What She Deserved

Nobody in Gryffindor Tower went back to bed that night. Word had gone round that the whole castle was being searched again, so the entire House sat up in the common room in pyjamas and dressing gowns, waiting to hear whether Sirius Black had been caught.

The fire sank. Somebody fetched more logs. Lee Jordan fell asleep in an armchair with his mouth open, then woke with a yell when a log collapsed in the grate, which set off a stampede of second years towards the girls’ staircase that took Percy ten minutes to calm down. Neville sat on his own by the portrait hole, still clutching his pillow. Nobody went anywhere near him.

It was dawn before Professor McGonagall came back. She looked like a woman who hadn’t sat down once all night, and her voice was flat with tiredness when she told them that Black had got away again.

After that, everywhere they went, there were signs that the castle had stopped taking chances. Professor Flitwick spent the morning standing on a stool in the Entrance Hall, holding up a large poster of Sirius Black in front of the oak doors, squeaking at them patiently until they had learnt the face. Filch came out of his office in a state of tremendous excitement. He scurried up and down the corridors with a hammer in one hand, his mouth full of nails, boarding up everything he could find, from cracks in the skirting boards to the very smallest mouse holes, while Mrs Norris trotted along behind him inspecting the work.

Sir Cadogan had been sacked. His portrait was hauled back up to the seventh floor, to the empty landing he had come from, with the little knight bellowing challenges at Filch the whole way, and the Fat Lady came home.

She had been beautifully mended, though you could still see the faint lines of the stitching if you looked closely, which she didn’t like anybody doing. She was also in a terrible state of nerves. She had flatly refused to go back to work at all unless somebody stood guard over her, so the castle had hired a gang of security trolls. They were enormous, sullen, thoroughly unpleasant creatures that paced the corridor outside her portrait at all hours, grunting at one another, holding up their clubs side by side like boys comparing conkers. As far as Harry could tell, they were male trolls. But at least they didn’t take any unwanted excursions to the ladies’ loo.

Harry noticed, with a guilty sort of relief, that nobody had gone near the statue of the hunchbacked witch with one eye, up on the third floor. Nobody had boarded her up; nobody had put a troll in front of her. Fred and George had evidently known what they were talking about. Apart from the twins themselves, the only people in the castle who knew about the passage inside her hump were Harry, Ron and Hermione.

‘D’you reckon we should tell someone?’ Harry asked Ron quietly.

‘We know he’s not coming in through Honeyduke’s,’ said Ron, waving the idea away. ‘We’d’ve heard if the shop had been broken into.’

Harry was secretly pleased that Ron saw it like that. If they boarded up the witch as well, that would be the end of Hogsmeade for him for good.

Ron, on the other hand, had become famous overnight. For once, people nudged each other when he walked past instead of when Harry did, and it was quite plain that he was enjoying every second of it. He still went rather pale whenever anybody mentioned knives. All the same, he was more than happy to tell the story to anybody who asked, in as much detail as they could stand, plus a good deal more than some of them could.

‘...I was asleep, and I heard this ripping noise, and I thought it was in my dream, you know? But then there was this draught... I woke up and one side of the hangings on my bed had been pulled down... I rolled over... and I saw him standing over me... like a skeleton, with loads of filthy hair... holding this great long knife, must’ve been twelve inches... and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and then I yelled and punched him right in his ruddy face, and he scarpered.’

Harry noticed that the knife had grown three inches since lunch.

‘Why, though?’ Ron said to Harry, once the little huddle of second years hanging on his every word had drifted off, deliciously horrified. ‘Why did he run?’

Harry had been asking himself the same thing all day. Black had picked the wrong bed; fine. But why hadn’t he simply shut Ron up, then worked his way along the row until he found the right one? Twelve years ago Black had blown a street full of strangers to pieces without turning a hair. Last night he had stood in a dormitory full of sleeping boys, with nothing between him and the bed he wanted but one yelling Ron Weasley.

‘Well you did hit him. I heard him moan. You got him good, Ron. He must’ve known he’d have a job getting back out of the castle once you’d yelled and woken people up,’ said Harry slowly, working it out as he went. ‘He’d’ve had to kill the whole House to get back through the portrait hole... then he would’ve met the teachers... You know how McGonnagall can be.’

Ron looked so pleased at you got him good that he forgot to be frightened for very nearly a whole minute.

Neville, meanwhile, was public enemy number one in Gryffindor Tower. Professor McGonagall had been so angry with him that she had banned him from Hogsmeade for the rest of his school career, given him a detention, then forbidden every Gryffindor in the tower to tell him the password. Every evening he had to sit on the cold flagstones outside the portrait, hugging his knees, until somebody came along to let him in. The security trolls stood over him the whole time, leering. Bad as all this was, it was nothing to what his grandmother had in store.

Two days after the break-in, she sent him a Howler.

The post owls came swooping into the Great Hall at breakfast as usual. A huge barn owl sailed down the Gryffindor table, landed in front of Neville with a thump that made the milk jug jump, then held out a scarlet envelope in its beak. Neville choked on his cornflakes.

Sitting opposite, Harry and Ron knew what it was at once. Ron had been sent one by his mother in their second year, and he had never forgotten it.

‘Run for it, Neville,’ Ron advised urgently.

Neville didn’t wait to be told twice. He snatched up the envelope, holding it out in front of him at arm’s length as though it might go off in his hand, which it was about to, then bolted for the doors. The Slytherin table fell about laughing.

Harry certainly wasn’t looking at Dracina as she laughed. He was still far too angry about the dementors, and far too hurt, to look at her at all. It was purely by accident, then, that he happened to notice her laugh stop a fraction before everybody else’s, as if somebody had shut a door on it.

A moment later the Howler exploded somewhere out in the Entrance Hall. The voice of Neville’s grandmother, magnified until it rattled the suits of armour, came booming back through the open doors to tell him (as well as everybody else within half a mile) that he had disgraced the entire family.

Harry was so busy feeling sorry for Neville that he didn’t notice at first that there was a letter for him, too. Hedwig had to bite him on the wrist before he looked round.

‘Ouch! Oh. Thanks, Hedwig.’

Hedwig hopped across to finish off Neville’s abandoned cornflakes while Harry unfolded the note.

Dear Harry and Ron,

How about having tea with me this afternoon ’round six? I’ll come and collect you from the castle. WAIT FOR ME IN THE ENTRANCE HALL; YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED OUT ON YOUR OWN.

Cheers,

Hagrid

‘He probably wants to hear all about Black!’ said Ron.

Harry was tucking the note into his pocket when a second owl came down, this time over the Slytherin table. It was an enormous eagle owl, dark and barred, with eyes the colour of marmalade. Harry knew it at once. It had come sweeping into his bedroom at Privet Drive last summer, then looked round the place with the deepest disdain. For nearly three years it had been bringing Dracina Malfoy parcels of sweets from home every week. It dropped a thick envelope in front of her, sealed in green wax, then swept straight out again without waiting for so much as a bacon rind.

He wasn’t looking, naturally. He simply happened to be facing that way when she broke the seal.

She read the first page with her chin propped on one hand, looking bored. She turned to the second. Somewhere near the bottom of it, every scrap of colour drained out of her face, which was quite an achievement, since there hadn’t been much there to begin with. Then it came flooding back in a hot, blotchy red, right up to the roots of her hair. She crushed the whole letter in her fist, stood up so suddenly that her goblet went over, then walked out of the Great Hall without a word to anybody, leaving pumpkin juice dripping off the edge of the table on to Goyle’s knees.

Goyle looked down at his knees in mild surprise. Nobody else at the Slytherin table moved. Pansy Parkinson, who normally followed Malfoy everywhere like a shadow with a bad temper, stayed exactly where she was. She was staring at the dripping juice. She had gone the colour of the wall behind her.

‘What’s up with her?’ said Ron, through a mouthful of toast.

‘Dunno,’ said Harry. ‘Don’t care.’

He went back to his breakfast. It was a great pity, he thought, that his bacon seemed to have gone cold so quickly.

*

She was waiting for him after Herbology.

Harry came out of Greenhouse Three with soil under his fingernails, while Ron grumbled beside him about a Puffapod that had gone off in his face, and there she was, standing quite alone on the gravel path.

She ought to have been in a lesson herself. Harry had no idea which one, only that it certainly wasn’t this one. She had no Crabbe with her, no Goyle, no Pansy. Her hair was as perfect as ever, but there were faint shadows under her eyes like bruised thumbprints, and she was holding something folded very small in one fist.

The Hufflepuffs coming out behind them slowed down to stare.

‘Potter.’ Her voice came out wrong, too high, so she cleared her throat. ‘I need to talk to you. Now. Alone.’

Harry walked straight past her.

She fell into step beside him at once, half running to keep up.

‘It’s about the letter. Father’s letter. Harry, you have to let me-’

‘Get lost, Malfoy,’ said Ron, shouldering in between them.

‘I wasn’t talking to you, Weasley.’

She didn’t even glance at him. She said it the way you might flick a fly off your sleeve, and her eyes never once left the side of Harry’s face. Then her hand shot out past Ron’s elbow to close on Harry’s arm.

Her grip was astonishingly strong. Harry could feel her nails through his robes, through his jumper, right down to the skin.

He pulled his arm free without a word. He didn’t look at her. He kept walking up the slope towards the castle at exactly the same pace as before, because on Saturday afternoon he had made up his mind never to say another word to Dracina Malfoy as long as he lived. So far, he had kept to it.

‘You’ll listen to me!’ she called after him.

It wasn’t her drawling voice. It wasn’t her haughty voice either, the one she kept for Ron. It was high and fierce, with something underneath it that made the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stand up.

‘Do you hear me? You will listen to me, Harry Potter. Sooner or later. I don’t care how long it takes.’

Harry kept walking.

‘She’s mental,’ said Ron, once they were safely through the front doors. He sounded rather shaken. He kept glancing back over his shoulder. ‘Did you see her eyes? She looked like she wanted to... I dunno. Eat you or something.’

‘It’s an act,’ said Harry. ‘It’s always an act.’

He knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted to get him on his own, somewhere nobody else could see, so that she could tell him all about her letter, then watch his face while she did it. Harry had been on the wrong end of that trick since before he could read. He wasn’t going to fall for it twice.

He rubbed his arm. The marks of her nails were still there that evening.

*

At six o’clock, the two of them dashed past the security trolls, who grunted at them suspiciously, then hurried down the marble staircase. Hagrid was there already, taking up a good part of it in his moleskin overcoat.

‘All right, Hagrid!’ said Ron. ‘S’pose you want to hear about Saturday night, do you?’

‘I’ve already heard all abou’ it,’ said Hagrid, pulling open the front doors to lead them out into the grounds.

‘Oh,’ said Ron, crestfallen.

Buckbeak was lying on Hagrid’s bed when they came in. He had spread himself across the patchwork quilt with his great wings folded neatly against his sides, while he worked his way through a heaped plate of dead ferrets with every sign of enjoyment. Harry looked hastily away. That was how he came to notice an enormous suit of hairy brown cloth hanging from the top of the wardrobe door, along with a truly dreadful tie in yellow and orange.

‘What are they for, Hagrid?’ said Harry.

‘Buckbeak’s case against the Committee fer the Disposal o’ Dangerous Creatures,’ said Hagrid. ‘This Friday. Him an’ me’ll be goin’ down ter London together. I’ve booked two beds on the Knight Bus...’

‘This Friday?’ said Ron. ‘I thought it wasn’t till April.’

‘Was,’ said Hagrid heavily. ‘Got a letter Sat’day mornin’. They’ve gone an’ brought it forward.’ He took the tie down from the wardrobe door, looked at it unhappily, then hung it back up. ‘Lucius Malfoy, if yeh ask me. Bin writin’ ter the Committee since Chris’mas, I heard. Wants it done an’ dusted before Easter.’

Harry felt as if something cold had slid down the back of his robes.

He thought of the eagle owl at breakfast. He thought of the thick envelope sealed in green wax, of the hot red rushing into Malfoy’s face, of the goblet going over. Of course. Her father had written to tell her. She had been so pleased that she couldn’t sit still, then she had come running down to the greenhouses to tell Harry all about it herself. It’s about the letter, Harry.

He was glad, now, that he hadn’t let her.

Underneath the anger, though, there was a horrible lurch of guilt. He had been so wrapped up in Dracina Malfoy since Saturday, in how much she had hurt him, that he had forgotten all about Buckbeak; before that, the Firebolt, the match and Black had done the same. Judging by the look on Ron’s face, Ron hadn’t either. They had promised Hagrid they would help him with Buckbeak’s defence. The promise had gone clean out of both their heads.

Hagrid made tea, then pushed a plate of Bath buns towards them. They both said no thank you, very politely. They had broken too many teeth on Hagrid’s baking over the years to fall for that.

‘I got somethin’ ter discuss with you two,’ Hagrid announced, settling himself between them with an air of great seriousness, which didn’t suit him at all.

‘What?’ said Harry.

‘Hermione,’ said Hagrid.

‘What about her?’ said Ron.

‘She’s in a righ’ state, that’s what. She’s bin comin’ down ter visit me a lot since Chris’mas. Bin feelin’ lonely. Firs’ yeh weren’ talking to her because o’ the Firebolt, now yer not talkin’ to her because her cat-’

‘Ate Scabbers!’ Ron cut in angrily.

‘Because her cat acted like all cats do,’ Hagrid went on, quite unmoved. ‘She’s cried a fair few times, yeh know. Goin’ through a rough time at the moment. Bitten off more’n she can chew, if yeh ask me, all the work she’s tryin’ ter do. Still found time ter help me with Buckbeak’s case, mind... She’s found some really good stuff fer me... reckon he’ll stand a good chance now...’

‘Hagrid, we should’ve helped as well. Sorry-’ Harry began awkwardly.

‘I’m not blamin’ yeh!’ said Hagrid, brushing the apology aside with one enormous hand. ‘Gawd knows yeh’ve had enough ter be gettin’ on with. I’ve seen yeh practicin’ Quidditch ev’ry hour o’ the day an’ night. But I gotta tell yeh, I thought you two’d value yer friend more’n broomsticks or rats. Tha’s all.’

Harry glanced at Ron. Ron glanced back, looking every bit as uncomfortable as Harry felt, then stared very hard into his tea.

‘Really upset, she was, when Black nearly stabbed yeh, Ron. She’s got her heart in the right place, Hermione has, an’ you two not talkin’ to her-’

‘If she’d just get rid of that cat, I’d speak to her again!’ Ron burst out. ‘But she’s still sticking up for it! It’s a maniac, and she won’t hear a word against it!’

‘Ah, well, people can be a bit stupid abou’ their pets,’ said Hagrid sagely. Over on the bed, as if to prove his point, Buckbeak coughed up a small heap of ferret bones on to the pillow.

For the rest of the evening they talked about Quidditch, because it was the only subject none of them could find anything wrong with. Hagrid thought Gryffindor had a real chance at the Cup this year. Harry agreed with every word he said, a little too loudly. Every so often his eyes strayed to the thick sheaf of notes beside the teapot, covered from top to bottom in Hermione’s small, neat handwriting. Each time, he made himself look away.

At nine, Hagrid saw them back up to the front doors.

*

When they climbed back through the portrait hole, there was a crowd jostling round the notice board.

‘Hogsmeade, next weekend!’ said Ron, standing on tiptoe to see over everybody’s heads. The visit was this coming Saturday. ‘What d’you reckon?’ he muttered, as the two of them went to sit down.

‘Well, Filch hasn’t done anything about the passage into Honeydukes...’ Harry murmured, more quietly still.

‘Harry!’ hissed a voice just behind his ear.

Harry jumped. Hermione was at the very next table. He hadn’t seen her, because she had built herself a sort of fort out of library books, and now she was pulling two of them apart to glare at him through the gap.

‘Harry, if you go into Hogsmeade again... I’ll tell Professor McGonagall about that map!’ said Hermione.

Harry felt a hot rush of fury. He had something ready to say back to her, something so cutting that he would have been ashamed of it afterwards, but before he could get it out, Ron put a hand on his shoulder.

‘Can you hear someone talking, Harry?’ growled Ron, without even turning round.

‘Ron, how can you let him go with you? After what Sirius Black nearly did to you! I mean it, I’ll tell-’

Harry opened his mouth. For one wild moment he wanted to explain everything, to calm the pair of them down, to make them both just stop. Ron got there first.

‘So now you’re trying to get Harry expelled!’ said Ron furiously. ‘Haven’t you done enough damage this year?’

Hermione opened her mouth, but before she could say a word, Crookshanks leapt into her lap with a low hiss. She took one look at Ron’s face. Whatever she saw there frightened her. She scooped up the cat, then fled up the girls’ staircase without another word.

‘So how about it?’ Ron said to Harry, exactly as though nobody had interrupted. ‘Come on, last time we went you didn’t see anything. You haven’t even been inside Zonko’s yet!’

Harry glanced round to make sure Hermione had really gone.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But I’m taking the Invisibility Cloak this time.’

*

Dracina Malfoy didn’t give up.

For the rest of that week, Harry couldn’t turn a corner without wondering whether she would be waiting on the other side of it. On Tuesday morning she was leaning against the wall at the end of the Charms corridor with her arms folded, although she had no business being anywhere near it at that hour. On Tuesday afternoon she was standing at the foot of the Owlery steps when he went up with a bacon rind for Hedwig. On Wednesday she was in the library, three tables away, with a book open in front of her that she never once turned the page of, her eyes fixed on the door. Every time, Ron planted himself between them like a lanky, freckled wall. Every time, Harry walked past her as though she were made of glass.

She couldn’t follow him into lessons. So the notes began instead.

The first one turned up inside his Transfiguration book, folded into a hard little square, although Harry would have sworn the book hadn’t left his bag all morning. The second was in the pocket of his robes on Wednesday, even though those robes had spent the whole night hanging on the end of his four-poster, at the top of a tower guarded by a gang of trolls. He didn’t open either of them. He dropped them both into the common-room fire unread, then stood watching until they had burnt away to nothing.

Ron looked at the ashes for a while.

‘How did she get it in your pocket?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘That’s not normal, Harry. That’s... Fred and George couldn’t do that.’

‘She’s a Malfoy,’ said Harry shortly. ‘She probably paid somebody.’

On Wednesday afternoon, Cho Chang stopped him outside the library.

‘That dive on Saturday was evil, you know,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I came so close to the grass I could smell it.’

‘Sorry,’ said Harry, going red.

‘Don’t be. I’d have done exactly the same.’ She hitched her bag up on to her shoulder. ‘I’m not falling for it next time, though.’

She went off down the corridor with a friend on either side of her, both of them giggling. Harry watched her go, feeling rather warm round the ears. Then he turned round.

Dracina Malfoy was standing at the far end of the corridor.

She wasn’t looking at Harry. She was watching Cho Chang walk away, without any expression on her face whatsoever. It was perfectly smooth, perfectly still, like the surface of a pond with something very large moving about underneath it. Harry had seen a look like that only once before, on Hermione, outside Charms, on the day the Hufflepuff knocked her bag over. For no reason he could have put into words, it made him think of one of Mrs Figg’s cats sitting on a garden wall, watching a sparrow.

The next morning, Cho Chang’s bag split clean open on the marble staircase. Her ink bottles went bouncing down every step to the Entrance Hall, smashing one after another, while a whole term’s worth of essays went fluttering over the banisters. Harry heard about it from Seamus at lunch. He didn’t think anything of it at the time.

The third note came by owl, at breakfast on that same Thursday, in front of the entire Gryffindor table. It was a scruffy little school owl rather than the eagle owl, but Harry knew perfectly well whom it was from. He pushed it into his pocket without unfolding it. That evening, before he went down to his lesson, he dropped it on to the common-room fire, where the other two had gone.

The paper caught at one corner. It curled open as it burnt, so that for a second, before the flames took it, he could read the first line in her small, sharp handwriting.

Please, Harry. Please. I’m begging you. Just let me talk to

Then it was ash.

Harry watched it crumble. He had made up his mind on Saturday afternoon, in front of the whole school, and he wasn’t going to change it now because of eleven words in green ink.

All the same, he had never once, in nearly three years, known Dracina Malfoy beg anybody for anything. Except once, perhaps, in the Chamber, when he had been too far gone to be sure he hadn’t dreamt it.

*

At eight o’clock that evening, Harry went down to the History of Magic classroom for his anti-dementor lesson.

Professor Lupin was there before him, as usual, with the packing case already set out in the middle of the floor. He looked dreadful. His face was grey, his eyes were sunk deep in shadow, and although the room was so cold that Harry could see his own breath, there was a fine sheen of sweat across Lupin’s forehead. He had pushed his sleeves up past the elbows. Harry thought, not for the first time, that whatever was wrong with him seemed to come and go like weather.

‘Harry. Good.’ Lupin smiled. The smile was perfectly genuine, even if it didn’t spread very far into the rest of his face. ‘Let’s find out whether Saturday was a fluke, shall we?’

It wasn’t a fluke.

The boggart came out of the case as it always did, tall and hooded, gliding, with the lamps guttering out one by one along the walls. The cold came with it. Harry heard the first thin edge of the screaming begin somewhere at the back of his head. This time, though, he didn’t stand there waiting for it to get louder. He thought of Wood’s face in the huddle, of the Snitch beating its wings against his fingers, of the whole stadium on its feet; then he raised his wand.

‘Expecto patronum!’

The silver burst out of him so brightly that he had to screw up his eyes. It wasn’t a cloud any more, nor was it a lamp. It was solid, it was moving, and it went straight at the boggart. He still couldn’t make out its shape. It was like trying to look at sunlight on water. The hooded figure stopped dead. It swayed. Then it began to retreat, step by step, until Lupin sprang forward with a crack of ‘Riddikulus!’ to drive it back into the case.

Harry lowered his wand. He was breathing hard, but his legs were holding him up perfectly well.

‘Well,’ said Lupin softly. ‘Well, well.’

He sat down on the edge of Professor Binns’s desk rather suddenly, as though it were his legs that had given way instead of Harry’s. Then he broke a slab of chocolate in two.

‘Eat that. Then tell me how it felt.’

‘Easy,’ said Harry, through a mouthful. Then, because that sounded like showing off: ‘Well. Easier.’

‘Good. It ought to be.’ Lupin turned his own piece of chocolate over without eating it. ‘The first time a thing is done, it is done against the whole weight of never having done it before. After that, you are only remembering.’

They ate in silence for a while. Outside, the wind was getting up. It moaned along the window frames, setting the lamps flickering.

‘Sir?’ said Harry. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘You may ask.’

‘What do you use? For yours, I mean. Your memory.’

Lupin didn’t answer straight away. He studied the chocolate in his fingers for a while.

‘Not something I did,’ he said at last. ‘Something that was done for me. Something I had no right to whatsoever, which I could never have earned if I had worked at it for a hundred years.’ He smiled slightly. ‘I used to think that was the most unfair thing about it. I’ve rather come round to it since.’

Harry frowned. He couldn’t see how that made it a happy memory at all. In his experience, people who gave you things you hadn’t earned always wanted paying back eventually, usually when you could least afford it.

‘Was it Dumbledore?’ he asked. ‘Giving you this job, I mean?’

Lupin laughed, quite genuinely this time.

‘Dumbledore has been extraordinarily good to me,’ he said. ‘But no. Somebody a good deal older than Dumbledore.’ He set the chocolate down on the desk. ‘Your mother introduced us, as it happens. It took me an embarrassingly long time to listen.’

Harry stared at him. Lupin had said something about his mother once before, at the classroom door in January, but before Harry could remember exactly what, Lupin had already moved on, as he always did when he had said precisely as much as he meant to.

‘Something else is bothering you,’ said Lupin. ‘It’s been bothering you since Saturday.’

‘No, it hasn’t.’

‘As you like.’ Lupin wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. ‘Then I shall tell you a story about somebody else entirely, and you may do whatever you please with it. A man once asked his teacher how many times he ought to forgive somebody who had wronged him. Seven times, he suggested. I expect he thought that was rather generous of him.’

‘And?’ said Harry, in spite of himself.

‘Seventy times seven, said the teacher.’

Harry worked it out. ‘That’s four hundred and ninety.’

‘So it is.’ Lupin’s eyes creased at the corners. ‘I’ve always understood that the idea was to lose count.’

‘That’s mad,’ said Harry. ‘Some people don’t deserve it. Some people would just... they’d just do it again. They’d laugh at you.’ He wasn’t thinking about anybody in particular. He wasn’t thinking about silver eyes and silver blonde hair. Not at all.

‘What about people like Snape?’

It was the wrong thing to say.

Harry felt it before he saw it. It came up through the soles of his feet, through the legs of his chair: a sound so low that it was hardly a sound at all, more like the bottom note of a church organ, the kind you feel in your teeth before you hear it. On the desk beside Lupin, the lamp flame shrank to a small blue bead. Lupin’s hand had closed on the edge of the desk. Harry heard, quite distinctly, the old wood creak.

Then it was gone. The lamp flame stood up straight again. Lupin let go of the desk, flexed his fingers once, then folded his hands in his lap.

‘Professor Snape,’ he said evenly, ‘is a very good example. I find it extremely difficult. I find it difficult every single day, if you want the truth, and some days I fail at it altogether.’ He looked at Harry. ‘That has never yet turned out to be a reason to stop trying. Believe me, I have looked very hard for one.’

Harry didn’t know what to say to that, so he finished his chocolate.

‘Where’s it from?’ he asked eventually. ‘The seventy times seven thing.’

‘You’ll find it written down, if you ever go looking,’ said Lupin. ‘I should like it very much if you did.’ He stood up, steadying himself on the desk for just a moment. ‘That will do for one evening. Same time next week. Go on ahead; I shall catch you up at the stairs.’

Harry picked up his bag and went out.

The corridor outside was long, cold and almost completely dark; somebody, probably Filch, had let half the torches burn out. Harry had got as far as the corner, where a suit of armour stood on its plinth, when somebody stepped out from behind it.

He very nearly yelled. A wand-tip flared, lighting a pale, pointed face from underneath.

‘Every Thursday,’ said Dracina Malfoy. ‘Eight o’clock. Every single Thursday since January.’

Her voice was very quiet. Harry would much rather she had shouted.

‘I’ve been waiting here since seven. I knew you’d come out this way. You always come out this way.’ She took a step towards him. ‘You’re going to listen to me now. There’s nobody here. No Weasley. Nobody to hide behind.’

Harry tried to step round her. She moved sideways to block him, quick as a cat.

‘Don’t.’ The wand-light trembled. ‘Don’t you dare walk away from me again. I have to tell you something. I’m not listening to him anymore. To any of them! I have to... you have to listen, there’s something you don’t...’

She stopped. Whatever it was seemed to have stuck somewhere in her throat. Her mouth worked, but nothing more came out.

Harry stood perfectly still. He looked at a point somewhere over her left shoulder. Her eyes were red-rimmed, he noticed, much too bright, but then they would be. It was very cold in that corridor, after all.

‘Say something.’ Her free hand caught his wrist. Her fingers were like ice; her nails dug in hard. ‘Say something, Harry. Shout at me. Hex me. I don’t care what. You don’t get to look straight through me like that. Not you. Everybody else can, but you don’t get to, you’re mine to...’

She stopped, as though she had heard herself.

Harry went cold all over. He had heard those words before, in exactly that voice. He had heard them in a dream in November, lying in the hospital wing, with her standing at his shoulder in the dark.

Further along the corridor, a door opened. Yellow lamplight spilt out across the flagstones.

‘Harry?’ said Professor Lupin. ‘Is everything all right out there?’

Her hand was gone from his wrist before Lupin had finished speaking. The wand-light went out. Harry heard the quick tap of her shoes on the stone, going away fast round the corner; then there was nothing at all.

‘Fine, sir,’ Harry called back. ‘I just dropped something.’

Lupin didn’t go back inside. He stood in the doorway with the light behind him, his head lifted slightly, like a man who has caught the smell of rain. He breathed in, slowly, through his nose. Then he turned to look down the corridor in exactly the direction she had gone, although there was no way on earth he could have seen her go.

‘She’s been crying,’ he said quietly. ‘For quite some time, I should think.’

Harry stared at him.

‘How... how d’you know?’

Lupin seemed to come back to himself. He blinked once.

‘A guess,’ he said. He pulled the door shut behind him. ‘Come along. I promised Professor McGonagall I would see you to your staircase.’

They walked the rest of the way without speaking. At the Fat Lady, Lupin left him with a nod.

Harry climbed in through the portrait hole rubbing his wrist, where four little crescent-shaped marks were slowly turning red. Crocodile tears, he told himself. That was all it was. Dudley had been able to cry whenever he liked, ever since he was three, usually when he wanted a second pudding. It didn’t mean anything. It never had.

All the same, it was a long time that night before he got to sleep.

*

On Friday it rained.

It rained all day, a cold, grey, sideways rain that streamed down the windows of every classroom in the castle. Harry kept looking out at it. Somewhere in London, he thought, Hagrid would be sitting on a bench in a Ministry corridor, in his hairy brown suit with his terrible tie, while a lot of wizards in very good robes decided whether he was allowed to keep his friend.

Ron kept saying it would be fine. He said it so often that Harry began to suspect he didn’t believe it either.

There was no news by bedtime. Harry lay awake for a long time listening to the rain, then fell asleep thinking about hippogriffs. When he woke, the sky outside was a clean, pale blue, and he still had no idea what had happened.

*

Before breakfast on Saturday, Harry stuffed the Invisibility Cloak into the bottom of his bag, slid the Marauder’s Map inside his robes, then went down with everybody else.

All through breakfast, Hermione kept sending narrow, suspicious looks at him from further down the table. Harry didn’t meet her eye once. Afterwards, while everybody else was streaming out through the front doors into the sunshine, he made quite sure that she saw him turn round to climb the marble staircase, alone.

‘’Bye!’ Harry called after Ron. ‘See you when you get back!’

Ron gave him an enormous wink.

Harry took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor, pulling out the map as he went. He ducked down behind the witch, then spread it flat on the floor. One small labelled dot was heading straight for him. Harry peered at the tiny lettering beside it: Neville Longbottom.

Harry hesitated. Neville was more hated than Snape in Gryffindor Tower at the moment, which was mostly Neville’s own fault, but Harry couldn’t help feeling sorry for him all the same. Surely he could spare a minute to cheer him up a bit before he went. Quickly, he pulled out his wand.

‘Dissendium!’ he muttered, then shoved his bag into the opening hump. He hadn’t had time to climb in after it before Neville came round the corner.

‘Harry! I forgot you weren’t going to Hogsmeade either!’

‘Hi, Neville,’ said Harry, stepping smartly away from the statue as he crammed the map out of sight. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Nothing,’ said Neville, with a doleful shrug. ‘Want a game of Exploding Snap?’

‘Y’know, I’d love to mate. But I was just off to the Library. I got that essay from Lupin. The one about the Vampires. What are they called... the mad ones?’

‘Oh, Malkavians, Harry,’ said Neville helpfully. ‘I could help you, mate. I studied them a bit ago for... well it was a family matter. But I know lots about them.’

Something passed across Neville’s round face as he said family, so quickly that Harry would have missed it if he had blinked. Then it was gone, and Neville was looking at him hopefully.

Bugger, thought Harry. This was only meant to be a quick chat.

‘Ah, well you see I work better on my own. Neville. No distractions. Not that you’re distracting of course.’

Even as he said it, Harry could hear exactly how it sounded. If he had sat down to plan the most obvious brush-off in the history of Hogwarts, he couldn’t have done a better job.

‘Right...’ said Neville, his face falling.

Then he gave a little gasp, staring past Harry’s shoulder. Harry turned round. Snape was coming along the corridor towards them. Neville took a quick step backwards, so that Harry was between the two of them.

‘And what are you two doing here?’ said Snape, stopping in front of them. His eyes went from one face to the other. ‘An odd place to meet-’

Harry’s insides lurched. Snape’s black eyes had begun to move: to the doorway on their left, to the doorway on their right, then, slowly, to the hunched stone witch.

Harry felt a prickle of irritation. Before he could stop it, his mouth had run off without him.

‘Sorry, Professor. We were busy plotting how to finally destroy Voldemort. We need-’

Neville made a faint squeaking noise.

‘Indeed?’ Snape cut in, his lip curling. ‘You have a habit of turning up in unexpected places, Potter, and you are very rarely there for no good reason... I suggest the pair of you return to Gryffindor Tower, where you belong.’

Harry nodded. He could think of at least three things to say to that, each one ruder than the last, but the witch was standing right behind him, so he swallowed every one of them.

‘Righteo, Professor. We’ll be on our way,’ said Harry, trying hard to sound respectful without sounding as though he were taking the mickey. It was much harder than it looked.

They set off. At the corner, Harry glanced back. Snape had laid one long, pale hand on the stone witch’s head. He was running it slowly over her, as though feeling for a seam.

Harry got rid of Neville at the Fat Lady.

‘Password’s Victis, Neville,’ he said, in a low voice, so that the trolls wouldn’t hear.

Professor McGonagall had forbidden anyone to tell Neville the password, but Neville had spent every night for a week sitting on the cold stone floor outside, waiting to be let in. As far as Harry was concerned, that was punishment enough. Then he made a great show of patting his pockets.

‘Oh bugger, Neville. I just realised I left my essay in the library. I better go fetch it. You go on ahead I’ll catch up.’

He dashed off before Neville could answer, so he never heard Neville say indignantly, to the empty corridor, ‘You never went to the library in the first place though!’

As soon as the trolls were out of sight, Harry pulled the map out again, holding it close to his face. The third-floor corridor was empty. He searched the parchment carefully until he found the dot he was looking for, then let out his breath. The little label Severus Snape was back down in the dungeons, sitting in his office.

Harry ran all the way back. He tapped the witch’s hump, squeezed himself through the gap, then went whooshing down the long stone chute to land beside his bag at the bottom. He touched his wand to the map, muttered Mischief managed to wipe it blank, then started running.

*

The best part of an hour later, invisible under the Cloak, Harry stepped out of Honeydukes into the bright spring sunshine and poked Ron in the back.

‘It’s me,’ he muttered.

‘What kept you?’ Ron hissed.

‘Snape was hanging around...’

They set off together up the high street.

‘Where are you?’ Ron whispered every few yards, barely moving his lips. ‘Are you still there? This feels weird...’

They tried the post office first. Ron spent ages pretending to ask how much it would cost to owl Bill in Egypt, while Harry wandered round looking. There must have been two hundred owls in there, hooting softly down at him from their perches: enormous Great Greys at one end, then smaller owls, then smaller ones still, right down to a row of tiny Scops owls under a sign that said Local Deliveries Only. They were so small that any one of them would have fitted in Harry’s palm.

Zonko’s was so crammed with Hogwarts students that Harry had to shuffle round it very slowly, with his elbows tucked in, to avoid treading on somebody’s foot and starting a panic. It was everything the twins had promised and more. Harry kept whispering orders into Ron’s ear while he slipped him Galleons from under the Cloak, so that by the time they came out again, their money bags were a great deal lighter. Their pockets, on the other hand, were stuffed full: Hiccup Sweets, Dungbombs, Frog Spawn Soap, a Nose-Biting Teacup each.

It was a bright, blowy day, far too nice to spend indoors. So they walked on past the Three Broomsticks, then climbed the slope beyond the village to look at the Shrieking Shack, which was supposed to be the most haunted building in Britain. As far as two thirteen-year-old boys were concerned, that made it both the creepiest building in Hogsmeade and by far the best.

It stood on its own, a little higher up the hill than any of the village houses. Even in broad daylight it gave Harry a slight chill. Every window had been boarded up, while the garden had run completely wild, all brambles and rank, dank grass.

‘People say all sorts about it,’ said Ron, sounding exactly like a tour guide. ‘Some say a mad old wizard chopped people to bits in the shack in the 70s. People say they heard all sorts of screaming and rustling about.’

‘Mate, if that’s true why did no one ever come in and stop it,’ said Harry inquisitively.

Ron gave this some thought.

‘Dunno. But I reckon not many people would want to sort out a mad old wizard with a cleaver. Would you?’

‘Yeah, I would,’ said Harry.

‘Yeah but you’re Harry Potter. You slew a bloody Basilisk.’

‘And you punched Sirius Black right in his ruddy face, and got clubbed by that chess piece in our first year. You’re pretty brave yourself.’

Ron rose a little higher from the praise of his best mate. He cleared his throat.

‘Anyway, even the Hogwarts ghosts avoid it,’ he said, as the two of them leant on the fence, gazing up at the place. ‘I asked Nearly Headless Nick... he says he’s heard a very rough crowd lives here. No one can get in. Fred and George tried, obviously, but all the entrances are sealed shut.’

Harry was hot after the climb. He was just wondering whether it would be safe to slip the Cloak off for a minute or two when they heard voices. Somebody was coming up the far side of the slope, towards the house. A moment later, Dracina Malfoy came over the brow of the hill.

She had done her hair specially, Harry noticed, in a complicated silver-blonde twist, and she was wearing a little make-up. She looked very pretty. Not that Harry was thinking anything of the sort.

She was walking very fast, huffing with irritation, muttering furiously over her shoulder, while Crabbe and Goyle struggled along at her heels trying to keep up.

‘...and I told Father not to worry. But that was only after I found somebody sent it. I’m sure it was Granger. Wanting me to look bad in front of... well never mind. I don’t know how she’s doing it. No doubt something Kabbalistic. My father warned me of those people.’

Crabbe nodded gormlessly. So did Goyle.

Under the Cloak, Harry’s hands had curled into fists. So that was the story now, was it? It hadn’t been her at all. It had been Hermione: Hermione, who had spent half the winter in Hagrid’s hut writing out Buckbeak’s defence by hand.

‘I don’t know what Har... Potter sees in that oafish Half-Giant. He can’t even speak properly. That’s the Giant in him. He’s obviously-’

She saw Ron, then stopped dead.

For a moment, before she had time to arrange it, her face was completely unguarded. Her eyes went quickly past Ron to the empty air on either side of him, the way they always did, looking for Harry. She was looking straight at him, without the faintest idea that he was there. Then the moment passed. Her mouth curled into a sneer she must have practised in front of a mirror for years.

Half-Giant. Harry had never heard anybody call Hagrid that before. He decided it was just one more Malfoy sneer about Hagrid’s size, but he tucked it away all the same, to look at later.

Harry had sworn more than once to stop speaking to her. This time, he had actually managed it. A whole week of ambushes in corridors, notes in his books and pockets, an owl at breakfast, but he hadn’t said one single word. She wanted to get him on his own so that she could rub his nose in it, to laugh at him for being taken in. Well, he was wise to her games now.

‘What are you doing, Weasley?’ Her eyes travelled up to the ruined house behind him. ‘Suppose you’d love to live here, wouldn’t you, Weasley? Dreaming about having your own bedroom? I heard your family all sleep in one room. Is that true?’

Harry grabbed a fistful of Ron’s robes from behind, just in time to stop him launching himself at her.

‘I’ll sort her out,’ he hissed in Ron’s ear.

It was too good a chance to pass up. Harry crept round behind the three of them without a sound, then crouched to scoop up a big, cold, dripping handful of mud from the path.

He hesitated, with the mud oozing between his fingers. Her hair really did look nice. Then he made himself remember: the hooded robes on the grass, the Snitch eight feet away, I’ve dropped it, I’m not going to, I’ve decided. He dragged up every last scrap of hurt and spite he had been carrying around since last Saturday: her attempt to humiliate him in front of the whole school, her betrayal. This was justice, that was all. It would make them quits. She would never know it was him.

‘We were just discussing your tamed savage Hagrid,’ Malfoy was saying to Ron. ‘Why does Ha... ugh, Potter spend time with that barbarian when he could-’

SPLAT.

The mud hit her square in the back of the head, jerking it forward. In an instant, the careful silver-blonde twist was gone. Muck was sliding out of it down her neck, into her collar, all over the shoulders of her good cloak. It was completely ruined.

‘What the-?’

Ron had to hang on to the fence to stay upright, he was laughing so much. Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle all spun round on the spot, gaping stupidly in every direction. Then Malfoy began clawing at her hair with both hands, trying to get the mud out of it, only making it worse. The worse it got, the angrier and more upset she became, until her face was blotched pink, her eyes swimming.

‘What was that? Who did that?’

‘Very haunted up here, isn’t it?’ said Ron, as though remarking on the weather.

Crabbe and Goyle had begun to look frightened. All the muscle in the world was no use against a ghost. Malfoy was glaring wildly round at the empty hillside, her chest heaving.

Harry crept a little further along the path, to a puddle full of something green, slimy and extremely smelly.

SPLATTER.

This time it caught Crabbe and Goyle together. Goyle hopped from foot to foot in a rage, rubbing at his small eyes.

‘It came from over there!’ said Malfoy, wiping her face with one hand, pointing with the other at a patch of empty air a good six feet to Harry’s left.

Then she started screaming.

‘My hair! Look at my hair! Whoever you are, you are dead, do you hear me? My father will hear about this! He’ll have you executed! Publicly!’ She rounded on Crabbe and Goyle. ‘Get them! Get them right now!’

Crabbe looked at Goyle. Goyle looked at Crabbe. Apart from Ron, who was still clinging to the fence with tears running down his face, there was nobody there to get.

‘What are you waiting for? Are you deaf as well as stupid? I said get them, you useless great lumps!’

Crabbe lurched forward with his long arms stretched out in front of him, like a zombie in a Muggle film. Harry sidestepped him easily, picked up a stick, then threw it hard at the middle of Crabbe’s back. Crabbe spun round so fast that his feet actually left the ground for a second, searching for whoever had thrown it. Harry had to clamp a hand over his mouth. Ron being the only person in sight, Crabbe went for Ron. Harry stuck out a foot. Crabbe tripped over it. His great flat foot came down on the hem of the Cloak; Harry felt a sharp tug as it slid right off his face.

For a long, frozen second, Dracina Malfoy stared straight at him: at his head, hanging in mid-air above nothing at all. Her mouth opened. Her face was working. She was so furious that no words would come out.

‘AAARGH!’ she screamed at last, pointing a shaking finger at his head.

Then she spun round to flee, flat out, back down the hill, with Crabbe and Goyle stampeding after her. Harry could hear her shrieking at them over her shoulder the whole way down, for being useless, for being cowards, for not even trying to protect her.

Harry yanked the Cloak back over his head, but it was far too late.

‘Harry!’ Ron stumbled forward, staring helplessly at the place where Harry’s head had vanished. ‘You’d better run for it! If Malfoy tells anyone... you’d better get back to the castle, quick-’

‘See you later,’ said Harry. Without another word, he tore off down the path towards Hogsmeade.

Would she believe her own eyes? Would anybody believe her? Dracina did have a bit of a reputation for being mental after that episode in their second year near Christmas when she screamed at everyone in the Great Hall and threw things at them whilst under the influence of the Diary. Harry felt a pang of sympathy for that he couldn’t suppress. Regardless, only Ron and Hermione knew about the Invisibility Cloak. So did Hagrid. So did Dumbledore, and very probably McGonagall too. Harry’s stomach turned right over. If Malfoy told anybody at all, Dumbledore would know at once exactly what had happened.

In through the door of Honeydukes; down into the cellar; across the flagstones; through the trapdoor. Harry dragged off the Cloak, bundled it under his arm, then ran, faster than he had ever run in his life, down the long dark passage. She would be back before him. She had the road, which was shorter. How long would it take her to find a teacher?

*

Down in the dungeons, Professor Snape was marking essays.

He had come back from the third floor in a filthy temper. The one-eyed witch had told him nothing, which was precisely what he had expected her to tell him, but it had not improved his mood in the least to have been right. Now he sat at his desk with the fire banked low, working steadily through a pile of second-year essays on Shrinking Solutions, writing remarks in the margins that would reduce several of their authors to tears. In the corner, over a small blue flame, a cauldron was simmering. A thin thread of smoke rose from it, carrying a faint, bitter smell like burnt grass.

The door burst open without a knock.

Snape didn’t look up at once. He finished the word he was writing (it was imbecilic), then laid down his quill.

‘Miss Malfoy.’

She stood in the doorway, breathing hard. She had run the whole way from the village. Crabbe and Goyle loomed in the corridor behind her, both of them smeared with green slime. Her hair was the worst of it. It hung round her face in thick, dripping ropes, more brown than silver, while the mud had dried to a stiff brown crust across the shoulders of a cloak that had certainly been expensive that morning.

‘Get out,’ she said to Crabbe and Goyle, without turning round. ‘Not you, Professor. Them. Go away. Go away.’

They went. Snape waited until their footsteps had faded before he spoke again.

‘Close the door.’

She closed it. She didn’t sit down.

‘Potter is in Hogsmeade,’ she said.

For a moment, the only sound in the office was the soft bubbling of the cauldron in the corner.

‘Go on.’

‘Up by the Shrieking Shack. I saw him. I saw his head, Professor, just his head, hanging in the air with nothing underneath it. Weasley was there on his own, pretending to be on his own. Somebody threw mud at me, then Crabbe trod on something, and there was his head...’ The words were tumbling over each other. She dragged in a breath. ‘He’s not allowed. He hasn’t got a form signed, everybody knows he hasn’t. Sirius Black is out there somewhere. There are dementors on every road out of the village. And he’s just strolling about up there with no more sense than... than a Weasley, as though nothing in the whole world could possibly happen to him...’

‘So you came to me.’

‘Of course I came to you!’ Her voice cracked right across the middle. ‘Who else was I going to go to? McGonagall? She’d have him expelled before tea. Somebody’s got to... somebody has to make him come back.’

Snape regarded her for some time over the tips of his fingers.

‘And the mud?’

Her hand went to her hair. She snatched it away again.

‘I don’t care about the mud.’

‘Evidently.’

‘I don’t.’ She was trembling from head to foot now, though whether with cold or with rage it was impossible to tell. ‘It was him. Of course it was him. Who else would it be? He was standing right behind me the whole time. He heard every word I... he heard...’

Then, quite suddenly, the anger turned round to face the other way.

‘You think I wanted to do it?’ she said. ‘Last Saturday? Is that what you think? Is that what everyone thinks?’

Snape said nothing. He had found over the years that this was generally the quickest way to hear the rest of a thing.

‘It was Flint’s idea. Flint’s, Montague’s, half the team’s. They’ve been saying it since November. Since the hospital wing. Since the gloves. Malfoy’s gone soft on Potter. Malfoy goes and sits with the Gryffindors at their practices. Whose side is she on? Montague said it to my face in the common room, in front of everybody. Flint said if I wasn’t going to help, he’d write to Father himself. Crabbe and Goyle write to their fathers every week anyway; you know they do; everybody knows.’ She was talking faster now, faster and faster. ‘I had to… my father… I…S-so I said yes. I said yes to make them stop. Before my father heard about it. I can’t disappoint him. He made me… I made them let me go on top, so I could see, so I’d know the very second anything went wrong. I had my wand out the whole time. Arresto Momentum. I practised it in an empty classroom every night for a week, on cushions, on a broom, on a suit of armour, until I could do it in my sleep. If he’d fallen, I’d have caught him. I would have.’

Her voice dropped.

‘You saw what they did to him in November. Fifty feet. I watched him fall fifty feet, Professor. I watched him go white before he fell. Everybody knows what those things do to him, the whole school knows, but I helped make him think they’d come back. On purpose. While he had one hand out for the Snitch.’

Snape’s face didn’t change. His right hand, though, which had been resting on the desk, had moved without his seeming to notice it, to grip his own left forearm through the sleeve.

‘And did you catch him?’ he said softly.

‘He didn’t need catching.’ She laughed, a horrible little laugh with no breath behind it. ‘That’s the joke. He did that... that thing, that silver thing, without even looking at us. He just went and caught the damned Snitch. Then he came down and looked at me. Just looked. After that he turned his back on me.’

Her mouth twisted.

‘He hasn’t said one word to me since. Not one. I’ve tried. I’ve waited outside his lessons. I’ve written to him. I’ve... ’ She stopped. ‘He burns them. I know he does.’

Snape looked at the fire for some time.

‘There are things,’ he said at last, ‘that cannot be unsaid, Miss Malfoy. Nor undone. I believe I once told you so, in a Potions lesson. I do not recall that you were listening.’

‘I was listening.’

‘Then you know.’

‘And it isn’t even only that.’ She had begun to pace: three steps one way, three steps back, leaving little smears of mud on the flagstones. ‘Somebody sent my letter.’

Snape’s eyebrows rose by perhaps a sixteenth of an inch.

‘In September. When I was in the hospital wing with my arm. I wrote to Father, four pages, all night, about the bird, about the oaf... about Hagrid. I was so upset about the whole thing. Then I didn’t send it. I didn’t. I left it on the table by my bed. I decided. I told Potter I’d decided; I told him to his face.’ Her hands had balled into fists. ‘On Monday, Father wrote to thank me. To thank me, Professor. He’s put my four pages in front of the Committee. My own words. He says they were most persuasive. He’s had the hearing brought forward on the strength of them. Now that animal is going to be... and Potter thinks... Potter thinks I lied to him. In September. To his face. Then sat next to him for six months, smiling.’

She drew a long, shaking breath.

‘I wrote back. I told Father not to worry about it any more. I told him to drop it. I begged him.’ She gave another of those breathless little laughs. ‘He won’t. He never does. Once Father has decided that a thing is going to happen, it happens, and it doesn’t matter in the least who...’

She broke off.

‘I should have burnt it. I should have burnt it that same night. It’s my own stupid fault for ever writing it.’ She pressed the back of her hand hard against her mouth. ‘Somebody took it,’ she said, in quite a different voice. Very quiet. Very level. ‘Somebody took it off the table by my bed. It was Granger. It must have been. She had my grandmother’s brooch in September, I know she did; she’d take a letter. She’s been waiting all year to make me look...’ She didn’t finish that either. ‘I’m going to find out. I’m going to find out for certain who it was.’

‘And then?’ said Snape.

She didn’t answer. She was looking at the cauldron in the corner, at the thin grey smoke curling up from it. There was something in her face just then that Snape had seen before, on another face, many years ago. He didn’t like it any better on hers.

Then her face crumpled.

One moment she was standing in the middle of the office with her fists clenched; the next she had both hands over her face. She was crying the way small children cry, in great, ugly, hiccuping gulps, her shoulders heaving. A clump of mud slid out of her hair, landing on the flagstones with a soft plop.

Snape didn’t get up. He didn’t come round the desk, nor did he say anything at all. After a moment, though, he drew his wand. A clean white handkerchief appeared on the corner of the desk nearest to her, folded into a neat square.

She took it without looking at it.

‘My hair,’ she wept into it. ‘It took me an hour. An hour, this morning, in front of the mirror, I did it three times over, I wanted it to... and it’s ruined, it’s in my ears, it’s all down my back...’

‘That,’ said Snape, ‘at least, can be mended.’ He raised his wand again. ‘Hold still.’

‘No.’

She stepped back so sharply that she nearly knocked a jar of pickled eels off the shelf behind her.

‘No. Leave it. Don’t you dare. Leave it exactly as it is.’

Snape lowered the wand slowly.

‘Miss Malfoy...’

‘I deserved it.’ She was still crying, but the words came out quite clearly through it, flat, almost calm. ‘Don’t you see? I deserved every bit of it. He thinks I lied to him about the letter. He thinks I tried to knock him off his broom in front of the whole school to make a fool of him, because he was stupid enough to trust me. He thinks I’m exactly what everybody always told him I was.’ She scrubbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. ‘He’s right. Isn’t he? Look at me. I did it. I put on those robes. I climbed up on Goyle’s shoulders. I let Flint frighten me into it, because I was more scared of a letter to Father than of what it would do to him. If somebody had done that to me, I’d have thrown a great deal worse than mud.’

She looked down at herself: at the ruined cloak, at the mud drying on her sleeves, at the brown water dripping off the ends of her hair on to the stone.

‘I’ve seen what those awful Muggles do to him. Now he thinks I’m as bad as them. I see it in his face. It’s what I am,’ she said quietly. ‘I just... I’d rather look like it. Than not.’

The office was perfectly silent.

Snape was looking at her with an expression that nobody at Hogwarts had ever seen on his face, nor would have believed if they had. It lasted perhaps two seconds. Then it was gone, folded away somewhere behind the sallow mask as neatly as he had folded the handkerchief.

‘I have known a great many people,’ he said, ‘who were quite certain they deserved whatever was thrown at them. It did not make any of them better people. It merely made them easier to hit.’ He stood up, gathering his robes about him. ‘Go and wash your hair, Miss Malfoy. Or don’t; it is your hair. Then go back to your common room, and say none of this to anyone. Not one word of it. Not in this House.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To see,’ said Snape, ‘whether Potter’s head has found its way home yet.’

‘Professor...’

He had his hand on the door. He waited.

‘He’ll be expelled,’ she said, very small. ‘Won’t he? If you catch him.’

‘Potter has been wandering around Hogsmeade with Sirius Black at large,’ said Snape. ‘If you would prefer me to leave him to it, you have only to say so.’

She opened her mouth. Then she closed it again, laying the handkerchief down on the corner of the desk.

‘I thought not,’ said Snape, and swept to the door.

‘One last word of advice, Miss Malfoy,’ Snape said at the door.

Malfoy stood at complete attention.

‘You still have a chance to do something, instead of just saying something. Before this all becomes far too permanent.’

Snape then left. Leaving Dracina to her thoughts.

*

Pansy Parkinson was waiting in the passage outside Snape’s office.

Crabbe had come blundering into the Slytherin common room ten minutes earlier, dripping green, with a muddled story about ghosts, Potter’s head and the Weasleys’ bedroom, so Pansy had come straight along. She had brought a towel. She had also brought a bottle of Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion, which she held out the moment Dracina stepped into the passage, like a peace offering.

‘Oh, your hair. Come on. Come upstairs, I’ll...’

‘Leave it.’

‘But it’s all...’

‘I said, leave it.’

Pansy lowered the bottle.

They walked along the dungeon passage towards the stretch of bare, damp wall that hid the Slytherin common room. Dracina went in front. Pansy walked a step behind, holding a towel nobody wanted, the way she had been walking behind Dracina Malfoy for nearly three years.

‘Father wrote on Monday,’ Dracina said, without turning round. ‘You saw. You were there.’

‘I... yes.’

‘Somebody took my letter, Pansy. In September. Off the table by my bed in the hospital wing. Somebody stood there while I was asleep, picked up four pages in my own handwriting, then carried them all the way up to the Owlery.’ Her voice was perfectly calm. ‘I’m going to find out who. I don’t care how long it takes. I’m going to find out. When I do,’ said Dracina softly, ‘I am going to make them wish they had never learnt to write.’

She didn’t look round. She walked on through the gap in the stone, into the green, underwater gloom of the common room, dripping mud on to the carpet, past forty staring faces, straight up the stairs to the girls’ dormitories. Pansy followed her with the towel.

*

Harry had a stitch like a knife in his side long before he reached the foot of the chute, but he didn’t slow down until he got there. He stood for a second, gasping, with the Cloak in his arms. He couldn’t take it up with him. If Malfoy had already found a teacher, a silvery cloak bundled under his arm would be as good as a signed confession. So he stuffed it into his bag, then pushed the bag into a dark corner behind a jutting rock, then began to climb as fast as he could go, his sweaty palms skidding on the smooth stone.

At the top he rapped on the inside of the hump with his wand, poked his head out, then hauled himself through. The hump sealed itself behind him. Harry had only just stepped out from behind the statue when he heard footsteps, coming quickly.

It was Snape.

He came along the corridor at a brisk walk, his black robes billowing out behind him, then halted in front of Harry.

‘So,’ he said.

He had the air of a man holding a winning hand, who was trying very hard not to look pleased about it. Harry did his best to look innocent. He was horribly aware of his sweaty face, not to mention his hands, which were still caked in mud. He shoved them quickly into his pockets.

Oh, bugger. Harry tried to look as though he had been standing there admiring the statue for hours.

‘So,’ he echoed.

‘Come with me, Potter,’ said Snape.

Harry followed him down flight after flight of stairs, wiping his hands surreptitiously on the lining of his robes as he went. They went right down into the dungeons, along the cold passage, into Snape’s office. Harry had only been inside it once before, in his second year. He had been in serious trouble that time as well.

Since then, Snape seemed to have collected a good many more slimy things in jars. They stood in rows along the shelves behind his desk, glistening in the firelight, which didn’t make the room any more welcoming. A cauldron bubbled over a low blue flame in the corner, sending up a thin thread of grey smoke. The smell of it tugged at Harry’s memory, though he couldn’t think why. There were little smears of dried mud on the flagstones in front of the desk. On one corner of the desk itself lay a white handkerchief, crumpled, streaked with brown.

‘Sit,’ said Snape.

Harry sat. Snape stayed on his feet.

‘Miss Malfoy has just been to see me with a strange story, Potter,’ said Snape.

Harry said nothing.

‘She tells me that she was up by the Shrieking Shack when she ran into Weasley. Apparently alone.’

Still Harry said nothing.

‘Miss Malfoy states that she was standing talking to Weasley, when a large amount of mud hit her in the back of the head. How do you think that could have happened?’

Harry arranged his face into an expression of mild surprise.

‘I don’t know, Professor.’

Snape’s eyes bored into his. It was like trying to outstare Buckbeak. Harry concentrated very hard on not blinking.

‘Miss Malfoy then saw an extraordinary apparition. Can you imagine what it might have been, Potter?’

‘Not at all, sir,’ said Harry, doing his best to sound innocently curious.

‘It was your head, Potter. Floating in mid-air.’

There was a long silence.

‘Maybe she’d better go to Madam Pomfrey,’ said Harry. ‘If she’s seeing things like-’

‘What would your head have been doing in Hogsmeade, Potter?’ said Snape softly. ‘Your head is not allowed in Hogsmeade. No part of your body has permission to be in Hogsmeade.’

‘I know that,’ said Harry, struggling to keep every trace of guilt or fear off his face. ‘It sounds like Malfoy’s having hallucin-’

‘Malfoy is not having hallucinations,’ snarled Snape. He leant down, gripping both arms of Harry’s chair, until his face was barely a foot away. ‘If your head was in Hogsmeade, so was the rest of you.’

‘I’ve been up in Gryffindor Tower,’ said Harry. ‘Like you told-’

‘Can anyone confirm that?’

Harry didn’t say anything. Snape’s lips twisted into a thin, unpleasant smile.

‘So,’ he said, drawing himself up to his full height. ‘Everyone from the Minister of Magic downward has been trying to keep famous Harry Potter safe from Sirius Black. But famous Harry Potter is a law unto himself. Let the ordinary people worry about his safety! Famous Harry Potter goes where he wants to, with no thought for the consequences.’

Harry kept his mouth shut. Snape wanted to goad him into giving himself away, but Harry wasn’t going to let him. There was no proof. Not yet.

‘You might at least have the curiosity,’ said Snape, ‘to ask after the state in which Miss Malfoy arrived at my door.’

Harry said nothing.

‘No? Then I shall tell you.’ Snape’s eyes glittered. ‘She was in tears, Potter. I have been her Head of House for nearly three years. I have seen her weep over House points. Until this afternoon, I had not known that she was capable of weeping over anybody else.’

Something gave a small, unpleasant lurch in Harry’s stomach. He kept his face perfectly still.

‘You will no doubt be gratified to hear that she did not ask me to punish you,’ Snape went on. ‘Not once. Miss Malfoy appears to have arrived at the remarkable conclusion that she had earned every ounce of that mud.’ His lip curled. ‘I do not share her opinion.’

Then his mouth closed with a snap, as though he had said a good deal more than he had meant to. He looked almost angry with himself.

Harry stared at him.

She had earned it. He turned the words over, and he didn’t like any of the ways they fitted. Why would Malfoy think that? Malfoy, who had never once in her life admitted to deserving anything less than the very best? Why would she cry? She had nothing to cry about. She had won. Her father had his hearing. Her father had her four pages. Buckbeak was... unless...

Unless.

A small, treacherous thought came wriggling up from somewhere at the very bottom of his mind. Red-rimmed eyes in a dark corridor. Lupin in the doorway, breathing in: She has been crying. For quite some time. Eleven words in green ink, curling up in the fire. I’m begging you...

Harry slammed a lid down on it, hard. That was exactly what she wanted.

But the lid didn’t sit quite flat any more, and he knew it.

‘How extraordinarily like your father you are, Potter,’ said Snape abruptly, with a glint in his eye. ‘He too was exceedingly arrogant. A small amount of talent on the Quidditch field made him think he was a cut above the rest of us too. Strutting around the place with his friends and admirers... The resemblance between you is uncanny.’

‘Thank you, sir. I’ve been working on my strutt. Lockhart was ever so helpful with it but I really think-’

Harry was trying to hide how angry he was getting behind cheek, but the anger was leaking through all the same. Snape didn’t let him finish.

‘Your father didn’t set much store by rules either,’ Snape continued, pressing home his advantage, his face alight with spite. ‘Rules were for lesser mortals, not Quidditch Cup-winners. His head was so swollen-’

‘SHUT UP!’

Harry was on his feet before he knew it. The same rage that had blown Aunt Marge up like a balloon at Privet Drive last summer was roaring through him. He couldn’t have cared less that Snape had gone stiff as a board, nor that something dangerous had lit up behind those black eyes.

‘What did you say to me, Potter?’

‘I told you to shut up about my dad!’ Harry yelled. ‘I know the truth, all right? He saved your life! Dumbledore told me! You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for my dad!’

All the colour drained out of Snape’s face, leaving it a nasty yellowish white, like old candle wax.

‘And did the headmaster tell you the circumstances in which your father saved my life?’ he whispered. ‘Or did he consider the details too unpleasant for precious Potter’s delicate ears?’

Harry bit his lip. He had no idea what had happened, and he certainly wasn’t going to own up to that. Snape, though, seemed to have read it in his face anyway.

‘I would hate for you to run away with a false idea of your father, Potter,’ he said, his lips drawn back in something that was not quite a smile. ‘Have you been imagining some act of glorious heroism? Then let me correct you. Your saintly father and his friends played a highly amusing joke on me that would have resulted in my death if your father hadn’t got cold feet at the last moment. There was nothing brave about what he did. He was saving his own skin as much as mine. Had their joke succeeded, he would have been expelled from Hogwarts.’

His uneven yellow teeth were showing.

‘Turn out your pockets, Potter!’ he spat suddenly.

Harry sank slowly back into his chair, then sat there without moving. Blood was thudding in his ears.

‘Turn out your pockets, or we go straight to the headmaster! Pull them out, Potter!’

Slowly, feeling as though his insides had turned to ice, Harry drew out the Zonko’s bag, then the Marauder’s Map. Snape snatched up the bag first.

‘Ron gave them to me,’ said Harry, praying that he would get the chance to warn Ron before Snape got hold of him. ‘He... brought them back from Hogsmeade last time...’

‘Indeed? And you’ve been carrying them around ever since? How very touching... and what is this?’

Now Snape had the map in his hand. Harry put every ounce of effort he had into keeping his face blank.

‘Spare bit of parchment,’ he said, with a shrug.

Snape turned it this way and that, without taking his eyes off Harry.

‘Surely you don’t need such a very old piece of parchment?’ he said. ‘Why don’t I just... throw this away?’

He held it out towards the flames.

‘No!’ said Harry quickly.

‘So!’ said Snape, his long nose twitching like a hound’s. ‘Is this another treasured gift from Mr Weasley? Or is it... something else? A letter, perhaps, written in invisible ink? Or... instructions to get into Hogsmeade without passing the dementors?’

Harry blinked. Something glittered in Snape’s eyes.

‘Let me see, let me see...’ he muttered, drawing his wand to smooth the map out flat on the desk. ‘Reveal your secret!’ he said, touching the wand-tip to the parchment.

Nothing happened. Harry gripped his own knees to stop his hands from shaking.

‘Show yourself!’ said Snape, rapping the map sharply.

It stayed obstinately blank. Harry made himself breathe slowly, in, then out, then in again.

‘Professor Severus Snape, master of this school, commands you to yield the information you conceal!’ Snape said, striking the map with his wand.

Words began to spread across the smooth parchment, curling out of nowhere, as though an unseen hand were writing them.

Mr Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to do as the rest of his people do and keep his abnormally large nose and comically small hat out of other people’s business.

Snape went rigid. Harry gaped at the words. The map hadn’t finished, either. A second line was already appearing underneath the first.

Mr Prongs agrees with Mr Moony, and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git.

Harry had to fight down a laugh. It came out of him as something halfway between a growl and a bad cough.

Mr Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor.

Funny as it was, Harry could tell that Snape’s temper was climbing higher with every line. It was horribly like watching Uncle Vernon in the last few seconds before an explosion, when the vein in his temple began to throb. Every muscle in Harry’s body had tensed of its own accord. He shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the map had had its final say.

Mr Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball.

Harry braced himself for the roof to fall in.

‘So...’ said Snape softly. ‘We’ll see about this...’

He crossed to the fireplace in two strides, scooped a handful of glittering powder out of a jar on the mantelpiece, then flung it into the fire.

‘Lupin!’ Snape called into the flames. ‘I want a word!’

Harry gaped at the fire, completely baffled. Something large had appeared in the middle of it, spinning very fast. A few seconds later, Professor Lupin was climbing out of the grate, beating ash from his shabby robes.

‘You called, Severus?’ said Lupin mildly.

His voice was perfectly mild. All the same, Harry noticed where he went to stand. He didn’t come forward to the desk. He moved round the edge of the room instead, without seeming to think about it, until he had put himself between Snape and the hearth, where the draught being drawn up the chimney ran from Snape straight past him. He was staying downwind of Snape, Harry realised. It was like something out of one of the nature programmes Dudley always switched over from: a big, patient animal working its way round to where the wind would carry it the scent, while giving nothing of its own away.

‘I certainly did,’ said Snape, his face twisted with fury as he went back behind his desk. ‘I have just asked Potter to empty his pockets. He was carrying this.’

He stabbed a finger at the parchment. The four messages were still glowing on it, as cheeky as ever.

A strange, shuttered look came over Lupin’s face.

‘Well?’ said Snape.

Lupin went on studying the map. Harry got the feeling that he was thinking extremely fast.

‘Well?’ said Snape again. ‘This parchment is plainly full of Dark Magic. This is supposed to be your area of expertise, Lupin. Where do you imagine Potter got such a thing?’

He had come round the desk as he spoke, holding the map up in his left hand, close to Lupin’s face. His sleeve had ridden back an inch or two.

Lupin breathed in.

Harry saw it happen. Lupin’s nostrils flared wide, once, the way they had in his office in October. His face went the grey of cold ashes. All along the shelves behind the desk, the slimy things in their jars drew back, very slowly, to press themselves against the far sides of the glass. Then Harry felt it again, coming up through the floor and the legs of his chair, so low that it was hardly a sound at all: the deep organ note from somewhere inside Lupin’s chest. It lasted no more than a second. On the wall behind him, thrown up by the firelight, Lupin’s shadow looked for one moment far too big for the man who cast it, hunched, its shoulders brushing the ceiling. Then the fire settled, and it was an ordinary shadow again. Lupin’s hand had found the back of a chair by the hearth, his knuckles standing out white as bone.

His other hand had gone to his collar. It closed round something there, under his shirt. His lips moved, very slightly, without making a sound. His eyes went once, quickly, to the little cauldron simmering in the corner, the way a man clinging to a ledge might look at a rope.

Then he looked back at Snape. His eyes flicked to Harry for the briefest of instants, and Harry understood at once that he was to keep his mouth shut.

‘Full of Dark Magic?’ he repeated. ‘As you well know, I know when something reeks of Dark Magic, Severus.’

He said it quite pleasantly. But his eyes had dropped, just briefly, to Snape’s left arm. Snape’s right hand moved, very slowly, to cover his own left sleeve. Lupin took out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

‘It looks to me as though it is merely a piece of parchment that insults anybody who reads it. Childish, but surely not dangerous? I imagine Harry got it from a joke shop-’

‘Indeed?’ Snape’s jaw had set like stone. ‘You think a joke shop could supply him with such a thing? You don’t think it more likely that he got it directly from it’s rather hairy manufacturers?’

Harry had no idea what Snape meant, nor why he had leant so hard on the word hairy. Lupin didn’t seem to understand it either. Only Harry, who happened to be looking at the chair, saw Lupin’s fingers tighten on it, then heard the old wood give a small, splintering creak.

‘You mean, by Mr Wormtail or one of these people?’ said Lupin. ‘Harry, do you know any of these men?’

‘No. Not from Adam, sir,’ said Harry quickly.

‘You see, Severus?’ Lupin turned back to Snape. ‘It looks like a Zonko product to me-’

Then, with perfect timing, Ron burst into the office. He was so out of breath that he could barely stand. He pulled up a yard short of the desk with one hand pressed to his ribs, trying to get some words out.

‘I. Gave. Harry. That. Stuff,’ he choked. ‘Bought. It... in Zonko’s... ages. Ago...’

Before he could stop himself, Harry gave Ron a tiny, grateful nod. Snape saw it. Harry knew he had seen it. But he said nothing at all.

‘Well!’ said Lupin, giving his hands a brisk clap, beaming round at all of them. ‘That seems to clear that up! Severus, I’ll take this back, shall I?’

He twitched the map out of Snape’s fingers, folded it, then tucked it away inside his robes.

‘Harry, Ron, come with me, I need a word about my vampire essay, seeing as I’m the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.’

He leant ever so slightly on the I’m. Harry heard the rest of that sentence as plainly as if Lupin had said it out loud: and you’re not, wanker.

‘...excuse us, Severus,’ Harry finished for him, quite without meaning to.

Ron made a tiny strangled noise. The corner of Lupin’s mouth twitched.

Harry kept his eyes firmly on the floor all the way out. None of the three of them said a word until they had climbed all the way back up to the Entrance Hall. Then Harry turned to Lupin.

‘Professor, I-’

‘I don’t want to hear explanations,’ said Lupin shortly. He glanced round the empty Entrance Hall, then lowered his voice. ‘I happen to know that this map was confiscated by Mr Filch many years ago. Yes, I know it’s a map,’ he added, seeing their faces. ‘I don’t want to know how it fell into your possession. I am, however, astounded that you didn’t hand it in. Particularly after what happened the last time a student left information about the castle lying around. And I can’t let you have it back, Harry.’

Harry had been expecting that. He wanted answers far too badly to argue.

‘Why did Snape think I’d got it from the manufacturers?’

‘Because...’ Lupin hesitated. ‘Because these mapmakers would have wanted to lure you out of school. They’d think it extremely entertaining.’

‘Do you know them?’ said Harry, impressed.

‘We’ve met,’ said Lupin.

He was looking at Harry with a seriousness Harry had never seen in him before.

‘Don’t expect me to cover up for you again, Harry. I cannot make you take Sirius Black seriously. But I would have thought that what you have heard when the dementors draw near you would have had more of an effect on you. Your parents gave their lives to keep you alive, Harry. A poor way to repay them... gambling their sacrifice for a bag of magic tricks.’

He turned and walked away.

At the foot of the marble staircase, though, he stopped. He stood there with one hand braced on the banister and his head bowed, quite still, the way people stand when they are waiting for a wave of sickness to pass. His lips were moving. Harry couldn’t hear a word. But he had stood through enough assemblies at St Grogory’s, with Dudley pinching him from the row behind, to know the shape of those particular words all the same: as we forgive those who trespass against us...

Then Lupin straightened up, squared his shoulders and climbed the stairs without looking round.

He must still be feeling a bit off colour, Harry supposed. He always seemed to be worse around Snape, somehow, as if being shut in the same room as the man were enough to make him ill.

Lupin had made Harry feel worse than anything Snape had said in the whole of that office. Harry hated letting people down; he always had. With Lupin it was worse. Lupin had known his mum and dad. Lupin was the one grown-up Harry had ever met who might actually tell him about them one day, ill or not. Harry wanted to know him. He had just watched him walk away disappointed.

For no reason he could name, the words Lupin had been murmuring at the foot of the stairs went round and round in his head.

Slowly, the two of them climbed the marble staircase. It was only as they passed the one-eyed witch that Harry remembered the Invisibility Cloak, still stuffed in his bag in the dark at the foot of the chute. He didn’t dare go back for it.

‘It’s my fault,’ said Ron abruptly. ‘I persuaded you to go. Lupin’s right, it was stupid, we shouldn’t’ve done it-’

He stopped. They had reached the corridor where the trolls were on patrol, and Hermione was coming along it towards them. Harry took one look at her face and was sure she had heard everything. His heart dropped into his shoes. Had she been to McGonagall?

‘Come to have a good gloat?’ Ron demanded savagely, before she had even come to a halt. ‘Or have you just been to tell on us?’

None of that mattered to Harry any more. He wanted Ron to shut up. He wanted to tell Hermione that she had been right, again, about all of it; to say sorry; to have her back. Even if it was partly selfish. Even if it was only so that he could feel like a little less of a disappointment to everybody: to Lupin, to Hermione, very probably to McGonagall as well.

‘No,’ said Hermione. She had a letter clutched in both hands. Her bottom lip was shaking. ‘I just thought you ought to know... Hagrid lost his case. Buckbeak is going to be executed.’

For a second, nobody said anything at all.

‘Malfoy...’ Harry hissed.

The fury came roaring up through him, hot, enormous, burning away everything in its path: the shame, the misery, Lupin’s bowed head at the foot of the stairs, the small, treacherous thought that had wriggled loose in Snape’s office. All of it went up like paper in a grate.