xciv. worthy
The grass rustled and snapped under Harriet's shoes as she ran. The redolent smell of late spring blooms chased her down the slope, joined by the deeper scents of lake water, pine needles, and chimney smoke. Her robes flapped in the breeze, and stray hairs escaped the braid Elara had plaited for her that morning to curl and twist about her ears. She jumped the steps at the bottom of the hill and landed heavily on the path, but didn't pause to notice. Her destination waited ahead.
Hagrid's hut sat just as it always did—though the collection of fat magical birds jostling for position on the roof was new, and Harriet paused to ogle the strange, dodo-like things. They ogled her in return, and one let out a loud, aggrieved caterwaul that echoed into the trees. She heard humming coming from the garden and hurried through the gate.
Hagrid wasn't in his garden but instead at the window inside his hut. Judging by the smell wafting under Harriet's nose, he was baking something sweet and enjoying the warm weather. Harriet jumped onto a convenient stack of firewood and popped her head over the sill.
"Hi, Hagrid!"
"Harry!" the half-giant exclaimed after his initial surprise, holding a large, goopy tray of fudge he must have just retrieved from the oven. "What're doin' out there?"
"I came to visit, and to see how Livi's doing if that's all right."
"'Course! Come around to the door, ya daft Bowtruckle. Startled me something fierce, almost dropped me fudge…."
Harriet grinned and hopped down, running back through the garden gate and up the massive steps to the porch. Hagrid opened the door—and his boarhound came bounding out, bowling her over.
"Back, Fang! Let her up, ya dozy dog…."
Regaining her feet, Harriet scratched behind Fang's ears and let Hagrid usher her into the hut, settling her at the huge table with a mug of strong tea and a plate of warm fudge. She nibbled on a piece, careful not to get her teeth glued together by Hagrid's dubious cooking, and cleaned the drool from her glasses.
"Yer familiar is over here, doing much better now, if I don't say so myself. Had a good amount of bruising about his neck, poor thing, a few cracked bones that made it hard for him to get around." Hagrid popped the loose lid of a crate sitting near the hearth, and Harriet straightened in her seat to see the soft, pillowy lining inside. She snorted. Hagrid's gone and spoiled him rotten.
"Sss…" Livius hissed, rustling in his bed as the light fell over him. "The tall one isss here. Doesss he have food?"
"You're going to get fat."
A pause occurred, then the Horned Serpent raised himself up, swaying, his tonguing flicking as he spotted Harriet at the table. "Misstresss…."
"Oh, now isn't that precious," Hagrid cooed as Livi made his way out of the box and over to Harriet. She thought only Hagrid would see a second-year getting wrapped up in snake coils and think it precious. Livi looped his head about her shoulders and rested on her nape, hiding behind the short braid, content. "He missed ya something fierce, Harry. Goes invisible and causes all sorts of mischief when he gets bored. Clever fella knows how to open the doors when he sets his mind to it. Hooch almost had kittens when she found him out baskin' on the Quidditch pitch one mornin', but I calmed her down quick enough."
"Thank you for taking such good care of him, Hagrid." Reaching back, Harriet ran her fingers over Livi's snout, feeling the small bump of new scar tissue by his eyes and the larger crack in his horn. She needed to be more careful with him. Livi was her responsibility, and Harriet didn't know what she'd do if something happened to that snooty, scaly snake.
"No problem at all. He's kept me and Fang on our toes." Hagrid took a seat and cut himself a generous slab of fudge. Harriet hefted her mug of tea off the table and carefully sipped. "Y'know, if yer interested in learnin' more about Horned Serpents and the like, you should take Care o' Magical Creatures next term. Professor Grubbly-Plank can teach you lots about them."
"Really?"
"Yup. She knows her stuff."
They drank in companionable quiet for a moment, Livi's weight warm and reassuring on Harriet's shoulders, Hagrid munching away at his fudge. One of those strange dodo birds braved the window sill, eyeballing the platter of cooling sweets, and Fang huffed, startling it away.
"Heard you and yer friends are gettin' an award for special services to the school."
Harriet nodded even as she blushed, fiddling with her mug. "Yeah. It's just another trophy we get to polish when we're assigned bloody detention with Filch though, isn't it?"
The corners of Hagrid's dark eyes crinkled as he laughed. "You might have a point there. Ah, but yer parents would be right proud of you, Harry. I—." He stopped himself from saying something else and stuffed another bit of fudge into his mouth, chewing. "I—err—ye did a good thing. Tellin' everyone Riddle was responsible for the Chamber. It means—I mean, it prolly means a lot to some people."
"Are you okay, Hagrid?"
"Oh, I'm just fine, just fine."
Harriet gave the half-giant a funny look, knowing he'd purposefully disassembled, but she didn't press him for more. They chatted about the end of term, about Quidditch and Ravenclaw winning the House Cup for sure this year, about springtime and the magical creatures they both found so fascinating. Harriet enjoyed her tea, hid fudge in her pockets when Hagrid looked away, and when it came time to leave, she tucked an invisible Livi underneath her robes. To her chagrin, her ruddy familiar felt almost a stone heavier than he had last time she'd picked him up, and her robes had grown almost too small to properly cover the both of them. She complained about it all the way back up the hill—and swatted his nose away from her pockets before he ate the fudge and found his jaws glued shut.
Somebody idled at the bottom of the steps into the entrance hall, and Harriet glanced at them as they crossed paths. It took a moment to recognize the person, their features washed out by the blazing glow of the sun. She stopped. "Longbottom?"
"Potter."
He looked just as she'd seen him last in the hospital wing, if a bit sullen and much cleaner. He wore casual robes instead of his uniform, which made sense—given the prat was meant to be suspended.
"What're you doing here?"
Longbottom sniffed. "Had to take my final exams even if I am suspended, didn't I?"
"Oh. I guess."
He nodded as he crossed his arms, looking out toward the distant gates, the sun bright in both of their eyes. "The Headmaster asked me to tell you you're wanted in his office. Don't know why or how he even knew I'd run into you down here, but there it is."
Dumbledore wanted her? Harriet couldn't think of a reason why, but it was convenient. She just needed to grab something from her dormitory and drop Livi off. "Okay. Thanks, Longbottom."
He moved off, dropping the last step to the dirt path, and Harriet could see someone in maroon robes waiting beyond the gates for him—his dad, maybe? It was too far to tell. Harriet started up the steps and nearly reached the doors before she stopped.
"Longbottom."
"What is it, Potter?"
"I, um." She shifted from foot to foot and grimaced. "I just…thank you for what you did for Elara. That was almost decent of you."
Longbottom scoffed and ran a hand through his dirty blond hair. When he ruffled it like that, Harriet noticed his ears stuck out from his head a lot. It made him look a bit goofy instead of heroic and bold. "I didn't do it for you. You probably haven't noticed, but your friends are bloody scary. If I got her expelled, Black would probably stab me."
"No, she—." Harriet hesitated, remembering the wild, flinty look in Elara's face as she'd shouted at Longbottom, her hand broken, his face bruised. Then she went and killed a Basilisk with a single spell. "Well."
"Granger would upend a bookcase in the library on my head."
"No, she wouldn't," Harriet said without pause this time. "It'd hurt the books."
Longbottom guffawed and Harriet smirked despite herself. She didn't like Longbottom. She doubted she ever would; it had nothing to do with what occurred in the Aerie and everything to do with their different situations in life, with their families and childhood. In the vaguest of terms, Harriet understood she could not hold Lily and James Potter's fates against him, but the pettiness of the emotion scoured deep in her heart and she couldn't let it go.
"Whatever. See you next term, Potter."
"Bye, Longbottom."
They parted ways, the Boy Who Lived disappearing from sight once the great doors swung shut.
x X x
"You wanted to see me, Headmaster?"
Professor Dumbledore sat behind his desk in his office idly twirling a blue quill in his hand. He'd looked up as soon as Harriet passed through the door and smiled when she spoke, gesturing the young witch forward to take a seat. It wasn't an unusual arrangement; in fact, Harriet could clearly remember taking the same exact chair now as she did at the end of the previous school year. She'd heard the saying before that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same, and it made an odd—if morbid—kind of sense to her.
Still smiling, Professor Dumbledore set his quill aside and lifted the morning's copy of the Daily Prophet. Lockhart's glittery teeth beamed from the front page. "Have you had a chance to read today's issue?"
Wrinkling her nose, Harriet shook her head.
"It seems our friend Gilderoy had a change of heart and has switched professions. He states that his experience here at Hogwarts, and some encouragement from select students, has inspired him to pursue a life in literature instead of adventure. His first novel will be about a fictional girl and her adventures in the Chamber of Secrets."
Harriet almost snorted. "I don't know if he can do it without stealing from Tolkien again, but it's better than getting himself killed for being a numpty."
"As you say."
"Is that what you wanted to talk about, Professor?"
"No, Harriet. In fact, I fear the conversation we need to have is far more serious than that." A hush fell upon the wizard as he returned the paper to its spot on the desk and the watching portraits quieted their fake snores and whispering. "You have questions for me. I promised I would answer what I could at this time."
Harriet's mouth went dry and her mind blanked. Yes, she did have questions—dozens upon dozens, and they all blared to life in an instant like a cloud of dust escaping from under a rug. "Professor," she began, staring not at the Headmaster but at the window or at the spindly items on his shelves, trying to gather her muddled thoughts. "When I was in the Aerie and I—when I found the Heir, he looked…well, he looked like Professor Slytherin. Not perfectly alike, mind you, but it was—uncanny, really. Minister Gaunt looks something like him too, and when the Heir—." She swallowed, surprised by how difficult it was to speak about the man—or figment—that had tortured her. "He told me his name was Tom Marvolo Riddle. He said—he said he was Lord Voldemort."
A shudder ran through the spectating portraits and Professor Dumbledore's eyes didn't shine like they usually did. He nodded.
"Why do they look so alike, Professor?"
The Headmaster exhaled as he removed his spectacles, set them down, and went about gently cleaning the lenses with his overlong sleeve. The jeweled bauble hanging from the temple caught her eye as she waited for his response. "As usual, you've cut to the heart of a very complicated matter, Harriet. You have a talent for it, it seems, and though I will endeavor to answer to the best of my ability, I fear you will only leave with more questions today." He put his spectacles back on. "You are not the first to note the similarities between Minister Gaunt and Professor Slytherin, though you are uniquely situated to understand the significance.
"Magic is not something we will ever fully understand, Harriet. The Ministry has an entire department devoted to unraveling its many mysteries, and the witches and wizards who work within it spend decades searching for answers most never find. Magic is both wonderful and terrible at times. The things it can do to a person are horrific, and it is to my lasting shame you experienced some of those horrific things in the Aerie."
"It's not your fault, sir. You weren't here."
"No, I was not, and yet I feel the burden of my faults and weaknesses as any wizard does, dear girl. Age and hubris can wear on a person. I fashion myself a rather intelligent wizard, but for all my intelligence and years, I could not prevent my removal from Hogwarts, putting my charges in peril, and I could not discover the Basilisk's lair as you did, Harriet."
He smiled and she blushed, recognizing the praise.
"But we are getting off topic. Magic is mysterious—it baffles even the brightest of us, and there exists spells and enchantments that we may never fully fathom or comprehend. You asked about Tom Riddle, Professor Slytherin, Minister Gaunt, and their apparent similarities. They look alike, Harriet, because they are the same person."
Harriet froze, a horrid, terrified churning in her middle nearly bringing her lunch up for a second visit.
"And yet, they are not."
She swallowed, the back of her throat burning, her hands clamped too tight on the arms of her chair. "W—what does that mean? I don't understand, Professor."
"It's not an easy thing to understand. How is one to define being, Harriet? What makes a person a person?"
Realizing he meant for her to answer, Harriet tried to ignore her dumbfounded shock and scrap together a remark. "Well, I—stuff like, I don't know, a body? A heart, brain. Feelings?"
"And yet, all these things can be replicated. Feelings can be forced and fabricated. So can bodies. I believe you have several pet golems in your possession, yes?"
"Oh. Two, yes. Kevin and Rick." How does he even know that?
"And how do Kevin and Rick differ from your dear familiar?"
"They—." Harriet shut her mouth when she discovered the answer didn't come to her immediately. By all rights, the golems were alive; they bled, ate, shed their skins, had all the moving parts and functions of Livius, and yet they weren't real. They'd been brought to life by a clever bit of magic and Charmed clay, according to Hermione. They used golems in Transfiguration but not in Potions. What really made them different? "…Livi has a soul."
Professor Dumbledore nodded. "Yes. But what is a soul? No, I don't expect you to answer, dear girl; better theologians than either of us have been trying to solve that question for centuries to no avail. We could say a soul is, or isn't, what makes a person a person, and we could find ourselves lost in the hows and the whys long into the new term and still be no closer to revelation. They are, and are not, the same person, Harriet. Slytherin and Gaunt are, and are not, Lord Voldemort."
Harriet could do little else aside from gawk at the Headmaster. How in the world could Professor Slytherin be Lord Voldemort and yet—not him? It didn't make sense. How did it even happen? Who was he?
The world thought the Dark Lord dead, and yet Harriet knew better, didn't she? She'd met him. Faced him. The world thought him defeated, and yet—.
A memory itched in the back of her mind. She remembered in a cozy room above a tavern in the summertime, sitting in the middle of a bed listening to the mingling sound of Muggle London and Wizarding Quarter. Her fingertip traced the words "The best coups are silent," at the bottom of a book's page, pressed into the paper by a quill's firm strokes.
She recalled the humid heat of a greenhouse, a line of infant Mandrakes waiting to be repotted, and Anthony Goldstein leaning forward to whisper, "My great-aunt told me he's the reason that Dumbledore, you know—." He wagged his right arm.
She thought of the words written in Mr. Flamel's letter—, "Your Defense Master is more than he appears."
Harriet felt very young as this knowledge pressed upon her. It frightened her to consider the forces meant to keep her safe weren't as powerful or well-intention as they appeared. She was just a girl whose feet couldn't quite reach the floor when she sat down, a girl who'd spent much of her life living under a set of stairs and knew so little about the world. She stared at the professor's empty sleeve and wondered what he meant by faults and weaknesses. She wondered what he'd meant when he told Minister Gaunt, "You're quite right. This isn't over."
She wouldn't be young forever, and the repercussions for all the things she didn't understand couldn't be ignored indefinitely. Sometimes a storm on the horizon dissipates, but more often than not it arrives in its own good time.
Professor Dumbledore pushed back from his desk and stood. Harriet blinked and focused on the wizard. "I have something I wish to show you, if you would accompany me on a short journey."
"Of course, sir."
He led her out of his office and down the spiral steps into the corridor beyond. As he'd said, it wasn't a long journey; Professor Dumbledore stopped at a painting of a woman in a puffy Edwardian gown and gave the password. The portrait opened, and he ushered Harriet into a new room. The hall inside stretched quite far, lit along both walls by torches that burst to life at their entrance. Harriet wanted to say it was a display room of some sort, but storage felt a better description of the numerous boxes, crates, and odd things tidied into shelves and stacks along the peripheries. She gazed up at Professor Dumbledore in silent question.
"Over the decades, the Headmasters and Mistresses of Hogwarts have had the unfortunate habit of accruing many possessions they inevitably forget or leave behind to the school. I believe Muggles would call them hoarders." He walked forward, setting a brisk pace, and again Harriet followed. He brought her to an ancient end table upon which rested a dusty, overturned bell jar. Inside the bell jar floated a wooden cube smaller than Harriet's palm, and she got to measure that assessment when the Headmaster gave his wand an errant flick to dismiss the bell jar and levitated the cube into her waiting hand. On closer inspection, she spotted dozens and dozens of smooth, shiny flecks of glass set in orderly rows on the cube's flat faces. "I take it you've encountered the legend of Ravenclaw's Aerie prior to discovering it, yes?"
"Yeah—yes, sir."
The older wizard nodded. "To most, it seems a rather backward legend, the story of Rowena constructing Hogwarts as a place to share the knowledge she gathered in her Aerie when the Aerie was supposed to be within Hogwarts itself. The discrepancy has always fascinated me, even when I was a student myself, and when you recounted your adventures to me—well, I went to have another look at the oldest items stored in our collection here. I've been told possessions here could have belonged to the Founders themselves—and it seems that assumption is correct."
Harriet turned the cube in her hands. Part of the revealed face had been scorched, a blackened spot eating away at the corner like mold. Harriet brought it closer to her face, and on further inspection realized the flecks of glass looked like windows—.
"Is this—?" she breathed, shocked. "It can't be."
"Magic is infinite in its delights and deceptions, dear Harriet." The Headmaster plucked the cube—the Aerie—from her grasp and returned it to the table. He replaced the bell jar, and the Aerie once more began to float, suspended forever beneath the curved glass. Harriet could see a smudge of smoke on the surface.
He's right. I don't think anyone could ever really understand magic in its entirety.
"Professor," she said after a moment, interrupting the quiet.
"Yes?"
"I have something to give you."
She shuffled and reached into her robes, pulling out Salazar Slytherin's tome and the scroll they'd used to write the translation on. The Charm on her pockets keeping everything light gave way and she nearly dropped the book, but she managed to hold on and hand it over with a sheepish grin. "I found this in the Chamber," she said. "It belonged to Salazar Slytherin, and we—Hermione, Elara, and me—spent most of term translating it."
"That must have been a fascinating project."
Nodding, Harriet continued. Fascinating's one word for it. "It helped me find the Aerie, and it—. We didn't finish translating it until this weekend, and though we kept a copy of the translation, we decided it best to give the book back to you." She caught the Headmaster's gaze and frowned. "There's so much that's not…right, Professor. So much about history that people have misinterpreted and just bloody—sorry—lied about. Everyone's always told us that Salazar Slytherin hated Muggle-borns, but he didn't. The Dark L—Voldemort's built his whole following on the idea of Muggle-borns being lesser and hated, using the Founder as a scapegoat. Some people look at Slytherins like we're the prod—progeny of a hateful monster, and it's not true at all."
Professor Dumbledore sighed. "Few things are ever as they appear, Harriet."
"I know. It really upset Hermione when we found out, and I told her some people don't want to hear the truth."
"That was very wise of you."
"I don't think it was wise, Professor. Just—sad."
The Aerie revolved in slow increments and Harriet could see the charred spot again. It looked like such a little thing, as if someone had pressed a match to the surface, and not at all like the remnant of a howling, seething inferno fit for nightmares. When Harriet spoke, she couldn't bring herself to look at the Headmaster. "The legend about the Chamber said Slytherin left behind a curse to purge the school of the unworthy, and it wasn't true. They say he left the school because of a disagreement, because of hate, and that wasn't true, either."
Professor Dumbledore continued to gaze at Harriet even as she fidgeted.
"He and Rowena Ravenclaw were in love. That's why the Aerie or the Underneath—the Chamber—shared entrances or objects only usable to either Founder. They loved each other, but Ravenclaw's family betrothed her to someone else. Hermione tried to explain to me how it used to work in those days, but I didn't understand it all. When she married, Slytherin wrote—." Her voice lowered, a sadness not her own creeping into thoughts of a witch and wizard dead for a thousand years. "He wrote that he could not spend another day here, or he feared his heart would break entirely."
Harriet knew nothing of love like that, not romantic love, and it proved difficult to imagine. She thought of Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, but any love there felt poisoned and wrong, maligned by furious, half-whispered fights in the sitting room when they'd thought Harriet couldn't hear them arguing about her or about money or about Dudley. Sometimes Uncle Vernon had made snide comments about her cooking. Sometimes Aunt Petunia had glared at the back of his fat, mustachioed head.
Slytherin wrote of Ravenclaw as one might write about something precious, like rare flowers found in bloom, or a new sunrise shedding light on a bleak world. He hadn't written a lot, but always it was—soft. Reverent. He'd called her 'my Rowena.'
Professor Dumbledore shifted and Harriet started as he pressed the tome back into her hands. "Professor?"
"I think," he said. "That Salazar Slytherin would have preferred this stay with a witch truly worthy of being his Heir rather than with me. Though, I do appreciate a copy of the translation. Thank you, Harriet."
Her fingers tightened on the book's binding as she brought it closer and hugged it to her chest. "Are you sure, sir?"
"I'm certain."
Dumbledore patted her shoulder and Harriet smiled, pleased with his comment. It shouldn't matter. She'd told Hermione once that it made no difference what Salazar Slytherin would have thought; Slytherin House belonged to them now, to the children who slept in emerald beds and studied under silver lanterns beneath the lake, they being the Founder's real legacy. However, holding something of his, imagining he'd want her to keep it, to know the truth of the wizard he'd been and reclaim that sense of blighted and tarnished Slytherin pride brought Harriet joy.
In that castle once lived a witch and a wizard who loved one another, even when that love was doomed to fail. He left behind a monster to protect her—her and her children and charges, and their children, those he couldn't look at without deep sorrow and regret but strove to shield all the same. Time had stolen the truth and twisted love into something terrible, made into a symbol of hatred and bigotry, but Harriet held the truth in her hands and she wouldn't let it be forgotten. Theirs was the House of ambition, and she swore they'd never fall into complacency. Slytherins were made to lead, not to follow, and she'd be damned if Tom Riddle—or any version of him—took that from them.
The bell rang. It echoed in the distance, and both Headmaster and student glanced up at the sound.
"I think it is time for you to return to your friends, Harriet. They'll worry where you've gone."
"You're right, sir." She tucked the book away, letting the weight disappear into her Charmed pocket, the outline of it still solid and real against her leg. Together, they left the room—and the Aerie—behind.
A/N: One more chapter for this part.