xxiii. come back for me
Pure luck saved the trio of Slytherin witches from being stopped and apprehended inside their own common room.
Harriet later learned that a Dungbomb spontaneously ignited in someone's bag and the foul smelling cloud of brown dust that burst from the satchel drew the crowded room's attention like moths to a particularly stinky flame. Harriet, Hermione, and Elara didn't notice the smell, not after tangling with a mountain troll, so they barely acknowledged the cloud or the shrieks or the general rabble as they passed through the entrance in the stone wall and all but dashed to their dorm room.
No one else was inside. With all the excitement of feast and troll incursion, the five other first year girls were mostly likely in the common room with everyone else, chatting and theorizing, waiting for more information. Elara was the first to sink into a boneless heap, wheezing in a way that worried Harriet, and Hermione followed suit, crumpling on her bed as she massaged a stitch in her side.
Rock dust and porcelain debris covered them from head to foot, shavings from the mirror gleaming like stars in Elara's disheveled hair and grime patterned in nervous fingerprints across Hermione's face. Livi slid from Harriet's shoulders with a sullen, tired complaint. She sat on the edge of her bed and hissed in pain.
"Harriet—," Hermione panted. "You're—you're bleeding!"
She was. Something in the loo had cut her calf from ankle to knee, the slice shallow but long, ruining both her sock and the hem of her uniform's skirt. "Bloody hell," Harriet groused as she thumbed the shredded threads. She hadn't bought many uniforms, anticipating—hoping, hoping—she'd grow taller and have to get more before the start of next year.
"Really, Harriet!" Hermione said, her voice several octaves too high. "Your language is terrible—." Then the bushy-haired girl dove into her trunk and threw aside sweaters and cloaks and more books than Harriet could count, emerging at last with a little zippered Muggle satchel she opened to reveal a handful of plasters, a wrinkled roll of gauze, and a tube of ointment. She disappeared into the washroom and returned with a dampened towel.
"I'm fine, really, you don't need to—," Harriet stuttered through chattering teeth, but Hermione wouldn't hear of it. She made quick work of cleaning the blood and grit off the affected skin, applying plasters to keep the cut closed before they both wound the gauze around Harriet's twig-like leg.
"You two could have been killed!" Hermione lectured under her breath. Silence had been thick in the room ever since their heavy breathing had subsided. "Such an utterly insensible thing to do!"
"I tried telling a teacher!" Harriet huffed. "But they ran off after the troll! And Slytherin wouldn't listen!"
"And so you just gave up?!"
"Well, someone had to come get you!" Harriet's voice rose to match Hermione's in pitch. "I wasn't going to let my best friend go wandering with that big buggering thing stomping about! It could have killed you!"
"You—." Hermione was suddenly reduced to tears. Harriet felt ill, unsure of what to do when clear, glistening streaks cut through the dirt on the other girl's cheeks. "Y-y-you came back for me." She whirled on Elara, who flattened herself against the door again, wide-eyed and startled, like one of Mrs Figg's cats when she'd corner it for a brushing. "And you. I never—. You—. You came for me, too! And I thought you didn't even like me."
Elara's pale face turned brilliant red in color and she fidgeted with her sleeves. It was a nervous tick Harriet had noticed before; Elara tugged her cuffs down toward her hands or straightened her collar, making sure the top button remained closed, and Harriet knew she'd wear gloves if the professor would let her get away with it. "I…of course I like you. I know it doesn't seem that way. I just—. I'm not…not good with…people." She kept her gaze on her hands as she wrung them together. "The…the people who…the place that raised me, they didn't—." A shuddering sigh escaped and she squeezed her eyes shut. "Of course I like you. You and Harriet are my friends. My only friends."
Hermione stood and hesitated for the briefest of instances before she went to Elara and gave the other girl a hug. Elara became rigid as a board, clearly unaccustomed or uncomfortable with the touch, and yet she pushed aside her own misgivings to lay a tentative hand on Hermione's shoulder.
Harriet smiled. Her cheeks ached from the strength of it and her eyes felt wet behind her scratched glasses. She didn't look away.
"I'm being silly," Hermione said with a broken chuckle as she used her sleeve to wipe her face. "I didn't mean to cry, how ridiculous—." She hunted through her pockets for a sodden tissue when she stepped back from Elara—who visibly deflated in relief—and happened to clap eyes on Livi again. "Harriet…is that the Horned Serpent from the Magical Menagerie? The one they reported stolen?"
Elara only quirked a brow.
"I didn't steal him," Harriet replied, hoping the two other witches believed her. Neither appeared wholly convinced and Harriet ground her teeth. "I didn't! I went into the shop and we had a little chat—apparently I'm a Parseltongue or, err, a Parselmouth, like Professor Snape said—and I got shooed out by the shop owner. Livi showed up in my room later and told me he didn't want to go back and I told him he had to go back, and then he kind of pinned me down and I couldn't think of how I'd go about getting a big snake back into the store—."
Harriet knew she was rambling but couldn't stop. Elara, who'd be there in the Menagerie and had heard Harriet talking, wasn't surprised by her snake chatting ability; Hermione reacted much like Snape, her expression cycling through various degrees of disbelief and shock. "Holy cricket. You can speak to snakes?"
"Yes—? But you can't say anything! I told Snape I wouldn't mention it to anyone else and he—." Might give me detention until the next century? Seems that kind of bloke.
"That's incredibly rare," Hermione said. "According to Hogwarts: A History, Salazar Slytherin himself was a Parselmouth—it's the reason our House symbol is a snake! And it's a hereditary talent, which is why Professor Slytherin is a Parselmouth too—."
"Professor Slytherin's a Parselmouth?"
"He would have to be. Some of the, um, books speculate on the legitimacy of his claim to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Slytherin because he simply couldn't have been born a Slytherin, as the family went extinct in the male line centuries ago—."
"Hermione—."
"—and the Gaunts became the last direct family, with the Minister claiming to be the final living member of the House—."
"Really, Hermione—."
"—so Slytherin would have to display a magical hereditary trait such as that for his claim to be rectified by the Wizengamot, not that any of the records make note of that. Shortsighted of them, really. Harriet, you're most likely related to him!"
Harriet wrinkled her nose. Maybe that's why Professor Snape warned me not to say anything. Something about Professor Slytherin seemed off to Harriet, something she couldn't name or really put a finger on, especially since he was always cordial with her, praised her Defense abilities, and was Head of Slytherin House. His presence…aggravated Set, riled her shadow when no one was looking, and Harriet didn't like how he grimaced at the Gryffindors and ignored Hermione. She already had enough terrible relatives, thank you very much.
A sudden bang hit the door and all three witches jumped.
"Professor Slytherin's doing a head count in the common room in five minutes! Be ready!" Prefect Farley called. Harriet, Hermione, and Elara looked at one another—then at their filthy, rumpled uniforms and dripping robes.
"Oh, no—!"
"Shite!"
"Oh, we're going to be—!"
"Don't say it—!"
"Expelled!"
"Will you two move—!"
Trunk lids clattered against the ends of their beds as the three girls grappled for any clothes they could, Elara disappearing into the bath where she typically changed while Hermione and Harriet tore off their robes and vests to jam jumpers on over their heads. Harriet used her dirty shirt to hastily clean her face and hands, then found a pair of new socks that mostly covered the gauze on her sore leg. She shoved her shoes onto the wrong feet in her haste and almost collided with Hermione when they both bolted for the door. Elara joined them then, her hair once more collected in a bun, her appearance much fresher than Harriet's.
The Slytherin common room was a long, sunken space built beneath the lake, windows set to look out into the black tide, the hearths gone dark and cold despite the number of people congregating on the plush couches and winged armchairs. The House of Serpents was the smallest House at Hogwarts despite the contrary size of Harriet's own year; sixth and seventh year girls often left Hogwarts early, content to marry with their O.W.L.s alone and lead their lives, pure-bloods marrying other pure-bloods to make pure-blood mums and dads and relatives happy. Some of the older girls, like Gemma Farley, sneered when someone asked if she was going to follow the same tradition, and disparaged those "unambitious twits" who did.
That left sixty or so students to mill about the room, their anticipation politely subdued but still palpable, like static clinging to the surface of a well-kept cashmere scarf. The eldest Slytherins intimidated Harriet so she didn't know much about them; they took the best seats by the best hearths, gleaming in the lowlight like cut gems, and those that crowded their sides reminded Harriet an awful lot of Dudley's snotty friends—if better bred. They looked and spoke like adults, not like children, with posh "r"s and "h"s, House rings on their fingers and practiced smirks at their lips.
"This way—," Hermione whispered once they exited the dorm corridor and came into the throng. "We'll just stand back here—."
Hermione quickly dragged Harriet and Elara to the farthest edge of the common room, where the light was the weakest and the temperature plummeted several degrees. Harriet's teeth started chattering again—though whether from cold or apprehension, she didn't know. Elara gripped her hand and Hermione gripped the other as they hunched their shoulders and waited for what would happen.
Professor Slytherin appeared less than a minute later. He strode from the dim passage that held the hidden wall entrance, silent as one of the ghosts when he walked, Professor Snape like a sure-footed cat at his side—a large, predatory and undeniably furious cat towering over Slytherin and the students. Harriet stared at the floor and gulped.
"Well, we've certainly had an interesting evening, haven't we?" Slytherin said, earning several genteel snickers out of the oldest students. They looked at Slytherin with something like adoration in their eyes and it made Harriet a bit queasy for reasons she wasn't sure of. "Yes, yes—funny, isn't it?" Something in Slytherin's tone shifted, indicating that no, nothing was funny about his words. "Funny to waste my time with a troll hunt through the castle. Funny to endanger the lives of Slytherins—funny to spoil a perfectly good Samhain those of you with half a brain would have used to prepare your best ingredients and rituals, or have you not be paying attention while attending this school?"
Hardly a breath could be heard. Slytherin always spoke louder than Snape did but he needn't have bothered; he could've muttered and it would have resounded among the students gathered there. "Professor Snape will call names by year. If you are not prompt in answering, you will be very sorry indeed."
Snape didn't need a list; he said the names from memory, and with each "present, sir!" Harriet watched his thumb tap against a fingertip as the professor counted in his head. He spat "Potter" like poison and, when he glowered at her, Harriet knew they hadn't fooled the Potions Master for an instant. The man was too clever for his own good.
"He knows," Elara whispered to the floor, her lips barely moving as Snape finished off the role call.
"He can't—not for sure," Hermione responded. "There's nothing that could prove we were there—."
"Except her knows about Livi, and he knows Longbottom didn't poison the bloody troll, and he knows someone was in the broom cupboard, even if he can't prove it—."
"Sh—!"
Slytherin dismissed the crowd. They made for the dorms, moving as swiftly as they could, but three first years didn't have the same presence as their older counterparts, so Harriet, Elara, and Hermione were shoved to the back of the dwindling line. Snape was on them the instant Slytherin turned to the common room entrance and disappeared.
"Potter," he said, voice low, eyes flashing as he leaned forward and the three girls froze. "Black, Granger. Don't think for an instant I'm fooled—."
"We weren't there. There's no proof—sir," Harriet told him. The statement came out much braver than Harriet felt, which was good, because Snape only paled further in his fury.
"Oh no? No proof? Perhaps I should bring a certain reptile to the Headmaster's attention then, hm?" Snape snarled.
Harriet blinked, because that was an empty threat and she hadn't realized Snape gave empty threats. Dumbledore had plainly seen Livi in the corridor and hadn't breathed a word of protest, so either the Headmaster knew about the snake already or the professor'd told him.
"If any of you do something half as brain dead ever again, I'll personally see to it that you'll be dissecting toads and scrubbing cauldrons for the duration of your stay at this school. I don't need proof, Potter, and you're a fool to suggest otherwise. Am I understood?"
Eyes on the floor, they nodded.
"Get out of my sight."
The congestion in the corridor had cleared during Snape's brief tirade, so the trio managed to slip by him and disappear with minimal fuss. Harriet's chest ached like she hadn't taken a breath in several minutes and now that she had, the air burned in her throat, in her lungs, and rendered her limbs as listless as cooked noodles. Dread and relief mixed in her head, and a single thought burst through the morass with startling clarity.
He didn't threaten to expel us.
"You know," Harriet murmured as they approached the door to their dormitory. Pansy's grating voice was audible just inside. "Tonight wasn't so bad. I've had worse Hallowe'ens!"
Hermione buried her face in her hands. Elara shook her head and looked toward the ceiling.
"Honestly, Harriet…."
