go any closer. No way I scared her that much. "Come back here, let them talk."
"But I have her homework from yesterday," Stacey argued, holding up Sharlen's bag which she must have kidnapped from the dorm. "All except, well… Potions…" She glanced wearily at Snape, as though just realizing he was there.
"Then leave it here already. Go back to your classes."
"Madame Pomfrey," Sharlen called, setting her eyes into a hollow stare upon the nurse, this time actually trying to scare her, "You wouldn't want me to fall behind, would you?"
Madame Pomfrey was about to speak, but Snape cut her off. "They'll be fine, Madame Pomfrey," he muttered as he turned to leave, taking his Veritaserum with him. The commotion, and the witnesses, had apparently taken his confidence. Madame Pomfrey retreated to the safety of her office, and the two Slytherins were left alone.
"I actually didn't bring homework," Stacey confessed, "You didn't really have much, so I just left it in the dorm. Who wants to do homework while they're recovering?" She shook her head. "Flitwick let you off when he heard about your injury, and so did Lupin and Trelawney. As I said I don't know about Potions, but McGonagall didn't let you off either, because… well, that's just Professor McGonagall for you, I guess. I took care of your unicorn duties yesterday; no Care of Magical Creatures homework." Stacey grinned.
She hadn't mentioned Harry or Draco at all. Sharlen sighed, "Great Stacey, thanks." She paused. "So, what is in the bag?"
"Well, I brought a few things I thought you might want." She pulled out her Tarot deck and her little black book. "I found yours; it was just where you said it would be! I'm sorry I didn't look hard enough before. I'll return Trelawney's deck." She pocketed the stolen deck with a wink and a smile. "Oh, and here's your diary thing. I didn't read it, honest. I just thought you'd like to know it was safe. And this flask you always drink from, weirdo."
Sharlen folded the small book in her arms, staring at Stacey. "Thank you," she said, this time with real gratitude. Stacey looked immensely proud. Sharlen took the opportunity to open her book to the last written-on page; Harry had written to her. Nonchalantly blocking Stacey's view, she read: I heard about what happened. You okay? They locked you up yet? Contact me when you can – I'll visit. "Have you talked to Harry at all?"
Stacey shook her head, peeling stickers and decorating an apology note she'd written to Professor Trelawney. As she spoke, Sharlen took the note and ripped it up, ashamed of her friend's dismally interfering conscience. "I've seen him, but I haven't said anything to him. I can talk to him next period, if you'd like. Speaking of Harry…" She plopped down on Sharlen's bed, a devious look on her face. "Dish. What happened the other night?"
Perplexed, Sharlen leaned forward and squinted at her. "What dish?"
"Tell me what happened!"
"You first."
"Oh, you mean like with Draco?" Stacey waved it aside like it was no big deal. "I basically sat in front of the door all night; the girls didn't bother with me, because they figured I was just odd like that." Sharlen pictured Stacey sitting in front of the dormitory door, staring at the wood with a determination on her face and her eyes narrowed in concentration. "That little jerk didn't even knock. He just went right to open the door. So, when I saw it start to open, I pushed it closed. He falls backwards, rolls down he stairs, smacks his head open, and Pansy puts the poor thing to bed. Because you took the earmuffs it was hard for them to get to sleep—they made a huge deal about that, by the way; took them an hour or so to get off my back about 'em—and they woke up when they heard the door slam. THEN of course they wanted to know why the hell I did that so I told them Malfoy had been sneaking into our room to see you which I apparently didn't word so well because Pansy went into an almighty uproar and although I tried to fix what I'd said, she wouldn't listen to reason and then they started a vendetta against you and you came back in the room and—"
"BREATHE, damn you," Sharlen shouted at her. For the past few days Stacey's perk level had indeed gone down, but when she was telling a story she lost herself in run-on sentences. "Okay, so Malfoy never found out I was gone. What time did he come, about?"
"Maybe 12:30, or something, I don't know."
"Wait… does he know you're the one who pushed him down the stairs?" Sharlen asked suddenly, sitting up in bed.
Stacey pondered. "Pansy may have told him while she was tucking him in or licking his wounds or something, because she hates me so much. He hasn't really let on that he knows, or if he does he doesn't seem to care… He's been picking on me a bit more than usual, though…"
While Stacey contradicted herself Sharlen made a mental note to warn Malfoy not to lay a hand on her, or to cover for her. Either one would work fine, but something had to be done. Stacey was too naive to know the danger she could possibly be in. "Well," Stacey sighed, standing, "I wanna catch the second half of lunch, okay? Rest up and feel better." Stacey handed her a whole page of rainbow stickers and swept from the room.
Sharlen looked at the stickers for a few minutes, peeling back the background stick and pasting it back down with her thumb nail. She was about to write a response to Harry in her little book, when she had yet another visitor. Sharlen heard Madame Pomfrey talking to another student before he came around the corner, practically ignoring her.
"You cheeky devil," Draco snickered, approaching her bed and swiftly shutting the curtain around them. Sharlen observed a small bruise near his hairline. Is that all he walked away with? From the feel of it, Sharlen had cracked her skull in half just from the windowsill.
"Speak of the devil," Sharlen shot back.
Draco laughed. "That bump on the head shot your wit, for sure…" He lashed forward and grabbed her throat, speaking through gritted teeth over the vision she received of him lying in bed with Pansy tending the wound on his head. "Perhaps you should be rendered unconscious more often. Maybe even permanently."
Sharlen narrowed her eyes at Draco and pulled away from his grasp. "Try it. You and your entire family would follow three steps behind me."
Draco glared at her, pulling up a chair and sitting at her bedside. "You need to knock this shit off, Sharlen," he warned. She interrupted him.
Sitting up and leaning forward, Sharlen glared at Draco. "You listen to me. I don't know if your mission has given you a big head, but don't ever think you're bigger than me. Tell me what to do one more time and I'll throw you down another flight of stairs."
"Speaking of which, your little friend Stacey's in for a rude awakening," he threatened snidely.
"It wasn't Stacey, you moron. I pushed you down the stairs. Don't ever go sneaking into our room again."
Draco scoffed. "Pansy told me it was that Davis girl. Don't try to cover for her. Pansy can't stand you; why would she give up the chance to rat you out?"
"Pansy told you it was Stacey for her own reasons; she didn't think you'd believe it was me. Note that you don't right now, and wouldn't have then, because you believed me to not even be in my dorm." While Draco was pondering this, Sharlen heard more footsteps approaching. Draco started complaining about her probably having not been in the dorm.
Harry skirted Madame Pomfrey who was jotting something down in her log in her office, having been tipped off by Stacey that she wasn't keen on allowing Sharlen visitors. He'd given her back the earmuffs and she'd giggled herself something awful. Harry turned the corner and set his eyes on the only bed with the curtains shut, spying a pack of Tarot cards on the bedside table and taking an educated guess. "Sharlen, it's me," he called just before pulling open the curtain. "I was really worried-"
Harry froze seeing Malfoy with her. His cheeks burned a little red; they were leaning close together and glaring, with Draco's hand on her stomach. Harry stared at it as though wishing her could make it burst into flames. "What are you doing here?"
"Just visiting an old friend," Draco sneered, his thumb stroking Sharlen's stomach. He watched Harry watch his digit with amusement playing on his lips and in his eyes.
Sharlen shoved him. "Go away Draco, get the hell out of here."
"Hey, who are you to refuse my company?" he asked her before she seized him. One hand curled around his head and gripped his hair tightly while the other pushed a finger to his wound, pushing harder and harder until he was nearly sobbing. "Madame Pomfrey!" she shouted, telling Harry to hide.
Harry ducked behind her bed just as Madame Pomfrey came around the corner huffily. She let go to Draco and he held his head gingerly, sniffling. "Would you be so kind as to see Mr. Malfoy out?"
"So, be honest with me," she muttered darkly as Harry sat down beside her on the bed and they watched Malfoy go, furiously, "am I the talk of the town?"
"Well…"
"And your friends," she added quietly, "How much did you tell them?"
"Well I, er..." Harry muttered, not sure of how much to say.
Sharlen took a deep breath and lightly brought his hand up to her lips, kissing the skin of his wrist in a way she hoped was comforting. Harry sighed longingly, ignoring her questions.
"I was so worried," he said quietly, looking into her pale gray eyes. "I didn't want you to… disappear again."
"I'm here on my own terms now," she reassured him, trying to smile through the lie. "I'm not going anywhere."
Harry gave a little nod. "What happened? Your friend Stacey had a hard time explaining."
Sharlen sighed. "I was overwhelmed. Our plan did not go accordingly. The girls in my dorm were pretty upset about the whole Draco-sneaking-in thing."
"Yeah, I'm going to need you to explain what's going on with that," he said earnestly, leaning forward. "You may not know this, but he is my unofficial arch nemesis and his entire family is full of Death Eaters. He's bad news."
Sharlen's mouth went dry and she reached over for her flask, taking a long draught. She was running low, and the thought of asking Snape for a new batch made her stomach turn. Harry narrowed his eyes at the flask suspiciously. Hearing him talk about Death Eaters made her break out in a cold sweat, but he expected some kind of answer. "Malfoy and I grew up together," she admitted in a small voice. "Nothing like you and me, but if Snape needed to store me somewhere, it would be at Malfoy Manor. We were home schooled together occasionally before our Hogwarts letters came."
"You got a letter to Hogwarts when you were eleven?" Harry asked. "Why didn't you come?"
"I wasn't allowed," she replied simply.
"I don't understand your past, Sharlen," he admitted, massaging his scar. Sharlen's eye flew to it, her eyebrows narrowing with concern. "Snape's a teacher here, why wouldn't he let you attend? It doesn't make sense."
"He wanted to keep me away from people. He always has."
She couldn't read his expression, but his aura was burdened.
"I know it's a lot," she said, bringing a sheet in her hands to form a layer between their skin as she touched his face, "and I'm sorry my answers aren't enough. I just need you to know that I'm here to help you. That's why I came back."
"I don't know what you mean," Harry muttered evasively, pulling away slightly. It stung. She assumed he didn't want to bother anyone outside his inner circle with the prophecy, his destiny.
"Harry, please," Sharlen said, lowering her voice and gripping his robes, "Please don't shut me out. I know about the prophecy, about the Order." His eyes snapped back to her, lips parted slightly in disbelief. "I know this summer has been hell for you. I know about your godfather. I know you're mourning. I'm so sorry for all you've been through these past few years, past few months."
"How do you possibly…—?"
"I know the battle you have ahead of you and I am here to help you. Let me be of help to you." Harry shook his head, not knowing where to begin. His hand went to his scar again. "Does your scar bother you around me?" Sharlen asked sadly.
"It hurts more nowadays," he said dismissively. His mood seemed to have darkened. "Look, I don't know how you know all that, but-"
"Snape is in the Order, remember?" Sharlen said quickly.
Madam Pomfrey came around the corner. "Miss Down, you're free to go. I want you to return if you experience any dizziness, and if so we may have to try an Anxiety Draught on you. It may help you from being overwhelmed in the halls." With that, she walked away.
Harry helped Sharlen up and closed the curtain around her so she could dress. Back to the curtain and arms crossed, he tried to absorb everything she'd said. "Look, Sharlen, I…" He sighed and started again. "I have a lot on my mind and it's really not safe for me to tell you more than you seem to know. I don't want to put you in danger. Everyone close to me ends up in danger." Hearing the curtain pull back, he turned to see Sharlen slipping on her cloak, watching him carefully. He helped her gather her things from the bedside table and pulled her bag over his shoulder. She was unsteady on her feet. "What I have to do… is very complicated. There's a lot we don't know and I don't want to put you in any danger."
Sharlen searched his eyes, frustrated. She didn't know what she'd expected, really. The truth about her would surface eventually, but she wanted to spare him too many details about her origin until he was in a better place and could trust her. When Snape told her he'd lost Sirius, her heart ached for him. She could see the anguish all over his face, even as he tried to remain neutral. She would have to ease into this with him—as far as he knew, she was just a girl who didn't need to be mixed up in his complicated obligations. With a small smile, she said, "At least don't shut me out."
Harry grinned at her, and she softened. "I bet food will make you feel a little better. Have lunch with me," he said, leading her out of the Hospital Wing.
