4. THE GOBLET OF FIRE
there's a snake lurking in the grass. - virgil
cliii. homecoming
Somewhere among the rolling green hills of the Yorkshire countryside, the village of Little Hangleton lay beneath the buttery shroud of the late afternoon's sunlight. The shadows grew long with the hour, but the haze and heat glowed yellow and orange with a dint of red leering over the rooftops, the residents content to remain in their homes or at the local pub, tucked away from the humidity and coming hour of night.
Outside of Little Hangleton, where the village ended and the houses gave way to untouched fields, a snake wended through the dry grass.
In height, the grass could have reached the midsection of a grown man, and as such, had no difficulty obscuring the great green serpent slithering through the swaying blades. Its belly was full of rats and other rodents that made their homes in the fields, and it moved with intent, its destination clear in mind as it wended through a corroded gate and by the undisturbed graveyard.
A manor loomed on the highest hill.
It looked a grand place from a distance, a house much larger than any other for miles and miles, but closer inspection revealed its faults. Spots on the roof showed missing shingles, the wood beneath damp with rot, the majority of the windows either shattered by thrown stones or boarded up. The whole of the property had been left to wallow and fester. As the years passed, the gardens had grown haggard and unkempt, hedges and rosebushes reduced to walls of brambles and thorns along the grounds. Rubbish had accrued in the branches, blown in by the wind, left to molder and rot.
The snake paid no mind to any of this. It slipped under the bushes and continued up the drive, making for one of the lower-level windows where the glass had been mostly cleared. No one saw the creature enter the house.
As the sky darkened and the night progressed, if anyone in Little Hangleton had thought to look up at the high hill and see the old manor there, they would have seen firelight gleam in one of the upper windows, the tell-tale flicker of a flame lit in one of the grand old grates. However, no one much bothered to consider the house, and so the fire went unremarked and unnoticed—as did the shadow cast by a man passing through the light's sullen glare.
In the house, embers popped and smoked in the dust-covered hearth, by which remained an old winged chair, the crushed velvet long since eaten and degenerated by time and insects. Someone sat in the chair's depths, but they couldn't be seen from the vantage of the dim fire and deep shadows; their breath, however, came in deep, rattling bursts.
The figure again passed the window—a man, slight in build and average in height, his features hidden in the night and a nondescript black cloak. He set a goblet down upon an aged sideboard and stirred the ashes in the grate with a wave of his wand.
"Where is Nagini?" rasped a high, cold voice from the chair.
"Wherever she pleases to be," returned the man, finishing with the fire. He turned instead to the goblet, a thick, pale liquid inside exuding a chilling mist. As with the fire, he stirred it with an idle twitch of his wand, more mist swelling and dribbling over the rim. He held the goblet to an unseen mouth in the chair's shadows. "Drink."
Silence intruded in the seconds it took for the chair's occupant to drink, and then the goblet retreated, empty.
"We will stay here, for now," the first voice continued, raspier than before. "It is moderately comfortable, for a Muggle hovel, and with wizards pouring in from every corner of the continent for that wretched Quidditch Cup, security will be heightened immeasurably." Another bubbling gasp interrupted the speaker. "It would be foolish to move without care."
The man had no response, sitting on the flattened window seat with his arms crossed. Then, a curious movement arrested his body, a sudden twist to his spine jerking his torso to one side, his head bobbing on his neck—and then it ended, the man once more seated with prim posture. Neither made any mention of his visible fit. "Are you so determined, my Lord? To use the Tournament—?"
"Yes," snapped the voice. "And I will not be questioned on the matter!"
"Of course not. But it would be easier to move ahead without bothering to wait."
"I have my reasons. You will respect them, as I have explained already. Do not make Lord Voldemort repeat himself."
The snake made an appearance then, nudging the ajar door open enough to allow its great body entry into the musty room. It went for the winged chair and encircled the wood legs, raising its green head enough to eye the occupant with scrutiny. Then, hissing, it turned away.
"Nagini is right," spoke the voice with some amusement. "This pitiful, weak form is failing me."
A body shifted, and an arm was held out toward the light—a grotesque arm, the flesh bloated and purple, the fingers like blackened sausages on the end of a limp, puffy hand.
"It seems the worthless Muggles in the village will serve a purpose after all."
One of the fingers broke off and fell, hitting the floor with a dull, echoing thump. The skin sloughed off from the exposed bone, revealing gangrenous tissue beneath, and as the hand flexed, more splits appeared in the decaying limb. The voice began to laugh as the man rose from the window seat with a put upon sigh. He headed for the door.
"As you wish."
xXx
In a dreary London townhouse some two hundred miles away, Harriet Potter woke with a breathless scream on her lips.
She laid on her back in sweat-soaked sheets, trembling despite the heavy humidity saturating the room. The window curtains were peeled back just enough to reveal the electric lights stationed in the park across the road, but the window itself remained shut tight. Above her, too close for comfort, loomed an opaque shadow, and Harriet could do nothing but blink in silent unease as the eyeless form of Set stared into her pale face. Her neck burned as if it'd been scratched open.
What is he doing?
Set leaned closer, soundless as ever, and the young witch held her breath in fear.
Then, the shadow disappeared.
Gasping, Harriet rolled to her feet and disentangled herself from the sticky, clinging sheets. She made a mad dash for the loo when she felt her stomach flip-flop in her middle, and she had just enough time to reach the toilet before she sicked up into it.
Already the images of her nightmare were dissolving, dispelled by the cold bite of the tiles under Harriet's bare knees—though, somehow, the odor of decomposing flesh remained in her mouth.
"Ugh," Harriet muttered, swallowing back the bile rising in her throat as she flushed. Her neck kept burning, prickling and stinging as if the area had gone numb and now throbbed with the return of blood. What in the world had she been dreaming about? And what was the matter with Set?
She eyed her murky shadow, and it remained still, unmoving. It did nothing to settle her discomfort.
"Miss Harriet Potter!" Harriet jumped when an elderly house-elf popped up by her elbow. The elf fussed with her tea-towel toga, peering into Harriet's teary eyes. "Is Miss Harriet Potter well?"
"I'm okay, Mably," Harriet replied, wiping her mouth. During the year, the old house-elf worked at Hogwarts in the kitchens, but this summer she'd begged Elara to stay at Grimmauld with them so she could look after Marlene McKinnon's only child, just as the woman would have wanted. Elara had allowed it—if only because the inclusion of another house-elf in their odd little arrangement drove the bitter Black house-elf, Kreacher, absolutely mad.
Speaking of the other witch, Elara appeared in the open doorway, half-asleep and dressed in her nightgown, scrunching her eyes against the light coming off the gas lamp. "What's the matter?" she grumbled as she blinked and looked Harriet over. "Are you ill?"
Harriet rose onto her woozy feet and shook her head, prompting Elara to reach out and steady her. "No. I just had a weird nightmare. Sorry to wake you."
"What was it about?"
"I—." Harriet opened her mouth, then shut it, struggling to grasp the vision that had taken on the quality of a poor cartoon, shapes and colors suggesting forms, but nothing of the content. She thought someone might have been laughing. "Y'know, I can't seem to remember."
Elara felt her forehead—then jerked her hand away, nose wrinkled. "You're covered in sweat." She went to wash her hands.
"Yeah, thanks for that."
Mably wrung her spindly hands together. "Should Mably be waking the Master of Potions? He is saying to be woken if anything is the matter!"
"NO," Harriet retorted—too loud and too quickly, startling both Elara and the elf. "I mean, no thanks, Mably. That won't be necessary." Harriet probably wouldn't go to Snape even if she was on fire. She thought it would serve him right to have to explain her crispy carcass to the headmaster.
Elara was eying her with speculation, so Harriet shooed both her and Mably from the room. "Go away so I can brush my teeth. I'm gonna make myself a pot of tea—."
"Oh! Mably can do it!"
Too late, the house-elf sprinted off toward the stairs, and Harriet huffed a swear word. She did manage to brush her teeth while Elara waited in the corridor, and then they set off for the kitchen in the basement together, their house slippers shuffling across the dark landings. They found Mably there, manning the kettle, and both witches slumped into chairs by the large table. Mably served them, and Harriet drank with a quiet sigh of thanks. She didn't know what kind of tea it was. Something Mably herself had blended.
"Is the Misses needing anything else? Maybe something to eat?"
"No thanks, Mably. It's much too early for that," Harriet replied, resting her chin on her folded arms. Indeed, when she consulted the old carriage clock on the mantel, they had a few hours yet until dawn. Elara studied the clock, too, and her face took on a hard, unhappy expression as she sipped her tea without bothering to blow away the steam.
"He's set to be here this morning."
"Mmm," Harriet acknowledged, because she'd been listening to Elara hiss about her father's arrival for an entire week now, and the vitriol surrounding Sirius Black had become as comfortable and familiar as a favorite coat. She got up to ferret through the cupboards, looking for a package of biscuits, and Mably proclaimed she would make a batch until Harriet furiously shook her head, thinking of their tetchy house guest and his notorious sense of smell. Elara was watching her as she returned to the table with an ancient tin of digestives.
"What is your issue with Snape?"
Harriet flinched at the casual usage of the Potions Master's name, and she kept her gaze fixed on the biscuits, sorting out the largest crumbled bits. "I don't know what you're on about."
"All last term, you ignored one another, and all this week, neither of you will sit down to dinner at the same table. I know Hermione and I have asked before, but did something else happen in the forest that night? Something that would cause this sudden antipathy?"
"No," Harriet replied, which was true enough. Snape had saved her life in the Forbidden Forest—and Harriet, in a roundabout way and by use of a Time-Turner—had saved his. It had been the day after when he'd screamed at her, had confessed to being a Death Eater and playing a part in her parents' deaths, and Harriet still had no bloody idea what to make of any of it. She'd never been the best at dealing with confrontation, and the undeniable sting of betrayal had yet to abate in its ceaseless nagging inside her chest.
She hadn't told Hermione and Elara about what he'd said. Not yet.
"Are you certain you're well?"
"I'm fine, Elara."
"You're not going to be if you persist in eating those biscuits from the seventies."
"Oh, har, har—." Harriet squinted at the label, having left her glasses in her bedroom, and discovered the smudged expiration date. "Bloody hell."
The tin found its rightful place in the bin, and Mably fussed over a new pot of tea despite both witches urging her to go back to bed. Neither Harriet nor Elara made a move to find their own, and they whiled away the time discussing nothing important, not mentioning Snape or Sirius, both looking forward to seeing Mr. Flamel next week and wondering when Hermione's next letter would arrive. Kreacher crept into the room eventually and got into a flaming row with Mably.
"Kreacher is a bad elf!" she hissed from her stool by the hob, where she'd been setting up a pan in preparation of an early breakfast. "He is not being a good help to his Mistress!"
Kreacher snarled from the floor, leering up at the testy McKinnon elf. "Mably is a nosy nuisance. She is not having business in the House of Black!"
"Business! Business! Mably is going where there is need!"
"No need for Mably!"
"Mably is needed because Kreacher is a bad elf! Not taking care of his House!"
Mably threw a wooden spoon at him, and Kreacher gave the stool a half-hearted shove that almost toppled her. She hucked a copper pot next, and it hit the floor with an almighty clang. Harriet stood, ready to tell both elves off—when the door to the potions' room slammed open, startling Elara into dropping her cup. It shattered in the eerie, stunned silence.
Professor Snape stood in the entrance, one hand pressed to the aforementioned door and the other clutching the wooden frame. His face bore the unmistakable marks of someone having fallen asleep at their desk, cheek cradled in a book, and he stared at the kitchen's occupants like a surly Dementor woken from his nap. He took one glance at the clock and sucked in a breath, ready to shout their ears off—.
And then he left, darting through the room with some fraction of his usual grace, and they listened to his footsteps pound up the steps until he was out of earshot. Elara lifted a brow as she turned to Harriet.
"That was 'nothing,' right?"
Harriet sunk onto her chair again with a sullen huff. "Shut up."
xXx
Mably made them a tasty breakfast an hour or so later, sniping with Kreacher the entire time. They eventually started chucking things at one another again, a dozen eggs splattering across the ceiling, Elara and Harriet ducking under the table for cover. McGonagall stepped out of the Floo to find both witches with their arms around an elf, trying to pry the brawling pair apart. Mably burst into tears and had to be calmed down. Kreacher opted to slink out of the room before anyone was any the wiser.
Elara and Harriet got a sound telling off of their own for being up so early, then sent up to their rooms to kip until daylight. Harriet didn't bother trying to sleep, still unsettled by her unsound dreams, and instead cared for her snakes and picked through her clothes for something to wear. She read a book on Ancient Runes that almost succeeded in sending her back to slumber, but Livi kept up a running commentary, and somewhere overhead, Harriet could hear the floorboards shift and creak under Snape's pacing feet.
Harriet glowered upwards and hoped he stubbed his toe on something.
Daylight had long since broken when Harriet followed McGonagall's call back downstairs, Elara seated on one of the bottom steps in the foyer, fighting not to scowl. Curious, Harriet sat with her there, listening to McGonagall converse with whoever stood outside on the stoop.
"Is he here, then?" she asked.
"Yes," Elara said shortly, folding her arms against her middle. "The Aurors are dropping him off."
Harriet could hear the gruff voices conversing with the higher, sharper tones of McGonagall until the front door came open proper, spilling sunlight into the usually tomb-dark hallway.
Sirius Black looked better than he had last she saw him—fuller in the face, dressed in a pair of trousers, shirt, and waistcoat that could have passed for Muggle fashion if one didn't look too closely at the cut and fabric. He had his sleeves rolled up, and one glimpse of the tattoos crookedly inked onto his right forearm sent a shiver through Harriet, her mind flicking back to the memory of Snape baring his Dark Mark.
"Er—it's great to see you again, Professor McGonagall!" Sirius said to the Transfiguration Mistress, his confusion at her presence apparent. He kept rubbing at his wrists as he came inside, and Harriet guessed the Aurors must have taken off a pair of handcuffs before letting him into the house. The Ministry had opted to keep him in a holding cell in London instead of Azkaban, so he hadn't gone back to the Dementors, but months of imprisonment had kept him somewhat peaky and pale.
McGonagall pursed her lips. "Yes, Mr. Black. Now that you aren't hexing me in my own study."
Black gave an uncomfortable laugh. "Sorry about that."
She folded her hands together, looking from Sirius to the two witches sitting on the steps. Sirius saw them there as well and brightened, but didn't move. Elara's foreboding stare kept him rooted in place. "Well. We'll all be thrilled to see you get the justice you deserve and be a free man again. In the interim, Albus has asked me to explain the guardianship arranged for the girls and some of the, ah, political climate to you. He planned to greet you himself, but he's been terribly busy and plans on stopping in later tonight if he can."
"Guardianship?" Sirius asked, puzzled.
"For Miss Potter, strictly speaking, as Miss Black is emancipated—." Elara stuck her nose in the air. "—and likes to think she doesn't need adult supervision."
"But what's this about a guardianship? I thought—." He scratched the back of his head. "I thought it was just us this summer?"
"Not hardly, Black."
Snape's voice drifted from the stairwell at Harriet's back, and neither she nor Elara bothered to look around as his oppressive presence neared. By unspoken agreement, they slid apart to give the wizard enough room to pass and got cuffed in the back of the head by his robes for their trouble. Sirius, meanwhile, looked as if someone had just kicked him in the arse of his trousers.
"What in the fuck is he doing here?!"
"Language, Mr. Black! It is difficult enough trying to break Harriet of the habit without you compounding the issue—!"
Snape sneered as he neared Sirius, his robes cutting a swathe through the dust that had accumulated on the floor over the summer. "Did you really believe that anyone with any sense at all would think to leave you alone with children?" Snape scoffed. "Innocent or not, you're a convict, Black."
Sirius shook himself, his hands balling into fists. "And so what? Dumbledore sends you to play babysitter? Nimue's knickers, the headmaster's off his head."
"Possibly. He's sane enough to recognize your worth, however. Or the distinct lack thereof."
"Oh, get fucking bent, Snivellous. Do your old pals know you're spending your summer watching little girls?"
"That is enough," McGonagall snapped. She stepped between the pair, which Harriet thought a good idea, considering both wizards appeared ready to come to blows. "We do not have time for you two to act on old, boyhood grudges. I do not expect you to be friends, but I expect you to act civilly in this house." Sirius made to interject, and McGonagall cut across him. "Yes, Mr. Black, I am well aware that this is your home, but if you find yourself unable to accept the Headmaster's strictures, we will have to remove Harriet from the house."
"She's my goddaughter!"
"And the legal ward of two terrible Muggles, direly susceptible to Ministry intervention." McGonagall exhaled, the lines of her face seeming deeper in the sunlight still coming through the door. She closed it with a wave of her hand, and the lamps on the wall eased into life. "Her safety is imperative and greatly affected by Minister Gaunt's continued interest in her affairs."
Sirius resumed glaring at Snape for half a moment, but his interest won out, and he dropped his blatant hostility. "What do you mean? Why would Gaunt be interested in Harry?"
"Harriet," Harriet and Elara corrected from the stairs.
"Did he not approach you at the Ministry?" Snape asked, his voice cold but also flat and cordial. Harriet wondered how long that would last. "He has not shied away from approaching people he perceives as being close to her in the past."
"No—well, shite, that's not true. He tried, but my solicitor prohibited interrogation after the first round of Aurors had their go. No further questions, even from the Minister for fucking Magic himself."
Snape and McGonagall shared a telling look, one that Sirius didn't miss.
"Is someone going to tell me what is going on?" he demanded.
"Yes, Mr. Black—Sirius. But the story will take time in its telling, and I am in need of tea. Severus, are you staying?"
The Potions Master's lip curled. "No. I have spent enough time in this doghouse today."
"Real clever, Snivellous. D'you stay up at night, thinking up all the rubbish you say during the day?"
Snape didn't answer. He swept by both Sirius and Professor McGonagall without further acknowledgment and stepped out onto the front porch. The door slammed shut, and a second later, the snap of Disapparition echoed. McGonagall muttered something that sounded like "Stubborn bawbag," under her breath, then stomped off for the kitchen. Sirius spared the two girls a confused look, then trotted along after her. Harriet considered going as well, but she suddenly found herself much too tired to hear the last three years of her life casually rehashed over a cuppa.
Elara stood. "I'm going to my room."
"Yeah," Harriet sighed, nursing a headache. "I am too."
A/N: So I decided not to use creepy baby Voldemort, because I never really understood where that came from, and instead we have shambling horror Voldemort. Nice and gross. Yay!
Sirius: "What a relief to be free!"
McG: "Snape is living in your house."
Sirius: "Send me back to prison."