The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|50| Snape's Secret

"There's something funny, though," said Hermione ten minutes later, holding her pestle suspended over a bowl of scarab beetles. "How could Rita Skeeter have known?"

"Known what?" I said.

"You haven't been mixing up Love Potions, have you?" Ron said quickly.

"Don't be stupid," Hermione snapped, starting to pound up her beetles again. "No, it's just— how did she know Viktor asked me to visit him over the summer?"

"What?" said Ron, dropping his pestle with a loud clunk.

"He asked me right after he'd pulled me out of the lake," Hermione muttered. "After he'd got rid of his shark's head. Madam Pomfrey gave us both blankets and then he sort of pulled me away from the judges so they wouldn't hear, and he said, if I wasn't doing anything over the summer, would I like to—"

"What did you say?" I beamed at her.

"And he did say he'd never felt the same way about anyone else," Hermione went on, going so red now that I could almost feel the heat coming from her, "but how could Rita Skeeter have heard him? She wasn't there or was she? Maybe she has got an Invisibility Cloak; maybe she sneaked onto the grounds to watch the second task."

"And what did you say?" Ron mimicked me, pounding his pestle down so hard that it dented the desk.

"Well, I was too busy seeing whether you, Harry, and Maisey were okay to—"

"Fascinating though your social life undoubtedly is, Miss Granger," said an icy voice right behind them, and all four of us jumped, "I must ask you not to discuss it in my class. Ten points from Gryffindor."

Snape had glided over to our desk while we were talking.

"Ah, reading magazines under the table as well?" Snape added, snatching up the copy of Witch Weekly that I had stupidly taken off of my lap and placed on the desk. "A further ten points from Gryffindor— oh but of course—" Snape's black eyes glittered as they fell on Rita Skeeter's article. "— Potter has to keep up with his press cuttings."

The dungeon rang with the Slytherins' laughter, and an unpleasant smile curled Snape's thin mouth. To our embarrassment, he began to read the article aloud.

" 'Harry Potter's Secret Heartache... dear, dear, Potter, what's ailing you now? 'A boy like no other, perhaps...' "

Snape was pausing at the end of every sentence to allow the Slytherins a hearty laugh. The article sounded ten times worse when read by Snape. Even Hermione and Harry were blushing scarlet now.

" '...In the meantime, Maisey Potter, Harry Potter's twin sister, should keep an eye out for her brother and the girl she calls her best friend. Harry Potter's well-wishers must hope that, next time, he bestows his heart upon a worthier candidate.' How very touching," sneered Snape, rolling up the magazine to continued gales of laughter from the Slytherins. "Well, I think I had better separate the four of you, so you can keep your minds on your potions rather than on your tangled love lives nad such. Weasley, you stay here. Miss Granger, over there, beside Miss Parkinson. Both of the Potters — that table in front of my desk. Move. Now."

Furious, Harry threw his ingredients and his bag into his cauldron and dragged it up to the front of the dungeon to the empty table and I followed him. Snape followed, sat down at his desk, and watched Harry and me unload our cauldrons.

"All this press attention seems to have inflated your already overlarge head, Potter," said Snape to Harry quietly as I mashed the scarab beetles for the potion.

"Both of you might be laboring under the delusion that the entire wizarding world is impressed with you," Snape addressed me as well, so quietly that no one else could hear him (Harry continued to pound his scarab beetles, even though he had already reduced them to a very fine powder and I began to cut up my ginger root), "but I don't care how many times your picture appears in the papers. To me, you Potters, you are nothing but nasty little gremlins who considers rules to be beneath yourselves."