Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!
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Sirius and Severus glared at Harriet.
Anger at his daughter's unexpected interruption welled in Severus's heart, which quickly became shadowed by fear.
Remus sought to mediate as he nodded at Harriet and replied, "Remember whom you're speaking to, Harriet. We've just come to chat with your father, that's all. There's no need to hurl unfounded accusations at him."
"Remus!" Sirius snapped.
Remus cast his friend a pleading look as Severus lifted his chin and commanded Harriet, "Return to your room…….Now."
"No!" She scowled.
Severus furrowed his brow at her blatant defiance.
Harriet's daring spirit was well-known, although she rarely defied her father.
In response, Severus couldn't help but feel a bit disheartened.
"You and Mum have been keeping secrets behind my back! I know you have been! It's the only thought that's kept me sane over these last weeks!" Harriet cried.
Severus fell into a contemplative silence while her eyes darted from him to Remus, then to Sirius, "I don't know what Professor Lupin has to do with any of it…..And I'm not quite sure who that is, but I've seen him before." She nodded at Sirius.
Sirius drew in a deep breath as Severus turned his fitting glare onto him.
"...But I want to know!" Harriet demanded as she turned to look back at Severus, "Two more years and I'm of age! Am I not old enough to be trusted?...What are you and Mum hiding?! How could you possibly-"
"-Enough!" Severus snapped.
His scathing tone caused Harriet's eyes to widen in surprise as she silenced herself.
Her father often spoke to his misbehaving students that way, but never to her.
"Your room." He commanded as his black eyes flickered over her, "Don't…..force me to ask again."
In a subtle across of angsty teenage rebellion, Harriet huffed as she stared into Severus's cold eyes.
The rage in her expression broke his heart as she turned on her heel and stomped up the stairs.
Severus should have taken her obedience as a compliment.
Her reluctance would have escalated into a full blown refusal if anyone else had so commanded her.
Remus and Sirius stared at Severus as he looked over at them.
Sirius opened his mouth, but Remus grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and spoke, "Sorry to bother you, Severus. We……We'll revisit the topic another time."
Before Severus could say a word, Remus yanked Sirius out of the Snapes' cottage.
"What are you doing?!" Sirius snarled once they were outside, "You're spoiling everything, Remus! We were this close to-"
"-To telling Harriet the truth about her paternity, yes, I know." Remus sighed, "Which consequently means we were this close to signing her death warrant, weren't we?"
Sirius finally shook himself free of Remus's grasp as the two men faced each other.
"What are you talking about?!" Sirius spat, "It's been fifteen long years! Fifteen years!...It's time she knew the truth!"
"...Perhaps Severus is right." Remus explained with a slow nod, "Perhaps, old friend, we should wait a bit longer."
Sirius scoffed, "What are you on about?"
"I can't be certain now, though I have an idea." Remus mused, "Did you not notice the look on Severus's face?...Did you see the fear in his eyes?"
Sirius groaned as he shuffled impatiently on his feet, "That's just how Snivelly looks. Surely your memory hasn't failed you that badly."
"Dumbledore informed the Order last week that Severus and Lily are still routinely attending Death Eater meetings." Remus nodded, "You missed that bit…..You were late, remember?"
"Yes, I was late…..What does that have to do with desecrating James' memory?!" Sirius fumed.
"Suppose they've hidden the truth from Voldemort all these years, Sirius…..Suppose Harriet occasionally goes with them to these…..meetings….Can you not imagine what would happen if the Dark Lord read her thoughts?" Remus frowned.
Sirius's irritated expression melted into a frightened scowl.
As he imagined the potential ramifications of his premature quest to divulge the truth about Harriet's heritage, Remus nodded and said, "...That's why I spoiled everything, old friend. I doubt James would thank us very much for getting his daughter killed, now would he?"
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For some reason, the weather reflected the coming storms in wizarding Britain that summer.
What should have been sunny days of warmth became rainy, dismal hours of extended gloom.
Once autumn arrived and Harriet found herself on the Hogwarts Express, bound for the castle, she sat across from her friends with a saddened frown as she stared out the window.
"Harriet…….?" Hermione asked cautiously.
She and Ron both flinched as Harriet glanced over in their direction, each anxious about what she would say and do next.
Instead of a rageful snap or a melancholy comment, a single word left her lips.
"...What?" Harriet asked.
"We all miss him, Harriet……Cedric, that is." Hermione nodded.
"You've got to stop blaming yourself, mate." Ron shrugged, "It's awful, it was awful and it always will be awful……but it wasn't your fault."
Harriet stared at Ron and Hermione for a long moment before she turned and gazed out the window at the gray landscape, shrouded in darkness by the ominous clouds that floated above.
She usually opened up to her friends, but since the beginning of her internal battle, she had chosen to fight her inward battle quietly.
Severus, Voldemort, Tom, Draco…….Cedric's death had been difficult to accept.
Unfortunately, he was only one of the five men who had broken her heart.
She spoke before she stopped herself, "...It's more complicated than Cedric."
Ron furrowed his brow while Hermione gently encouraged, "What do you mean?...Whatever it is, you can tell us, Harriet."
Harriet glanced over at her friends.
Ron Weasley, a member of the only family in the Sacred Twenty-Eight that actively fought against….Voldemort.
Hermione Granger, the brilliant muggle-born who Harriet had come to realize Voldemort would dearly enjoy torturing and murdering.
What could she possibly say?
How could she explain?
Where should she even begin?
The task seemed overwhelming.
Harriet shrugged as she turned back to stare out the window once more.
"...I don't want to talk about it right now." She sighed.
Hermione and Ron exchanged worried glances.
As the train chugged along the track, Harriet's compartment was not the only one tinged with a sense of melancholia.
"What's the matter, Draco?" Crabbe asked.
Handsome and dapper in his tailored black suit, Draco's pale face seemed wan and tired as he gazed out at the same bleak landscape Harriet studied.
"...Another wretched year at this bloody school." He sneered.
Beside Crabbe, Goyle blinked.
"I'd have to be as thick as you two not to be bothered, wouldn't I?" Draco hissed.
His spiteful tongue was a necessary weapon.
What better way to convincingly cover his broken heart?
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Heavy sheets of rain smashed against the glass window.
As thunder boomed outside her dormitory room, Harriet forced herself to keep her eyes closed and focus on the storm.
She shifted in her bed.
The gentle snores of her sleeping roommates were easy to block out, but as the unending night droned on and the storm raged, the throbbing ache in her head became blinding.
Open the diary.
Open the diary.
Open the-
Gripped by an unrelenting wave of pain-induced nausea, Harriet huffed as she threw the covers off herself and slipped out of bed.
By the light that poured through the window as the lightning crackled, she reached over and pulled on her glasses just as she flipped Tom Riddle's diary open.
For once, the words that appeared there caused her to frown instead of smile.
Harriet Potter,
Will you ever come back to me?
Harriet held the small, black book in her hands.
Her chest heaved as she watched the penned words of black ink sink into the parchment until it once again appeared bare.
She closed her eyes and clamped the book shut before she crushed it against her chest.
A violent crackle right outside her window would have startled her if she hadn't been too consumed by her own introspection.
She and Tom were not friends, which made it even harder to give him up.
If only they had been just that, friends, and nothing more………
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Harriet's connection to Tom Riddle, to Voldemort, extended far beyond simple emotional drama.
As each day passed and Tom Riddle spent his time wandering about in his lonely chamber, his aching heart began to erode the more robust pieces of the soul he had issued from.
At one particularly tense Death Eater meeting, on a late night in October, Severus noticed the physical proof of his false master's rumored ailment.
Voldemort chalked his condition up to a mistake that had been made during the spell designed to yield him a new body.
A mistake, that was all.
The Dark Lord despised mistakes, but mistakes could be righted.
That night, he stood at the head of Malfoy Manor's dining table with his spine painfully straight and his reddened eyes sharp as he peered from recruit to recruit.
Bellatrix's concerned dismay for her beloved leader was evident.
Regardless, in Lucius and Narcissa's eyes, it amused Severus that he detected the slightest bit of hope.
Although they would be of little help to his cause, it gave Severus a sense of false comfort to know that his old friends truthfully wanted to witness the Dark Lord's demise as well.
He wisely stopped himself from exploring that musing as he quickly returned his silent concentration to upholding his Occlumency as he sat next to Lily.
Before Voldemort succumbed to an ailment or warfare, they would first need to survive.
"Severus!" Voldemort barked as his reptilian eyes moved over to his appointed general.
"Yes…….my lord?" Severus answered.
Lily resisted the urge to shift nervously in her seat.
It had been painful, whatever malady had stricken the Dark Lord, and pain had made him dangerous.
Unpredictable.
Malicious.
……..More volatile than usual.
"I suffer, Severus." Voldemort hissed as he stretched out a pale hand, scarred and bloody with oozing sores, "It is you and you alone who can heal me."
Lily sucked in a silent breath.
"Dust out your cauldrons, my friend, study your books." Voldemort snarled, "I expect you to design a potion that will echo through the ages. One strong enough to do what my magic is struggling to accomplish."
Severus nodded as he calmly drawled, "It will be my honour, my lord, though it may take some time."
"Make beasts, Severus!" Voldemort commanded in a hateful gasp, "Time is never a plentiful thing!"
Severus calmly agreed, "Of course, my lord. I shall do my very best."
Lily wanted to scream.
As Voldemort turned away and went on to the next topic slated for discussion that evening, Severus forced his heart to keep a steady pace while he wondered……Had his new assignment been a cruel punishment or a wonderful opportunity?