Haze

The Night Of

"I wish you'd let us come with you, Headmaster - " Hagrid says for what must be the fifth time in as many minutes - earning himself, finally, an outright scowl.

"Unnecessary," Snape repeats - also for the fifth time - this time through his teeth.  It's a little surprising, honestly, that he's restrained himself as long as he has.  He cuts Harriet a quick look - one that says quite clearly: make him stop, please.  Harriet merely blinks at him - for once, ignores that little twinge in her chest - the one that's been happening more and more often lately.  Because Snape is being an idiot - he's being such an idiot at the moment.  Unnecessarily.

"Severus," Minerva started this conversation off annoyed - had been huffing and glaring and frowning severely - but she's long since moved on to resigned.  Her nostrils are still flaring slightly - her mouth is still a thin, thin line - but her arguing has a distinct flavor of someone who's now only saying it for the sake of saying it - she clearly has no expectation he'll actually listen.  "I understand they're children, but whatever they saw - it could very well be quite dangerous."

Snape doesn't actually roll his eyes at this - but Harriet has the overwhelming feeling that it's a quite close call.

"That is enough," he says - cross.  Irritated.  The line of his own mouth hardening with every second.  "I will take care of it - myself, and you two," his eyes pass severely from Minerva to Harriet, "will remain in the castle, and you," he turns that same scowl on Hagrid, "will remain in your cottage."

"But - " Hagrid tries - one final, pointless time - but Snape lifts one hand - a sharp gesture - to stop it before it even really starts.  Minerva sighs - her eyes flicker towards the ceiling - not quite an eye roll - maybe - probably - appealing to someone for patience with Snape's general stubbornness and persistent need to do everything himself.  She turns to Hagrid, her spectacles flashing in the torchlight.

"Come up to my office for tea," she says - and shoots Snape a cold - yet searching - look.  "With any luck, our foolish Headmaster will return to us before we've finished our biscuits."

Hagrid grunts - a worried kind of grunt, accompanied by another glance in Snape's direction - and then they both look at Harriet - a clear, if silent, invitation to join them in what is undoubtedly going to be a vigil of sorts.  She shakes her head once - waves them off.

"I'll be right there."

Hagrid nods - claps Harriet on the shoulder, nearly buckling her knees beneath her - and begins to trudge off towards the grand staircase.  Minerva lingers for a moment more, though she doesn’t speak - she only glances once more between Harriet and Snape, her hands pressed to her hips, before she turns on heel and sets off behind him - her pace brisk to keep up with his long strides.

Harriet sighs when they disappear - shakes her head again - and turns to Snape, planting her own hands on her hips.

"You'll be careful, though, yeah?"

He does roll his eyes at her - though she can tell - after years of practice - that this eye roll is more - well, affectionate - than it ever used to be - in particular, when she was a teenager and mouthing off at him.  Her frown twitches despite her best efforts, though she lifts her chin and attempts her best severe, Minerva-esque expression to offset it.

"Of course," Snape drawls - even draws his wand from his cloak prematurely - as if that makes it any better that he plans to go wandering about in the forest alone at night hunting some sort of Dark beast - all it really achieves is making Harriet glare his bare hands -

"Do me a favor - wear some gloves.  It's bloody cold out there - "

That’s underselling it, really.  She’d heard a group of Gryffindor fifth years insisting to a group of wide-eyed first years going through their first Hogwarts winter that just this week, their snot had frozen to their upper lips and sealed their mouths shut while they’d been traversing between the greenhouses and the castle.  The worst part about the vague horror on the first years’s faces - the story had maybe not been an exaggeration.  It’s been positively frigid for five or so days now - at night, the temperature falls well below zero, and more than once, Hagrid’s had to beat icicles the size of grown men off some of the eaves hanging over the outdoor walkways between this or that castle wing.

And Snape insists it’s perfectly fine - it’s perfectly safe - for him to venture out into such weather to - take it all on his own shoulders.  For some reason.

He makes a kind of huffing noise - likely sensing the morbid direction her thoughts have taken - and steps closer before Harriet's ready for it.  He catches her chin with firm - but not too firm - fingers.  Still warm, as they’re still inside.  Pressing gently against her skin.  For all they've been - getting along rather well since she joined the staff in September - even having the occasional private tea - even, sometimes, pushing the boundaries a little more and a little more and a little more - carefully - carefully - carefully - this is something new.  And very physical, in particular - both unexpected yet, in a way, not.  Not really.  It's another little thrill in her stomach - her face heats despite the creeping chill in the entrance hall.  "Stop worrying," he orders, voice low, holding her eyes.  "Whatever it is - I'll destroy it or force it off the grounds."

"I just don't like you going out there alone," she grumbles - manages to speak relatively steadily despite the slight squirming in her belly - the way his thumb is tracing along her jaw the slightest bit.  It’s not even just that it’s him, and she loathes the idea of him putting himself in danger alone - that it sends her thundering straight back to crouching in the shadows of the Shrieking Shack, watching helplessly while - well.  It's that she doesn't like anyone going out there alone - not even herself.  For loads of reasons - some of them not even tied up in her own trauma.  Harriet doesn’t quite have the words for this, of course - she's never been the type who can speak her mind and heart clearly - action has always been her style - attempts to convey it, however clumsily, with just a look.  Snape keeps holding her chin - and her eyes - for another moment before releasing her - draws himself up to his full height.

"Go have tea with Minerva," he says.  "And don't wait up.  I can't have my Defense Professor sleepwalking through teaching."

Another little jump of her heart - really, this is getting out of hand.  Harriet rolls her own eyes to distract herself from it - waves him off with both hands.  "Yeah, fine," she says - though she fully intends to stay up until he's back in the bloody castle, and he must know that.  "I'll see you tomorrow morning, then?"

"You will," Snape says - before turning on heel - his cloak flaps about dramatically, and it's so very him, she's biting back a smile again.  He sweeps through the front door - glances back at her once - before it shuts quietly behind him.

Harriet stares after him for a long moment, alone in the entrance hall, her arms crossed over her stomach - stares at the familiar, well-loved wood now separating them.

Attempts to dislodge the worried little lump now impossible to ignore in her throat.

--

The First Morning

Harriet falls asleep in the armchair in front of her fire at around three in the morning despite her best efforts - after a long, long tea with Hagrid and Minerva that had lasted until after midnight and ended when Hagrid had nearly nodded off into stack of biscuits on the table between them - and she wakes up in a mad scramble too-early - but still, to her annoyance, after the sun rises.  It is, in fact, the sun that wakes her up at all - shines directly into her face through the high window in her sitting room nearly the moment it begins to peek out from behind the darkened treetops of the forest.  She outright falls out of her chair - though no one’s woken her in a panic, it does nothing to disperse the dread expanding - suddenly and violently - in her chest.  She rushes through too-cold corridors to the Headmaster's office in her wrinkled clothes with her morning breath - lets herself in and finds it empty but for the portraits of Headmasters past - turns on heel and rushes back out again, ignoring the few portraits she'd woken up in her rush when they grumble after her -

Runs full tilt to the Hospital Wing because there’s no other realistic option, her heart beating violently in her throat -

When she arrives, she loathes herself for a moment - if only for being right.  It’s exactly as she’d feared.

He's been injured.  He's been bloody - by whatever it was - bitten.

His entire torso is uncovered when she rushes into the ward to find Poppy tending to him behind a high curtain.  Pale skin - his lean chest - pink nipples dusted with stray black hairs.  She skids around the barrier and to a halt beside the bed he's sat on, too distracted by the horrible fucking bite mark the size of her own forearm to be properly embarrassed by the fact that Snape - the most buttoned-up person she knows - is so stripped down.  The mark - there aren’t even teeth marks.  It’s more - a horribly large, horribly sharp crescent moon - as if a blade had sunk into his flesh rather than a jaw laden with fangs -

Not to mention the fact that she can see a blackening in his veins - creeping out from the jagged edges of the wound - giving every appearance of spreading -

"Jesus - what happened?"

Snape shoots her a look that is immediately furious - through his hair, damp with snow and probably sweat - his lip curling back in a snarl.  His eyes, in particular, have a kind of wild sheen to them.  His robes are tattered around his waist.  "What does it look like?" he snaps - which, fine.  Stupid question.  But -

"Are you alright - ?"

"I will be alright," he's baring his teeth now, his glare flashing in that way that would undoubtedly make at least half the first year class outright faint - his hands twitch strangely at his sides, "when you cease with this absurd bleating.  I haven't the time for you, Potter.  Disappear."

It's easily the angriest - the nastiest - thing he's said to her since she was sixteen - and it's accompanied by a look that's even more spiteful than anything he'd aimed her way back then - and Harriet swallows down an angry retort before it can spill out and make the moment worse than it already is.  He's in pain.  It’s obvious in his face - never mind the angry wound that keeps trying to draw her eyes.  He must be in incredible pain.  She can - understand that -

"I've got him, Harriet," Poppy says - returning from wherever she’d gone off to - to fetch gauze, if the fresh roll in her hand is any indication - sounding impatient - glaring at Snape. 

"Yes, alright," Harriet says - backing away.  She'll - check on him later. 

When he's feeling better.

--

Three Days Later

The glance Snape shoots her when she finds her seat at the staff table this morning is no less hateful than the glances from the previous two mornings - but somehow, still, it hurts - somehow, ridiculous as it sounds, even more than the previous days.  Her eyes are already prickling, and she hasn’t even been here five minutes.

Fuck - when did she get so pathetic?

Minerva's lips press together - whiten.  Filius shifts in his chair.  Neither of them actually says anything - just like Harriet doesn't say anything.  No one even really looks at him - and Harriet can’t blame her colleagues for that, given how close he already seems to tipping right over the edge of his temper, but she can sure as shit blame herself -

Again - pathetic.

The bandages are still there, too.  She can't see them, obviously - but the bulge beneath his robes is still there, which means the bandages are still there.  He is using his left arm again, however, which is a relief, as he’d favored his right for two days  - his body, at least, is improving, even if his mood isn't -

Harriet eats her toast and drinks her tea in silence.  She's good at this, even if she's out of practice - making herself small.  Dodging someone's temper by making herself as invisible as possible.  Most of the staff keeps quiet, too, but even then - she's still able to shrink more still, and so she does.  Snape has been really rather mellow as Headmaster - usually, at least since Harriet took up the Defense post this last September, the staff table is chatty.  A dozen conversations, some of them overlapping - some of them continued after starting in the staff room or someone's office the night before.  In pairs - in small groups - all of them remarkably welcoming.  She'd been worried, before she'd arrived, that it might be awkward, joining her former teachers as a member of the staff - that she might be - well, left out - because of her age.  Because of who she is, even.  But they treat her as an equal, and they include her - and it's not even really an effort for them to do so - they make it so natural - even Snape. 

Or - he had been.  Until -

Today, no one is saying anything because yesterday, Harriet had asked Snape how he was feeling - mistake, and he'd snarled at her that - it's none of your business, you little busybody - and had also requested, as nastily as humanly possible, that she - stop your constant chattering - your voice is giving me a fucking headache.  The rage behind the words - so painfully obvious in the way his voice had outright shaken - the way his hands had clenched violently around his utensils - had stuck Harriet’s tongue the roof of her mouth.  The shock of it, frankly, even after two days of growing cruelty - she'd been in denial, it seems - had silenced her completely.  It had been Minerva who had snapped at him to stop being so foul - who had pointed out that it hadn't been Harriet's fault he'd gotten bitten.  She’d also made the point - again - that she and Harriet had both offered to go with him into the forest to hunt the supposed creature that had sent a group of second year Hufflepuffs into an utter fit of panic - tears and hyperventilating and multi-day visits to the Hospital Wing.  None of them had been able to fully articulate what they'd seen - but there had been four of them, and their reactions had been so extreme, it had been impossible to write it off as a group hallucination.  Especially when almost every student in the school seems on edge on a good day, and this had made them all - well.

More than a little nervous.

Snape had merely glared at Minerva when she'd struck back - though, he hadn't gifted her with any downright mean words.  He's been in an utterly foul mood since returning from the night in the forest - but most of his ire is, undeniably, pointed straight at Harriet.  Thus far, he's claimed her voice gives him a headache, has called her a busybody, has told her to get out of his sight before he hexes her on principle, has told her she's a middling professor at best and none of her successes are owed to skill - only to fame, has snapped at her to stop walking so loudly, and has told her to keep her mouth shut about the inner working of the school and leave it to the adults.  These words had been accompanied by the looks - a wild, almost desperate kind of rage - and by shaking hands - twitching, jerking hands - as if he'd been barely restraining himself from doing what he'd threatened to do - from drawing his wand and turning it on her.  Minerva and Filius and Hagrid have all protested these - truly unwarranted - attacks each time they've happened in full public view - but, of course, it's done nothing.  They've all seemed genuinely surprised by it, too, as he's been snappish but not nearly so vicious with anyone else in the three days since - and it's reassuring.  It is.  That she's not the only one who'd thought - who'd really thought - that she and Snape were - honestly getting along - before.  Were friendly.  She'd thought -

Well, she'd thought a lot of things.  And she understands that getting bitten by some horrible beast - and he still hasn't come out and said exactly what it was - is stressful and painful - but that doesn't justify treating her like dirt.  It doesn't.  And she's not going to stand for it much longer.

The students are subdued, too, this morning - but they have been.  Whispering in small groups instead of talking loudly - shooting furtive looks at Snape.  He's been nastier with them, too - but, again, not nearly as nasty as he's been with Harriet.

She finishes up her breakfast without saying a word.  Doesn't bother excusing herself, either.  Would rather not get her head bitten off because she'd wanted to be polite.

--

The students whisper to each other about lingering.  Voldemort lingering, specifically.  Have been.  Harriet hears them - though, rarely.  They try not to talk about it around her - probably because she just can't keep her mouth shut when they do.

Maybe that's why Snape's lost patience with her.  She's never been able to leave well enough alone.

Even two years on, there are hints of it - Harriet can't quite deny it - of Voldemort's presence on the castle grounds - creeping shadows and strange noises and too-thick mist hovering at the corner of one's vision.  It scares the younger children - and even the older teenagers, many of whom had been present for the Battle of Hogwarts, if not active participants, seem unsettled more often than not.  Harriet doesn't know how to fix it - doesn't know how to remake Hogwarts into what it had once been - into the place she had known it as growing up - into the place she knows it to be, still.  All she can do is reiterate - over and over - to pale and nervous students who sometimes can't quite meet her eyes - that Voldemort is dead.  He's gone.  And he can't hurt them anymore.  Not any of them.

"He's dead," she tells them whenever she does hear the whispers.  Swallows back the words: I killed him.  I'm sure I did it right.  She knows, really, that's not what they mean.  They mean it more in the sense that - the castle has been poisoned.  By his attack.  By his mere presence.  By his magic - they seem to think it leaked out of his dead body and seeped into the stone.

She doesn't know how to convince them away from this - and honestly, sometimes, it's because she feels like she can feel - him.  Alone in her office at night, grading - sometimes, the flames from her candle will hiss at her, and it's not Parseltongue because she can't understand it, but it's - close enough it lifts the hairs on the back of her neck.  Sometimes - sometimes, portraits will seem - shadowed - darker than they were before - sometimes, even, the subjects will be caught in the wrong light, and their eyes will appear red for a second - and it'll seem, for the space of that breath, that everything is wrong.  And it might be the imagination of the students - it might be Harriet's own imagination - but the darknesses caught in corners do seem darker than they should be.  Unnaturally so.  Sometimes. 

Especially in the dungeons. 

Today, it's two Hufflepuff third years, and they're in the library, and they don't know Harriet's there - so they're being far more candid than they would be if they did know she was listening.  She'd only come up here to return a book she'd found abandoned in her classroom - and which no one has claimed - last week - but she lingers because:

"I'm telling you, Kristin says it was Voldemort's cursed cloak - "

Is it - wrong - to huddle behind some shelves and eavesdrop on her students?  Probably.  Still - she's heard a load of bizarre rumors about Voldemort's supposed left-behind magic since being back in the castle - but this -

This is a new one. 

"Yeah, but I heard Snape got bit - how does a bloody cloak bite someone - ?"

"Dunno - but Kristin heard it from Charlie, and Charlie was one of the ones who saw it, you know - "

Harriet nearly overbalances and falls flat on her face.  As far as she knows, none of the Hufflepuffs who'd seen the beast before Snape had apparently killed it had described it for anyone.  Whenever questioned by any members of the staff, including Pomona - they'd clammed up.  They'd gotten strangely tongue-tied.  They hadn't seemed capable, honestly, of getting the words out.

They'd thought it'd looked like Voldemort's fucking cloak?

She listens some more, but they only turn their conversation towards how off Charlie - and it can only be Charlie Belby - has been since he'd - seen what he'd seen.  Apparently, he's woken up half the House screaming with his nightmares - another thing that hasn't been quite mentioned to the staff - at least, not that Harriet's aware.  She'll have to warn Pomona.  Make sure the boy is - getting the help he so clearly needs.

Especially since - the creature - the cloak, or whatever.  It's dead now.  It's long gone.

--

Five Days Later

Her Gryffindor courage fails her.  It does.  But being in the Great Hall with him during meals is becoming - well, it's becoming absolutely unbearable.

It's just - the way he looks at her.  Not even Voldemort had looked at her like that.  He'd looked at her with hatred, certainly - but there'd always been a bit of amusement there, underneath it all.  As if Harriet had been a kind of strange novelty - someone she knows he'd pretended to himself he was playing with.  A joke.  Not Vernon, either - he'd looked at her with a vague kind of disgust - but he'd also looked through her.  Had ignored her when she'd been doing what - in his opinion - she was supposed to be doing - that is, acting as the Dursley's fucking servant. 

Snape looks at her like her very presence is noxious - even when she's being quiet.  Even when she's giving him plenty of space - and he has been.  The glances are poisonous - and they land hard and hateful on her skin - and worse, his words are getting more and more biting, and Minerva has gotten so upset, she's taken to sitting right next to Harriet every meal to attempt to discourage any unwarranted attacks.  On the third day, Harriet's attempts at not talking had seemed to help - at least for the morning - he'd ignored her, though his knuckles had still been white where he'd gripped his fork and knife, and there'd still been a slight shake to his limbs.  Is that down to - this - maybe - new hatred of Harriet?  Or is that just his lingering injury?  But by dinner, however much he'd ignored her at breakfast, he'd seemed to escalate - had found even her breathing offensive and had criticized, out of nowhere, the way she'd held her fork - like a little savage - and told her to stop staring out at the students - how are they to focus on feeding themselves with such a celebrity gawking at them - and had sneered at her when she'd sneezed while drinking a bit of pumpkin juice, spilling some down her chin - how truly disgusting, Potter, but then - you were raised in a cupboard - your relatives had the right of it, I think -

This last had made Minerva stand with such force, she'd rattled the entirety of the staff table and drawn the attention of every single person in the hall.  She'd told Snape to shut his mouth - very quietly, so the students couldn't hear - and then she'd dragged Harriet - who had been in shock again, maybe - from the Great Hall.  When they'd been alone, she'd also apologized profusely - for something that isn't her fault, obviously - and she'd sworn to put Snape right.  Harriet had been unable to do anything but nod stupidly.

The worst part - she doesn't know what she did.  To make him hate her - apparently out of nowhere - so much.  She can't even begin to guess.

Falling back on old habits - habits she'd thought she'd escaped when she'd left Privet Drive for the last time - sets her teeth on edge.  Makes it so much worse - maybe this - this shrinking of herself - is, in fact, the worst part.  She hates the way her shoulders hunch beneath his stare against her will - hates the way she can't make her mouth move when he starts in.  She used to be able to stand up to Vernon, at least - even if it'd gotten her smacked and chucked in the cupboard.  But then, she'd hated him - and Snape -

On the morning on the fifth day, instead of fucking subjecting herself to another breakfast with him, she takes a walk on the grounds.  The morning is overcast - heavy clouds hanging too low, carrying a brownish tinge in the grey - the shadows by the tree line - where she inevitably ends up - feign absolute darkness too well.  As she walks, she listens, occasionally straying into the edge of the trees - beneath skeletal branches.  She strains her ears - for what, she doesn't know - and she hears nothing but her own feet crunching in snow and dead leaves - nothing but her breathing, white clouds erupting in her vision - is it too loud?  She grits her teeth against that thought - she wanders, and she weaves, and she listens, and she hears nothing, she thinks, until she realizes that she -

Is -

The hairs on the back of her neck rise.  Her skin prickles with awareness.  Her breathing slows - her fingers, even slower, curl around the handle of her wand in her cloak pocket.  Did they get to her?  The students?  Those Hufflepuffs, in particular?  Is the general stress - Snape’s injury - his foul behavior - is it getting to her so severely after only five days?  Is that - all of that - why she thinks she hears -

A second cloak whispering over ragged, slushy earth?

She turns without thinking - abrupt - doesn't allow herself to make the decision on when and how, lest she accidentally broadcast it - turns with her wand already whipping out of her pocket.  She points it forward -  sparks pour from the tip against her will - at - absolutely nothing.  The space that had been behind her is empty but for her own footsteps - the slight creaking of grey tree branches - the whisper of dry leaves over slushy snow.

She frowns.  Stares.  Lets out her breath in another white burst.

--

Charlie Belby - the little Hufflepuff boy who'd seen the creature - whatever it was - is in her final class of the day on Mondays and Wednesdays.  Harriet can't help but hold him back after dismissing the other students that afternoon - after two days of fiercely resisting doing so - to, what?  She doesn't even really know what she wants to ask him.  She is aware, distantly, that she's grasping at bloody fucking straws looking for reasons why Snape might be so fucking angry at her after just one night in the forest -

And she may very well have been hearing things during that stupid fucking morning walk -

"I've heard, Charlie," she says - as gently as she can - when they’re alone, and he's looking at her in such a way - like he's as tender as she feels, "that you saw the creature - "

"I didn't go near it," he blurts before she can even finish the sentence.  He’s a small boy - short for his age the way Harriet had been herself.  And he’s been pale, she thinks, for weeks - since the first of the Hufflepuff panics had drawn their attention to the forest and what might be hiding inside it.  "I saw it at the tree line, and I just ran, Professor Potter, I swear- "

"Oh, I know," Harriet replies - smiles in what she hopes is an encouraging and not at all miserable way.  "Don't worry - I only wondered - could you tell me exactly what you saw?"

"Oh," Charlie looks down at his feet.  Shuffles them a bit.  Picks at his tie.  Doesn't look up again.  "I - er.  Well - "

"It's alright," Harriet adds after he falls into complete silence for several moments, his brow furrowing, his body continuously shifting nervously about.  He glances up at her again - sheepish, suddenly, now.  "Whatever it was - I promise I won't be angry."

"I - er.  It's going to sound mad, Professor - "

"I've seen plenty of mad things," Harriet mutters - chagrined, really, though fighting down the hysterical snort that's threatening to erupt from her stupid face - and Charlie huffs a nervous laugh himself, which makes her own battle a losing one.  She laughs, too, and he relaxes slightly - though his expression - it's impossible to miss - twists with a seriousness that is far too grown up for a twelve year old. 

"It - well, it looked like a cloak.  A black cloak.  Only - it was moving.  I thought - well, I thought, because it was in the forest, that it might be - "

He cuts off.  Ducks his head again, his mop of blond hair falling forward to hide his eyes.  Harriet swallows.  Forces the question - the solitary word - out:

"Voldemort's?"

It’s funny - that the forest is so associated with him and his fucking alleged lingering - when she’s the one who died out there.  She'd killed him in the fucking Great Hall - one would think the students would be afraid to eat in there - not panicking about a forest that has been a source of intrigue for teenagers for as long as Harriet can remember.  Even with Voldemort dead - it's so fucking depressing to think it - they’re still getting fucking blurred together in some ways.  The Dark Lord and the Girl Who Lived.  She grits her teeth - catches herself - stops before she can upset Charlie even more -

To his credit, the boy doesn't flinch.  He does nod.  He looks up at her again - outwardly frightened, this time.

"Do you - I mean, I know Professor Snape got bit - but d'you think he really got it?"

Harriet glances out the classroom window towards the forest.  Stares for a moment at the still - still - trees - especially dark against the white - blinding - snow blanketing the grounds, heavy and giving every appearance of softness.

I hope so - she thinks, doesn't say.

--

Seven Days Later

She's actively and entirely avoiding the Great Hall by the end of the first week.  It doesn't feel like a choice - or, if it is, it's the only reasonable one she has.  Maybe that makes her pathetic - but she’s fucking tired, and she’s gotten enough of his nasty little insults in her fucking life - from so many fucking people, and she doesn't need them from him - especially not when she'd thought things had changed so much between them - too.  But, though they live in a cavernous magical castle, and though she sometimes goes entire weeks without seeing some of her colleagues outside of the Great Hall - of course, eventually, she runs into him in a corridor.

If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was actively seeking her out with the express purpose of verbally assaulting her.  Except he looks so angry to see her when he skids to a halt in front of her - that’s simply impossible.  No one looking for someone could possibly look so enraged by successfully finding them -

They're alone, and it’s bitterly cold, and the windows are crusting with ice at the corners, and it’s late enough in the day, the shadows are creeping and lengthening - the kind of shadows that make the students uncomfortable - and, frankly, they’re getting to Harriet, too, at the moment.  She crosses her arms over her stomach again - can't stop herself - can't stop how defensive she knows it looks.  It's - it's absolutely fucked that being alone with him makes her this nervous - makes her fucking nauseous - now.  He glares at her, his lip already curling -

"I would say thank you," he says, "for vacating the Great Hall - but, of course, you still plague my castle.  Everywhere I turn, it seems.  I cannot escape you."

Beneath the anger, there's a layer of - something.  Something she can't quite pick out - her brain is scrambled by the hate sparking in his eyes - by the way his hands are curled into such tight fists, she's surprised his knuckles aren't bursting from his very skin.  And - she can’t take it anymore.  She can’t.  She’s avoided him, and she’s held her tongue, and - how can that not be enough for him?  She's tired - and she sure as shit hadn't orchestrated this fucking meeting.  She'd put the entire fucking earth between them if she could at the moment - she's never wanted to get away from him more.  Yes, years ago, their relationship hadn’t been good, and there’d been cruelty on both sides.  But it had been on both sides.  He'd been just as guilty as she'd been.  And there’s simply nothing she could have done - before - now - to deserve treatment like this-

"Fuck you," she snaps before she can stop herself - and he rears back, his expression contorting into another vicious snarl.  "I don't know what I did to upset you, but you don't get to talk to me like this.  You don't - "

Even if he hates her - fuck, he's so out of line.  He's so out of line.  He’d never treated her this badly even when she was a student.  She -

"I'll tell you what you did."

The absolute last words she'd expected.  Harriet - freezes.  Her mouth opens.  Hangs there.  She probably looks like such a fool -  

And it's embarrassing, for a moment - it's truly embarrassing - the hope she experiences, if only for a second.  That he'll tell her.  That he'll explain it to her, maybe - help her understand.  That maybe she can put it right, if he just tells her -

"I've suffered much in my life," he goes on - the lines of his face are cut into hate hate hate.  His hands - she doesn't know why they catch her attention for a moment - maybe it's the way they jerk - how violently they do so.  There's - blood, she realizes.  Dripping from his palms - from his nails, digging into his skin.  Fat droplets falling to the stone beneath them - and his voice is - jerking, too.  Hitching - whatever he's about to say - he feels it - so much - "Obviously.  But if I had to pick out a worst moment - well, Potter.  It was the moment I woke up in St. Mungo's and learned you had survived the war."

For a moment, nothing moves.  Not either of them - not Harriet's chest with breath - not Snape's twitching body - not a mote of dust.  The words - they don't echo in the corridor.  They clap once, and the sound deadens immediately in her ears.  Sucked - along with all of the oxygen around them - clear out of space and time - leaving nothing behind.  Snape keeps staring at her, his mouth curled into such open and vicious loathing -

Blood keeps dripping from his shaking, shaking hands to the floor -

Harriet turns.  She walks away.  It's the only thing she can do without -

--

Her luck holds.  She doesn't start crying until after her office door is shut between herself and the rest of the castle.

And once it starts - when she collapses backwards against the shut door and buries her face in her hands - it doesn’t stop.  She cries for over an hour.  Sobs, more like - fucking wailing - and it's embarrassing - and it's childish - and she's furiousabout it.  Just because she'd thought - well.  She'd been wrong, fucking clearly - and it's not as if it's the first time.  She's been wrong loads of times - and sometimes, she's gotten people fucking killed over it - fuck.  She needs to grow up.  She needs to get over it.  She's Harriet fucking Potter - if there's one fucking thing she knows, it's that life'll disappoint her - over and over and over again - and despite it all, she'll survive it.  She always does.  She needs to take a fucking breath and put it behind her, goddamn it -

She makes herself all kinds of promises - alone in her sitting room, curled beneath an absurd pile of blankets, trying to muffle her sobs from - nothing.  No one.  This will be the last time she cries over him.  And she's not going to quit - she's not going to let him force her to quit.  Fuck him.  It doesn't matter what she'd thought - she'd been a fool, and this'll be the final time she has to learn this lesson.  And she won't be driven out -

Of the only place that's ever felt like home.

She cries so long and so hard - until the sun sets, and the torches on her walls ignite - that she forgets all about Hermione and Ron's visit until her Floo is activating -

Harriet scrambles to try to dry the tears when it does - when she remembers, her stomach lurching with fear - but it's too little, too late.  They spill out too quickly, her best friends - and they catch her in the act.  Hermione - holding her tiny baby bump in the cradle of her hands - Ron - staring at her, his jaw tightening when he sees Harriet’s undoubtedly red eyes and splotchy cheeks -

The little but growing family - staring at Harriet and seeing everything -

"What's wrong?" Hermione is the one to ask - after a long, uncomfortable silence.  Probably because Harriet - doesn’t cry.  Not really.  Hermione's always been the crier between the two of them.  "What's happened - ?"

"Nothing - " Harriet tries to say - and it would probably be more convincing if her voice wouldn't break around the word. 

"Well, that's a load of shit," Ron starts forward - catches her shoulders.  Dips his head to try to force eye contact when Harriet tries to turn her head away.  "You've been crying - "

Obviously.  Harriet glares at him - scrubs at her cheeks again with her palms.  Shrugs out of his grip.  "I'm fine.  It's nothing."

"It's clearly not nothing, Harrie," Hermione says - so gently, Harriet is struck with the thought that she's going to be such a lovely mum to such a lucky child - before she loses all control of herself and promptly dissolves into tears again.

She wishes fervently that Lily were here, as Ron and Hermione tag team her back into her chair - wrap her back up in her blankets - rub her back and hug her and generally mumble sweet nothings that don't - despite their best efforts - land.  Her own mum.  Lily would know what to say - Lily would know how to make Harriet feel better after days of misery - and, what's more, she'd known Snape.  She’d probably be able to tell Harriet what the fuck to do about this.  She'd maybe even know what the fuck his problem is - because who is she kidding - she can’t stop thinking about it - she’s been obsessing about it - and it still doesn’t make any sense.  The turn.  At least Lily - maybe she’d know better than Harriet fucking knows at the moment -

And now - because she’s just a complete disaster of a person at this point - and they're both looking at her with so much worry - her two best friends -

Harriet can’t stop herself.  She can’t.  She can’t keep it in for another second.

She opens her mouth, and it all comes spilling out.  In halting, hiccupping speech.

Ron is fucking livid - just absolutely out of his mind - at the end of it.

"I'll fucking kill him," he snaps - surging to his feet, making Hermione push her hands against her mouth and Harriet’s stomach plunge into her feet.  "He doesn't get to fucking say that to you - "

Harriet lurches out of her chair and pile of blankets - grabs at Ron's arm.  Wraps both her own arms around it when he attempts immediately to escape.  “No," she hisses.  "You'll make it worse - "

"Yeah, well, that's a shit reason to just let him get away with it," Ron snarls back.  "He doesn't - "

“I don’t need you fighting my battles for me and making me look like a coward!”

Hermione still has a hand over her mouth - but she lowers it when Ron allows Harriet to shove him back into his own chair despite his grumbling protests.  She shifts on her seat - rubs a palm over her bump.  Her brow is furrowed in that thinking way - instead of finding it reassuring, as she has so often in the past, the near constant dread Harriet’s been carrying around in her belly for a week now - for even longer, if she's honest with herself - since she came back here, really - begins to swell again.  With force.  Starts crawling up her throat -

"I don't understand," Hermione says slowly when she finally speaks.  "Harrie - I thought you said you and Snape have been getting along - "

This is the problem with Hermione - even as it's the very best thing about her.  She thinks so logically.  She looks for reasons - and she won't stop looking until she finds at least one.  And Harriet can't deny it - because she had said that - because she'd been so foolishly filled with hope, it's fucking embarrassing -

She knows better.  She should've kept her mouth shut.

"I must've been wrong," Harriet mutters - glancing away from both of them to stare into the fire.  Blinks to keep more tears from spilling down her cheeks.  Fucking grow up, Harriet - you should've done it ages ago.  She feels more than sees Hermione and Ron exchange a look.

This is something they don't talk about.  Her two best friends, respecting her privacy - in a sense.  Or they know she'll refuse to talk about it - that she'd refuse to talk about it even before - this.  Harriet's - massive - stupid - ridiculous - fucking crush on Snape.  It's something they've never really talked about, though it's obvious that they both know - but -

"Harriet," Hermione says firmly.  "You would have noticed him treating you this way before.  And you said it was sudden - "

"Well, clearly I did something to make him hate me," Harriet snaps back.  Catches herself hugging her stomach again - immediately makes herself stop - 

"But that doesn't make any sense," Hermione says.  And maybe Harriet’s been carrying that idea around in her chest - but hearing someone else say it out loud - and so matter of fact - ignites a blistering kind of panic inside her.  But if Hermione notices, she chooses ignore it: “And I've been here plenty of times since you started teaching - I've seen you interact with him - this simply wasn't there before.  I would have said something if it was.  Tell me again what Charlie said he saw in the forest."

Harriet - shuts her mouth before she can protest.  Blinks.  She doesn't even know why she'd mentioned that part.  What Charlie saw in the forest.  More of that foolish hope, she supposes.  That there's some explanation.  She recoils from it now, utterly disgusted with herself -

"It doesn't matter - " she tries to say -

"A cloak," Hermione says firmly.  Ron shifts angrily, but she ignores him, too.  "He thought it was Voldemort's."

"A cloak can't bite someone, Hermione - "

Ron says it - so Harriet doesn't have to, maybe.  If Snape's behavior doesn't make sense, what Charlie had described makes just as little sense - if not less so, still.  Hermione can search and search and search for her explanations - Harriet doubts she'll find a single one.  For any of it.  This is just life, again, handing Harriet the shit end of the stick -

And if she could just stop feeling sorry for herself for one single fucking second - 

"No," Hermione says - thoughtfully.  It feels dangerous, that tone - Harriet digs her fingers into the high back of her chair, probably drawing harsh lines in the fabric with her nails.  After a suspended pause, Hermione stands abruptly, making both Ron and Harriet jerk.  "Do you think Madame Pince would let me use the library, Harrie - ?"

Ron's mouth drops open.  He gawks at Harriet, who shrugs rather than say out loud: don't look at me - you're the one who married her.

And she says: “I don’t think - ”

Hermione must decide she doesn’t want to hear it - the flimsy lie Harriet’s about to tell, given Hermione's one of the few human beings Pince actually likes - she shakes her head, shoots one single warning look at Ron - and marches right out of the sitting room.

--

Hours later - after Ron had called the house elves and got them to bring Harriet some chocolate ice cream, and Harriet hadn't been able to stop herself from crying a little more - and it's so stupid - she needs to get a hold of herself - and he’d rubbed her back and wrapped an arm around her shoulders and had been clumsy but perfect because he’s her best friend - Hermione returns, a large book braced over her tiny baby bump.

Ron lurches to his feet when he sees this, leaving Harriet tipping awkwardly on the chair they’d been squished into together - cursing, snatching the heavy tome away from her - all while Hermione rolls her eyes.  When he sets it on the low table around which their chairs sit, she uses her wand to flick it open - the pages turn themselves rapidly to a specific -

Ron resumes his seat next to Harriet, squishing into her again, and leans forward, squinting at the open pages.

"What the bloody fuck’s a Lethifold?"

"A Dark magical creature," Hermione recites - even though it probably should be obvious - doesn’t even glare at Ron for the foul language.  She’s got that gleam in her eyes - Harriet’s stomach starts squirming again with a vengeance -

"Looks like a bloody Dementor - "

Harriet sits up a little straighter, nudging Ron out of her way with her hip - looks at only the picture, not the words on the page, and only because she feels she must - not out of any particular real interest or investment.  Ink spreads before her - loose, flowing lines - more a sketch than a proper illustration, though it gets the point across well enough.  It does - rather look like a Dementor.  The flow to its - well, body, for lack of a better word - however sinister.  The ragged edges.  Like a - a cloak, too, really - perhaps even - and she'd seen it enough times - she knows what it had looked like -

It does - this illustration - rather look like Voldemort's bloody cloak.

"Some think they might be related, though obviously, the research on both species is very limited," Hermione frowns.  "And - Lethifolds are typically only found in the tropics, while Dementors - "

"Hang on," Ron looks up at her, his expression scrunching up in a way Harriet hasn't seen in ages - since, maybe, he'd written his last essay for Snape's Defense class, in truth.  “The tropics?  Then why’re you thinking one of these is in the forest?"

She’s glad he’s said it - it’s clearly what Hermione is thinking, after all, though Harriet hadn't had the - the strength, maybe - to vocalize it herself.  That this - bizarre, living cloak had scared the life out of those little Hufflepuffs, and then had torn a ragged wound in Snape’s flesh.  Which, if she’s right - and how often is Hermione wrong, really?  But if she’s right -

"Possibly," Hermione chews her lip.  "Voldemort recruited a number of Dark creatures, after all - including Dementors - it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine he got Lethifolds to travel - he controlled the Dementors well enough - ”

That’s - true.  He had.  He’d set them on innocents - on defenseless Muggles - and he hadn’t hesitated for a second.  Harriet doesn't know the exact count - the Ministry hasn't released the totals, probably for fear of upsetting the general public - but she knows that dozens of people - both with magic and without - had been found soulless - mindless - after the war.  Why would he hesitate with a - not-Dementor?   And where could a tropical fucking not-Dementor possibly go when its master had -

Disappeared?

Harriet leans forward more.  Allows herself to focus on the words.  Reads - with bile slowly crawling up her throat -

- the shape of a cloak -

- aggressive -

- violent attacks, many of them unexplained for many years -

- few known survivors -

- repelled by the Patronus Charm -

- suffocate and then digest their victims by unknown means -

"He was bitten, though," she says quietly.  "Snape.  I saw it - it was massive.  These - these don't sound like they - bite things - "

"Well," Hermione says - she reaches forward to snap the book shut.  Her hand presses to the cover - hard enough, the tips of her fingers turn white.  "Not much is known about these creatures, Harriet.  And it's very difficult to prove when there's been a Lethifold attack at all because they don't leave bodies behind the way Dementors do.  We really don't know how they eat something after they suffocate it - "

"So, what, you’re saying you think they've got a set of teeth in all that - fabric?" Ron asks - lifting both eyebrows. 

"It's possible," Hermione replies - a little snappish - with a little force.

Harriet shuts her eyes.  Dips her chin.  Here it comes - the last fucking thing she needs right now -

"But that doesn't explain why he'd be such a prick to Harrie," Ron snaps back - and she can hear the way they glare at each other for a moment.  Harriet sighs - leans back in her chair.  Her head thumps backwards against the cushion.  Her cheeks are still sticky with tears - she doesn't bother wiping them again yet.  Why - when she may very well cry again before the night is out?

"Again," Hermione says with the kind of exaggerated slowness that is absolutely guaranteed to set Ron off - and for perhaps the millionth time in her life, Harriet wishes they wouldn’t flirt like this, and she especially wishes they wouldn’t do it in front of her.  "There are few known survivors.  And the most famous - the first - Flavius Belby - he didn't let things go beyond the attempt to suffocate.  He repelled it just as he was about to lose consciousness - he said it just - fled after he shot the Patronus at it."

"So, what?" Ron shakes his head.  "You think these things have - what, unknown venom?  That makes them randomly hate people?  And that they infect people with it when they bite them?  With fabric?”

It’s belligerent enough, they might just start screaming at each other.  In front of her.  Again.  And normally, Harriet can stand it - though she certainly doesn’t love it when they row.  She's not sure she can, however, this time - at this moment, when she's feeling so particularly fragile.  But then the silence stretches, and when she chances a look at Hermione, she doesn’t look outraged - she only looks lost in thought.  And Ron is just - staring at her.  Waiting.

Is this - what maturing is?  What it looks like?

"I'll have to look into it more," Hermione finally says - chews her lip again.  "Which I will," she adds, looking at Harriet.

Harriet doesn't - doesn't want any more false hope than she already has - but she also doesn't want to disappoint Hermione, who's getting that research light in her eye again.  She shrugs as a middle ground, glancing away. 

--

Nine Days Later

Minerva apparently shouts at Snape in the middle of the staff room in front of several witnesses after a student had heard Snape telling Harriet to go find somewhere else to breathe, Potter, or simply cease doing it and had been so upset by it, he'd tattled.

Harriet hadn't noticed the student at the time - certainly couldn't say who it was.  She also doesn't witness the shouting, either - because she'd gone to shut herself up in her office again, wrapping herself in her thickest, fluffiest blanket - shoving her feet into her warmest slippers - and curling up in front of the fire because she’d been done with teaching for the day anyway.  The castle has felt particularly cold of late - and that feeling of being on edge has only increased.  The students are all - unsettled - shifty - suspicious - too-quiet - and Harriet hasn't been sleeping - hasn't been eating properly - it's fucking ridiculous that she's getting this way over a man who'd never even been -

She doesn't cry anymore, however.  She refuses.  She won't give him that.

She's left alone for most of the evening - and when the knock on the door comes, she considers ignoring it.  She's tired.  Her bones are stiff from the chill leaking from the castle stones.  Still - after the second knock comes, she stands - she sheds the blankets - she shuffles to her office door.  When she opens it, she finds Charlie Belby - his eyes wide - darting.  His hands twisting together in front of his stomach.  Frightened.  He's frightened.  Harriet sucks in a breath, shoving all thoughts of Snape aside for a moment -

"I - I'm sorry - please don't be mad.  But I - went for a walk - down by the forest again.  I just - wanted to get out of the castle - everything feels so creepy sometimes, and I just wanted some fresh air - "

Harriet unsticks her tongue from the roof of her mouth.  Reaches forward to grasp Charlie's shoulder - cold from his cloak - he's still wearing his cloak, slush dripping from the hem and forming small puddles around his feet - leeches into her palm.  "It's alright," she says - hoarse.  "What's wrong - ?"

He looks up at her with eyes that are just growing wider by the second.

"I think I saw it again," he whispers.  "I think it's still out there, Professor Potter - "

Harriet - lets her hand fall from his shoulder.  Stares at him.

Feeling rather - truth be told - feeling rather helpless.

--

Eleven Days Later

Hermione comes back to the castle acting - well, shifty.

She owls before, at least - gives Harriet time to prepare - to brace herself - and she writes only that she’d like to check on Harriet, says nothing about the research she’d promised, which is more telling than she probably thinks it is.  Harriet receives the letter during her solitary breakfast in her rooms - and despite the omission, her stomach positively writhes with nerves.

"I found this," Hermione tells her in the evening, after Harriet's classes - approximately two minutes after arriving - after asking Harriet if she’s okay and then not really waiting for an answer.  She's clearly simply not able to hold herself back.  She stares at Harriet rather desperately, shoving her own notes under Harriet's nose - Harriet blinks down at the familiar, cramped handwriting, her eyes taking a moment to focus.  She's so tired.  She needs to find a way to get some fucking sleep - she's been having strange nightmares - fucking living cloaks stealing out of the shadows and wrapping themselves around her throat -

When she finally does manage to read:

- unpleasant slice on his shoulder - deep, with a great deal of blood -  in the wake of the wound, his joy turned to ashes in his mouth, and his loathing swelled tenfold - his wife, the light of his life, was driven from their home seven days hence - within the next fortnight, he was diminished - sickly -

Hermione - who knows where she found this.  Likely in some massive, ancient tome not even about fucking magical creatures at all - seemingly completely unrelated - the person who'd written this, clearly, hadn't given Lethifolds a single thought.  Perhaps, even, they hadn't been discovered at the time.  And it sounds - her mouth is developing a very unpleasant taste - it sounds -

"The injury," Hermione says carefully before Harriet’s eyes have even stopped moving - roving over the strip of parchment, "was apparently from a strange cloak hanging on the back of a chair in a pub - a blade was hidden inside it, or so the man thought."

Harriet stares at the words.  Absorbs them.  Understands them - understands, too, what Hermione’s saying without actually saying it.  The madness she’s implying - and it is madness.  It must be.  It can't -

She shakes her head once.

"Harrie - "

"He just hates me, Hermione," Harriet cuts her off - because she can't hear it.  She simply can't.  Her voice has gone hard.  Anger - not meant for Hermione but pointing at her all the same.  Because she’s there.  Because she’s too close.  "He just does."

"But - "

"Hermione," Harriet snaps - snarls - maybe even screams.  "Enough.  I'm tired."

Hermione - fucking finally, though she hadn’t pushed too long or too hard, really - drops it - with a bitten lip and worried eyes.  And she sits with Harriet for a few hours before going home - maybe because she feels guilty.  They eat more ice cream, and they don't really talk much - and about Snape, not at all. 

Harriet refuses to cry, so she doesn't.  She doesn't.

--

Thirteen Days Later

Snape is pale the next time she sees him, in the first week of February.  Very pale.  Unnaturally so, for him.  Even - he even looks - sickly, maybe -

He also sneers at her - though he doesn't say anything, for once.  His mouth quivers like he wants to - his eyes show with a terrible, wild sheen - sweat drips down the sides of his face - and it must be from the effort of keeping his mouth shut - though she doesn't quite know why he'd bother - or why it matters.  It all blurs together now - the insults.  The hatred.  Her own fucking dread.  They stare at each other for a long moment as Snape seemingly struggles violently with himself - and then he whips right by her, his footsteps too-fast, and her own mouth opens before she can even hope to stop it -

“You’ve made your point.”

Snape stops.  She doesn’t see it - she doesn’t turn to look at him yet - but she hears the absence of his footsteps.  Silence - pressing on her chilly ears.

“What’s that?”

For a second, he sounds almost - almost normal - the way he sounded before - when he’d talked to her before.  Not snarled at or snapped at or insulted.  Or - at least he sounds, for the space of a breath, neutral - which is such an improvement, it shakes her very person.  Harriet turns - can't stop herself - looks at him.  At the strange twitching at the edges of his expression - there again, as it has been along with his shaking hands - though it feels more - more prominent - at the moment.  Is it anger?  Strangely, now - it doesn’t quite seem so -

“I get it now,” she says quietly, regardless. It doesn't matter what she thinks she sees in his face - she'll get it wrong, as she always has.  “What a fool I was to think we could ever - ”

She stops.  Can’t voice it.  Can't even make herself voice it.  Swallows the words down.  Alongside more bile.  More tears.

She turns away again - walks away again - before she can make an even bigger fool of herself.  Back in the direction she'd come from, though it doesn't matter.  Not really.  For the first time in ages, he does not say a word at her retreating back.

Later - she can't remember the words, but - but she can't stop thinking about how pale he was.  How there'd seemed to be a hitch in his step as he'd walked away.  She hadn’t seen it - but she’d heard it.  Or, she’d thought she had.

And that single word.  Echoing through her head - cutting through her fear - her misery - every unsettled feeling that's been plaguing her - the students - the castle itself -

Diminished.

Hermione’s gotten to her.  Or the students have gotten to her.  Or Snape - or all three.  It's stupid.  It's so stupid, and she should know better than this.  She does know better than this, though she never really seems to learn.  Even after she'd come to Hogwarts the first time, she'd had plenty of disappointments - she knows better than to have hope in something like this.  But -

But, still - Harriet wanders down to the forest after dark that very night - lights her wand, casting the world in grey and silver and black - and sneaks into the trees alone.

She walks for hours.  In the silence - in the stillness - the usual creatures - the small animals - even the larger ones - are they asleep?  Have the fled - from it, though it's gone - from it, if it's still there?  Her footsteps are too-loud - grating in her ears.  Crunching in the snow -

She's alone for hours.  They stretch and stretch and stretch - she can't ever remember feeling so isolated - not even in childhood.  She can't ever remember -

When she sees it - when she stumbles upon it - the dumbest - the purest - luck - she -

Stops -

A clearing.  One like - so many others in these trees.  Harriet's wand light spills across the space - spreads, beating back shadow.  She stares.  At the blood - somehow, still so red - even weeks later.  Preserved, maybe, by the bitter chill.  At the black fabric on the ground.  Certainly, Snape had been wearing a black cloak that night, but - but there's an awful lot of it - and his cloak really hadn't looked that tattered in the morning -

In her first year, she'd heard fabric slithering along the forest floor in the dead of night.  She remembers it sometimes -  how it had sounded - how it had prickled against her skin - against her will.  She dreams of it sometimes - despite all efforts to stop it - despite everything that happened after it.  And, right now -

It's like snake speech.  Whispering - in a way.  Telling her something - though she doesn't know what.

And it's - too loud -

She whirls in place - casts her light about, her heartbeat in her throat. 

Sees nothing - behind her - around her.  Nothing at all.

--

Fourteen Days Later

Hermione - and it's such a credit to her - and their friendship - and it's nearly enough to make Harriet cry again - returns quickly when called.  Possibly even drops everything to come - and Harriet will never be able to properly thank her for it.

"I need you to tell me how to fix it - him - or how to kill it - I dunno," Harriet says - all in a rush, the words knocking into each other in her mouth - waves away the look on Hermione's face - the pinched expression.  "I went down into the forest last night - there's something still out there - and it's wrong - "

Hermione keeps staring for a long moment before she nods.  Reaches into her cloak.  Pulls out a massive folded chunk of parchment.

"Okay," she says slowly, crossing Harriet's office to her desk - carefully nudging a stack of ungraded student essays out of the way to spread out her notes.  The cramped writing has increased tenfold over the parchment surface - curving writing, some of it changing, too-slanted or too-sloppy - this is clearly the work of multiple days and nights - evidence of Hermione walking away sometimes but always - always going back. 

Tears - again - prickle at her eyes.

"Can he be fixed, 'Mione?" she asks - croaks - her voice small.  "Can we undo it - whatever it did to him - ?"

"It would help," Hermione is positively gnawing at her lip - she shoots Harriet a worried look, "if we could get a sample of - it.  The venom, I mean - "

And - maybe Harriet's not as stupid as she's been thinking.  She lurches around her desk, reaching wildly for her locked drawer - wrenches it open, gathering a fistful of the black tatters she'd taken off the ground from the clearing.  She spills it over the desk and parchment, breathless: "I found this - out there - d'you think - ?"

Hermione's eyes widen - get that spark of academia again - and Harriet can't even be annoyed by it - by how inappropriate it might feel under the circumstances - because she can't take it as anything but a good sign.  "This is - ?"

"Some of it might be," Harriet gestures at it - a little wildly.  "I - he was wearing a dark cloak - that night, but - "

Hermione nods once.  Uses both hands to gather the scraps into a small pile on top of the parchment.

"Give me some time," she whispers.  "I'll figure something out.  I promise."

--

Harriet - maybe she should hesitate.  Maybe she should pause to think for just a second -

Maybe she should -

But it's - it's Snape.  It's Snape - and it's not even about her and him, really.  It's not.  That fucking thing - that fucking thing Voldemort left out there - and it doesn't even matter if it'd been on purpose.  She's not going to allow Snape to - diminish, or whatever - without - fuck.  He'd barely survived Nagini.  He's - he's not going to suffer like this - and she suspects he is suffering.  Hasn't he been getting shakier and shakier each time she sees him?  Hasn't he looked paler and paler - doesn't he look ill?  Hadn't he made himself fucking bleed -

Even through Minerva's anger at him - Harriet's beginning to pick up on a hint of worry there, too.  The same worry that's growing in her own chest.

She'd found the scraps, yes.  And she'd given them to Hermione - but - but what if there's not enough of it?  What if too much of it had come from Snape, and only miniscule pieces had come from - it?  Can she sit by while it's down in the fucking forest, lurking about - waiting to drag someone off so it can eat them - ?  No.  She can't - she can't - not when she's fully fucking capable of going out there and getting as many goddamn pieces as they might need -

Fuck Tom Riddle.  He's dead - he's fucking dead - but if she could, she'd resurrect him so she could kill him again for this - for terrorizing them - all of them - like this -

Very late in the evening - as she's preparing - long after she's made the decision - she checks the Marauder's Map - the first time she's opened it, in truth, in ages.  She should've, probably, tried to use it to dodge Snape these last few weeks - it hadn't even occurred to her.  Of course, now she needs it to dodge everyone - she's always been a piss poor liar, and any of her colleagues would see right through her and know something is wrong, and some of them would probably try to appeal to her common sense - and she doesn't have time for it.  Not tonight.  She searches for a clear path - finds it quickly.  Looks a bit more - sees -

Severus Snape in his office.  Not alone.  Hermione Granger is with him.  Perhaps this should make her pause - when nothing else has.

It doesn't.

She doesn't ask anyone to go with her when she leaves - no point.  She doesn't tell anyone she's going at all - of course.  Hypocritical?  Oh, most certainly yes.  But she doesn't care.  They hadn't fought so long and so hard and given so fucking much so it could - so it could end like -

Like this.

--

The forest is painfully quiet again.  Painfully still.  The creatures - fled?  Probably.  She can't even really blame them.  And it helps.  The silence - ringing in her ears.  The cold - biting at her cheeks.  It makes it easier to find the clearing again - makes it easier to knock about there - stomping through the snow - breathing loudly - muttering to herself - making a general nuisance of herself - just as Snape has accused her of being of late -

No traps.  She's not going to waste time or energy on setting traps that might not work at all.  When it comes - it'll be a fight, just the way it always was between her and Voldemort.  And she always won, didn't she, when it had been her and Voldemort - ?

And the slithering sounds -

It happens after ages - it happens too soon.  The creature spreads like inky darkness into her circle of light - seems to stain the snow.  It's - honestly eerie, how accurate Charlie's description had been.  And it does - it does look like Voldemort's fucking cloak.  Billowy - ragged - fucking dramatic.  He always had been - for all the good it ever did him.  Harriet stills her feet in the very center of the clearing - grips her wand - watches in silence - in stillness - and the cloak creeps forward.  She could almost believe it being disturbed by a stray breeze with how slowly it moves - only there's no wind, and there's nothing truly natural about its movement, besides.  It creeps - and it creeps - and it creeps - closer closer closer -

And it rears before Harriet expects it -

She falls flat on her arse when it makes contact, tearing right through her too-quick - her messy shield - and it feels like fabric - it does - but it's also wrong - it's so wrong - and its grip is hot hot hot on her skin.  It's attached to her ankle - it slips beneath her trousers - beneath her socks - presses - burning - into her skin.  No wonder it's fucking tropical - it's heat where Dementors are cold - it's searing - it's a miracle, frankly, Snape hadn't come out with horrible burns to go with the bite - or maybe he had, and she just hadn't seen them.  Maybe Poppy hadn't seen them, either - that would be just like him - to hide it -

It twists her - she's thrown onto her stomach - dragged, her hands scrabbling for purchase in the snow - her wand nearly slips out of her grip, but she catches it at the last second -

"Expecto Patronum - "

It's not a surprise - of course it's not a surprise - that the stag doesn't come.  How could it - with how fucking miserable she's been?  With how fucking lonely?  Harriet curses - and the Lethifold shoves itself up her fucking pant leg - tightens it impossibly - fuck, no wonder it kills people by suffocating them.  It might not even be on purpose - if it gets beneath their clothes, it must - cut off all air - all fucking circulation.  Her leg is screaming in pain besides - searing - is it fucking cooking her?  Fuck - fuck fuck fuck -

"Expecto Patronum!"

A wobbly mist - the faintest silver - cutting through the darkness that had descended the moment her wand had snuffed out - and it's so connected to her - the beast - she feels the way it seems to - wince away from it.  It doesn't retreat entirely - why would it, with a Patronus so weak, it's not even really a Patronus at all?  Why would it - ?

Harriet grits her teeth -

Hermione's up in the castle.  Right now.  With Snape.  One of her best friends, and the man that Harriet - and it must be because - she's trying to - help him.  She must have those scraps with her - she must be - what?  Trying to - treat him?  Trying to - ? 

The Lethifold tightens over her calf - Harriet swears - she swears - as she digs her free hand into the snow - as she bites back a scream - that she can smell burning flesh -

If Hermione has enough pieces of the creature - if she fixes Snape tonight - if Harriet disappears out here - snuffed into silence because she'd let her fucking emotions get the best of her again -

No.  She can't.  She can't - not like this -

"Expecto Patronum - Expecto Patronum - Expecto - "

Maybe Hermione will fix him tonight.  Maybe - maybe none of this - none of this anger and hatred - maybe none of it was real - maybe all of it was in her head - in his head - some relic Voldemort somehow left behind - to hurt them - as if he'd known - to hurt them - one final time -

The stag erupts from the tip of her wand - so bright, it blinds her for more than a second.  The Lethifold jerks violently against her - it tries - it tries immediately - to extract itself from her pant leg as the stag turns on soundless hooves - as it rears, tossing its head - its antlers pass through the reaching, skeletal tree branches above them.  Harriet keeps her eyes on it as she wrenches her leg in the opposite direction - it's a little stuck, the beast - it's struggling - and the stag's hooves hit the earth so hard, it seems to shake the clearing around them -

"Fuck you - fucking get off - "

Harriet kicks her leg - bites her lips against the pain - so hard she draws blood - tears prickle at her eyes and spill - biting - freezing on her cheeks.  The black mass writhes - almost grey in the silvery light - the stag paces, impatient - distressed -

They separate -

Harriet - perhaps even years later - can't say what possesses her then.  Her anger is a living, breathing thing - the pain is blurring her vision.  She's not thinking - there's only feeling - and almost none of it is good - almost all of it is wild fury - all except for that tiny core of hope.  That little - that bruised thing she holds inside herself.  That thing that no one - nothing - has ever quite snuffed out - no matter how hard they'd tried -

She lurches after the creature - seizes it with both gloved hands.  The heat of it sears even through the dragonhide - she grits her teeth against it.  She bears down with her weight - presses it into the snow.  Her Patronus gets closer - bathes both Harriet and it with light.  Harriet scrambles with her entire body - uses her knees - her arms - even her face - to bury the body in the snow -

It struggles.  It slips against her fingers.  It nearly twists away - fabric moving as it just shouldn't -

It struggles - and it struggles - and Harriet buries it, and buries it, and buries it still more.  The clearing is silent - it's silent - but for her breathing - her sobbing - and the brush of a cloak on slushy, frozen earth -

It struggles - until it doesn't.  Until it stops.

--

Fifteen Days Later

She has to go to the Hospital Wing.  Somehow.  She has to get there - as when she chances a quick look, the skin of her calf is shiny red, catching in the light of her lingering Patronus.

He follows her as she limps - the stag.  He follows her in his silence - coming close occasionally - when she nearly trips.  When she chokes out yet another sob.  He follows - he follows - he stays with her until she reaches the edge of the trees.  He walks behind her - side by side with the Lethifold Harriet is dragging behind her.  If she didn't know any better, she'd think it a cloak - she would.  She might even think it his - if someone tried to tell her it was, she'd have no real way to dispute it.

The stag finally fades when she crosses onto the open grounds. 

It's harder to walk when he's gone.  It's harder to move her feet up the beaten path through the snow - but she forces herself forward.  She has no choice.  She puts one foot in front of the other - makes quite a racket, probably, in the silence.  Must, actually - because eventually - thankfully - because eventually -

"Harrie?"

She can't help the sob - Hagrid emerges, a massive black shadow, from out of the night - and he catches her before she can outright collapse.  He holds her in his large, warm arms - gathers her carefully to his chest.  So gentle - as he always is.  He tucks her beneath his chin - whispers to her as her head lolls.  She knows he asks what happened - she can't answer him.  He tries to make her let go of the Lethifold - she refuses, only tightening her grip on its ragged body.  Eventually - it's all a haze - she knows he bears her inside.  She knows there's commotion - he must've called someone -

Voices -

What happened - ?

Harrie, can you hear me?

She's being carried.  They're moving quickly - jostling her about.  Up - up - up -

And then - softness -

Hermione - help me here -

What is that - ?

And - before she loses consciousness entirely -

Where is she?  Step aside - step aside, I'll not tell you again - where is she - ?  Tell me where she is - !

And -

Blackness.

--

Seventeen Days Later

Little Charlie Belby comes to see her at the very end of her convalescence in her office.  The last in a long line of visitors, including Hagrid (six times in two days, every time with squiggly flowers he must've conjured himself - that bring tears to her eyes each time), Poppy (to check on her over and over and over - so many times, Harriet loses count - tutting and frowning excessively each time and bringing her a potion that cools the lingering heat in her leg), Minerva (four times, her spectacles flashing furiously, her mouth such a thin, thin line each time), Ron and Hermione (they've practically been living in her rooms, waiting on her hand and foot to keep her from putting weight on her healing leg) -

But no - no Snape -

"Professor Potter - " the boy stares with wide eyes.  She's looking better than she has, certainly - but he still seems on the verge of tears.  "I - "

She doesn't want him to cry.  She definitely does not want him to cry.  She's had enough of tears.

"That thing in the forest," Harriet cuts him off firmly.  "It's dead.  I killed it.  I'm sure I did."

Charlie blinks at her rapidly. 

"Snape said," he says in a rush.  "At breakfast yesterday.  He said you killed it, and you brought the body back, and it definitely won't be out there anymore."

Harriet swallows hard.  Barely resists the urge to glance away from him - from his wide, searching eyes.  Her heart is beating too hard again - she's starting to feel a bit - dizzy.

"Yes," she makes herself say.  And: "You don't have to worry anymore."

"Oh, I'll always worry about stuff - Potions, especially - I'm rubbish at Potions," Charlie says - still in a rush - babbling, really - a bemused little twist to his mouth.  "I - I guess I just wanted to say - we're - so lucky to have you, Professor."

Harriet - doesn't know what to say to this.  She really does not.  It's not the first time she's been confronted with such words, of course - but she'll never get used to it, and she'll never have any kind of response - let alone an appropriate one.  She opens her mouth awkwardly - still utterly unsure of what to say -

"Yes," Snape says quietly before she can form words.  "We are."

Harriet's heart stops.  It does.  Too abruptly - especially after beating so fast - she grabs wildly for her doorframe to keep from keeling over entirely -

Charlie leaps about a foot in the air, whirling to face Snape where he's snuck up behind him - snuck up on both of them.

"I need to have a word with Professor Potter," he continues quietly - keeps his eyes on only the boy, his expression - so utterly neutral - Harriet swallows again - again - can't quite seem to clear her throat.  Charlie's shoulders jerk high - brush the bottoms of his ears.  "Excuse us, Mr. Belby."

Charlie - hesitates.  Tosses a quick peek at Harriet over his shoulder.  Nods slowly when Harriet fails spectacularly to do anything at all.  Mutters a quiet: "Bye, Professor," though it's obvious - it's very obvious - he'd rather not leave -  

He'd probably heard about the insults.  Everyone has.

Harriet watches him go.  Watches him hesitate at the end of the corridor before turning and disappearing from view.  Forces herself to keep breathing all the while.  Forces herself -

"Hermione Granger," Snape says abruptly - after a stretching silence that nearly pushes a scream from Harriet's too-full throat, "brought to me pieces of the beast last night.  Insisted there must have been venom in my bloodstream - but she did not need to convince me.  I was all too aware of it - thought I was powerless to stop it.  Nothing I tried worked - I dosed myself with several antivenoms, but the result was always the same.  Those - pieces - were what I needed to create an appropriate treatment for myself.  I understand I have you to thank for that."

Harriet blinks rapidly.  She stares at her hand on the doorframe.  Her eyes are prickling again - no.  No.  She's not going to cry.  Not now.  Not now - not when -

"I can apologize," Snape continues - softer, still.  "And I will - however many times you wish to hear it.  But I understand that it will never be enough."

Harriet sucks in a breath.  It's wet - and quivering - and too telling.  She presses her free hand to her stomach to keep it from shaking.

"I want you know, for whatever it's worth to you," he breathes after another moment of impossible stillness, "that none of the things I said to you during that time were true - nor were they reflective of how I feel.  I - could not stop myself.  No matter how hard I tried."

Anger - that's anger creeping into his voice - but it's also a vague sort of helplessness.  Harriet thinks of shaking hands - of wild black eyes - of blood dripping from too-tight fists -

Her stomach churns.

"It wasn't your fault," she whispers back.

Snape doesn't say anything - which is enough disagreement that she can't help it - she turns her head, and she glares at him - full force, jutting her chin out for maximum impact, her own temper rising with sudden and frankly shocking force.  He's staring at her - staring at her.  He's looked at her plenty of times over the years - fucking obviously - but never - never like this.  Never with - with so much -

And then, of course, his eyes flick down.  To her injured leg.

"You're still injured," he says - his lip curling - more anger, still.  This - she sees it quite clearly.  It's pointed entirely at himself.  "I understand you intend to return to classes tomorrow - I ask you wait a few more days - "

"I'm fine - "

"Harriet, please - "

She jerks.  She can't help it.  He's - he's never called her by her first name.

Snape's expression twists.

"Please," he repeats -

Desperate.

She can do nothing but nod in the face of that look.

--

She spends the days wrapped in blankets in her rooms.  Has been - continues, for a time, with Snape's - blessing.  She does cry - can't help herself.  Cries - relief?  Confusion?  She'd accepted it - she's come to realize.  She'd accepted that he'd hated her - she'd taken it inside herself - and now - now, faced with proof that he doesn't, she's having a hard time - believing it.  Is it fear?  She doesn't know.  It might be more a kind of resignation.  An expectation - ingrained in her very being -

Minerva comes in the evening to check on her.  She has a - very strange look on her face.

"I came to make sure you're alright," she says - which is strange, given that's what she's been doing, though with significantly more annoyance prior.  But then: "I understand you spoke with Severus today."

Oh.

"I'm fine," Harriet says - tries for dismissive.  Maybe even manages it.  And, because she can't help herself: "Is Snape okay?"

The strange look intensifies.

"He is - " Minerva starts - pauses.  Shakes her head, her mouth quivering slightly.  "Perhaps I should not tell you this, but - he is devastated, Harriet.  By how he treated you."

Harriet looks at the fire crackling merrily beside them.  Blinks rapidly - more tears threatening.  "It wasn't his fault," she repeats quietly.  This - she has no problem believing.  Accepting.  It's true.  It's not even, really, the Lethifold's fault - they're not intelligent creatures, Hermione had told her a few days ago.  They're - animals.  They operate on instinct.  If there's anyone to blame, it's -

"No," Minerva agrees quietly.  "It most certainly was not.  We've kept the corpse you brought in - we'll be submitting it for examination to several prominent creature researchers.  What happened - as awful as it was - it may very well help people, Harriet."

Harriet hopes it does.  Fervently - she's not sure she's ever hoped for anything more.  She huddles more into her blankets, pulling them up to cover her own quivering mouth.

"You'll tell me, please," Minerva adds, softer still.  "If you're not alright?"

"Yeah," Harriet nods, the words muffled.  "I'll tell you."

--

Twenty Days Later

She avoids him for three days after that first conversation.

It's not - that she doesn't believe him when he says he didn't mean it.  She does.  And she knows it's not his fault - or her fault.  It's no one's fault but a dead man.  Except - except - well, Hermione thinks she's got stunted growth emotionally because of the Dursleys - she's said it plenty of times - but it's never felt like more the truth to Harriet than it does now.  Because she does believe him - she does.  But she also -

Doesn't.

It's just - scary.  It's fucking terrifying.  To trust someone.  After a fucking parade of disappointments.  Even Ron had walked away from her once - and even she and Hermione have had vicious rows.  And those are just the big things.  She's so aware of little things, too.  Things other people might not even notice.  Sometimes, she thinks Molly avoids being around her because Harriet got one of her sons killed.  Sometimes, she thinks Andromeda gets short with her because Harriet's alive and Tonks is dead.  Sometimes -

And Snape.  Snape - he's just -

She returns to the Great Hall twenty days after he was bitten.  She forces herself to.  It's scary - but so is sitting alone with her thoughts.  So is spiraling over and over into the same worries - the same fears.  She can't stop thinking about it - and it wouldn't be very Gryffindor of her to shy away from it - to obsess over it, hidden away - rather than face it.  She's tired, yes - she's tired of hurting, and she's tired of feeling alone.  But she's also tired of disappointing herself - she's tired of feeling like a fucking coward.  And if there's one thing she's learned in the last three weeks, it's that she's not alone.  She isn't.  No matter how much she sometimes might convince herself she is -

Snape is tense almost the moment she sits down at the staff table - three places away from him, Minerva and Hagrid between them.  He holds himself so still - he speaks very little.  Trying, as she had tried, to not draw attention to himself.  He seems to be - trying not to force his presence on her, even as they are in close proximity.  And Harriet -

He leaves the Hall first, his plate only half cleared, and Harriet does not let herself think about it. 

She follows him.

"Snape - Severus," she calls after him as he sweeps up a deserted corridor - aiming, clearly, to go back to his office.  And he stops dead in his tracks - nearly the same moment her voice sounds.  It would be funny, maybe, the way his boots squeak on the floor - it is enough that she has to bite back a smile.

He turns to her after only the briefest pause.  And he does meet her eyes.

"Yes?" he asks quietly.

He's brave.  He always has been - and even when she'd hated him, she hadn't been able to not see that.  He's brave.  And she can be, too.  In this.

She takes a slow, careful breath.

"It wasn't your fault," she repeats - watches his expression twist again - the same way it did before.  "It wasn't.  There's nothing to forgive - "

Snape's lip has started curling.  He glances away - his jaw works furiously.  "Potter, I hurt you," he says roughly - his voice shakes at the edges, though it's - different now.  Devastated, Minerva had said - "It doesn't matter why - "

"Yeah, it does, actually," Harriet says firmly.  Reminds herself - reminds him.  "It's not your fault, Severus.  And I don't want you beating yourself up over it."

Snape lets out a breath of his own.  Loud.  Harsh.  His jaw works -

"Come with with me," he mutters.  "I'd rather not have this conversation here."

--

He leads her to his office.  Lets her climb the spiral staircase in front of him - his hand hovers at her lower back, though he doesn't - touch.  Inside, he sets her up in a dark armchair by the fire - which he lights and increases in strength and brightness - enough, she's bathed with lovely warmth.  He prepares tea in silence behind her - it smells of peppermint.  When he brings it to her, he offers, too, a tiny vial of familiar potion -

"Poppy's been giving me this," Harriet says as she takes it - brings it to her lips.  Severus glances away again.

"Yes," he says - lowers himself into his own armchair. 

"Have you - did you brew it?"

Stupid question.  Severus brews all of the potions for the ward - Slughorn is too lazy.  He busies himself with serving them each tea - grunts the affirmative.  He's - again - avoiding her eyes.

A cup of tea sets itself in front of her with a wave of his hand.  Harriet picks it up carefully.

"Thanks," she says - for the tea, for the potion.  For - not shutting her out, though she knows he must've been horribly tempted.  He nods - doesn't pick up his own cup.  Stares into the fire for a moment -

"How is it feeling?  Your leg?"

Harriet shifts her weight in her chair.  In truth - it's improved, but she suspects - and Poppy has confirmed - that it'll be some weeks still before it's completely healed.  The skin is still a horrible, raw red - the potions and pastes for healing wounds aren't working on it as they should.  Probably because of what had put the marks there - they'd given her the antivenom, too, just in case, when the wounds had first shown themselves to linger. 

She's quiet too long.  Severus sits forward in slightly in his chair.

"May I see it?"

The blush that immediately floods her cheeks doesn't embarrass her - can't, really, after the last few weeks.  She can't vocalize it - doesn't dare try, lest she croak permission.  She merely nods again - and Severus slides out of his chair to balance on one knee in front of her - and, fuck.  That's a lot.  That's quite a lot.  The image sears itself in her brain - imprints itself - to linger - to stay.  He wraps two large hands carefully around her calf - guides her foot between his - legs -

His fingers are careful - so gentle - when he rolls up the cuff of her jeans.  She watches his face carefully - watches the shadow of anger and helplessness flicker across his features - watches his jaw work furiously.  But his hands - the coolness of his palms and fingertips dance over the burns - stroke so softly - and it's soothing in a way none of the potions, even, have been.  Harriet slumps backwards against the cushions behind her - lets her head loll a bit.  Her eyes flutter - she exhales, shaky.  His eyes land on her face - he's watching carefully, she knows.  He doesn't want - he's afraid - he'll hurt her again -

Harriet's afraid, too, a little.  She's afraid, but - it's fading.  It is.  And with a little more time, it'll fade even more, still -

"D'you think," she asks - a bit sleepily, "that he brought it on purpose?  That he left it behind on purpose?"

Severus is quiet for a long moment - his hands continue to stroke gently over her leg.  "I've asked myself that dozens of times over the last couple of weeks," he finally murmurs.  "It felt too - targeted.  But, no - I don't believe he did.  I don't believe he ever thought he would lose."

Harriet opens her eyes - smiles at him.  His lips part - his eyes widen -

"I don't think he did, either," she says quietly.  "Mostly because I don't think he ever understood - "

"Understood what?" he asks - low - a little breathless?  Maybe.  He doesn't look away - she doesn't either.  She lets her smile grow, however sleepy it must be.

She doesn't answer him out loud - but she doesn't have to.  She watches it creeping into his expression - warmth.  Maybe a little awe -

Hope.