They met with Rose and Snape again, as Rose had promised to show them the entrance to magical Paris, and Snape had, grudgingly, allowed it.

Harry was rather startled when Hermione’s parents announced they wouldn’t join in, but were happy to leave the children in the care of Professor Snape.

“It would be awkward for you to have to babysit us muggles”, Hermione’s mother said firmly when Snape frowned at the suggestion. “I am not sure my nerves have recovered from Diagon Alley, yet. All that magic is rather frightening when you don’t have the talent to use it.”

That didn’t sound to be the entire truth, but Harry wasn’t overly worried about it, either – the last meeting had been so awkward he fully understood why they didn’t want to repeat it. Only the fact that there were no adults there to protect him from Snape ...


“This isn’t Hogwarts”, Snape said, glaring at Harry. “Since I cannot assign detention or take house points, I will also not go out of my way to rescue you from dangerous situations you recklessly jumped into.”

“Harry won’t do anything reckless, sir”, Hermione promised. “It’s just a window shopping trip, what could possibly go wrong?” Immediately after she had said those words, she paled.

“Now I did it”, she whispered to Harry when Snape turned to talk to Rose. “In books, people always say that sort of thing before everything goes horribly wrong.”
“We aren’t in a book”, Harry reminded her. “Don’t worry.”

Snape led them to a bronze statue that moved when they approached. “I will go first, Rose, you go last.”

Even though they were with Snape, Harry felt the same wonder and amazement he had at visiting Diagon Alley when the bronze statue moved to reveal a portal.

Harry saw a Quidditch shop window and walked towards it, but soon realized that all the information on the broom on display was in French. So he contented himself with a short glance at the broom and hurried after the girls.

They were heading to a pet shop nearby. Rose was fascinated with a raven that was seated on a perch outside the shop.
She had mentioned she thought she would be sorted into Ravenclaw if she went to Hogwarts – but, wait, the animal on the Ravenclaw crest was an eagle. He still got confused about that at times.

While Rose tried to find out which language the raven spoke – she was sure it had to be able to talk, apparently - Harry followed Hermione inside.

“Looking for a pet?”, he asked. After all, she didn’t have one yet.

“Oh, I’m not sure. It would be really great to have an owl, but then, the neighbours might notice if I let her hunt, and locking her up all summer would be cruel. What do you do with Hedwig?”

“The Dursleys locked her up”, Harry admitted regretfully. “I think next time I’ll either leave her at Hogwarts or ask her to go live with the Weasleys for summer.” Her presence had kept him sane, reminding him that the magical world must exist, but if the Weasleys hadn’t rescued them ... Harry wasn’t an expert on owls but he didn’t think an animal who liked to hunt could live on a diet of limp vegetables for long.

“A pet I have to leave at Hogwarts in the holidays wouldn’t be much of a pet”, Hermione mused. “Perhaps a smaller owl wouldn’t be spotted ... or I could get a cat.” She eyed the cats on display, most of them white with luxurious long fur. “Perhaps one that’s a bit more, you know, down to earth, though. Those are beautiful, but I would want one that, you know, really jumps out at me.”

Harry nodded his agreement. It was probably a bit silly to judge animals for their appearance, but those cats looked like little princes and princesses who wouldn’t accept any but the most expensive catfood.

They were all seated on velvet cushions, which already showed you what they were used to.

Looking at the row of cushions, Harry noticed that one didn’t contain a cat, but ... he stepped closer. A black snake.

The snake raised its head, and Harry noticed there was a tiny gold crown on it. “What are you staring at, asshole? Don’t like snakes, do you?”

“Uh ...” Harry blinked. “I’m very sorry, sir. Or madam. Um.”

The snake froze, so completely he thought it might be dead. “My apologies. I was not aware you could understand me”, it said at last, sounding rather embarrassed.
“No, I’m sorry, it was rude to stare. I just didn’t expect a snake.” Harry hesitated. “That’s a nice crown you have there.”

“Thank you. It is a burden at times, but someone has to be queen.”

“Potter!”

Harry winced. “Sorry, I have to leave”, he told the snake.

It turned out his guess had been correct. Snape all but dragged him out of the shop. “What were you thinking?”, he scolded him once they were out on the street. “If someone noticed - ” Snape breathed deeply.

“What? I wasn’t rude. In fact, she was very happy I complimented her crown.”

Snape glared at him. “You spoke parsel, you idiot!”, he hissed. “We could have a dark wizard panic at our hands right now, thanks to you!”

Oh, right. Hermione had told him people might have prejudices. “You are exaggerating. It can’t be that bad.”

“Yes it can. Now shut up.”

“Don’t be like that”, Rose pleaded. “Harry couldn’t have known, his family are muggles, remember?”

Harry was surprised when Snape actually stopped scolding him after that.

The next shop they went to was Snape’s choice, a bookstore.

It was several stories high, with galleries winding around every room, and Harry was sure it was bigger on the inside than the outside.

“It is a pity I don’t speak French”, Hermione commented once Snape had wandered away, apparently in search of some rare book. “Hogwarts should really offer some languages, we don’t even have Latin!”

“Oh.” Rose seemed to only now realize the problem. “There must be a foreign languages section. I’ll ask.”

Before she could go seek out someone to ask, however, one of the nearest bookshelves turned into stairs. Without hesitating, she climbed them. “Here it is! Oh, there’s a lot of English books!”

There really were, and they spent a while browsing them all.

“Oh – this is a new rendition of a book by Rowena Ravenclaw herself! Why don’t they have this in Diagon Alley?”, Hermione exclaimed.

Rose nodded absent-mindedly, staring at the cover of Lockhart’s Gadding With Ghouls, which of course did not depict a ghoul but the author in all his golden-locked glory, award-winning smile fixed on his face.

Harry found a thin booklet on Quidditch that must be quite old, it listed the Chudley Cannons as a great and successful team.

“Wow, did you know the Chudley Cannons’ motto used to be ‘We shall conquer’?”

Hermione looked up. “Oh? What is it now?”

At such times, Harry really missed Ron. “They changed it to ‘Let’s all just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best’.”

“That’s just depressing”, Hermione said, then buried her nose in the book by Rowena Ravenclaw again.

“What are the Chudley Cannons?”, Rose asked.

“A Quidditch team. They haven’t won a game in years. Our friend Ron is a very loyal fan, but I don’t think they have many anymore.”

“That’s just silly. If you only wanted to be a fan of the winning team, you’d have to change loyalties after every match, wouldn’t you?”

Harry nodded. “True. I’ve been a bit of a loser most of my life, and it’s nice to know Ron doesn’t care.” That thought had never occured to him before, but now he realized how reassuring Ron’s enduring love for the Chudley Cannons was. After all, if any of the other Quidditch teams got a really good seeker, his bit of Quidditch fame could easily come to an end. “Do you play Quidditch?”

Rose shook her head. “I chose horseriding. You have to decide, you see, and I love horses, so I couldn’t do Quidditch. I don’t think Uncle Sev would have approved, anyway.”

It took Harry a few moments to realize whom she was talking about.

Uncle Sev? Merlin’s pants, how could she get away with calling Snape THAT?

“So he’s very strict?” Well, figured. This was still Snape.

“Not really. I didn’t even know he had a say about what I get to do before I told mum and dad that I wanted to join the horseracing team and they said they’d have to ask him. It’s just that he rants about how dangerous Quidditch is.” Rose frowned “Now that I think about it, it’s strange. I could swear he told me how proud he was of his Slytherin Quidditch team a couple years ago. But the last few times he visited, it was all about how insane it is that they let first years play it and don’t even require the parents’ permission, and that he’d have words with my parents if they ever let me. Did anyone have a horrible accident or something lately?”

Harry thought about it. Anything that would have caused people to consider Quidditch too dangerous? He couldn’t recall anything of the sort ever being mentioned. “No. Must have been before my time.”

Rose checked her wristwatch. “Speaking of time – we should get ready to go.”

Right, Snape had said something about meeting at the entrance. Harry looked at the booklet wistfully. “Wish I hadn’t left my galleons in the hotel.” Hermione’s parents had given him some French muggle money, but they’d told him it was strictly for emergencies, like having to call the hotel if he got separated from them or something. They’d probably not be thrilled if he spent it on a book.

“I can lend you some money”, Hermione said. “Well, muggle money, but I suppose we will have to exchange it anyway.”

“Let me see.” Rose took the booklet. “Oh, that’s affordable. Tell you what, I will buy it for you.”

Harry stared at her. “But – you can’t – you only met us the day before yesterday!” What if she regretted her generosity later and then resented him for having accepted it?

“I feel like I have known you a lot longer. Who knows, you might be my long lost younger brother.” Rose flashed him a bright grin. “We are eye twins!”

It was true, Rose’s eyes were the same green as Harry’s. For someone with blonde hair, though, green eyes weren’t as unusual, were they? They fit in nicely with her blonde curls and the few freckles on her nose. Harry noticed that she had tied her hair with a matching emerald green ribbon today.

Long lost brother? If only. The Dursleys hadn’t managed to lose him, so they surely wouldn’t have lost his sister. Especially since Rose wasn’t scrawny and freakish like him – she would have been the perfect little girl, the one Aunt Petunia wished she had so she could buy pink and frilly dresses for her.

Harry wondered what Rose thought of looking like that, as he suspected she wasn’t very fond of frilly dresses. Perhaps that was why she wanted to dye her hair.

“Besides, that book is about the price of a decent sized ice cream, so really, don’t worry”, Rose continued.

When Snape came to fetch them – apparently they were running late - Rose had already moved on to Hermione. “You can pay back part of it, if you absolutely insist”, she conceded after Hermione had voiced her concerns. “But, really, I am older than you, I probably get more allowance.”

“If you still want to eat an ice cream, we need to leave now” Snape stated, in a much more neutral tone than he’d ever used on Harry.

“We’re ready!” Rose announced. “Just have to pay.”

Harry could have sworn they had been further away from the entrance and counter than they were now.

Fortunately there was no line, and the shopkeeper, a thin, middle-aged woman in a faded green velvet robe, sat behind the counter reading a book.

She startled when Rose rung the bell.

They didn’t pay with knuts, sickles and galleons here, Harry noticed. His money would have been useless.

Snape made no comment when Rose handed them the books and they put them into their respective backpacks.

Silently, he led the way to an ice cream parlour.

“I will be paying for no more than three scoops of ice cream for each of you”, Snape announced as they sat down. He sounded so grumpy that Harry thought he was being mean for a moment, then realized that that was rather a lot.

Harry looked at the options on display. There were no English names, but he knew what the common ice cream flavours were. “I think I’ll take some of that red one.”

“Do you like the taste of actual blood?”, Snape drawled.

“Of course not!”

“Then you’d better take something else.” Rose pointed at one that was more pinkish in colour. “That one’s strawberry, if that’s what you wanted. Or, over there – tomato!”

In the end, Harry decided to stick to strawberry, raspberry and chocolate. He didn’t want to see the schadenfreude on Snape’s face if he didn’t like the tomato and basil ice cream, though it was tempting.

Hermione was a bit more daring, with spruce flavoured ice cream in addition to wild blueberry and, at Rose’s insistence she take three scoops, chocolate.

Rose only wanted dark chocolate ice cream, and Snape just ordered coffee for himself.

“I have tried everything”, Rose explained as she digged into her ice cream. “Except for cockroach and blood, obviously. But this one is just the best.”

The chocolate one really was good, but so were the other two Harry had chosen.

When they had finished their ice creams, Hermione excused herself to go to the toilet. Rose got up, too, and followed right behind.

“Why do girls always go to the toilet in groups?”, Harry wondered idly.

Snape glared at him. “You, of all people, ought to know, Potter. Mountain trolls may not be very common, but they are not the only danger a young girl could encounter in a public toilet. And no, I never believed Miss Granger’s claim that she sought out the creature.”

“That was one time!”

“As you are so, dare I say, chummy with the castle’s ghosts that you attend their deathday parties, I would have assumed you knew where Myrtle Warren died.”

“She died in a toilet?”

“Why else do you think she would spend so much time there?”

Harry had never thought about it, but it did make a lot of sense.

“She was killed when the chamber of secrets was opened for the first time, Potter.”

So she knew about the monster? “Then why don’t we just ask her what the monster is?”

Snape’s eyes narrowed. “Because, Potter, she has not seen it. The only thing she testified was that she heard a male voice. And the only other thing the headmaster has been able to extract from her was that the voice was not particularly deep or loud, and thus unlikely to have belonged to Rubeus Hagrid.”

“Hagrid?” Sure, Hagrid had raised a dragon and kept a three-headed-dog and named if Fluffy, but he wouldn’t kill anyone.

“He was suspected. That was why he was expelled from Hogwarts. Keep that in mind, Potter.” Snape drew his wand from his sleeve and flicked it discreetly, so fast Harry couldn’t even react. Apparently, nothing happened. “He was expelled on the grounds that someone had witnessed he had been keeping a monster in his room. A monster that could not have killed Miss Warren the way she was killed. A monster that also had no connection at all to Salazar Slytherin. And you walk around and show off the fact you are a parselmouth. It is probably only thanks to your obnoxious father’s genes overriding all else that you were not placed in Slytherin for this talent alone – and you honestly cannot imagine what would be bad about the public finding out that you can talk to snakes?”

Harry blinked. “Uh. No, sir? I mean, lots of people can talk to snakes, can’t they?” He had never been special in anything before Quidditch, and didn’t think it likely he ever would.

“No, Potter, they cannot. You are the only parselmouth I know of in all of Hogwarts. There likely are some more in my house, but I cannot know for sure as no one but you would be foolish enough to walk around and not only tell people but demonstrate it.”

“I didn’t know it’s such a big deal! I grew up with muggles, remember?”

Snape took a deep breath. “Now you know. You have to keep this a secret, Potter! If people were to know – the speculations on who might be the heir of Slytherin would be at an end! You would be the first and foremost suspect! The ministry would put pressure on the headmaster to have you expelled!”

Oh, so now Snape was concerned about that? “So what? At the beginning of this year you were disappointed we didn’t get expelled, so what’s it to you?”

“Foolish boy! I only said that to scare you straight, I –” Snape interrupted himself, and his face coloured, as if he had blurted out some embarrassing secret.

Was this really happening? Was someone impersonating Snape with polyjuice potion? But he behaved like usual, just that ... “So you don’t hate me that much after all?”

It was rather disconcerting how fast his world was changing. He had been pretty confident that the Dursleys were at least somewhat normal, but he had been even surer that Snape absolutely loathed him.

“Don’t get any stupid ideas, I – I ...” Snape looked a bit like a fish out of the water, opening and closing his mouth. “Of course I do not hate you. It is, after all, my duty to treat you like any other student.”

Some time ago, Harry would have taken this to mean that Snape did, in fact, hate his guts, but wasn’t allowed to say so.

Now, he wondered.

Snape hadn’t been nice about it, but he had warned him about the blood-flavoured ice cream first.

Perhaps Rose would have, anyway, but the Snape he thought he knew would still have waited and hoped for Harry to have his day ruined.

While Harry pondered this strange behaviour, Snape called the waiter and paid.

“Thank you, sir.” Harry said quietly when the waiter had left. “For the ice cream.” Snape or not Snape, it simply felt rude to not say anything.

“I only do this for Rose.”

In Harry’s opinion, that didn’t make it less surprising at all. Why would Snape do anything at all for this girl he wasn’t related to?

Snape caring about anyone at all was about as surprising as him not hating Harry quite as much as previously assumed.


When Hermione returned from the toilet, she seemed a bit unsettled.

“Meet any mountain trolls?” Harry asked jokingly, hoping she’d explain things.

She forced a smile. “No, not this time, thankfully.”

On the way back to the magical statue, she told Rose the story of how they’d fought the troll, forgetting to edit it for Snape’s sake.

Snape didn’t comment.

Anything more than a year ago probably was water under the bridge, nothing he could assign detentions for.