Harriet turned, propping the door of Number Twelve open with her foot, and flicked her fringe back off her face in the signal to Remus that she was in. Then she oozed through the gap into the hall and shut the door behind her.
In the sudden press of darkness, all she could hear was the clicking of the locks. Wherever the Weasleys and Sirius had gone, they were shielded from Mrs. Black's ears, and the hall was heavy with silence.
She took a step forward and tripped over something lying in the fairway.
Catching herself on her hands sent a puff of carpet dust into her face; she only just managed not to swear, sneeze, or wake up Mrs. Black - and the thing jerked, making her jump.
"Snape?" she hissed at the same time he hissed, "Potter?"
"What are you doing?" she hissed at him.
"Nothing you need be concerned about," he hissed back.
"You-" She worked through the possibilities while he tried to use the troll's leg- umbrella stand to pull himself up. He wasn't the type to take a nap in the middle of the hall, and if he was having difficulty standing. . .
Voldemort. He'd been with Voldemort, and he'd got himself hurt.
She fumed at him. "Why didn't you call for someone?"
"I am capable of- what are you doing?" he snarled (quietly) when she pulled on his arm.
"Helping you up. Well, why are you lying on the floor if you can get up? Or should I go get Sirius?" she whispered, pointedly.
He seethed, and it practically had a sound: the curdling of helpless fury. Then he cranked out his elbow and let her pull him up. He was heavier than he looked. . . but since he had the physique of a folded umbrella, that wasn't saying much.
They navigated up the stairs like some lurching monster. Snape leaned on the banisters and walls, clearly trying not to touch her more than he absolutely had to, as if she were some plague survivor. She kept a grip on his arm nonetheless; they weren't toppling back down the stairs and breaking their necks because he was too. . . Snape to take help.
As he spelled his chosen bedroom door open, she peered curiously at the age-spotted plaque on the wall. 'Do not enter without express permission of Regulus Arcturus Black.'
"Really?" she muttered.
Snape grunted and fell into an armchair that had probably seen better centuries. Eyes closed, he rigidly slumped against the moth-eaten cushion, his breath rasping. He looked even worse than he had in the cupboard. Honestly, he made her wonder if he'd stuck his soul in an old vase and his body would continue running on spite forever.
"I can get Mrs. Weasley," she said, eyeing him.
"Don't you dare." His eyes opened to slits. "I will be - fine."
"Sure," she said, making her doubt obvious, and turned to peer around the room. She didn't know anything about Sirius' brother, but he'd apparently been really into being Slytherin.
"Were you friends?" she asked, glancing back at Snape, whose eyes were shut again.
"You'd probably call us that," he said after a moment. He sounded bone-tired.
What a weird answer. A pure Snape answer. "Good to know."
Sirius' room had Gryffindor memorabilia on the walls and posters of swimsuit models. He'd yanked them down with an embarrassed look and binned them when he'd seen her grinning at them. "Just - annoying my parents," he'd said. Regulus' room, though, was a shrine to everything Black. Toujourus Pur, read a crest over the headboard. She didn't know what that meant, but judging by the plaque outside the door, she'd bet it was something only a twat would paint above their bed.
"I can get you tea or something," she said to Snape, whose expression said she had asked him some incomprehensible question, like how she might cure human idiocy. "Toast?"
"That is not necessary," he said, carefully.
She frowned at him. "So I can't get anyone, and I can't get you anything."
"You can be taught." He pushed himself up in the chair a bit. His hand was shaking; he balled it out of sight. "Close the door behind you when you leave."
"Yeah," she said. "Sure. I'll remember that."
Then she ambled over to Regulus' bookshelf and peered at the books. She could feel Snape's consternation. The thing about Snape was, he didn't stay consterned for long.
"Any time, now," he said scathingly.
"I want to make sure you're not going to pass out," she said, like it didn't matter much. "You know, since I can't get anyone to check you out."
"Don't!" he snarled.
She froze; he was leveling a shaking finger at the bookshelf.
"Don't. . . touch those," he said more evenly. "They're - probably hexed. And over time, the hex will have grown considerably - worse."
Harriet retracted her hand. "This is the worst house I've ever been in. I thought Privet Drive was always gonna carry that award."
A dusty picture frame caught her eye on the bed-stand. She bent down to examine it.
"Is this Regulus?" She didn't expect Snape to answer, but she didn't need him to; the slight, black-haired boy in the photograph bore a strong resemblance to Sirius, like Asteria's unfinished sketches before she molded them into the final result. Like the other players, he looked pleased with himself to be on the team, though he kept fiddling with the trim on his robes, as if assuring himself he was really wearing them. "He played Seeker?"
"He won more games than not, though he didn't have your talent."
She cast a bewildered look over her shoulder, but Snape was determinedly not looking at her.
"You're not dying, are you?" she asked.
"Don't be ridiculous."
"That scathing tone sounds good," she said. "You still look like you came out of a frozen dinner pack, though."
Snape's expression was difficult to read. It took her a moment to realize that this was because he didn't look angry.
She was just weighing the strangeness of this conversation coming not twelve hours after that. . . thing in the Carnivorous Cupboard, when a sudden screech from far below sent Mrs. Black into a new wave of invective. Harriet groaned.
"Can we get rid of her?"
She went out onto the landing to lean over - and almost got her eye put out by a rocketing bundle of feathers. "Bloody hell!"
Righting her glasses, she dashed back into Snape's room, where an imperious eagle owl was settling on the winged back of his chair.
"Hey," she said, "I know that owl. . ."
"It's Draco's." Snape reached up and pulled the note off its leg. Harriet very much wanted to nose over and see what it said, but the pounding footsteps and swearing on the landing outside distracted her.
"Where'd that fucking-" Sirius went skidding past the open door, rucking up the carpet, and then came shooting back. "Holly-berry, what are you - hoy!" He leveled an accusing finger at Snape, who didn't bother frowning up from his note. "What are you doing in here with him?"
"I coerced her in here, obviously." Snape might look like a frozen dinner pack, but his sneer was on point. "It couldn't have to do with the giant, screeching bird."
"It did have to do with the giant, screeching bird," Harriet told Sirius. He didn't have to know she'd already been in here. In fact, it was much better that he didn't.
"It almost took my face off," Sirius said, pointing to his forehead, which was bleeding from a talon mark as long as Harriet's finger. "And it's lucky Molly didn't shoot it. You aren't supposed to be receiving owls, Sniv."
"I certainly didn't invite it," he said, but he was frowning up at it where it sat haughtily surveying them all like a monarch confronted with a trio of peasants. "It must have followed me. . . I haven't been back long."
"That doesn't fucking worry you?" Sirius said incredulously.
"Were you able to exchange owls with - the Potters?" There was the tiniest hitch as he said it; if Harriet hadn't been listening for it, she probably would've missed it.
Sirius ran a hand over his unshaven jaw. "Yeah. . . Dumbledore didn't want us to, but we did it anyway."
"We should probably do something about that." Snape turned the note over and used his wand to scribble a reply. Then he held it up to the owl - only to lose the paper when Sirius swiped it over with a spell.
"This is from Narcissa Malfoy!" he yelped, and then, "Shit!" as the owl dived at him, screeching.
"If you don't want it to peck your eyes out, give it what it wants!" Snape snapped as Harriet ducked out of the way.
"I'm not - letting notes to Narcissa Fucking Malfoy - out of the house! Harriet! Open the damn wardrobe- No! Don't touch it, I forgot-"
He shot a spell at the wardrobe door, which banged open, and in a flurry of feathers shoved the bird inside. Panting, he slammed the door; a second claw-scratch ran down his cheek; his shirt was ripped at the shoulder seam, and there was a golden feather stuck in his hair.
"Doesn't surprise me she's got a raging bitch for an owl," he said, shoving his hair out of his face; the feather stayed. Harriet didn't think he realized it was there. "All right, let's see what she oh-so-innocently wants-"
She peered over his shoulder at the note, which he angled so she could read, too. Surprisingly, Snape didn't try to stop them, only treated them to one of his 'There are things growing on cheese more intelligent than you two' looks. Behind them, the wardrobe clattered and shrieked as the owl fought to get out.
Narcissa Malfoy's handwriting slanted sharply across the parchment, spattered with inky backsplashes. She'd written in a hurry, and as Harriet skimmed the note, she saw why.
Severus Something dreadful has happened Draco has gone missing, while out with one of those girls - a routine walk in the woods, his cousin said, to look at some foolish ruins, only they never came back. It's been two days and they have only just now informed me, hoping to find him themselves - I could kill them with my bare hands and I will if I get them within my grasp - Severus You must find him
She was surprised to feel her heart drop as she read, like she was actually worried about Draco Malfoy. But she knew what it was like to be trapped and lost, to wonder what was going to happen to you, to pull all of your cleverness together to try and get out. Really, she wouldn't wish that on anybody.
"How can he have just disappeared?" she asked. "Does his mum think he was kidnapped? Who's this girl he was with?"
"One of the Greengrasses," Snape said. "As I understand, all of the family was there, or at least most of it."
Her heart jumped back up and lodged in her throat at the thought of it being Asteria. "What were they doing with Malfoy?"
"And why should you be the one to find her wayward offspring, Sniv?" Sirius turned the note over, as if looking for clues on the other side. The only thing there, though, was Snape's reply: 'I will attend to it.' "What can you do? I thought he was in bloody Switzerland or wherever."
"Which is why she asked me and not you - I actually know which country he's in."
Snape placed his hands flat on the arms of the chair. If he was trying to get up, though, his legs didn't cooperate, because he stayed sitting. When his eyes narrowed to furious slits, Harriet suspected he had tried to stand.
"Not like that, you can't," Harriet said. And then, the last thing she'd expected to say followed: "Which is why I'm coming with you."
Draco's ankle was killing him; his eyes were gritty; his head felt like a balloon tumbling gently down a grassy slope. Lying on rocks was uncomfortable. All the dust made him want to sneeze. He needed a bath. And some natural light.
"We're going to die," he muttered, very quietly to himself.
He snuck a look around; in the only bright spot through the gloom, Asteria was hunched over her sketchbook, her lit wand tucked behind her ear for light, dirty yellow hair obscuring her face. He relaxed. If she'd heard him, she'd have threatened him again.
He didn't know why he'd ever thought she was sweet or scared of everything. He must have picked up this false information from Daphne, who believed her little sister was some helpless duckling. But helpless ducklings didn't turn to you holding a sharp rock and say fiercely, "Shut up or I'll sh-ut you up! We're not going to d-die!"
If he was having trouble sleeping in this tomb - where he was probably going to die - it wasn't just the uncomfortable rocks, the hunger, or the pounding in his foot and ankle. It was hard to get a proper rest when you were afraid your only companion in your imprisonment was going to bean you with a sharp rock in the middle of the night.
Footsteps crunched in the dirt; huddling in on himself, he risked a look upwards, but Asteria was only holding out the canteen.
"Time for your ration," she said tiredly.
He unscrewed the lid and gulped down a mouthful of water - not too much, because she'd told him off about that the first day. He held the water in his mouth as he handed the bottle back, then let it trickle down his throat. It tasted so good and there was too little of it.
He knew Asteria was right to conserve it. He'd have drunk it all the first day. . . and he wondered where she'd learned this stuff. Maybe she and Potter had been off practicing survival tactics in the Forbidden Forest during spring term. They'd certainly spent enough time together.
Unless Potter and Asteria had also fallen down into a ruined old crypt in the middle of nowhere, they'd surely had more fun together than he was currently having.
"Find anything new?" he asked warily as Asteria took her own mouthful. He had to cap the canteen, since she'd hurt her shoulder.
"Just more caved-in tunnels," she said, angling her sketchbook so that he could see.
Lighting his wand, he peered at the map she was piecing together. The room they'd fallen into started it off, then the tunnels she'd explored a little bit more each time she went out. X's marked off the cave-ins. There were a lot of them.
"I'm about to go back out," she said. "I was just copying off the additions."
He took the piece of vellum she handed him, though he didn't want to; stupid, to imagine she'd stay if he didn't take it. She'd probably just ball it up and throw it at him.
"You should eat something before you go out again," he said.
She frowned at him. "We don't have enough food for me to eat every time I leave."
"Just a bite or something."
". . . Fine," she said, and went to dig in the picnic hamper. She pulled a piece off the bread loaf and chewed it with a defiant air. They'd eaten the cheese and the sausages the first day, since that stuff wasn't going to keep. Now they had bread and crackers left, with some fig butter that ought to have been refrigerated but hadn't turned green and fuzzy yet.
Had it only been two days? Maybe a third? One minute they'd been out with her sisters - the oldest one, Leto, whose husband was a complete twat and whom she kept fighting with; Daphne, who was trying very hard to keep the peace; his cousins, who were clearly wishing Leto and her stupid husband had never answered their invitation; and Asteria, who just wanted to avoid the lot and sketch the scenery.
"Ruins are so romantic, aren't they?" Draco's cousin Cato had said, and he'd like to borrow Asteria's rock and brain her with it. She wouldn't think they were so romantic when she was lying under the bloody ground with a load of genuine skeletons.
He was going to hex them all good and proper if he didn't die down here: Cato and her sisters for ditching him with the Greengrasses; Leto and her stupid husband for going off to have a row; Daphne for going after them, and telling Asteria to wait there, she'd be back - if he and Asteria had just gone after all those boneheads, they wouldn't have fallen into these old catacombs, which apparently no one knew about.
Cato and her romantic ruins!
The pain, the hunger, and the burning desire to wring all their necks made the days seem longer and unreal. He did have a watch, but he'd given it to Asteria, since she was the one with the self-control, the self-designated explorer. By agreement - she'd allowed him to weigh in, for once - she had to come back every half hour. Whenever the black on the other side of the door swallowed her up, he lay on his cloak terrified she was never going to come back. Sometimes he reckoned she'd die, either by falling down some bottomless pit or by triggering another cave-in; other times he was convinced she'd find a way out and take off without him. What was he but dead weight? He'd sprained his ankle and knocked his head when they'd fallen through the trapdoor and hit the remains of the crumbling stairs on the way down. Asteria's shoulder injury didn't keep her from moving around. She was better off without him. More food and water for one than for two.
"All right, I'm off," Asteria said, tugging over her head the strap of lace on which she'd tied her wand. She'd ripped it off her dress. Apparently her survival skills course with Potter had included fashioning bits of your clothes into handy accoutrements like pockets and lanyards. He would've offered to help her pull her hair free of the strap, but he didn't want her to glare at him. He was already feeling too fragile.
At the exit to the room - the only door in the crypt - she turned back toward him, the wandlight beneath her chin breaking her face into eerie planes of light and shadow.
"We're not going to die," she said firmly. "I'm f-inding a way out."
And with that, gripping her sketchbook, she marched into the darkness.
"You're-WHAT!" Sirius grabbed her by the shoulders and wheeled her around. "The bloody hell you are! You've - you're joking, right? Please tell me you're joking, you didn't pick up some Babbling Curse at St. Mungo's."
"I'm fine," Harriet said, pushing his hand off her forehead, where he'd been feeling for a fever. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."
"Look," Sirius said in what he probably thought was a patient tone, and maybe it was; but the calm effect was ruined by the way his eye was twitching. "You've had a rough few days. It only makes sense that something - completely mental would seem like a good idea, but - "
"It's certainly a joke," Snape said. "Stop taking it so seriously, Black."
Harriet rolled her eyes. He would say that. She couldn't read his expression; it was aloof, somehow.
"No, it's not, but fine, keep thinking that. How are you getting out of here without help?"
Snape's eyes narrowed, fixed on hers. His fingers dug into the chair's arm like claws, and he very. . . slowly. . . rose. He stood there, breathing audibly - even Sirius was watching him warily - and his posture shivered, like he was going to buckle. He clamped one hand on the back of the chair and flicked his chin up, his eyes glittering.
"I," he said, drawing the words past his teeth, "don't need help."
Then he slumped into the chair, a shaking hand pressed to one side of his face.
"Get out of here, the both of you," he hissed. "Black, take your goddaughter and piss off."
"It's my fucking house, Sniv, I'll go where I like," Sirius said, frowning. There was still that wariness to his expression, though, as he watched Snape, who turned a seething glare on him. Just getting the edge of it was hot enough; full-on, Harriet imagined it felt like getting a heated iron pan in the face.
"Look," she said firmly, stepping in, and on Sirius' foot. "You need to find Draco. I want to help - plus, if I'm there, I'm not here, right?"
There was a silence as this inane declaration processed. She said, "I mean, people are trying to kidnap me here, aren't they? They've tried it once, and maybe again. They won't expect me in - not-Switzerland so they won't find me. Much safer that way."
Snape was looking at her like he didn't know where to begin to enumerate all the stupidity in this line of reasoning.
"You know," Sirius said, before Snape could speak, "that's not a bad idea."
Harriet saw Snape's expression shift to 'flabbergasted' from the corner of her eye, but she'd already swiveled to stare at Sirius, who was stroking his unshaven jaw and looking almost sly.
"I mean, nobody would expect it," he said. "So it's the safest course, yeah?"
"I. . . what?" Harriet boggled.
He smiled and clapped her on the shoulder. "Great idea, Holly-berry. So! When do we leave?"
"W. . . e?" Snape managed, sounding strangled.
"Obviously," Sirius said, with a bright edge. "We're all going."
Snape stared at Sirius, then at Harriet, who stared at Sirius and then at Snape. Sirius beamed at both of them.
Then Snape buried his face in one of his hands. "This is a nightmare," he muttered so quietly Harriet thought he might have been talking only to himself. "At any moment, I'll wake up. . ."
"If this is your idea of a nightmare, lucky you," Sirius said. "I've been dreaming out my dear old mother lately. Wonder why. C'mon, Holly-berry, let's get packing. Or, you pack, I'll watch Sniv. He'll try to leave without us."
"Yeah. . . I really don't think leaving you two unsupervised is the best idea," Harriet said.
"Let me be perfectly clear," Snape said, dropping his hand to hit them both with his frying-pan glare. "It doesn't matter who packs when or in what order - you two are not coming with me. Black, you are a wanted criminal. Potter, I have no idea what Draco has got himself into, and if you think I'm letting you traipse off into the middle of it - "
"Huh," said Sirius. "There's a point. Guess that's us stymied, then. Right, Holly-berry, you know these Grassy girls? You can write them and ask where they are. Don't worry, Sniv, we don't actually have to go with you - "
Snape looked like he wanted to pull Narcissa's owl out of the wardrobe and shove it down Sirius' throat. "I'll - tell Dumbledore."
Harriet was torn between wanting to laugh and wincing at this rather serious threat. But Sirius only snorted.
"You won't, because he wouldn't let you go. This'll make you unable to keep your spy job, at least for a while. He'd say Narcissa could go herself, and he'd be right."
Snape shook his head. "I'll be vastly more effective." Then he lapsed into silence, staring at Sirius in something like confusion.
"Black," he said at last, "-no, I don't know why I'm about to appeal to your capacity for reason. You've never shown you have any." He switched his bleak scowl to Harriet. "Neither have you. This may be the stupidest plan either of you has ever come up with. I haven't made an exhaustive list, which now seems like an oversight."
"Yeah, you're right," Harriet said, folding her arms. "That Unbreakable Vow plan you two came up with was way better. I've got to come along for that reason alone, haven't I? If something happens to me and you're in another country, you won't be able to get back in time to help. Remus told me the only reason you knew I'd been kidnapped so soon after it happened was because the Vow - reacted. That could kill you, and you wouldn't be helping Draco at all."
Sirius frowned; the lines on Snape's face deepened with vexation. Harriet tried not to look too smug.
"She's got a point," Sirius said, tossing the words casually at Snape. Harriet tried hard not to look smugger.
Snape stared at them both for several long moments. Whatever he saw only made him look disgusted - and resigned.
"I am going to regret this to my dying day, but what else is new?" He pointed at the wardrobe. "Let it out and send it off to Narcissa. Then we'll need to plan - an actual plan, not that either of you knows what that is - if we want to get out of here without Dumbledore, Lupin, or Molly Weasley knowing, because they will certainly stop this."
"Great!" Sirius clapped his hands together. "So glad we're all getting along. That's what they've all wanted us to do, isn't it?"
a/n: so begins an arc that i have adapted from my original plan for ootp as of a couple of years back (a lonnnnng time, in other words). it IS going to tie into the over-arching plot and themes of ootp and the hp series as a whole, fear not, friends.
as always, thank you for your continued support, encouragement, and kindness