15

PART TWO: The Prisoner of Azkaban

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

-Khalil Gibran

At Christmas, Harriet had got a (small, beaten up) package from Aunt Petunia holding nothing but a note that said nobody would be coming to collect her at King's Cross; if she couldn't magic herself home, she could take the train down.

Harriet had assumed Aunt Petunia meant the Muggle trains. She had never ridden them before, but if she could fight Quirrell-demort and Tom Riddle and Slytherin's monster, she could figure out how to get a train from King's Cross to Little Whingeing.

But some things are subject to powers that no amount of girl-heroing can overcome, and Harriet didn't have any Muggle money.

"Oh no." She stuck her hands in her pockets even though it was useless, and pulled them inside out even though it was pointless. A button that she'd stuck in her pocket after it had come off her anorak clattered to the pavement.

"What is it?" Hermione asked.

"I haven't any Muggle money," Harriet said. "Have you got some? I can pay you back in Galleons—"

"Why do you need Muggle money?" Hermione stretched her hand above her head to wave to a woman Harriet recognized as Hermione's mum, Dr Granger. And there was her dad, who was also called Dr Granger. Ron had already been swept into a clump of Weasleys and was enduring his mum's hugs with loads better grace than most thirteen-year-old boys could have.

Harriet hadn't told Hermione about the train. She hadn't wanted to see Hermione's reaction, which would have made it horrible instead of a reprieve. Honestly, any Dursley-free time was a blessing. But if she told Hermione, then she'd have to acknowledge the part of the story that meant going to a place she was forced to call home, to people whom she was forced to call family, who so terribly couldn't stand the sight or thought of her, they didn't care if she made it back to them or not. They probably felt even worse about her after last summer.

But before Harriet was forced to answer, Mrs Weasley hurried over, saying, "Oh, sweetheart," and swept her up in a hug that smelled like baking bread and grass.

Harriet was unprepared for it, so unprepared that she almost hugged back. She caught herself at the last moment. Ginny hates you sometimes Riddle had said. This wasn't Harriet's mum; she was Ron and Ginny's. She wasn't Harriet's mum to hug and breathe in, thinking This is what my home smells like.

Harriet's home smelled like lemon-scented Pledge and crisp carpet and Aunt Petunia's perfume of gardenias and oranges that she dabbed behind her ears every morning. Harriet despised those smells.

"How are you?" Mrs Weasley asked, pulling back and putting her hands on both sides of Harriet's face.

"I'm okay, Mrs Weasley." She saw Mr Weasley speaking to Percy and felt a wrench of terrible guilt about the car. "And I'm so sorry—"

"Nonsense," Mrs Weasley half-whispered, like she couldn't make her voice go any louder, and kissed Harriet's hair. "Don't you dare."

Over Mrs Weasley's shoulder, Harriet could see Hermione hugging her mum and dad. In person, her mum looked so different from Mrs Weasley, but they hugged their children the same way, as if they were trying to pull a piece of themselves back inside.

Mrs Weasley turned to Mum-Dr-Granger and reintroduced herself; both Dr Grangers shook her hand. The rest of the Weasleys trickled over, including Mr Weasley, and hellos and names floated back and forth.

"Harriet, dear," said Mrs Weasley, "where are your . . . relatives?"

Harriet saw the expression on Mum-Dr-Granger's face and wished the platform would open up and swallow her. "Er . . . "

"Muggle money!" Hermione exclaimed, thrusting her hand in the air like they were in class and almost hitting Ron in the nose. "That's why you need Muggle money, isn't it?"

"How'd you work that out?" Harriet said, half vexed with embarrassment, half impressed.

"You wouldn't need Muggle money except for anything to do with, with them," Hermione said, her lips thinning.

"I'm afraid I'm not following, Hermione," said her mum. Her voice was tightly pleasant and brisk, exactly like a dentist telling you to be sure and floss every day.

Hermione glanced at Harriet but bit her lip rather than reply. With a thicket of eyes on her—fourteen Weasleys' and six Grangers'—Harriet was more reluctant to admit it than ever, while knowing she had no choice.

"I need to take a train to Little Whinging," she said, trying to sound nonchalant. It was hard since she didn't know exactly what "nonchalant" meant.

The grown ups' expressions rippled to stone. Mrs Weasley's eyes were fierce like brushfire; Hermione pressed her lips together over what Harriet knew was a rude word. And Hermione didn't say very many rude words.

Then Mum-Dr-Granger and Mrs Weasley looked at each other, like they were connected by some secret Mum Telepathy.

"Don't be silly, Harriet," said Dr Granger in quite a normal tone of voice. "We'll drive you down."

"Oh—" Harriet felt that she ought to refuse, even though she wanted to throw her arms around Hermione's mum. "You, you don't need to do that, please—"

"Don't be silly, dear," she said, sounding exactly like Hermione: pitch, expression, everything, only somehow moreso. "It will be our pleasure. Are these your things? We're parked this way, then . . ."

In an enormous, roving group, they all set off: the seven Weasleys, the three Grangers, and Harriet, lugging their trunks and owls and Scabbers and gathering perplexed looks like wildflowers. The Grangers looked so commonplace, the Weasleys so outlandish, and Harriet fitted somewhere in between. She felt like she was part of some Dickensian procession and loved it. The Dursleys would have fled in horror.

The Grangers drove a pale blue Corolla. It sent Mr Weasley into raptures and made Harriet and Ron squirm. There was some difficulty cramming both the girls' things into the boot, and Hedwig would have to ride on Harriet's lap, but Hermione's dad managed without the help of magic while her mum and Mrs Weasley chatted about becoming better acquainted. Harriet hoped they would talk about magic and being mums and not about her.

Then, with final hugs, they left the Weasleys waving at them and inched into the snarl of traffic surrounding Kings Cross St Pancras.

"Are you girls hungry?" Hermione's mum asked from the passenger's seat.

"Ooh, yes, Mum," Hermione said.

"What do you like to eat, Harriet?"

"I eat anything, Dr Granger."

"Jean, please," she said. "And this is Daniel." She laid her hand on her husband's arm, who smiled at Harriet in the rear-

view mirror. "You must have some preference."

"No, really, ma'am. I . . . don't go to restaurants much." Aunt Petunia resented restaurants, as if they were trying to pretend their cooking was better than hers, and Uncle Vernon only ate English food anyway. The only time they had taken Harriet out with them had been during their attempt to flee the Hogwarts' letters.

"Japanese!" Hermione said quickly. "Harriet will like Japanese."

Harriet did like Japanese. She liked the names for the food that she couldn't pronounce, and the sight of unfamiliar writing on the menu, and the chopsticks that she couldn't use. She liked being there with the Grangers, who never made her feel stupid or like a poor, neglected orphan when they explained the menu or tried to teach her how to use the chopsticks (and eventually asked for a fork).

But most of all, she liked how everything was strange and yet wholly normal, or would have been normal if she'd been a different person. The Dursleys would never come here, even though it was a Muggle place in Muggle London. It would be as foreign to them as the Leaky Cauldron, as foreign as Hermione's family was to Harriet. The Grangers were like a family from the telly, something you didn't expect to really exist, like unicorns. And Harriet had seen a unicorn before she'd met this family.

The most awkward moment of the evening was when Hermione's mum asked how the year had gone. Harriet nearly choked on a dumpling.

"Well . . . " Hermione pretended to blow on her tea to give herself time. "Our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was sacked. Again."

"That position seems to have a high turnover rate," her dad said.

"Yes," Hermione said with a nearly straight face, while Harriet chased her dumpling around her plate.

"Should we get you back, dear?" asked Jean as Daniel counted out cash for the bill. "Are your family worrying?"

"No," Harriet said without thinking, and then wished she hadn't.

"Ice cream, then," said Daniel cheerfully, tucking away his billfold.

The shadows of twilight had bled down from the sky and across the earth by the time they pulled onto Privet Drive.

As Harriet watched the mind-numbingly boring houses march past, with their bright windows and dark blotches of lawn, she felt herself growing more and more numb inside. She had just had more fun than she could ever recall having outside of Hogwarts and Diagon Alley, and to punctuate it with the Dursleys . . .

She remembered (with a pulse of satisfaction, vicious enough to trouble her) how Snape had hexed and left them, and swallowed. She was surprised they were taking her back at all. What if they locked her up again? What if they took all her letters for real? What if, once they got hold of her, they really didn't let her go back?

Snape saved you last time. Maybe he'll do it again.

She wasn't sure about that, though. He'd been pretty enraged when he'd found her in the Chamber of Secrets. (She was still confused about that, to be honest. Was he just mad that she'd broken so many rules?) He might think it served her right this time, getting locked up.

The Corolla bumped into the Dursleys' driveway and Daniel powered off the engine. Harriet felt her happiness snuffing out with it.

"I'll see you to the door," said Jean, unbuckling her seat belt.

She squeezed Harriet's arm before she rang the doorbell. Then she brushed her hair back from her shoulders and stood coolly waiting.

When Uncle Vernon answered, Harriet's stomach twisted.

At first, Uncle Vernon was just perplexed by the sight of Hermione's mother: a professional-looking, attractive woman standing on his doorstep in the deep twilight. The ladies of Privet Drive were mostly housewives, without Dr Granger's cool, business-like control.

"Can I help—" he started.

Then he saw Harriet.

Belligerence colored his face purple. "You," he snarled furiously.

Then he remembered Hermione's mum. Maybe it was her appearance being at such odds with Harriet's, or maybe it was his natural desire to act normal around normal people, but something he saw in her face tamped down on his hostility.

"If you've been causing trouble," he said threateningly.

(Well, the non-hostility was only sort-of.)

"My name is Jean Granger," said Hermione's mum. She sounded calm, but there was something hard in there, too, like a layer of rock underneath grass and earth. "I'm Hermione's mother. Perhaps you've heard of my daughter?"

"Daughter?" Uncle Vernon glanced uneasily over Jean's shoulder to where Daniel and Hermione stood next to the car. They had the same curly hair, although Daniel's was much shorter.

"Harriet and Hermione go to Hogwarts together," said Jean.

Uncle Vernon's expression fluctuated. He was probably battling the desire to shout her off his lawn. But he glanced uneasily now at the car. The Grangers' devoutly normal appearance was having the effect on Uncle Vernon that normalcy always did: he had to respect it, the same way he had to despise everything freakish.

"Well," he muttered. "Well. Good of you to bring her home. She . . . she wanted to take the train."

"I can certainly see the appeal," said Jean. For about the millionth time that evening, Harriet wanted to throw her arms around her. "But we were quite happy to take her. In fact, we'd like to have her for a bit longer, if you don't mind."

Uncle Vernon stared at her. Perhaps he couldn't wrap his mind around the concept that someone would want Harriet around.

"I," he said, and then shut his mouth.

"Vernon, who is it at the door?"

At the sound of Aunt Petunia's voice, Harriet very nearly cringed. She hated Aunt Petunia more than Uncle Vernon. She hadn't realized it until that exact moment, when she felt more nauseous at the sound of Aunt Petunia's voice than at the mean look on Uncle Vernon's face, but she did.

Aunt Petunia's thin, horseish face appeared over Uncle Vernon's shoulder. Exactly like him, too, she said, "Can we help—" and then saw Harriet.

"You must be Harriet's aunt," Jean said. Her hand had moved to Harriet's shoulder and was resting there. "I'm Jean Granger, Harriet's friend Hermione's mother. I was just inviting Harriet to come and stay with us. Tonight, in fact."

Her attitude was brisk, not unfriendly, but her hand was tight on Harriet's shoulder, like she wanted to drag Harriet back to the car.

Aunt Petunia's face flickered, as if she, like her husband, couldn't imagine anyone deliberately seeking Harriet's company, especially after an hour's car ride with her. But then her expression shut down, going hard and distant.

"That's very kind of you," she said. Like Uncle Vernon, she couldn't resist the respectability of Hermione's mum. "But I'm afraid she has to . . . stay here. For a while."

"I see," said Jean. "When could we steal her away from you, then?"

Aunt Petunia's eyes were narrowed, but she was apparently thinking seriously about it, because she said, "Let's say a week, shall we."

Harriet couldn't believe she was hearing this. Only a week? Only a week with the Dursleys? She could have sung and danced and turned cartwheels and made fireworks from her wand.

Hastily she tried to look as if this news wasn't elating, in case Aunt Petunia saw and made it two weeks, just so she wouldn't be giving Harriet something she wanted so desperately it was making her toes curl.

"A week, then," said Jean. "Unless we hear otherwise. Thank you. It's ever so kind of you."

Aunt Petunia nodded curtly. Uncle Vernon fiddled with the doorknob. They clearly wanted the Grangers gone but couldn't bring themselves to look so bad as to slam the door in Jean's face.

She turned to Harriet, who found herself being hugged again. Hermione's mum smelled clean and crisp, like nearly unscented fabric softener and the briefest tang of mint.

"We'll see you soon, dear," she said.

A patter in the grass, and then Hermione was throwing her arms around Harriet as her mum let go.

"Try not to turn them into newts," she whispered. "Even though they deserve it."

"Keep in touch, Harriet," said Jean. "Molly and I are expecting to know how you're doing."

With that subtle parting barb, she and her husband and daughter climbed into their Corolla and pulled away, Hermione waving through the window until the lamp post-tinted darkness swallowed her.

"Everything goes in the cupboard," Aunt Petunia said, like she really wanted to say Everything goes on the fire. "And it will be locked. You're not to touch any of this freakish rubbish so long as you're in this house."

"Right," Harriet said, trying to unclench her fists and make her voice sound normal, easy. Just one week, just one—

"And you're to give me your wand."

"What!" Harriet stared in horror, first at her aunt, then at Uncle Vernon. They were both wearing terrible smiles, although Uncle Vernon's was more like a grimace and Aunt Petunia's had a gleaming edge, like a knife in the sun.

"Now," Aunt Petunia said, holding out her hand.

Her hand shaking with anger, Harriet groped inside her anorak and pulled her wand out of the interior pocket. She clenched it by the handle. Giving it to Aunt Petunia—it was so much worse than just locking it in her trunk.

"Careful, Petunia, dear," Uncle Vernon said, sounding genuinely anxious. "You never know what those freaky things can do—"

"They're not like guns, Vernon," Petunia said, her hand still held out. She didn't look at him. "They're nothing but wood. Give it to me now," she snarled at Harriet, and wrenched it out of her grip.

Harriet tried not to feel like something was being ripped out of her inside. It was like giving Hedwig to Malfoy.

"I am going to put this in a safe place," Aunt Petunia said, gripping Harriet's wand. "If I catch you snooping around for it, it's kindling. Go to your room."

By the next morning, life with the Dursleys had resumed its routine horribleness. Then again, routine horribleness never left Privet Drive.

Harriet looked out the tiny window of her bedroom, into the tidy backyard that was identical from the tidy back yard on the other side of the fence. She thought of the street, straight like an arrow and lined with identical houses. You could walk down the streets of Little Whinging until you lost your mind, probably. She thought she remembered Aunt Petunia gossiping, once, that one of the neighbors' wives had done just that, put on a house coat over an evening dress and pearls and just walked away, out of her life.

Harriet would much rather fight a Basilisk than live here. And Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon loved it.

At least she only had a week's worth of Dursley-suffering ahead of her. Only a week of being treated like her Invisibility Cloak had been sewn into her skin, except when the Dursleys wanted to be cruel. Then she'd get to stay with Hermione for a bit. She didn't care if it was only a single night. Anything to get her out of this life for even that long.

It didn't matter what happened during the year, how she triumphed, what she suffered, who hated or loved her. At the Dursleys', there were only the Dursleys. At the Dursleys', everything else started to unravel, memories turning into dreams. Sometimes that meant they were sharper and clearer—sometimes stranger and more frightening—but always less real. When she was cleaning coffee grounds out of a sink in a kitchen that smelled like lemon Pledge, under the glare of fluorescent lights, it was hard to imagine that she was some kind of hero who'd held a magical sword and slain a monster.

This summer, the Dursleys let her eat, but they didn't offer her dinner or a place at the table. There were only three chairs now, and Aunt Petunia told her strictly that the leftovers were for Vernon and Dudley only. Harriet fixed a lot of toast and cereal and scrambled eggs: quick things, because if she took up too much time in the kitchen Aunt Petunia would throw her out and dump the uncooked food in the trash, scolding her for wasting.

Dudley had returned to being terrified of her, just like the summer when Hagrid had given him a pig's tail. He jumped up and fled the room whenever Harriet entered it, even during dinner (which was why Harriet wasn't allowed to come downstairs until the family had finished eating). He spent most of the day outside of the house, and Harriet never saw his gang at all. She thought seriously about sending Snape a thank-you note.

On the second day, Aunt Petunia dumped her at the grocery with orders to see to the shopping, and drove up the lane to the beauty parlor. She had been doing this since Harriet was nine. It was actually one of her backhanded kindnesses: as long as Harriet was in the grocery store, she was away from Aunt Petunia. She was never able to buy anything for herself because Aunt Petunia always demanded to see the receipts for this reason, but the clerks didn't get paid enough to care if she paged through the comics while she was shopping.

Aunt Petunia sat in the car while Harriet loaded the groceries into the boot and then climbed in the back seat. Aunt Petunia didn't like for her to sit up front, but again, the further from Aunt Petunia, the better. The air in the car stung with the scent of hairspray and nail polish; Aunt Petunia had also gotten a perfect, salmon-pink manicure.

"The receipt," she said tetchily, even though Harriet was already pulling it out of her anorak pocket. "And don't forget the change."

As they drove back to Privet Drive, it started to rain. Drops pattered on the roof of the car and sluiced off the windows. The rhythmic thump thump thump of the windscreen wipers threaded through the thick silence of two people who hated and had nothing to say to each other.

"I suppose you wish you were back with that pervert," Aunt Petunia said, abruptly and out of nowhere.

"What pervert are you talking about?" Harriet said, honestly bewildered. "I don't recall knowing any perverts."

"Don't you," said Aunt Petunia. Harriet always sat behind Aunt Petunia's chair, to make it harder for them to see each other, but she could hear Aunt Petunia's lip curling. "Does he like for you to play the little innocent, then? I would rather have supposed he put you in a red wig."

If Aunt Petunia hadn't been so relentlessly Muggle, Harriet would have thought she was talking to an invisible person sitting in the passenger's seat. "A . . . wig?"

"Because he was sick as a dog for your mother," Aunt Petunia said, braking so hard at the light that Harriet was jerked against her seat belt. "Of course, she wasn't innocent, or at least she never played like she was."

Now this was about Mum? "Who are we talking about?"

Aunt Petunia's eyes fixed on her in the rear-view mirror, hard and cruel and something else Harriet didn't understand. "That professor who you went with so willingly. Snivellus Snape, the pervert, all grown-up. Never thought I'd live to see that. He looked like an overgrown bat."

Harriet had thought that once Aunt Petunia explained the name, things would clear up. But she was only more confused than ever.

The light changed to green. The color refracted off the drops, reminding Harriet of the green light she saw in her nightmares. This conversation was a little bit of a nightmare, too.

"Snape didn't know my mum," she said coldly. "You're making it up, the way you made up everything about me before Hagrid came and you had to tell me the truth—"

Aunt Petunia laughed, a short sound as nasty as her words. "She was always like that, too—thinking she knew everything. Oh, he knew her. She knew him. He used to stalk her about the neighborhood. At first she ate it up, little queen of Cokeworth that she was, but then he did one too many things she didn't like and he fell right out of favor. Well, I'd told her how it would be, but she did so like being worshiped."

"You're lying," Harriet said even more coldly than before. She was quite certain that it was all a lie, because there was no way it could make sense . . . but she had a hot, queasy feeling in her stomach all the same.

"Did he tell you that you were precious to him? Is that it?" Aunt Petunia asked, her voice meaner than Snape's had ever been. "That you were special? He's seeing her when he looks at you. You're nothing to him but a little copy of his spoilt princess."

Harriet opened her mouth to say that Snape didn't even like her; that he ignored her, except when he felt like being mean . . . but then she shut it. A vague, almost formless notion was drifting through her like smoke, so light she knew she couldn't try to see what it was just yet or it would evaporate. But it made her decide to stay quiet for now.

Aunt Petunia pulled into the driveway. "Bring in the groceries," she said without looking at Harriet as she patted the plastic hood over her hair. "And put them away."

Like the conversation had never happened. Harriet couldn't help comparing Aunt Petunia's method of ignoring her with Snape's and finding them very similar. But Snape had tried to save her from being murdered by a giant monster snake. Aunt Petunia would surely be disappointed to learn how close Harriet had come to dying, only to have survived.

Once the groceries were all shut away and the kitchen was left looking like a display in a model home, Harriet escaped upstairs to her room. She wanted to be alone and think.

She was still confident that Aunt Petunia could easily be lying. For ten years the Dursleys had pretended that Harriet's parents had died in a car accident and forbidden her to ask questions about it. Both Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had big fat lies on their track record.

But . . . the night Hagrid had told Harriet the truth, Aunt Petunia had burst out about Mum, her face twisting when she shrieked about how proud her parents were to have a witch in the family, how deluded, because Lily was nothing but a freak . . . And then she married that Potter and they had you, and then she got herself blown up . . . Like she'd been waiting to tell Harriet how much she'd hated her own sister. That stuff in the car about Snape and Mum had been a lot like that.

There was also the part where Aunt Petunia knew who Snape was. If she was lying, who'd told her his name? What did she call him? Snivellus? That seemed like a pretty realistically nasty nickname for "Severus."

So . . . had all that been true? Had Snape known Mum? Fancied her?

This must be what Uncle Vernon had felt when Dr Granger had asked for more Harriet-time. She just didn't see how this could possibly be true. Snape, having warm and fuzzy feelings? For her mum? Next she'd find out Dudley had a brain.

She wished fiercely for her photo album, but it was shut away in her trunk, which was locked inside the cupboard. She was certain there were no pictures of Snape in it or she'd have noticed and her jaw would've dropped, but she couldn't help feeling the sight of her mother's face would solve some part of this bloody maddening mystery.

She reminded herself that Aunt Petunia's version of the facts, if facts they were, was probably wonky. Aunt Petunia had hated Mum, whereas all Harriet had heard since meeting Hagrid was how great her parents were, how many people had loved them, how much sadness there'd been when they'd died. All Aunt Petunia seemed to care about from Lily's death was that it had stuck her with Harriet.

And the idea that Snape would fancy herself . . . He was a grown-up! He was her teacher. She was twelve (well, very-almost thirteen, but she was the smallest girl in her year, something Pansy Parkinson liked to cackle about). After a homeless man had given Harriet some chocolate when she was seven or so, Aunt Petunia had bewildered her with a talk about blokes who loved kids the way they were supposed to love women, but there was no way Snape could be like that. Harriet had often wondered if that was just Aunt Petunia making things up, anyway.

And most of all, Snape couldn't stand her. The idea of him ever telling her that she was precious was madder than she'd ever thought dragons and unicorns, before she'd seen one being born and the other dying.

No one had ever told her she was precious.

The next day, the wind and sun stripped the clouds away, and Aunt Petunia handed her a long list of chores to finish before lunch. In Aunt Petunia's sharp, slanted writing it read:

"Wash the car. Mow the lawn. Paint the garden bench. Wash the windows. Manure the flower beds. Prune the roses. . . "

And so forth.

And as if some other spirit had slipped into her body, Harriet heard herself say quite calmly, "I think Professor Snape would think this was too much work for me."

Aunt Petunia dropped her glass of lemonade. It cracked on the counter, the lemonade and ice cubes gushing across the tiles. Harriet forced herself to keep staring into Aunt Petunia's twisted face. She was just another villain, like Quirrell-demort or Riddle.

"Go, then," Aunt Petunia said in a jagged voice, ripping the list out of Harriet's hand so hard, it tore in half. "Walk the neighborhood, run away to Kuwait, I don't care, but get out of my sight!"

Harriet meandered down to the play park on the edge of the neighborhood, where the rusted equipment creaked in the wind. Now she knew what that vague smoke of an idea had been: to play off Aunt Petunia's fear and suspicion of Snape to protect herself.

Very Slytherin of you, said a sly little voice that reminded her of the Sorting Hat.

We're a lot alike, you and I, Riddle had said.

"No we're not," Harriet said aloud. "You'd have killed her."

The grass whispered in the wind that pushed the swings, sounding nothing like snakes. Harriet could understand snakes. The grass was just speaking gibberish. Were there wizards who could understand the wind?

"I'm not their house-elf," she told the unintelligible grass.

She hoped Dobby was happy working at Hogwarts now, where no one would be cruel to him. She really had loved Professor Dumbledore right then. When she'd asked for Tom Riddle's diary to give back to Lucius Malfoy, he had said, Of course, and as she was running out of the room, Do let Dobby know that if he ever needs work, he can find it at Hogwarts. The food at Gryffindor table had been extra rich all the rest of the year. And there'd been that cake that had squashed Pansy Parkinson's stinksap-squirting bouquet.

It had all worked out, hadn't it. Slytherin's monster had been defeated. Lucius Malfoy had lost. The Muggle-born students were restored to life, and Dobby was freed from enslavement. There had even been a magical sword. Just like a fairy tale.

Only it wasn't over, not the whole story. If it were over, then Harriet would be free, too. There would be no threat of Voldemort, no Dursleys . . . just her and Hermione and Ron and Hogwarts, forever.

She waded into the grasses, walking carefully in case of snakes. If she concentrated, she thought she could hear them murmuring to each other.