xxxiii. dark lord's mistake
Harriet didn't wake all at once. Rather, she became aware of an annoying ache in her back, and even as she tried to ignore it, the ache grew and grew until it persisted from the bottom of her ankles to the top of her head. Groggy and uncooperative, Harriet pushed the feeling aside and attempted to let sleep take her again, but the longer she lay in the half-doze between dreams and reality, the more Harriet began to realize something was not quite right.
She was used to things being "not quite right"; the whole of her existence up until she stepped onto the Hogwarts Express could be considered just that—and yet this was a kind of not quite right Harriet hadn't experienced before, or at least not for a while. The only time she could recall something similar happening was when she woke in her cupboard, Set prodding her in the side, a large bump on her head after Uncle Vernon threw her inside.
What…what happened? What am I doing?
Harriet opened her eyes and expected to see the top of her dormitory ceiling, fingers of moonlight rippling through the lake's clear waters—but that was not what she saw.
Where am I?!
She sat up and the white sheet pulled up to her chin fell into her lap, pain throbbing anew in her back and about her stomach. Harriet plucked at the front of the unfamiliar nightdress, then pushed a hand against her middle. The pressure increased the ache and she groaned.
"Good evening, Harriet."
Harriet almost toppled right out of the narrow little bed she inhabited when a voice spoke at her side. She peered through the fuzzy darkness, trying to make sense of the misshapen blobs, and started again when someone slid her glasses into her hands. Muttering her thanks, she put them on and blinked.
The room she lay in was very large—a ward Hermione would call it—with more than a dozen empty beds lined up along both walls, the sconces all doused for the evening, rendering thick shadows where the moonlight couldn't touch. Harriet's bed sat near the far wall inlaid with diamond-paned windows, a screen blocking off much of her view of the ward, and perched in a chintz armchair at her side was Headmaster Dumbledore. He smiled at her.
She blinked again. "Er—?" Harriet blurted, nose scrunched in confusion. "Wh—? Where—?"
"Eloquent, Potter."
The bespectacled girl was in for another shock when what she'd assumed to be a shadow by the windows bloody moved, and the starlight glowed on Professor Snape's pale face when he turned in her direction.
Harriet stared at the gaunt wizard as she swayed ever so slightly, still mussy with sleep and cranky from pain. He stared in return. "I don't know what happened," she said. "But you can't give me detention for it."
His answering smirk said, I can try.
"I think we can do without any detentions tonight," the Headmaster said, raising his brow for Snape's benefit. The Potions Master huffed and crossed his arms, moving his attention to the view outside once more, which meant he missed the sudden humor in Dumbledore's bright eyes. "Can you remember anything that happened, my dear?"
Harriet mulled over her jumbled thoughts and flashes returned to her, voices and screams, hot pain in her mouth and throat, Hermione's clammy hand on her arm. "I…I drank something. Some tea I think, sir. It hurt."
Dumbledore nodded, his expression once more grave as he ran his thumb along his knuckles in what Harriet thought might be an anxious gesture. "Yes. You were poisoned, Harriet."
"Poisoned?"
She remembered blood on Parkinson, red drops peppering her own hands and her plate, the strange burning not abating even as liquid poured out of her mouth.
"Is—did anyone else get poisoned?" She had sat between Elara and Hermione like she always did in the Great Hall; were they hurt too?!
"Everyone else is fine, my girl—as are you, thanks to Professor Snape's swift actions and Madam Pomfrey's care."
Like a punctured balloon, Harriet deflated with relief, a heavy sigh leaving her as she slumped. Snape saved me? "But how did it get into my tea, sir?" Harriet asked. She looked into Dumbledore's patient, knowing face, and when the silence stretched between them, she got her answer. "Someone put it in there? Someone meant to—?"
Someone meant to kill me.
Harriet couldn't fathom why anyone would want to kill her; not even Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia could muster the kind of hate necessary for murdering their niece, though her uncle came close the last time she saw him. Harriet was a nobody; an eleven-year-old orphan, an average student, and a girl who mostly minded her own business. "Why? I haven't done anything!"
Dumbledore considered her for a long moment. Snape, still at the window, said nothing and didn't appear to even breathe, holding himself like a gargoyle looking out over the battlements. Harriet could see his arms folded behind his back and his clenched fists were plain against the black fabric of his robes.
"Tell me, Harriet; what do you know of Lord Voldemort?"
"That's You-Know-Who, right?" It had taken months for Harriet to discover his stupid name. The Wizarding world refused to say it and Slytherins gasped when she asked. Even Hermione hadn't known; it was only through Elara, who read the name written in a journal, that they discovered the truth. "Why won't anyone say his name?"
"He put a Taboo upon it during the war. That is a kind of curse placed upon words—very old and very powerful magic, my dear. Voldemort felt it increased his mystique when others feared uttering his very name, but I feel fear of a name is a very silly notion. By naming a thing, we take away its anonymity and dispel the fear of uncertainty."
"Don't tell her that."
Snape whipped around, his face livid. "With all due respect, Headmaster, the girl is a Slytherin. You, in contrast, are eminently powerful—and independent—wizard who doesn't have to worry about others taking offense to what he says. She cannot go about naming the bloody Dark Lord. Discretion is a virtue of the highest importance in our House."
"Perhaps you are right, Severus. However, it is up to Harriet to make that decision for herself."
Given the look Snape leveled in her direction, Harriet was fairly certain she'd land herself about a dozen detentions if she said "Voldemort" anywhere in his hearing.
"Nevertheless, his name and its usage are not what I wished to discuss; Harriet, what do you know of your history with Voldemort?"
History? "He killed my mum and dad, right?" Harriet lowered her eyes, and instead of looking toward the Headmaster, she stared at the hem of Snape's black cloak. It trembled ever so slightly. "Before he tried to kill Neville Longbottom."
"Yes. He killed many, many people, your mother Lily being the last."
The same anger Harriet had experienced in Diagon Alley when reading The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts came upon her again, and it curled in her belly like a living thing, wanting to lash out at someone, anyone, as she hated Longbottom for surviving, her own parents for dying, and Voldemort for being a monster. It wasn't fair—but Harriet couldn't change any of it. She forced the feeling away and shut her eyes.
"Voldemort is many things, Harriet; powerful, dangerous—and also cowardly, petty. He is a wizard who has committed as many mistakes as he has misdeeds, though he refers to the latter as his successes and would never acknowledge the former. If given the chance, he tries to rectify those mistakes—erase them, I should say, so they cannot remind him of his failures."
Harriet listened to the Headmaster and flinched each time he referred to the Dark Lord in the present tense. You-Know-Who was gone. He died at the Longbottoms'…hadn't he?
"Sir," she said, speaking softly, hesitating before meeting his eyes. "Sir, is—he's dead, right? You-Know-Who died that night. Neville defeated him."
Snape scoffed. Dumbledore's gaze flicked in his direction, a warning in his slanted brow, and the Headmaster shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not, my dear."
The blood roared in Harriet's ears as she gaped without a word at the Headmaster's statement, so simply given, his face open and calm even as Harriet's heart bludgeoned itself against her ribs. I'm afraid not, my dear. How could he not be dead? How could—? He killed so many, ruined so many families and reduced whole Muggle villages to ashes, had murdered her mum and dad and—. How could Dumbledore say he wasn't dead?
Harriet trembled. The Headmaster took her hand in his, squeezing, and only then did she realize how very clammy it'd become.
"You are one of his mistakes, Harriet," the elderly wizard said. "Greater than you know."
"Why? Because he missed me in the house that night?!" Her voice went high and tremulous. "He's going to try to kill me?"
"Headmaster…" Snape cautioned.
Dumbledore ignored him and answered her. "Yes."
Harriet felt very much like she might lean over the bed's edge and vomit on the wizard's shoes. Sweat peppered her brow and her mouth dried, her tongue heavy and awkward behind her teeth, Harriet's fingers buzzing with numbness and fatigue. Someone had tried to poison her. Someone had tried to kill her for the Dark Lord.
"He's not…he's not here, is he?" Harriet asked, though surely that couldn't be right. Someone would have recognized one of the most dangerous wizards in history trotting about the corridors, wouldn't they?
"We believe he's had an agent infiltrate the school—either willingly or unwillingly, as there are curses that exist to bend a person's will against their own. You see, Harriet, Voldemort is not alive in the sense that you think he is; he's a shadow of his former self, unable to live but unable to die, and he will use any means he can to return himself to our plane and wreak havoc again on society."
"Dumbledore," the Potions Master snapped, stepping forward. "I really must protest—."
"Harriet has a right to know," the Headmaster responded with a shrug, his eyeglasses flashing in the moonlight. "Voldemort ensured her involvement when he ordered an attempt against her life."
"But why send someone to Hogwarts?" Harriet asked, gulping. "Surely not because of me. Is it because Longbottom's here?"
"No. He's searching for something, something he knows was moved from Gringotts and placed here within my safekeeping. I do flatter myself in thinking I'm rather clever sometimes, and this artifact—."
"Headmaster!"
Before Snape could be reprimanded for interrupting again, the sound of the infirmary door popping open and muffled voices moving closer silenced the Headmaster and the dour Potions Master. They both turned their alert gazes toward the screen blocking view of the ward—and Harriet froze in her bed, jerking her hand from Professor Dumbledore's so she could twist it into the sheets. What if it was the poisoner coming to try again? Surely she'd be fine with two professors sitting right there—but what if she wasn't?
Harriet almost wept with relief when Hermione and Elara stepped by the screen and both yelped when they caught sight of Snape swooping over them.
"Thirty points from Slytherin," he said without preamble. "Out after curfew, the nerve—."
"Sir, we were coming back from Astronomy and wanted to see if Harriet was well!" Hermione quipped before realizing to whom she spoke, slapping a hand over her mouth in afterthought. Elara just eased herself from foot to foot, looking queasy, if determined.
"I think, Severus," the Headmaster said as he rose from his armchair. It vanished with a quick flick of his hand. "We shouldn't fault Miss Granger and Miss Black for getting lost after their lesson. The castle can be a confusing place after nightfall, can't it?"
Both Slytherins nodded.
"Let's see…I believe thirty-five points should go to Slytherin for checking on the welfare of a classmate," Dumbledore pronounced, smiling, though Snape curled a lip and his hands clenched the footboard on Harriet's bed. Hermione beamed and Elara's cheeks flushed. "Though Professor Snape is correct, and it is quite late. If you'll excuse me, I have much to see to before I can seek my own bed. I will have to write to your relatives, Harriet, about this—."
What?! "No!" Harriet shouted, shocking those gathered around her, the Headmaster's brow rising and Hermione choking like she'd just cursed at the Queen of England. "I mean—you don't have to, I—err—I'll write to the Dursleys, I mean my aunt. I want to write to my aunt and uncle and tell them myself. Sir."
For one long, dreadful moment, Dumbledore seemed on the verge of denying Harriet's wish, then reconsidered, tugging at the end of his beard as he hummed. "Well, I'm sure it will comfort them to hear from you personally. I'll ask Madam Pomfrey to give you what you need for a letter in the morning."
"Thank you, Professor Dumbledore."
The Headmaster nodded, then left the ward. Harriet thought—hoped—Snape might go as well, but the thoroughly irritable wizard lingered at her bedside, plucking a vial from the nightstand and all but shoving it into her face. "Take this."
"What is it?"
Snape didn't say anything at first, but when it became clear Harriet wasn't about to take anything someone just handed her at random, he rolled his eyes and pinched the bridge of his considerable nose. "Incomprehensible little twit. Take it. The poison used, Salazar's Tongue, Lingua Salazarius, has lasting effects the Amino Accelerator counteracts by rebuilding liquefied tissue."
Harriet sighed. He could rattle off a line of absolute nonsense and I'd have no clue what any of it meant or if it was true. She took the potion and drank, wincing at the coarse, slimy texture. Snape snatched the empty vial back.
"It was laced with an analgesic melatonin infusion. You two—." He glared at Hermione and Elara. "—have five minutes before she's asleep. If you are not out in the corridor, where I will be waiting to escort you back to the Slytherin common room, after those five minutes, I will begin handing out detentions. Don't try my patience."
With that said, Snape followed Dumbledore's path out of the infirmary, his cloak flaring like a particularly ominous thundercloud in his passage. He disappeared—and both of Harriet's worried friends threw themselves at her bed, wrapping their arms tight around the scrawny bespectacled girl.
"You're crushing me, really—."
"Don't you ever do that again!" Hermione whispered in a furious undertone. She and Elara released Harriet, the latter coming around the other side of the bed to avoid Hermione's agitated hair flipping. "You could have died! Haven't you been told not to accept food or drinks if you don't know where they come from?!"
"To be honest, Hermione, I don't know where any of the food or drink on the House tables comes from."
"You know what I mean!" She sniffled and wiped at her misty eyes. Harriet stared, dumbfounded and not quite sure how to react; no one had ever been so worried over her wellbeing before. Had she walked out into the kitchen of Number Four one morning missing a limb, the Dursleys would have snapped at her to make certain she hadn't left any blood or bits of flesh on their clean floors. No one had ever cared about Harriet Potter.
Elara reminded Harriet of Snape when she looked to the other girl for help; the moonlight falling through the window blazed across her pale complexion, dark tendrils escaping the bun at the nape of her neck, gloves covering her anxious hands. She remained quiet as Hermione regained composure, then finally spoke. "…You're not going to write to your relatives, are you?"
Stricken, Harriet looked down at the blanket covering her knees. She shook her head.
The silence continued for much of their alloted five minutes, which surprised Harriet because she thought Elara would disapprove, or Hermione would argue. Instead, they stood quietly at her sides and each took one of Harriet's hands in their own. Harriet held onto them even after Snape's potion kicked in and she fell into her pillow once more, lost to her muddled dreams.
She was in the Great Hall, alone, seated at her familiar spot at the Slytherin table with nothing but a cup of tea before her. The cup of tea said, "Drink me, Harriet," and when Harriet refused, the cup repeated, "Drink me, drink me, let me in!" Harriet ignored the tea and stared instead at the ceiling above, watching the night sky bleed starlight until, one by one, the torches went out, and she drifted away.
