Christmas day dawned, if only because Severus had a painting of the sun in his quarters and there never was winter on that painting.
Outside, it must still be dark.
He felt an eerie happiness that it was Christmas. Was he getting sick?
Shrugging it off, he went to the bathroom and showered. Before breakfast. A luxury he seldom indulged in. He knew his hair tended to get oily about three hours after washing it, but he was a teacher, not a participant in a beauty pageant.
With a busy schedule that in addition to being a teacher and head of house also included finding out whatever the newest Defense teacher was up to and whether it was connected to the Dark Lord, he didn’t have the time to wash his hair two times a day.
Not that he cared about the students’ gossip anyway.
He didn’t really care about anyone’s opinion these days.
Sure, he knew he could not offend some people, but that was not the same as truly caring.
And he did, most decidedly, not care what Harriet thought of him.
He walked past her on his way to the table, and overheard her talking about apprenticeships.
Interesting.
She sounded happy, so that was good.
While he ate, he glanced towards the girl whenever he thought he could risk it.
“The Weasley clan are all staying? Do their parents need a break?”, he said, as to explain his interest in the Gryffindor table. “Understandable.”
“Oh Severus.” Professor McGonagall laughed. “No, their parents are visiting one of their other sons who is working abroad.”
And they could not afford the journey for all the children. Probably the son was working the holiday shift because he needed the money.
Much as he loathed Gryffindor, at times, he had to admit that he had more in common with the Weasley clan than with … well, the richer pureblood families who tended to sort Slytherin.
Even though he had well and truly escaped poverty, it had not … escaped him.
“Stop pretending you weren’t looking at Potter”, Professor Sprout scolded, chuckling. “You found her in the forest, it is too late to pretend you don’t care if she lives or dies.”
“I just do not fancy the prospect of the upheaval that would follow the death of the Girl-Who-Lived.”
Everyone at the table laughed. Except … Quirinus. He looked rather pained. Which confirmed Severus’ suspicions.
Somehow, Quirinus was in cahoots with the Dark Lord. A weak man, seeking power, if only to defend himself.
Severus himself had gone down that path.
Shortly after breakfast, a letter appeared on his office desk.
It was from Harriet.
Severus took it to his living room and risked making himself a hot cocoa.
This letter, hopefully, would not contain any upsetting things.
“Dear Prince,
(Can I call you that?)
Merry Christmas to you, too.
I want to apologize. What I wrote about my mum was really mean. The hags said she was your only friend, is that true? They also said you’d never forgive me, so perhaps they lied about other things, too?
Thank you for your present. It’s really pretty. If I wear it as a kind of necklace with the leather string, I can hide it under my clothes and the Dursleys can’t see it is valuable. I’m not sure if they would take it away, because I never had anything that pretty, but Dudley would probably want to steal it in any case.
If I have to break it, can you repair it? I hope I don’t have to, but it would be nice if it could be repaired.
I would like to be your apprentice! But that doesn’t mean I can move in with you, does it? Because you’ve given me the flower thing (what is that sort of thing called?) and I can only use it in the holidays. I wouldn’t need that if I could move in with you.
There’s something I need to ask you.
I got an anonymous Christmas present, and after the thing with the hag, I’m not sure if it is dangerous. Ron says it’s an invisibility cloak and they’re real rare. The letter enclosed says it used to belong to my father and the letter writer is just giving it back, but there’s no name there.
What do you think?
Yours sincerely,
Harry”
An apology. That was unexpected. After all, he had already forgiven her.
Perhaps he himself had been an unusually self-centred teen?
Still, this being the spawn of Potter, it was rather unlikely that Harriet was more sensitive than he had been at that age.
On the other hand, she was Lily’s daughter, and Lily had been exceptional.
It might be just an attempt to get him to tell her something incriminating about himself … namely, that he had not had any true friends.
Sure, there had been the Slytherin boys he had called his friends, but there had been no real trust there. Even back then … he had known he could not trust them with his real thoughts. That even voicing the tiniest doubt he had about pureblood supremacy would make them turn against him.
Possibly even with murderous intent.
He had not shared his doubts with Lily, for fear that she might try and use them to talk him out of the whole thing altogether. However, he had occasionally tried to persuade her to see his point of view.
Never once had he feared that Lily might turn against him and physically attack him if he voiced an opinion she did not like.
And still … and still … he had been too blind to realize what this meant. What this must mean.
Teenage idiocy, he wanted to tell himself, but he could not.
After all, Potter and Black had been old enough to see the wrongness of their actions, too. Sure, they had directly sexually harassed him and tried to murder him, while his own crimes had always been indirect, but …
He had witnessed what his ‘friends’ had done. Lily had even pointed it out to him. And yet, he has been as willfully deaf to her warnings as Potter had been to her anger.
Severus shook his head, willing himself to return to the present. Harriet was a strange child. She had not even mentioned the chocolate frogs. He would have thought she would have been the most excited about those.
He had half expected her to reject the portkey as being too ‘girly’.
The thought that it might be stolen had not even figured into his thoughts at the time.
Of course public portkeys usually looked like trash to avoid that very thing, but he had thought if he made something that looked enough like muggle jewelry, her magic-hating family would leave it alone.
He really should have expected that, since they clearly did not just hate Harriet’s magic, but Harriet herself, they would not let her have anything nice.
She was right, though, the simple leather string would not draw too much attention.
An invisibility cloak. Of course Potter had had one. That explained a lot. And all this time Severus had thought his tormentor just happened to be very good at charms.
Who could have sent it to the girl?
Sirius Black? No, he wouldn’t have been able to keep that with him in prison.
Remus Lupin? Would be like that coward to write an anonymous letter.
Though of course, Potter had also been very close with Dumbledore …
Would Dumbledore give an eleven year old something as dangerous as an invisibility cloak?
Yes. Yes he would.
“Dear Harry,
Yes, you may call me Prince.
You are perfectly right about the hags: They lie a lot, and what kernels of truth they are in what they say, they twist beyond recognition.
Your mother was my first friend, so for a while, she was indeed my only friend, but by the time she ended our friendship, that was no longer the case.
In fact, one reason she no longer wanted to be friends with me was because she did not like the boys I increasingly spent my time with. She was right, and I am no longer friends with most of them, but at the time I came around to her point of view, it was already too late.
The flower thing is a portkey. A portkey can have any shape whatsoever, though of course, most will be small enough to be picked up, out of practicality. If you need to use it, take care that no one you do not wish to bring along with you is touching you at the time. If you do wish to bring a friend or a pet or anything along with you, hold the friend’s hand or hold the pet in your arms.
You will hear other people mention portkeys, they are one of the most common ways of traveling. However, they are also heavily regulated, so this one is not strictly legal.
As for breaking the glass phial, do not worry, it is easily repaired with a simple charm.
If your cousin tries to steal it, you may tell him that it is cursed and a horrible fate will befall anyone but you who touches it.
There is no curse, but I can certainly make the life of your cousin very uncomfortable.
In the event that he successfully steals it, write to me immediately.
It is, I am afraid, completely out of the question that you move in with me. I am a very busy man, and could not adequately take care of you.
Your relatives do not seem to be doing that, either, I must admit, but they also would not consent to let you live with a wizard if I am not completely wrong about them.
Hence the portkey.
The mysterious letter … the safest course of action would be to show your invisibility cloak to a teacher.
I do not know for certain that your father owned an invisibility cloak, but it would explain a lot of things. He did often seem to appear out of thin air.
My guess is that the letter is indeed from an old friend of your father’s who likes being mysterious. If someone wanted to curse you, there would be cheaper alternatives than an invisibility cloak that actually works, so I do not think you need to be overly worried.
Should you notice any symptoms following the use of the cloak, do search help from Madam Pomfrey, and alert me.
Yours sincerely,
The Half-Blood Prince”
It was not before long that Harriet wrote a letter admitting that she was using the cloak to sneak around the school.
And apparently, she had discovered the Mirror of Erised.
“It’s strange, because I can see my parents in it, but Hermione doesn’t see hers. She says she sees Professor McGonagall awarding her a hundred points for an exceptional essay and Gryffindor winning the house cup because of it. And she sees all of us applauding her. I figure it must show you what you want to see?”
The mirror. The perfect opportunity to learn more about the girl, in theory, but wishing her parents were alive could mean many things. A wish to have known them. A wish to be loved. A wish to not be mistreated.
Granger wishing to be accepted by her peers was much more specific. Strange, he had always thought she was happy with having only two friends.
But then, he thought of himself as a loner, and he had wanted the approval of his peers, too. Had, perhaps, wanted it more than Lily’s friendship.
In his reply, he admitted that he would probably see some people he had lost in the war alive if he were to look into the mirror, without specifying.
Things were quiet after that, Harriet’s letters mostly containing ordinary school things.
Chapter 10