When the morning light came creeping through the lake's shallows and Harriet opened her eyes to the dappled green glow warming her bedsheets, she could little remember the eerie voice she'd heard in the dungeons the night before. Indeed, the whole evening felt fuzzy to Harriet, and if it weren't for the rumpled sheet of parchment she unearthed from her used robes, she would have thought it all just another strange dream.
She stared down at the page, touching the spidery letters at the top, and thought, Snape was in an odd mood.
Being a Sunday, Millicent and Pansy still slept, the latter snoring into her silk pillows, but the rest of the beds were empty and made, leaving Harriet to make her way into the washroom on her own, getting ready for the day. Livius stuck his nose out from under the bed's skirts when she returned, but he otherwise remained quiet, content to remain in his nest, the Warming Charm thrown over his blankets by Hermione. Kevin went into his favored pocket in her robes.
Once washed and dressed, Harriet grabbed her school bag and headed into the common room, but found neither Hermione or Elara there. She continued out of the dorms into the castle itself, and—yawning all the while—meandered to the library.
She ended up taking the wrong corridor twice, passing a bust without a face three times, and each time she did, it asked her odd, raspy questions. Finally, she found a portrait of a witch herding geese who was kind enough to point out the proper path—interrupted by loud, obnoxious honking every other syllable—and Harriet managed to get to her destination.
"There you are, Harriet," Hermione said, lifting her head from a yellowing tome as the bespectacled witch wandered over to the table. Others sat with Hermione, including Elara—slumped in her seat and half-asleep—the Ravenclaws Terry Boot and Anthony Goldstein, and—surprisingly—Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood. The two first years looked up when Hermione spoke.
"Hello, Harriet," Luna said, pale eyes wide as they faceted on the other girl.
"'Lo," Harriet replied to Luna and the table in general, taking the seat left open at Elara's side. The taller witch dragged her own bag off the chair with a tired grunt. "Bit keen for studying on a Sunday, aren't you all?"
"You missed breakfast," Hermione informed her with an imperious arch of her brow. "So no, it's not early at all, really."
Elara and Weasley seemed to disagree, but neither chose to say anything. The latter had dark circles under her eyes and appeared paler than usual behind her numerous freckles, and though her bias against Slytherin still stung, Harriet asked, "How are you, Ginny?"
Ginny shrugged.
Madam Pince made her rounds, lurking like an angry, well-read vulture, and so their conversation subsided, the two younger students consulting what looked like Hermione's Transfiguration notes from the year before while Hermione tackled a Charms project with the Ravenclaws and Elara paged through a Herbology text, working on a supplemental essay for Sprout.
Harriet took out her notes from the evening prior and, smoothing the sheet against, neatly tore off the bit holding her lines, leaving behind her hasty scribbles about Birch's Law.
"Hermione?" she asked, getting the other witch's attention. "D'you know anything about Birch's Law? Or—VERD?"
"VERD?" Anthony said before Hermione had the chance. "Professor Flitwick told us we won't touch any of Horwell Birch's theorems until well into our fourth year—and only in Arithmancy, after we cover Agrippa."
Hermione clicked her tongue. "Birch's theorems aren't strictly Arithmancy. VERD, in particular, is covered in other subjects beyond Arithmancy, Anthony. Especially in Defense."
Terry snorted. "No. Too close to dueling practice, and the older Ravenclaws tell us Professor Slytherin doesn't teach anything resembling proper dueling."
"Why do you ask, Harriet?" Hermione said, ignoring Terry, who shared a smirk with Anthony. "Is this for class?"
"...You could say that." Harriet slid the parchment to Hermione, who reached over her amounting stack of texts to pick it up and bring it closer to the light coming through the open window.
"Merlin, your handwriting—."
"I know," Harriet interrupted a bit testily. "I rushed to write all I could."
"Was this in—?"
"Yes," she interrupted again, eyes flicking toward the Ravenclaws, then away. "We got onto a bit of a tangent."
"I'll say." Hermione squinted and brought the parchment closer to her nose. "You're looking for a spell that will rebound against a density two point five to three grams per cubic centimeter. You're going to need an equation for that—." With a lazy gesture, Terry reached and snatched the parchment from Hermione. "Boot!"
"It's stone," he said—also squinting when he tried to decipher Harriet's smudged words. "A non-porous stone. Granite, mayhaps. You're looking for a spell that'll bounce on the castle's floor or walls."
"You don't need an equation for that," Anthony supplied, grinning. "After all, experience is the best teacher, isn't it? I say, most of our first-year curriculum should rebound, shouldn't they, Terry?"
"Theoretically. It also depends upon a spell's inertia. A flipendo usually dissipates upon hitting a solid obstacle, but I've seen it ricochet when it hits with enough force."
"Don't encourage her to go throwing hexes at the walls hoping they bounce back." Hermione took the parchment back, scowling, and handed it to Harriet. "What's this for, anyway?"
"Just some, um, extra credit?" Harriet winced at the weak excuse. "I'll show you the assignment later."
Clearly there wasn't an extra credit assignment under the sun Hermione hadn't heard about and completed, and so she opened her mouth to question Harriet—when Elara nudged her chair with her foot, expression flat, knowing. Hermione's mouth snapped shut, lips thinning.
"There should be books on Birch's Law over there," Elara said, tipping her chin across the library toward the far stacks. "If you're interested."
"Thanks."
Harriet stood and wandered in the direction Elara had indicated, though she shied away from the idea of unearthing some thick, overzealous book from the Stone Age filled with maths and equations and a thousand other things that would make her head hurt. Reading something like that was always a chore, but if she wished to write Mr. Flamel, she needed a better grasp on the subject, lest she sound like a bumbling fool wasting his time with simple nonsense. With that thought in mind, Harriet entered the dusty section devoted to Magical Theory and Laws.
Ten minutes of searching provided little insight, and Harriet slid a dusty scroll on Abu Musa Jabir's nonsensical ramblings back onto the shelf, reaching for another.
"Harriet?" Startled, the bespectacled witch turned to find Ginny standing a few paces away, looking uncertain about what she was doing there exactly. She fiddled with the ends of her red hair and waited for Harriet to look at her before speaking again. "Listen, I just wanted to say I'm—sorry, about what happened at the lake before. It wasn't right, I know. Ever since I was little, my brothers have always filled my head with all these stories about Slytherins being terrible and liars and—." Ginny paused, fiddling with her hair again, tugging hard on the edges. "Did you know our mums got on?"
Harriet didn't know that, and she didn't know why Ginny brought it up. What's her angle? "No," she said slowly, choosing her words and another book. "I don't...I wasn't told a lot about my parents." Nothing at all, if it wasn't a bunch of lies.
"My uncles were Aurors who worked with your dad supposedly, and so the—Potters were invited over a lot. My mum was gonna have Ron and your mum was gonna have—well, have you—and so they became friends." Ginny colored. "I wrote a letter home, and I...mentioned you. Mum told me about being friends with Lily Potter. I just—felt silly, after she told me that. You, Elara, and Hermione were really nice to me and Luna, and I should've known my brothers were having me on. So I'm sorry."
"I understand," Harriet said, because she did understand—but she did not say it was alright, because it wasn't. Why did she always have to apologize for her House? People always liked to whip out the fact that "Merlin was a Slytherin" when defending Slytherin's honor—but the bloody wizard hadn't been at Hogwarts for a thousand years! Harriet didn't like that Slytherins always had to make up for some slight, some perceived injustice done by others in their House, how the Dark Lord's shadow seemed to stretch wide and sully those who didn't have a thing to do with him. It wasn't Ginny's fault, and yet it irked Harriet all the same.
The feeling sat heavy and convoluted in Harriet's stomach, but she shoved it away, because she appreciated the image Ginny painted; her dad and mum with friends, being invited over for dinner, enjoying life. She did, however, change the subject. "You look tired, Ginny," she told the other girl, reading the spine of another tome. She couldn't make heads or tails of the language. "Are you liking Hogwarts?"
"Yes," the other girl said, perhaps a bit too quickly. "I do miss home, though. I haven't been getting enough sleep."
"Doesn't Gryffindor have a curfew? Our prefects are strict about it."
"We do, but the prefects don't seem to care much. My brother Percy tries to bully us off to the dorms, but he forgets to get to bed himself with all his studying. The common room's loud because—." Ginny suddenly flushed a darker red than her hair, and Harriet thought steam might come flooding from her ears at any second. "...because of Neville Longbottom."
The last words came out in a worshipful hush, and Harriet didn't fight the urge to roll her eyes, though Ginny couldn't see, not with her face pointed at the shelves. Bloody Longbottom.
"He's...he's not really how I'd thought he'd be," Ginny admitted, quietly, as if she didn't really mean want to. "He's great, of course! But he's...."
"People rarely live up to their reputations, good or bad." Harriet took down another scroll, checking the title. She had no desire to hear Ginny Weasley wax poetic about the Boy Who Lived. Not after what she learned at the end of last term. "If he's keeping you up, tell the prat to be quiet."
Ginny's eyes grew round as Galleons. "He's—he defeated You-Know-Who. You can't call him a p-prat."
The Headmaster's voice came back to Harriet, echoing "he is no more the cause of Voldemort's downfall than myself or this candy dish," and though the absurd imagery peculated a kind of quiet hilarity in her head, Harriet didn't find the sentiment very funny. She was still bitter over the years she spent in the cupboard while Neville Longbottom had lived the kind of life she still couldn't properly imagine.
"I'll believe it when I see it," Harriet muttered.
"What?"
Harriet cleared her throat, pretending she didn't hear the question. "Listen, Ginny. Neville and I don't get on. I mean, you probably don't want my advice, yeah? But, you should form an opinion based on who he is, not what he's done." Supposedly done. "He's just another student. I can't speak for him, but he'd probably appreciate someone trying to see him for who he is."
Harriet left then, walking from the stacks empty-handed, ignoring her friends' questioning looks as she resumed her seat and dug out her own Charms essay instead. She'd continue her research later, when she had time to tell Hermione and Elara exactly what happened in detention, and when she had the opportunity to do as Anthony said, and test which spells would work best for getting past Professor Slytherin's shield.
Across the table, Luna smiled—a vacuous, if friendly, gesture—and though Harriet tried to return it, her heart wasn't in it.