FORTY-SIX: Slytherin’s Secret

“That must’ve been some talk he and Professor Lupin had,” Ron commented under his breath.

“Not free of influence. Free of adult influence,” Draco offered.

Hermione tilted her head to one side. “Yes,” she drawled slowly, obviously thinking this through. “The Professor wanted us to advise you, Harry. Hinted at it, really.” Her eyes slipped up again to the dark-haired man’s retreating figure. “He’s so different lately – isn’t he?”

Ron shrugged. “Not really.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, but didn’t press the issue.

“You think he wants me to talk to you about it? The memories?”

“I’m still a bit behind, here,” Draco alerted them.

“Oh.” Ron frowned. “Well, Harry doesn’t really remember his summer. Not properly, anyhow. We got all sorts of vague letters from him and he was saying very odd things about what happened just before the summer.”

Harry’s cheeks flushed with guilt as he realized he still had not explained to Ron fully about Sirius Black and the Obscura.

“Eventually, we figured out he’d been here at Hogwarts, and probably studying something or other with Snape.”

“Dumbledore seemed to be keeping it from the both of us,” Harry growled. “Me and Snape, I mean.”

“Dumbledore?” Draco inquired curiously. “Why?”

“There has to be something there, some secret – a secret that Dumbledore doesn’t want Harry and Snape in particular to know,” Hermione filled in. “A secret so dangerous that no witch or wizard ought to know it.”

“Or just me and Snape in particular,” Harry mused, “because Voldemort–” the other three winced – “has a direct connection to the both of us, or did just a few months ago.”

“A secret no one ought to know – like the story you gave me,” Draco filled in. His grey eyes stirred and flashed like stormclouds in a high wind. “It’s the same secret, isn’t it? The same thing?”

Hermione eyed him warily. “The thought did cross our minds. It could very well be the same secret.”

“But what could be so powerful?” Draco wondered, eyes now thoughtful, narrow.

“No need for speculation,” Hermione replied dismissively. “All we want to know is whether Harry accepts the offer of information or not.”

“Then we need to speculate what that information may be!” Draco returned. “How can he know what he wants if he doesn’t know what he’s accepting? We need to at least have a handful of guesses as to what this great secret really is.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Well, fine, I suppose; for the sake of argument we’ll continue. I always assumed Slytherin and Gryffindor fought over Muggles, or Muggle rights.”

“What makes you say so?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hermione dithered. “Just some context clues from a dozen or more sources - nothing concrete. I assumed that Slytherin wanted Muggles out of Hogwarts.”

“Of course he did,” Draco sniffed. “Pureblood tradition is practically the motto of our House.”

“Yes,” Hermione said sadly, and Draco blinked as if rediscovering his audience.

“Well, Draco’s right, though,” Harry mused. “It makes sense that he wanted Muggles out, right? Because wizards… wizards of mixed blood are still allowed in today. If Slytherin had been the one for Muggles, then Gryffindor would have shut out non-purebloods and his is the House that would have Draco’s motto.”

Draco scowled. “Not my motto.”

Hermione nodded certainly, but Ron looked confused.

“What is it, Ron?” Harry asked, noting the redhead’s furrowed brow.

“Well… maybe I’m just being daft, but didn’t they always let non-purebloods into Hogwarts? From the beginning?”

Hermione nodded. “Yes, Ronald, what’s your point?”

Draco, however, was sharing a grin with Ron. “Absolutely. Always.”

“Then what changed?”

Harry, beginning to catch on to Ron’s train of thought, felt his jaw drop slightly.

“I mean, if wizards of mixed blood were always allowed into Hogwarts, what changed after Slytherin left? Something had to’ve.”

Hermione shook her head. “Not necessarily. Slytherin might have disagreed with their policies all along –”

“Why would he have formed an alliance with Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw to create a school if they disagreed so fundamentally, from the start?” Harry returned. “Ron’s right. We need to find out what altered just after the battle. It would have to be something big – something noticeable. You’ve memorized Hogwarts: A History cover to cover,” he prodded. “So what happened right after Slytherin left?”

Hermione shook her head slowly, then paused, caught on the cusp of an idea.

An apparently overwhelming idea. Her eyes glazed over for a moment in sheer shock; then she recovered her internal equilibrium. “If you’re right – and I’m not saying you are – this is bigger than we ever thought. Right after Slytherin left – that was when – when Helga Hufflepuff drafted the Muggle Declaration.”

“The Muggle Declaration?” Harry wondered. “Hermione none of us know what…” Harry trailed off, noting that Draco and Ron’s faces had drained of colour.

“There was no Statute of Secrecy, yet,” Hermione explained. “The Declaration was the first in a long line of edicts that slowly separated the Wizarding World from the Muggle. The Muggle Declaration,” she filled in, turning to Harry, “says that no magical person may inform a non-magical person of their status as such.”

“In other words, you can’t blab to Muggles,” Ron translated.

Harry still wasn’t quite wrapping his mind around it. “So Slytherin wanted us to be able to talk to Muggles about magic?”

Draco cut in then, his tone cold and his body stiff. “What she is implying, Potter, is that Slytherin never wanted to separate from the Muggle world in the first place.” He shuddered distastefully. “We had been drifting away from the Muggle world for centuries by that point, slowly but surely,” he continued, as Hermione nodded to confirm his words. “What the Muggles called fairy stories and legends were the last vestiges of our influence on their realm; any wizard worth his salt would know that any fairy story holds at least a grain of truth; and that they are usually about wizards. That’s why Slytherin told his story as a fairy tale.”

Ron went quiet for a moment, then nodded. “D’you think that’s it? He wanted us to stay within the Muggle world?”

“If Gryffindor was so against Muggles, why am I in his House?” Hermione wondered. She flushed. “I mean – I wasn’t – but… it was my second choice… oh, you know what I mean!” she exclaimed, cheeks flushing.

“He wasn’t,” Ron said staunchly. “Gryffindor liked Muggles. Thought they were funny.”

“Funny?” Harry’s eyes narrowed.

“Well, maybe funny so long as they were quite far away,” Draco commented, examining his nails and buffing them quietly against the shirt Harry had lent him.

“You could separate yourself from the Muggle world a lot easier than kill off all the Muggles,” Ron added.

Harry coughed.

“All right, so He doesn’t see it that way, but that’s because he’s completely starkers. Maybe Gryffindor thought – well, can’t beat and don’t want to join them – maybe a strategic retreat is in order?”

“Now,” Draco intoned flatly, “we have the pureblood-loving one embracing Muggles everywhere, and the brave one running away.”

Harry snerked.

“Perhaps next,” Draco commented, “we shall discover that Ravenclaw was so dull that she thought the sun was a shiny pence piece cast into the sky and that Hufflepuff…”

“…was so brilliant that she wrote Hogwarts: a History,” Ron finished, and though they knew that last, at least, was chronologically impossible, they all laughed.

“So,” Hermione said, “although Slytherin did not like Muggles very well, he wanted to remain with them, as a part of their world. I wonder why?”

They were all silent. Harry watched as Hermione ran her fingers along the spine of her book, Ron thrummed his fingertips against the cold grass, and Draco held stiff, perfectly still – exactly, Harry decided, like some statue, except for his white-gold hair, which stirred gently in the wind.

“He had some advantage to gain,” Draco finally said, his lips the only moving part of him. “Muggles were – were giving him something. Something important.” His eyes flashed again, brighter now. “Something vital.”

“He found out something about Muggles that makes them vital to wizardkind,” Hermione pieced together.

Harry stiffened, his cousin’s features flashing through his mind. “I think I have an idea what it is.” He stood almost reflexively. “And I need to know the rest…” Harry looked down at the three of them – his friends – and felt the tug of a warm smile. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll tell you the whole thing as soon as I know all of it.”

Draco bounded to his feet. “You’re not going to wait until tomorrow?”

Harry, already jogging away, turned to face him. “Are you kidding? Wait that long?”

Hermione laughed and waved, and then Harry was taking off like a streak, heading for Snape’s private chambers.

Severus Snape eyed him balefully. “I assure you that I am.”

“But that’s impossible,” Harry replied, one hand reaching tentatively to brush the small, squat pewter cauldrons. “It can’t have been Pensieves. Dumbledore always remembers what he’s put there. And you –” He choked on his words, clenching his fists in his dark pant-knees.

Snape smiled at him, a relatively rare occurrence, one that was becoming more frequent. His dark eyes flashed. “Very good, Harry. Why do you suppose that is?”

Harry frowned. “Well – I’ve never thought about it before.”

“Relatively incurious for someone who manages to land in trouble as often as you do,” Snape replied caustically.

Ouch – that stung. “Well, I typically had other things on my mind at the time.”

When no ready answers were forthcoming, Harry pondered. “I guess – well, you are removing the memory… Dumbledore implied that, anyway, the first time I talked to him about Pensieves… so I guess… you must remember removing it?”

Snape nodded. “Precisely. Five points to Slytherin. You recall removing the memory, which means you do not recall the event itself – rather, you recall an echo of it.”

“You – you remember remembering it,” Harry supplied. “I think I understand. So why don’t we, then?”

“Answer your own question, Potter. I do not approve of lazy minds.”

This, Harry decided, was not news. He did his best, but nothing he could come up with made any sense. Someone would have to remove the echo of the memory, too, and then that memory’s echo, and so on until the echo faded into silence. It was definitely tedious, perhaps impossible. Maybe no memory faded to that little significance. Wasn’t there always something left?

Maybe there had been something left, he decided. Snape had been different lately and so had he, presumably from their time together – but maybe habits were like the emotional equivalent of muscle memory, so that didn’t necessarily explain it.

“Can someone else use a Pensieve for you?” Harry wondered.

Snape nodded. “Very good. Once you had removed the bulk of your memories, someone would have to incapacitate you and finally remove the memory in which you utilized the Pensieve.”

Harry nodded. “So you did it for me, probably, and then Professor Dumbledore did it for you.”

“Very plausible, Potter. In fact, correct.”

Harry grinned. “It had to be him; no one else knows, do they?”

“So – do you want them?”

Harry looked at the half-dozen Pensieves. “Yes,” he said.

“That is what I thought you would say,” Snape murmured, but Harry thought he caught some warm emotion behind the typically stilted dialogue. He got the sneaking suspicion that Snape was actually proud of him. It made him even more certain of his decision.

And also a bit sentimental. “Sir… uhm, thanks for all you’ve done, this year.”

Snape stiffened. “I should hope you won’t begin going on about what you may do to repay me, as Lupin has.”

Harry bit back a startled laugh, and, after an instant’s search for some meaningful reply, opted to ignore the statement altogether. “Before I take them, I have a guess.”

“A guess?”

“About Slytherin’s secret,” Harry said. “I think I know what it is.”

“Without the Pensieves?” Severus purred. “Do tell.”

Harry parroted back the combined reasoning skills of Hermione, Draco, Ron and himself. “…so basically it has to be something that Slytherin discovered about Muggles that he considered vital and that Gryffindor considered dangerous or undesirable… and my cousin… he did a bit of magic this summer…”

“He – your cousin? That…” Words seemed to fail Snape, but his face twisted into familiar lines of contempt.

“He was loads better this summer – really he was, Professor!”

“And why didn’t you tell anyone about this sudden discovery of yours?” Snape demanded.

“It was really only a little bit of magic – insignificant, really… Dudley made my bauble light, just a little bit. I think – I think maybe Muggles have a magic of their own. Maybe their magic – responds to ours, somehow. Slytherin would have thought he was clever enough to handle that, to maneuver it. But maybe Gryffindor thought that would threaten his strength.” Harry paused. “Strong people, you know, they’re always afraid that someone stronger will come along and make them less important, less strong.” He eyed Snape. “Smart people are – are always smart,” he stammered. “They don’t become stupid when a smarter man walks in the room.”

Now the expression on Snape’s face was unmistakable. He was… proud of Harry. The dark-haired man ran his finger along the rim of one of Harry’s cauldrons. “You are correct,” he finally replied. “Of course, it is so very much more than that. We had only stirred the surface of the truth between us, you and I.” He paused, both in his speech and in the motion of his stroking finger; his hand fell to his side, rasping against the edge of his dark wool robes. His black eyes scanned Harry. “Voldemort would use that knowledge against us, but more importantly, he would see Muggles as sources of power that he could tap at will. It does not work in such a fashion, but it is not in Voldemort’s nature to grasp certain concepts; and those involved in Sympathetic Magics are amoungst those that are beyond his reach. He would alter his tactics to exploit and enslave Muggles rather than merely murder them.” Snape’s eyes grew fierce. “More importantly, he would gain another, very powerful way to convince wizardkind that Muggles are dangerous and must be disposed of. He would not even have to lie.”

Harry swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. All he had been thinking about was how incredibly exciting it all was, how everything he had learned and seen and heard that school year was sliding together, piece by piece, forming a paper in his mind, a paper with the inescapable conclusion: the Muggle and Wizarding Worlds must be Joined.

A paper he would never publish. A paper like Snape’s.

Harry hung his head and hissed a sharp release of breath.

Snape placed his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “I ought to tell you, Mister Potter, that I know very few wizards who could have pieced all of that together.”

“It wasn’t me,” Harry averred. “I mean, yes, I pieced it all together in the end, but Hermione and Draco and Ron practically led me to it.” He grinned quietly to himself. “And if it hadn’t been for Dudley…” The fact that Dudley had held the missing piece to the puzzle delighted Harry to no end, and he was planning on explaining that in detail to the other boy in his next letter – as much as he could explain.

Snape tsked under his breath. “This is no time for false modesty, Mister Potter. I am complimenting you. It is an incredibly rare occurrence, as I am certain you are aware. Your response is to deny responsibility for the triumph? Not very Slytherin.”

Harry smiled. “Yes, but it wouldn’t be very fair not to tell you that my friends really helped, because they did. And… thanks. For the compliment. Uhm…” Harry flushed, not really certain exactly what he wanted to say. He had already thanked Severus for all he had done, but it didn’t seem quite right, or perhaps it wasn’t specific enough. “…and for… looking out for me.”

“Keeping an eye on you over the summer was hardly the onerous task I first imagined. You were less off-putting than a new piece of furniture,” Snape added, his lip twisting slightly in a half-smile. “You were so quiet I scarcely noted you. After the screaming,” he tacked on, rubbing distractedly at his arm.

The screaming. These memories proved to hold some interest beyond their mere origins, after all. Still, that was besides the point. “I didn’t mean over the summer,” Harry said, awkwardly, and then, before Snape could do more than frown in slight puzzlement, he set to work replacing the first memory back into his conscious mind.