xxxix. never prosper
"Drink."
Harriet looked at the vial tucked into her pale, trembling hand and did not drink. She stared at the opaque blue liquid and remembered, oddly enough, the sound of the Mirror of Erised breaking. It should have been on the low-end of memorable events this afternoon, and yet Harriet couldn't forget the crash and the subsequent pinging of jagged glass bouncing on the stones as Quirrell slumped to his knees and fell forward.
Then the wraith had burst from his skull and screamed, "This isn't over, Potter!" while the glass continued to rain.
Harriet jumped when Snape snatched the vial from her and uncorked it with one practiced hand, holding the rim to her mouth. "Drink it."
"Severus, a modicum of care at this moment would go a long way—."
Harriet didn't hear the rest of Dumbledore's statement because she swallowed the silty blue potion and everything ceased to matter. Harriet stopped thinking about the glass, about Quirrell's dead eyes, Voldemort's screams, or the vibrant green flash that poured from her own wand and flung itself back at the wizard who cast it. She barely noticed when the Heads of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff came streaming into the office and all began to talk at some volume. Harriet just sat in the wing chair by the fire with Snape watching her until the mediwitch came, at which point Madam Pomfrey began bickering with Dumbledore as she healed Harriet's busted lip and smeared a nice, cool cream on her aching shoulder, neck, and chest.
A white sheet covered a Conjured cot, Quirrell's body stretched out beneath it. Muggles did that too, Harriet knew from catching snippets of Dudley's programs. They covered their dead in clean white sheets. The strange, unexpected commonality almost had her breaking out in a hysterical, giggling fit.
By the time the world came back into focus, Harriet felt much calmer and the body had gone, as had everyone but for Professor Dumbledore. The Headmaster sat in another wing chair across from her, his profile highlighted by the flickering fire in the hearth, the windows grown heavy and drab with sunset. He noticed Harriet's rapid blinking as she straightened and sucked in a breath.
"I believe Professor Snape was a bit heavy-handed with the Calming Draught," he said with a small smile. "He means well, of course. Lemon sherbet, Harriet?"
The end table balancing the colorful candy dish scuttled closer on spindly, delicate legs and leaned to offer up a sweet. Harriet stared at the candy dish for a moment before taking one.
"I had a bad dream with lemon sherbets in it," she said, not quite sure why she was mentioning the weird nightmare. It seemed surreal after having watched a man with a ghost in his head accidentally kill himself.
"Oh?"
"Mhm. I wanted something sweet and the gargoyle told me all he had were lemon sherbets. He sent me out to the Forbidden Forest where there were lots of mirrors and a cupboard that I hid in to escape."
"To escape what?"
"I'm not sure, sir." Harriet popped the little yellow candy into her mouth and the sour taste helped further clear her mind. "I have that dream a lot, though."
The Headmaster studied her over the top of his half-moon spectacles. "Curious," he decided, taking one of the candies himself. "I'm sure Professor Trelawney would have much to say about your dreams. She's the Divinations teacher, you see." Professor Dumbledore said this with a wry note to his voice that puzzled Harriet, but the elderly wizard simply shook his head. "Never mind, my dear. You've been through a great deal and I've no doubt that listening to an old man's prattling isn't high on your priorities. I did want to ask you about…this."
He held up Harriet's wand, which she'd quite forgotten about in all the commotion. "That's mine, sir."
"Yes. Tell me, Harriet, where did you receive this wand?"
"From Ollivanders, Professor."
The Headmaster lifted one brow in disapproval. "Now, I think we both know that's not true, my girl."
Not precisely, no, but the truth was infinitely odder than the lie, and though Harriet had come to learn many fantastical things in the magical world, she knew some things were still labeled as 'weird,' and possibly possessed shadows fit neatly into that category. "I'm not sure," she said instead. "I know it's not the same as it was, but I don't actually know what happened to it. It is the wand I got at Ollivanders, Professor, I promise. It's just—different now."
Professor Dumbledore made a thoughtful sound as his fingertips moved over the surface of the wand and he relinquished it to Harriet. "It's made of elder wood, I believe. A very rare kind of instrument indeed; according to Garrick Ollivander, it takes a rather special and talented kind of wizard—or witch—to master a wand of elder."
Harriet blushed.
"I could guess at the core, but I believe such projections would be best left to others, because I couldn't say for certain. It is a very loyal wand, one of a pair."
"A pair?" Harriet asked. "Who owns the other one?"
The Headmaster shrugged, then extracted his own wand from a fold in his navy blue robes. "Me."
It certainly looked like Harriet's wand, the same pale wood and of similar length, but the professor's had more design to it, a band with funny markings about the part where his knuckles rested and several pitted protuberances, kinda like the knobbly tops of bones Harriet had seen pictures of in her old Muggle texts. Her own was like a very thin, tightly wound tree branch with funny markings on it from Set's fingers.
"As I said, they're very loyal wands, Harriet. They can prove quite difficult, impossible in most cases, to turn against their chosen master, and if someone were to attempt casting a deadly curse against the will of the wand—well, I would think that someone might find themselves the recipient of their own misdeed."
Harriet's eye wandered over where the Conjured cot had stood and she gripped her wand tight. Dumbledore watched her, and for a moment looked nothing like the spry, gentle Headmaster she'd come to expect, but rather an aging wizard with a great weight upon his shoulders.
"I'm sorry, Headmaster," she mumbled. "I shouldn't have left the dorm on my own."
Dumbledore let out a short breath of disbelief and smiled. "Oh, my girl, it's not your fault."
"No," Harriet agreed, staring at her scraped knees. Madam Pomfrey must have missed those. "But I knew I should be careful. Hermione and Elara always tell me that. And I—I meant to take Livi—." She cast a furtive glance in the Headmaster's direction. "But I had to leave him behind. I should've known better." In afterthought, she added, "He's gonna come after me again, isn't he, sir? Voldemort is?"
He didn't respond immediately; instead, Professor Dumbledore returned his wand to his pocket and eyed the window, night coming to sit prim upon the sill, the final whisper of sunlight still caught in the dust that lingered there, speckled spots of brilliance on an otherwise dim surface. She felt anything but calm, and yet Harriet relaxed despite herself, holding onto her wand as if she'd never let it go and wishing she could thank Set for setting her free earlier. She would've died without him.
"Harriet, I once told you that you were what Voldemort considered a mistake, but not for the reasons that you believe, or even for the reasons he believes. Sometimes…sometimes it is not the blow that kills us, but the wound."
"The wound, Professor?"
"Yes. You see, when he attacked your family that Hallowe'en, Voldemort very much intended to kill you, Harriet. He did not overlook you; much like Quirrell, he attempted to curse you—and failed."
Harriet's hand crept upward until it cupped the sore side of her neck, the cream Madam Pomfrey had spread still tacky beneath her rumpled shirt. "Why…why did he fail?"
"I believe it was because of your mother. I believe Voldemort meant to spare her, but Lily refused to step aside, and her sacrifice—her love—invoked an old and very powerful kind of magic that we may never really understand, a kind of inscrutable, uncontrollable, wonderful magic Voldemort fears above all else. It's the same kind of magic you feel in your heart when you look at your friends or think of your parents, dear girl."
Her eyes stung and Harriet stared again at her knees.
"He wounded himself when he attacked you. He broke himself truly, though he didn't shatter. He fled your home, mortally wounded—though, in his arrogance, I doubt he saw it as such—and attempted to rejoin his followers in Dorset, where they had been sent on their own mission to raid another wizarding home."
Slowly, Harriet lifted her head and found the Headmaster watching her closely as he continued speaking.
"I do not know how he managed to leave your home at all that night. Something of his being persisted, a thread of himself keeping the whole together, fraying from the moment he spoke the curse meant to end your life, and when he attempted the same spell again, before he could even manage to summon the words, Voldemort soul gave out, and he became what he is today—a wraith who cannot live, and who cannot die. And it is all because of you and your mother, Harriet."
The bespectacled girl had to swallow twice before she could speak, and even then her voice escaped in a thin, terrified whisper. "But…but Neville, he's the Boy Who—."
Professor Dumbledore shook his head and dread tightened in Harriet's middle.
"Neville is a brave boy who lost his mother and nearly his own life that night, but he is no more the cause of Voldemort's downfall than myself or this candy dish."
"But—but, bloody hell, Professor, he's famous!" Harriet winced at her own cursing, but the Headmaster only shrugged.
"He attracts a great deal of attention, yes. A rather large detachment of Aurors from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement is tasked with his safety, and both his father, Frank Longbottom, and his stepmother, Catherine Blishen, are aware of what truly transpired that night. Frank, and his late wife Alice, were quite devoted to seeing Voldemort defeated."
Harriet felt nauseous as she struggled to keep her head from spinning out of control. She'd wondered on many occasions how it was possible for her to survive that night and had dozens of her own speculations on the dilemma. Those speculations, though, had turned themselves on their heads when she went with Hagrid to feed the Thestrals and realized she must have witnessed the death of one of her parents. How did I survive? Apparently, madmen will overlook you if they've already killed you. It made an awful, terrible kind of sense. "Neville's like the third-floor corridor."
"In a manner of speaking, yes. A clever way to put it."
"And I'm…I'm the Mirror of Erised."
Again, Dumbledore nodded and Harriet turned her face to the fire. "That's rather Slytherin thinking, isn't it, Headmaster?"
"To quote Professor Snape; 'if one wants anything at all to be done, then they'd best find a Slytherin with an ounce of sense in his head, because that's an ounce more than anyone else has.'"
Harriet snorted, covering her mouth, and Professor Dumbledore chuckled. She laughed more fully at the sound and a measure of tension left her upset, nervous stomach, allowing Harriet to feel more herself than she had since stepping foot into that office. "Sir, why couldn't Vol—Voldemort get the Stone out of the Mirror? I think that's why he brought me along, in the end. He couldn't figure out how to get it and thought I might be able to."
"Ah, it's one of my cleverer ideas, if I do say so myself. Anyone who wished to possess the Stone to use it could not possess it, but a person simply wishing to keep the Stone from harm could be given it quite easily. If I may ask; what did you see when you looked into the Mirror?"
"I didn't see any of that, sir. I just…I just saw my mum."
Dumbledore nodded as if he'd expected nothing else. "Yes, that's evidence of your Slytherin character— no, my dear girl, I don't mean that as an insult. Quite the opposite, in fact. You see, Slytherin House has a poor reputation, and even I myself have been swayed by that prejudice in the past—but over the years I have come to learn that those who find themselves Sorted into Slytherin are often of a singular character, possessors of quick-wit, ambition, and their own kind of bravery. Hufflepuffs are kind even when it's difficult to be so, Gryffindors brave in the presence of fear, Ravenclaws inquisitive even when challenged, and Slytherins are unbelievably loyal to those who've earned their trust, even in the face of great temptation."
"I…I don't know if I'm any of those things, Professor."
"But you are, Harriet. I'm certain he tried to tempt you; far better witches and wizards than you and I have fallen prey to Voldemort's false promises, and many more will, before the end. However, you didn't give in. You resisted."
"I almost didn't," Harriet confessed, horrified at the quiet words coming out of her mouth. "For a second, I…he promised…."
When it became clear Harriet couldn't continue, Dumbledore asked with plain curiosity, "So why did you deny him?"
"Because he's a liar!" she snapped, tears stinging her eyes again. "Because he's the one who took them from me. I just…I just wanted my family back."
The Headmaster leaned forward to grasp Harriet's hand in his own. "And therein lies your greatest strength and your greatest weakness, my dear; loyalty. An old proverb in our Wizarding community says 'a Slytherin who cheats at cards and steals your wife says nothing when you take his gold and give him strife, but threaten his family and you'll meet his knife.' A bit melodramatic, but it makes a poignant point. You saw your mother, Harriet, because you didn't care about Voldemort or the Philosopher's Stone; you cared about her."
Harriet gave the Headmaster's hand a squeeze before letting go and mulling over his words. It was selfish of her, she decided, not caring about the Stone or Voldemort or any of that. She never felt like much of a Slytherin, having grown up downtrodden and decidedly Muggle, concepts of normality drummed into her head like a stick beating a snare drum—freak, freak, freak. Hermione was clever and quick-witted, Elara was cunning and proud, and Harriet—.
Well, Harriet didn't know what she was.
"The Philosopher's Stone is gone, isn't it, sir?" she asked. "Because the Mirror's broken?"
Dumbledore sighed and adjusted his spectacles. "Yes, unfortunately."
"What's going to happen to Nicholas Flamel? He'll die without the Stone, won't he?"
"Oh, you know about Nicholas, do you?" He smiled when Harriet nodded. "Nicholas knew there would be risks in lending me his stone—the worst of which was possibly having it stolen by Voldemort. He has enough Elixir for himself and Perenelle to set their affairs in order, and I imagine that, at the end of the day, they were prepared for this eventuality. To live forever is a great burden, Harriet. A quiet death can just as often be a gift as it can seem a curse."
"I'm sorry."
"It wasn't your fault, dear girl."
"I still think it should be said, Professor. He's your friend."
The Headmaster met her gaze and Harriet saw the briefest flash of profound sadness in the wizard's blue eyes before he stood from his comfortable chair. "Come along now. I've kept you far too long and Madam Pomfrey will have my beard if you don't get the rest you deserve."
He walked her toward the waiting door, past the storage room where she saw Quirrell kill himself, Dumbledore's hand coming to rest on her shoulder so Harriet wouldn't stop and stare. "He's…Voldemort's going to return, isn't he, Professor?"
"Not today, Harriet."
"And when he does, sir?"
He considered her, then opened the door with a wave of his hand. "Then we'll be prepared. But, as I said, that day is not today."
Harriet left the office. She wiped her face when the cooler air on the stairs chilled the smudged tears on her cheeks, and she found none other than Professor Snape waiting in the hall outside the gargoyle. Clearly in a dark mood, he pointed in the direction that would lead them to the common room and they set out without a word, the Potions Master leaving once Harriet stumbled through Slytherin's secret entrance.
She didn't start crying until she entered the dark dormitory and changed into her nightgown. Harriet lay in bed and tried to smother her stupid sniffles, and suddenly Hermione and Elara were there, embracing her tight with whispered worry until Harriet buried her face in someone's shoulder and quietly sobbed herself to sleep.
She didn't dream.
