xxx. a breath before the storm
On the evening students were set to return to Hogwarts, Harriet came barreling out of the dungeons and collided with something solid.
"For Merlin's sake, Potter," Professor Slytherin grunted, one hand pressed to the place on his chest Harriet had smacked with her head. "Do watch where you're going!"
Harriet backpedaled and would have tumbled down the steps behind her had Slytherin not grabbed hold of her arm. His grip chafed and Harriet winced, then gave a swift apology before hurrying on. Slytherin hissed "Rude child," behind her. Harriet almost froze, shocked by his open usage of Parseltongue, but she wasn't meant to understand that, so Harriet kept running. Odd, she mused. I thought I'd imagined it, but his accent really is different from mine, even in a snake language.
Scratching her neck, Harriet entered the entrance hall and dodged around the few older students who'd already arrived, sliding on the ice that encased the outer steps, though she kept her balance and hopped into the snow. Others weren't as lucky; they laid scattered and rumpled, complaining as McGonagall used her wand to warm the stones and scolded those who swore within her hearing. Harriet shivered in the wind and gave a thought for her cloak down in the dormitories.
"Harriet!"
Coming up the path from the line of creepy horse-pulled carriages strode Hermione and Elara, both panting heavily as they trekked through the sludge. A wide grin spread across Harriet's face as she set off again, weaving through the crowd, her feet small and light enough to skate over the snow where others sunk deep. She felt like one of the elves from the Tolkien books Aunt Petunia had burned. Hermione let out a small shriek when Harriet threw her arms around her and they toppled into a drift, Elara evading a similar fate by jumping aside.
"Miss Potter—!" McGonagall admonished, only for her attention to be diverted by a sixth year Ravenclaw toppling into a third year.
Giggling, Harriet rolled onto her back and sunk into the snow while Elara pulled Hermione to her feet.
"Harriet, you're going to freeze to death, you're not even wearing your cloak!"
"Don't care," she said with a sigh as the air escaped her in a white plume. "I haven't been outside in days thanks to Professor bloody Snape."
"Did he really give you all those detentions?"
"Yes! He even gave me two in one day. For lookin' at him funny."
Hermione managed to pry her out of the ice. "You aren't serious. You can't be, that'd be monstrous."
"I think his exact words were 'If you can sit there glaring at me, Miss Potter, you can spend an hour in the dungeons glaring at the wall'."
Snorting, Elara wrapped an arm about the shorter girl's shoulders to bring her into the shelter of her own cloak. Hermione started plucking dead leaves out of the unholy tangle of her hair. "That does sound like Snape, Hermione."
The older Slytherin huffed with disapproval.
"I've missed you two lots," Harriet said. "Hogwarts isn't the same without you."
"We missed you too, Harriet."
xXxXx
The oddest thing about classes resuming was Snape's sudden switch in attitude.
He went right back to ignoring Harriet, like a cobweb too far up on the ceiling to be bothered with, or an ugly painting you pass by without giving it any real thought. Her detentions came to an abrupt halt the afternoon the rest of the student body arrived, and so baffling was the change, Harriet knocked a beaker off her desk on purpose in Potions to see what he'd do. Snape just sneered and continued pacing the class.
He's a confusing bloke.
"I bet he was trying to keep you out of trouble," Hermione said one afternoon as they ascended from the dungeons and headed toward the Great Hall for lunch. "Being the only Slytherin here over break. Honestly, Professor Snape seems to take over most of the Head duties. Professor Slytherin just—." Hermione waved a hand in a vague gesture.
"Slithers about?" Harriet put in.
"Creeps?" Elara muttered, earning a titter from the bespectacled girl.
"Stalks?"
"Will you two be quiet before someone hears you?" Hermione hissed as they came into the Great Hall proper. They edged nearer the Slytherin table, pausing only to let a group of sneering fourth year Gryffindor boys pass before reaching their seats.
"I don't get into trouble," Harriet insisted as platters and full cups of pumpkin juice appeared before them.
"You did drop a beaker on Professor Snape's foot," Hermione told her.
Elara spooned green beans onto her plate. "And then headbutted him in the thigh when you bent down to retrieve it."
"It's his own bloody fault for standing so close," Harriet grumbled, cheeks red. "Don't take his side; he stole my new cloak! Says I won't get it back until I 'learn some responsibility.' What does that even mean? How does one learn responsibility? I'm plenty responsible!"
"Well, what did you expect to happen when you went out after curfew with it?"
"I expected to be invisible, that what." Harriet popped a biscuit into her mouth and chewed. She thought there might be something funny about Snape's eye; during the detentions he'd assigned later in the evenings, she'd seen how he'd always rub at his scarred left eye after brewing something particularly smelly or reading a clutch of essays. How else could he see through the cloak? How else could he see Livi? The ruddy snake could cross the dorm and steal all the food in the bowl laid out for Bulstrode's cat without anyone any the wiser but Snape always stared whenever Livi poked his snout outside her collar.
Harriet stuck another biscuit into her mouth and Parkinson, seated across the table, grimaced. "You eat like an animal, Potter," she complained. "Were you raised in a barn?"
"Close 'nough," Harriet replied, memories of the cupboard and sitting alone in the dark, listening to the Dursleys eat, flashing through her mind. She smacked her lips just to irritate Pansy. Parkinson voiced her revulsion and turned away.
Hermione and Elara took it upon themselves to slip servings of foods healthier than sugary biscuits onto Harriet's plate as conversation turned away from their prickly Potions professor. "I must have read a dozen theory books on the Shield Charm during the holiday and still can't cast it as well as you can, Harriet. I just don't understand. Of course, I'm doing better than most in our class, but the practical spells just aren't as fluid as yours, no matter how often I practice."
Shrugging, Harriet pointed out that she still managed to turn her matches into javelins half of the time in Transfiguration. Recently they'd moved on to changing plants into various inanimate things and Harriet's almost always turned out over-sized or oddly disproportionate, though she was getting better.
"I was actually reading the book you got me for Christm—Yule, Elara, and it talked all about Shield Charms."
"Really?" Hermione asked, interest piqued. "I've read about Protego Duo and Protego Totalum, though the latter is considered far beyond our current ability."
Harriet gave her head a quick, sharp nod. "There's loads more—all of them made to counter specific elements or objects, making them stronger or weaker than plain Shield Charms, depending on when you use them. There's Protego Impervius, against water based spells, and Protego Flammae against fire—and harder stuff like Protego Mente Malitiae, which is supposed to ward away spells of 'ill intent,' and Protego Visus, which I gather is a bit like a Notice-Me-Not? I didn't really understand that part. It's supposed to make you harder to concentrate on and takes a barmy amount of wand-work if the diagrams were anything to go by."
"Can I borrow this book?"
"'Course," Harriet said. "Look, I've been practicing the one that conjures water shields—." Making sure no one else was paying attention, she drew her wand from its brace on her wrist and held it under the table, out of view. Like a typical Protego, the charm required a sharp downward slash, but before that she needed to preform a gesture similar to the alchemical symbol for 'water,' an inverted triangle created with three rapid, tight twitches with the wand made from the wrist rather than her fingers. Harriet performed the proper motions, then whispered "Protego Flammae."
Properly done, the spell was meant to conjure water in a wispy shield reminiscent of the thin, milky sheen of a plain Protego, but Harriet must have done something wrong, because the moment the words crossed her lips, every goblet in the Great Hall burst, sending their contents flying ten feet into the air before raining back down. Students shrieked as they were doused in pumpkin juice and tea. Most of the professors managed to throw Impervius Charms over themselves, though Selwyn bellowed when he caught a face full of hot cider on its way up, and Dumbledore actually laughed at the madness unfolding before him. Snape and Slytherin looked murderous.
Harriet just gawked in horror.
She didn't resist when Elara cinched an arm about her own and all but yanked her from the bench. Others had jumped to their feet as well, and it looked like a full food fight had broken out at the Gryffindor table much to McGonagall's despair. Elara swiftly led Harriet right out of the Great Hall's doors with Hermione scrambling after them, pale and speckled with juice.
"And here I thought you were saying you don't get into trouble," Elara said once they'd made it into the entrance hall with a few miffed Ravenclaws clutching damp books to their chests. "That certainly looked like trouble."
"I don't know what happened," Harriet complained. "I did it all right in the dorm over break. Here lemme—." She whipped out her wand, fully intending to try the Charm once more—when Hermione lunged for her arm, pushing it down. "What are you—?"
"Hey, Potter!"
Two of the Ravenclaws had stowed away their texts in their school bags and approached. Harriet recognized them as Terry Boot and Anthony Goldstein, the former lanky and brown-haired, the latter boasting a shock of blond locks atop his head. "W-what?"
"You were the one who cast that spell, right?"
Harriet sputtered. "Wh—? No, of course not. Why would I do something like that?"
Terry's eyes dropped to her wand with a bemused expression and Harriet quickly stuffed it into her sleeve, her cheeks bright pink.
"Can you teach us how to do it?" he asked, genuine curiosity in his bright eyes. "I haven't seen anything like it. It would have amazing uses."
"Er—," Harriet hedged, fiddling with the edge of her sleeve, her face still warm. "That, uh, wasn't really what it was meant to do—not that I'm admitting it was me who cast it."
Terry grinned. "Do you think you could show us how it went wrong?"
"It only works with liquid that is already present," Hermione interrupted. "The original is meant to coalesce it from the air, like an Aguamenti Charm. What practical use would you have for a spell that throws all open liquids within a hundred yards into the air?"
"Well, it could be really useful, couldn't it?" Anthony replied, earnest. "Like you said, water conjuring Charms can only make use of what is already there, typically what is atmospheric and gaseous. What if your spell could be used to move an underground spring closer to the surface? Imagine the impact that could have on Herbologists and Wizarding farmers!"
Hermione's mouth popped open and she got that glassy-eyed look Harriet recognized as one of her overly thoughtful expressions. "But that's brilliant. I thought you wanted the spell for a prank or something ridiculous like that…."
Harriet didn't think that. Ravenclaws, from what she'd seen, found witty jokes like riddles far funnier than anything physical like a food fight. She followed along with the conversation, though she thought it a bit too dry and theoretical for her tastes when Hermione, Terry, and Anthony devolved into a conversation about magical agriculture and the limitations of duplicating matter for consumption.
"Honestly," Harriet grumbled to Elara. "They're eleven. Where do they find time to think about all this stuff?"
Elara shrugged.
In the end, the Ravenclaws convinced Harriet to teach them the Protego Flammae Charm, and after dinner they all gathered in an empty classroom on the first floor and tried to recreate the spell. They didn't manage to explode anymore goblets, but before Filch came to chase them back to their dormitories at curfew, all five of first years could create a passable water shield. They returned to their beds sopping wet and tired, but also rather pleased with their progress.
Overall, Harriet was glad everything was back to normal at Hogwarts.