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Chapter Fourteen—A Surprising End to the Term

“How was your last lesson, Neville?”

Neville smiles hesitantly at Harry, who’s leaning over the rack of potted plants that Neville has started in their secret classroom. He spirited some of the plants away from Herbology class. It’s not stealing if Professor Sprout would let him have them for the asking, he reassures himself. He just didn’t ask.

And some of the plants are from his own seeds and cuttings. The room is starting to fill with a mixture of sweet and soil smells, and Neville is relaxing more and more when he comes here to tend and water and prune and cast the little spells the plants need.

“Snape was actually all right,” Neville says. “Not kind, you could never call him that, but he told me how to clear my mind. He never did that before. And he didn’t tear into my worst memories, and he didn’t leave me with as painful a headache.”

“You’ll tell us if he gets bad again, right?”

“Of course I will,” Neville says. He doesn’t know how Harry and Blaise made Snape stop being so mean to him. He didn’t ask. But he knows they get results.

If Snape starts teaching Occlumency horribly again, then Neville will tell them, because he knows they’ll do something about it.

“Good.” Harry eases back and glances along the rack of orchids Neville is coaxing into bloom with just the use of small spells. “How did you get them to grow like this? They’re beautiful, but all the books I’ve read said it’s really hard to make orchids grow outside a greenhouse.”

Neville happily starts explaining, especially since Harry pays attention and nods along and sometimes scribbles down notes in a small journal he carries around with him. Zabini would sneer and roll his eyes if he were here, but he’s not. Neville has to admit that he enjoys himself the most when it’s just Harry and him.

And if Zabini was somehow involved in making Snape back off, if they did something illegal…

Everything will be fine as long as Neville doesn’t actually ask.

*

“And you think Snape is going to keep his word?”

“Yeah.” Harry gives Blaise a small smile as he lounges in the chair of the classroom they’ve made theirs, just he and Blaise, without sharing with Longbottom or Patil or Goldstein or any of the rotating cast of other people who sometimes come to study with them. The corners are alive with shadows thanks to some wards Blaise has learned from Mother and there’s a brazier hovering in the middle of the room above the floor. Artemis is curled up near the heat. “He wouldn’t like what I found to be spread all over the school.”

“What did you find?”

Harry eyes him, then takes a photograph out of his pocket. It’s obviously a copy, but it still recognizably shows a younger Professor Snape. The other person is a red-haired girl Blaise doesn’t know, but her eyes…

“Snape and your mum?”

Harry laughs a little. It’s a dark, gentle sound that Blaise has never heard from him before. He immediately wants to hear it again, and his hand twitches with the desire to reach out and touch Harry. “Yes. It’s strange, isn’t it? But from the expression in his eyes, I could see that he was obsessed with her. And she was Muggleborn. Maybe not everyone in Slytherin would care that their Head of House was obsessed with one, but he would.”

“You took a chance that he would. You didn’t know for sure.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Harry.”

Harry sits up and cocks his head at Blaise. “What is it, Blaise? I promise, you’re not less my friend or something like that because I handled protecting Neville on my own.”

Blaise shakes his head. Perhaps jealousy does stalk him in the odd moment now and then, but that isn’t what he’s thinking of now. “I just—do you know how dangerous Professor Snape is? And you blackmailed him as if it was nothing at all?”

“It wasn’t nothing. I had to protect Neville.”

“What—what would you do to protect me, if you had to?”

Harry leans forwards. The firelight catches and gleams in his eyes, making them shine in odd ways. “Assuming your mother couldn’t do it for some reason and you were being blackmailed or there was some other reason that meant you couldn’t…”

“Yes?”

“Whatever it took. I would destroy them.”

Blaise starts. He wanted to hear Harry laugh in that dark, gentle way, but it’s nothing compared to his longing to hear Harry talk a lot in this way, as if he’s going to transform into a dragon and rip Blaise’s enemies apart.

No one else but Mother has ever done that for him. Blaise knows, in some ways, that he’s lucky he has even one person who will. But he’s wanted more, wanted people who wouldn’t just do it because Blaise is their blood kin. And he also thought he would never get that because of Mother’s reputation.

Harry will do that.

Blaise will do it back for him.

They smile at each other, in perfect accord.

*

“It’s unlike you to be so interested in the Ravenclaws, Severus.”

Filius’s voice is jovial, but with a warning underneath it. Severus twitches a shoulder at him and keeps watching the Ravenclaw table. Harry Potter is sitting between Goldstein and Patil—the brighter twin—and talking about something that apparently involves many hand gestures.

Quidditch, Severus would guess. That game seems like the kind of subject first-years would be interested in. Especially first-years descended from James Potter.

Except that the boy who blackmailed him didn’t resemble James Potter at all.

Severus grimaces and reaches for the cup of pure water in front of him. He drinks nothing else when he has a Potions class right after breakfast. Too much temptation to soften the coming blow otherwise.

“Who are you interested in among the Ravenclaws, Severus?”

Filius will not shut up this time, apparently. Severus faces him. “Harry Potter,” he says smoothly. “I had thought the boy showed a severe lack of talent in Potions, but it appears I may have been wrong.”

“The poor boy.”

Severus has to bite back a sneer. Potter has been twisting the other professors around his fingers with sob stories, has he? “In what way?”

“He has so many troubles with wanded magic,” Filius says, shaking his head until his hair whips his ears. “He can get the charms, eventually, but he has to try again and again. He says he matched well with his wand in Ollivander’s shop, but that was before he tried any formal spells. I’m not sure if it’s a difficulty with the wand or just a low level of power.”

Severus narrows his eyes. “I haven’t heard anyone else talk about that.”

“Few of us have reason to pay attention to random children who aren’t causing trouble in class, Severus.”

Severus grits his teeth over the implied rebuke. “You think he would have less trouble with magic that doesn’t involve wands?”

“Yes. Pomona and Aurora say he does well enough in their classes. But Minerva and Quirinus told me he has to practice Transfigurations and Defensive spells over and over as well. Mr. Potter seems interested in both classes, but frustrated at his lack of progress.”

Severus stares over again at Potter. Now he’s leaning back and listening to Goldstein with an eager expression as the other boy points to something in a book and swoops his hand back and forth, apparently imitating a descending broom.

Well.

A student with low power and less skill in class somehow had the confidence and control needed to blackmail him?

That does not make sense. Potter does not fit.

Severus narrows his eyes. He will find out the truth, and make the facts fit.

*

“You almost lost your arm, Sirius.”

Moony’s voice is subdued as he bends over Sirius’s arm and works to repair the damage where the tentacle of a massive plant grabbed Sirius and nearly pulled him into the mudhole it was sitting in to join its roots forever. Sirius grimaces and wonders if he should try to make a joke, but he’s shaken up.

“I want you to stop this.”

“Investigating the Horcruxes?”

Moony takes a step back, stares at Sirius’s arm for a moment as if making sure the regrown skin and muscle tissue will stay there, then shakes his head as he reaches for the vial of pain-killing potion standing on a shelf near the wall. “No. Rushing through it.”

“The sooner we face it, the sooner I can get back to Harry.”

Moony gives him a knowing look as he tips the vial towards Sirius’s lips. Sirius grimaces and reaches up to hold it with his left hand. “And it would be worthwhile to get back to him if You-Know-Who can still return from the dead? You want him to live in a world so dangerous that you would be risking his life every time he drew a breath?”

Sirius sighs and leans back as he feels the pain surging through his arm begin to depart. He’ll still need to rest the limb for a few days, but that’s a fuck of a lot better than losing it. “I just—want him to have a family, Moony.”

Moony takes a step back and becomes Remus again, losing the manic gleam in his eyes that always makes it impossible to think of him as anything but his nickname. “I know, but he has one, Sirius. He’s survived this long. He’ll be waiting for you. Just—don’t rush so much that you’re going to die before you ever get to meet him properly.”

Sirius grimaces and slides his hand over his face. Remus is right. He really took too many risks with the last few threats that the book required them to face, the huge intelligent plant only one of them. “All right. If you do the same.”

“I wasn’t rushing.”

“Oh, yeah? Who ran beneath that arch made of jade without even checking to see if there was a scorpion above it?”

“No one could have anticipated that!”

“Who decided that he should grab hold of that wooden ladle-like thing dangling from the ceiling and yank—”

“Yes, yes, all right, I take your point.” Remus shakes his head. “We both stop rushing, and we both get back to Harry in one piece and give him the family he’s always dreamed of. Okay?”

Sirius smiles. “Deal.”

*

“Are you all right, Neville?”

Neville has wandered into the classroom where he has his plants set up looking dazed and a little ill. Harry doesn’t like how long it takes Neville to blink and focus on him, and he’s less than convinced by the thin smile Neville dredges up.

“I’m fine,” he whispers. “I’m—just fine.”

“You’re late,” Harry says, and feels Artemis stir in his pocket. Since their encounter with the troll, she seems to think that every little thing being out of place means they’re going to be in danger. Harry presses on her to get her to stay where she is and eyes Neville. “Are you sure you’re fine?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Neville shakes his head and blinks again and looks more like himself. “Got caught in that one trick step on the southern staircase. I know that I should be able to avoid it, but I never think about it…”

He chatters on, while Harry helps him tend the plants and eyes him. Neville sounds almost normal, but not completely. And it hasn’t escaped Harry’s notice that he was supposed to meet with Professor Quirrell for some kind of dueling lesson before lunch.

Harry waits until they’re almost done giving the plants water before he asks casually, “How was Professor Quirrell?”

“I didn’t see him today,” Neville says, frowning at Harry over his shoulder for a second before he goes back to cooing at a strawberry plant with large, star-shaped leaves.

Harry stays for the rest of the time they’ve agreed to spend together, but the instant Neville has disappeared around the corner, he’s heading for the Slytherin common room.

*

“I didn’t think you cared about Ravenclaws, Nott.”

“But you’re a fascinating Ravenclaw.”

Blaise quickens his steps as soon as he hears the voices. Ignis started getting agitated ten minutes ago, which is usually a reliable signal that Harry needs to see him, and so Blaise started towards the classroom they use that’s closest to the dungeons. But it sounds like Nott is there before him.

He steps through the door, and is just in time to see Nott falling backwards, a puff of stone dust shaped like a snake wrapped around his legs. It’s gone by the time Nott sits up, his smile gone for once, his eyes locked on Harry.

Blaise steps up behind him, taking a moment to make sure that Ignis is concealed in his robe pocket, and presses his wand against the back of Nott’s neck. “Did you have something to say, Nott?” he asks softly.

Nott freezes for a long moment, and then leans forwards and laughs. Blaise’s stomach crawls at the sound of that laughter, but he looks over Nott’s head at Harry. Harry just shakes his head.

He’s not hurt, then. Blaise kicks Nott, hard, at the base of the spine and listens to his laughter leaving him in a wheeze. “Get out of here, Nott.”

“Professor Snape might have something to say about you mistreating me in defense of a Ravenclaw, Zabini,” Nott says, and levers himself up with the help of the wall. “Especially that particular one.”

It doesn’t surprise Blaise that Nott’s heard about the way Snape treats Harry in Potions despite not sharing the Ravenclaw class. But before he can say something, Harry leans forwards and smiles.

“He won’t have anything to say, Nott. Trust me on this.”

Nott stares at Harry with his lips slightly parted. At one point, Blaise thinks he’s going to say something, but in the end, he only shakes his head and turns to leave the classroom. He doesn’t look at either of them as he goes.

“What was he doing here?” Blaise asks, kicking the door shut behind him.

Harry grimaces even as he takes Artemis out of his pocket and gently caresses her. She twines around his wrist, hissing something that Blaise doesn’t think he needs Harry to translate. “He was behind me, but I didn’t know that. He saw me come in here, and he came in, too. Then he started hinting that he knew all these things about me.”

“Does he?”

“Nothing important.”

Blaise watches Harry narrowly for a moment, then nods. Harry tells him most of the important things, if not everything. He’ll trust that Nott doesn’t have blackmail to hold over Harry’s head. “Why did you need to see me?”

“I think Neville’s been Memory Charmed.”

Blaise listens, blinking, as Harry talks about the symptoms Neville displayed, and especially how he didn’t see Professor Quirrell despite supposedly going to him for a dueling session. By the end, Blaise’s hand is tight on his wand, and Ignis is sitting on his shoulder snorting little puffs of flame.

“It’s not sure that he’s been Memory Charmed,” Blaise says, when Harry finishes. “It’s always hard to tell. Professor Quirrell could have rescheduled the dueling session.”

“But…”

“Yeah, it’s at least suspicious enough to keep an eye on Quirrell,” Blaise murmurs. And he’s thinking of a few other things now. Like how a stutter and a reputation for cowardice has made even him, son of a mother who taught him all about paranoia, dismiss Quirrell. And how Quirrell was the one who said the troll was in the dungeons when it turned out to be nowhere near there.

The evidence is flimsy. But Blaise will agree that they should at least investigate.

*

Severus hisses under his breath as he watches Potter leave the Great Hall less than a minute after Quirrell. How is it that the boy isn’t the Dark Lord’s target but has still managed to get himself involved with someone Severus suspects of working for the Dark Lord?

Although, come to think of it, Longbottom left a few minutes ago as well…

Severus stands, and ignores the comments from Filius and Minerva about how he should eat more. At the moment, he has no time for them. He stalks out of the Great Hall and pauses for a moment to cast a Tracking Charm, followed by two more.

All of them come back with the kind of soft, uncertain pulse that means they’re muted by powerful wards. There is only one place in the school that has wards that powerful.

Severus begins to run.

*

“Why did you get captured so easily?” Artemis hisses at Harry.

Harry doesn’t reply, but curves a little in midair so that he can press against her. They’re in the third-floor corridor, and Quirrell has both him and Neville floating behind him in conjured ropes.

The simple answer to Artemis’s question is that Harry thought he was watching so that Quirrell wouldn’t be able to Obliviate Neville again. He had no idea that Quirrell was apparently going after whatever’s hidden in the third-floor corridor.

“You are going to help me,” Quirrell tells them, with no hint of a stutter and a manic smile as he turns and looks at Harry and Neville. “I only planned to bring Mr. Longbottom along with me, but two hostages are better than one, aren’t they?”

Neville, poor Neville, looks terrified. Harry doesn’t say anything, so Quirrell comes back towards him.

Harry glares at him and says, “You really shouldn’t have kidnapped someone Aradia likes.”

“Aradia,” Quirrell repeats, his brow wrinkling for a second. “I know that name.”

“Aradia Zabini? Mother of my very good friend Blaise Zabini?”

“Ah, yes, she is known for murder,” Quirrell says. “But she cannot intervene here. She cannot stop me from getting the Stone for my master.” And he smirks at Harry and pulls out what looks like a harp from underneath his cloak, turning around to walk back towards the door. Harry isn’t surprised to see that the wards or lock or whatever was protecting it is gone, although he’s a little surprised when it opens to reveal a giant, three-headed, slavering dog.

Eat him up, Harry tries to will the dog, but it doesn’t seem to understand Thoughtese. It snarls at Quirrell, but he casts a spell on the harp, it starts playing, and…

And the dog just goes to sleep.

Harry stares as Quirrell hauls him and Neville through the door. That’s it? Whatever the dog is here for, they just chose a dog that would go to sleep if you played music at it?

“I could do better than that,” Artemis whispers. “I could bite him.”

Harry rubs his hand up and down the pocket that contains her, the only thing he can move in the ropes. She’ll understand that it’s him telling her not to do it. It isn’t worth the risk that Quirrell will notice and destroy her. And she’s not venomous enough to hurt Quirrell, anyway.

But maybe…

Maybe he can imagine something that is.

Harry closes his eyes and starts to concentrate very hard.

*

Aradia looks up, irritated, at the jangling. It’s hard to prepare a new ceremonial knife when things are forever ringing all over the house.

But she goes very still when she sees the crystal hand on the clock jangling. The clock has three hands, for herself, Blaise, and Harry. She was going to show it to them when they came home for the summer. The usual places are marked—Home, Hogwarts, Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley for when they become old enough to traverse magical Britain on their own.

And there is “Mortal Danger.” Where Harry’s hand is now pointed, and Blaise’s is tending, and the jingling bells that Aradia has placed in an attempt to alert her to such occurrences are going mad about.

Aradia stands and smooths her robes down. Her mind has gone as still and cold as the crystal that makes up the clock hands.

She will need to travel to the Leaky Cauldron, but that is no problem, as her house is not precisely in any one world and has connections wherever she has been before. Hogwarts’s wards will prevent her from simply appearing in the school (an oversight Aradia will correct next term), but she can Apparate to Hogsmeade from the pub.

With one hand on the hilt of the ceremonial knife, Aradia sets off.

*

“Go back, you troublesome child.”

“No.”

Blaise can hear Snape gritting his teeth. He ignores that. When Harry didn’t come back immediately to report on Quirrell’s movements, Blaise knew something was wrong. They agreed to track him together as much as possible, only separating for short times like Harry did when leaving the Great Hall to find out where the professor was going.

Blaise found Snape on the way, which meant he had to hide Ignis, who was guiding him to Harry. But at least it means he’ll have someone with him when he finds Quirrell.

Whenever that will be. Wherever he was going. Whatever he wanted Harry and Neville for.

Snape casts a Body-Bind at him. Blaise dodges easily, and hears Ignis rumble in his pocket. The little dragon is probably dreaming of burning Snape, or eating him, if he was large enough. Blaise doesn’t take him out, but he does his let his hand brush the pocket Ignis is in for a moment.

“Go back.”

“While you’re casting hexes at me, Quirrell is getting away with Harry and the Boy-Who-Lived,” Blaise snaps.

Snape faces the door with music coming from behind it with a muttered oath. Blaise follows him in, and recoils at the sight of a Cerberus with a harp playing next to it. Asleep. The dog is asleep.

Snape barely gives the dog a glance, going straight to an open trapdoor set in the flagstones. Blaise guesses what Snape is going to do, ducks underneath the hex, and speeds up to jump down the black hole beneath the trapdoor before Snape can.

“Idiot child!”

Blaise ignores Snape and manages to land, with a thump, in what feels like the embrace of a plant. Before he can get too nervous about the tendrils wrapping around him, Snape is there with fire and light, and the Devil’s Snare that the light reveals cowers away from both of them. Blaise squints ahead and thinks he can smell fire. Someone else was here before them, not long ago.

Someone who has Longbottom and Harry, Blaise is certain.

He runs ahead while Snape is still cursing him.

*

Harry has gone so deeply into himself that he barely registers Quirrell using fire to defeat a Devil’s Snare, summoning something bright and shiny that’s flying around, knocking out a troll. He does wake up, sort of, for the chess set, but Quirrell only plays half the game before he gets impatient and casts some sort of spell that knocks over a big, important-looking piece. The rest of the pieces spring back and let them past at that.

Then they come into a small room with flames before and behind them and potions on a table, which Quirrell studies while muttering underneath his breath. Harry takes a slow, deep breath. He thinks he knows how to do this.

Part of him doesn’t want to do it. This isn’t like defending himself from the troll or creating Artemis because he wanted a friend. This is deliberately setting out to hurt someone as much as possible.

This is trying to kill someone.

Harry puts aside the doubts. He will die if he doesn’t do this. Artemis will die. Neville will die. Maybe even Blaise and Aradia will die, if they try to come after him and Quirrell is stronger or gets this stone he’s been talking about, whatever it is.

Harry makes his decision, and reaches out to the threads of Quirrell’s robe collar.

At his call, they begin to twine around each other. There’s no magic on them to stop this, which Harry was half-afraid of. Then again, there’s no one Harry has ever met who can do what he does. He bears down with his will, and then lashes out.

The threads unravel and loop themselves into a snake. Harry opens his mouth and hisses sharply, “Strangle him!”

Two things happen almost at once. Quirrell starts and spins away from the potions to stare Harry with his mouth open.

And the thread-snake wraps around Quirrell’s throat and begins to choke him.

Neville screams. Harry’s not sure at what part. He’s focusing on the ropes tied around him now, telling them in Parseltongue that they’re snakes, to unbind him and let him go. It happens faster this time, probably because Harry already has all that concentration and pooled magic from working on the threads of Quirrell’s collar, and Harry rolls across the floor and stands up on the far side of the potions table.

Quirrell is swearing and fighting with the threads around his neck. Harry can hear someone else speaking, demandingly, in a high, cold voice, but he can’t see who. It doesn’t really matter. He races towards Neville.

The ropes on his friend are already loosening, maybe because Quirrell is, um, a little distracted. Harry drags Neville underneath the table, giving a quick glance at the fire. He doesn’t know how to make it go or out or how they’re going to get back through it, but at least he and Neville are free, and that’s a pretty good first step.

He smiles at Neville, who is staring at him with a pale face and round eyes. “Neville, are you okay?” Harry starts to ask, but then the cold voice speaks more demandingly than ever.

“Show me! Show me, you fool!”

Harry winces as he feels the thread-snake crumble apart. It must be some magic Quirrell did. And then Quirrell turns around, walking backwards towards the table, and takes off his turban, and Harry and Neville scream at the same time.

Artemis is hissing at him, desperate for reassurance, but Harry can’t take his eyes away from the slitted red ones staring at him. Slitted red ones in the back of Quirrell’s head! It’s the most disgusting thing he’s ever seen, and Neville trembles like a rabbit next to him.

The face bends towards Harry, Quirrell bending over, and the voice says in Parseltongue, “How is it that you speak the language of my line?”

“You can’t think I’d be stupid enough to answer that,” Harry says, startled into honesty.

“Answer me!”

Harry feels an enormous, crushing pressure land on his mind. He shudders, and a cold feeling trickles all down his limbs. He does want to open his mouth and answer the face, but it’s as though his mouth is frozen shut with the rest of him.

There’s an enormous crash, and suddenly the pressure is gone. Harry rolls over again and pulls Neville with him, so that they’re both more firmly under the table and out of the way of the figures coming through the door where suddenly there’s no more fire.

One of the figures seems to be Snape, which makes no sense to Harry. But the other is smaller, and Harry would know him anywhere. His heart leaps in gladness.

Blaise is here. He’s all right. He’s going to save them.

*

Severus nearly halts at the sight of the disgusting face on the back of Quirinus’s head, but after all, he suspected something like this, if not exactly this. He grips his stomach in a mental fist and raises his wand.

“You traitor, Severussss.”

Severus feels a moment’s panic at the idea that the Dark Lord knows, now, and will be more likely to torture him to death if he ever gets a body back. And then Severus’s mind leaps ahead, and he feels a triumphant smile rise to his lips unbidden.

“Yes, I am,” he says. “A traitor to you throughout the war, not that you knew it.”

The Dark Lord hisses again, and the Mark on Severus’s arm blazes with pain, but he doesn’t care. He has just destroyed the façade that Dumbledore wanted him to maintain, and he can plausibly say, if questioned, that he needed to reassure the children and already thought the Dark Lord would never trust him again.

He is free.

Quirinus spins back around, lifting his wand, and Severus falls into a dueling stance.

When he has survived this, that is.

*

Blaise ducks under the table and breathes out slowly when he sees that both Harry and Longbottom seem to be all right. Harry beams at him and leans forwards to rest his hand gently on Blaise’s cheek for a minute.

“We’re alive,” Harry says.

Blaise wants to say that that doesn’t matter as much as their not being in this situation in the first place, but then he sees the duel taking place between Snape and Quirrell and almost loses his breath.

It’s magnificent. The strikes are so fast that Blaise can barely see them. And the confined space makes the sizzling spells and lashing wands and flying robes even more dramatic. Blaise is actually kind of surprised that Quirrell can duel so well. Even when he was talking about fighting vampires in Defense, Blaise never thought he meant it.

Of course, it ends the way it has to end. Snape casts a wordless spell, and Quirrell shrieks as his hands fly to his face. Snape Stuns him, Disarms him, and then binds him with a look of distaste. Blaise thinks that Snape probably blinded the man.

“There’s a face sticking out of the back of his head!” Harry calls.

Blaise stares at him. But Longbottom is nodding, and saying he saw the face, too. Snape gives them an inscrutable look and just nods.

“We are leaving,” he says.

Blaise is quiet on the march back up through the rooms, Snape ignoring or disarming the threats as necessary, the silent, bound Quirrell floating behind them. Harry is walking between him and Longbottom, now and then craning his neck back as if to make sure that Quirrell is still there instead of disappeared. Blaise, meanwhile, is thinking hard.

This is a lot worse than just a professor kidnapping Harry and Longbottom. The face sticking out of the back of his head…

Then they come out of the room at the top of the trapdoor, and Mother steps forwards to level her wand at Snape and say in a soft, chilly voice, “Blaise, Harry, tell me that you are well and if I must curse this man.”

Blaise smiles. He knows that everything is going to be all right now.