Chapter 7: The Disappearance of Severus Snape
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Snape did not come back after two weeks, nor two weeks after that. In fact, the term was halfway over before Draco heard a word about his godfather from anyone.
He threw himself into his studies, not from desire so much as a lack of preferable alternatives. The dismal wet of a Scottish spring forbade any evening excursions with Potter, and as exams approached, the library became more and more crowded with students who, to Draco’s recollection, had never made an appearance within its walls before. For privacy, he retreated to Gryffindor Tower, where bleak winds from the moor thundered in the eaves and occasionally sufficed to obscure the atonal wails of Finnigan’s music.
Secluded in his four-poster with the hangings drawn, he wrote long letters to Snape, which he left unaddressed and slipped beneath the Potion Master’s office door. ‘Dear Professor,’ read one. ‘I hope you are not dead, but if you are, please do your students the kindness of returning as a ghost, even temporarily, so we (read: your godson, Draco Malfoy) are not left in Quirrell’s hands for final exams. Best, Draco.’
Snape’s absence hurt him in another way. Because of the Ministry’s surveillance, he could not write his mother. He received zero letters in the weeks between January and March, and it made him so restless he considered going to McGonagall and begging for leave to go home. He began lighting Dobby’s candle each evening before he fell asleep. It gave off an olive-gray smoke that smelled like Narcissa and the Manor, old wood and damp stone, dust and cedars.
The only Gryffindor who shared his dismay at Snape’s disappearance was, surprisingly, Granger.
“I hope nothing’s happened to him,” she said fretfully (once they were well out of Potter and Weasley’s earshot.) “He’s not my favorite teacher, and I’m certain he doesn’t like me, but I don’t want harm to come to any professor… and quite frankly, he’s ten times the Potions Master Quirrell is. Swap?”
They traded papers. Granger had suggested they review together for a particularly tricky Charms assignment at the start of term, and it had somehow turned into a habit. If it had been anyone else, Draco wouldn’t have tolerated criticism of his work, but she was still beating him in Transfiguration.
“Quirell is a hack,” he said scornfully. “He doesn’t even know the right way to chop a stag-beetle… for a potioneer, his knife-work is atrocious.”
Granger leaned in and lowered her voice. “Did you see,” she said, “when we did the Forgetfulness Potion, how his model looked? It wasn’t at all how the book described — it was yellow instead of green, and the smoke was the wrong shape.”
“It was the same with the Pompion Potion,” he said disgustedly. “It wasn’t just mediocre, it was wrong. Ours both looked better than his.”
“I don’t understand it. For someone who worked with Nicholas Flamel, he’s terrible!”
“I tried complaining to McGonagall.”
“Really? What did she say?”
“That I couldn’t expect everyone to live up to Snape,” he said bitterly, circling a spelling error, “and that Quirrell was a Board Certified Potioneer, so twelve Grandmasters evidently disagreed with my assessment of his abilities. As if a cert means anything. A flobberworm could pass the Boards.”
Granger sighed. “Well, honestly, it’s not us I feel bad for. You and I will be fine. But the others… I mean, poor Neville, he might have to retake it next year.”
“You don’t have to tell me about ‘poor Neville,’” he muttered mutinously. He knew all about it. He and Longbottom had been working double-time to try and get the boy’s Potions grade up to snuff, but the difficulty of the material escalated sharply in the second term, and for someone who had barely fit his mind around the fundamentals, this was too much to ask. More cauldrons were sacrificed to Longbottom’s indelible powers of destruction that spring than Draco had seen Snape lose in ten years of potion-making, and with each loss, the boy became less and less motivated, until he barely responded to Draco’s instructions, polite or otherwise.
This came to a head in the last week of March. “I’ll never get this,” Longbottom complained, shoving his chin in his palm and looking longingly out of the Tower window. It was the first really fine day they’d had in months. The sky was a clear, forget-me-not blue, and a group of girls in white dresses were picnicking on the lawn by the lake.
“I’m doomed,” he continued glumly. “I’m going to have to repeat the year. Gran will kill me.”
“Good,” snapped Draco, who had been working with him for far too long to have any patience left for moping. “I’ll send her some flowers if she does. Then I’ll be free of you.”
“It’s not my fault! It’s too difficult! I’ve tried the same potion three times, and I’ve done everything right, it just doesn’t want to work…”
“It doesn’t ‘want’ to do anything. You’re failing because you’re not stirring correctly,” he uttered through gritted teeth. “You need to stir slowly and steadily for three minutes, which is not, in fact, an extraordinarily difficult task, but you keep getting distracted, so it curdles—”
“But that’s imp-p-possible,” said Longbottom. “I can’t sit still for three minutes, I get ants-s-s-sy. I want to move around. My gran s-s-says—”
“Oh, please, do tell me what Granny Longbottom says. I simply dribble with anticipation.”
“My g-g-g-ran says,” Longbottom soldiered on, “that I’ve got a, a, a special condition, and I c-c-c-can’t sit in a-a-any one place for very long. She says my dad was the s-s-s-same.”
“Well, that’s a comfort,” Draco said acidly. “Your dad was spastic, so you are, too. Are you sure she was trying to comfort you?”
“That’s r-r-rude,” said Longbottom bravely, “a-a-a-and y-y-you shouldn’t say it. I d-d-don’t c-c-c-c-c-c-c—” He stopped, swallowed, and closed his eyes. He tried again. “I don’t care what you say about me,” he said, pronouncing each syllable carefully, “and you can be as mean as you want, and it’s probably true. But p-p-please don’t say stuff like that about my dad.”
For some reason, this meek entreaty irritated Draco even further. “Why?” he snapped. “I’ll say what I please about your father, Longbottom, and anyone else’s. In fact I bet he is a spastic. You should hope he is, anyway. At least that would explain why he couldn’t be bothered to raise his son—”
Longbottom stood up so fast his chair skittered back and fell over. “My father was a hero,” he said, cheeks blazing, voice clear. “Which is more than anyone can say of yours.”
The common room became very quiet.
“Really,” said Draco, in a voice so low it was almost inaudible. “Is that so. How very proud your grandmother must be.”
Longbottom, to his credit, refused to stand down. He stared at Draco with balled fists, breathing hard. “Yes,” he said. “And he sacrificed himself to stop people like your father from taking over.”
“People like my father?” He gave a joyless smirk. “There’s a word you want that you’re not saying, isn’t there? Go on, Longbottom, have it out. Everyone knows you’re thinking it.”
There was a pause, and Longbottom bit out: “Death Eater.”
“There you go,” Draco sneered, in faux admiration. “Why, you do have a backbone, after all. I say, this is a revelation. Do you get that from your father, too? Of course, being dead, I doubt there’s much more than a backbone left of him by now…”
A susurrus of disapproval wound its way around the common room: this was below the belt, and nobody liked it. Least of all when hurled at Longbottom, who, despite his incompetence, cowardice, and reproachable tendency to leech off the abilities of those around him, was somehow better-liked in the Tower than Draco.
“He’s not dead,” said Longbottom, and he wasn’t stuttering anymore.
“Oh? So he did run away, then. Some hero he is, isn’t he, man could stand up to the Dark Lord but couldn’t stomach you—”
“He’s in St. Mungo’s,” said the boy coldly.
Draco paused. He did a few quick calculations and arrived at the implication of his words. The realization was a bit like a stab to the gut.
“Because of your aunt,” he added, twisting the blade.
Draco couldn’t think of anything clever — or even coherent — to reply to this, so he said nothing. He sat in the horrible silence and fumed, hateful, as Longbottom stood there radiating righteousness like a mounted knight.
Longbottom turned and picked up the chair. He set it right and pushed it into the table. He turned off the cauldron burner (correctly, Draco noticed) and extinguished the flame. Then he said: “Don’t take this the wrong way, M-M-M-Malfoy, but if I were you, I would try to be nicer about other people’s families. You know, considering.”
Then he left. There was a quiet dignity in the sad hunch of his shoulders.
Any hopes Draco had of the fight blowing over were extinguished by supper. Fred and George Weasley spread the story like a virus, and within the day, none of Gryffindor would speak to him. This included Potter and Weasley, who sat apart from him at dinner, pointedly parked on either side of Longbottom.
Only Granger joined Draco.
“Careful, Granger,” he jeered as she sat down. “Don’t want to spoil your reputation. You might get murderer on your sleeves.”
“For Pete’s sake, don’t be silly,” she scoffed, reaching for the pumpkin juice. “To be clear, you were totally horrible to Neville, but that was your own doing, not your father’s, and frankly if you just apologized to him I think he’d be willing to move on.”
“Apologize?” Draco wrinkled his nose. “To Longbottom? Eugh.”
“Alright, don’t,” she said crisply. “But you can’t sulk about everyone being cross at you if it’s your own stubbornness that prevents it from blowing over.”
In fact he could, and did. For the next two weeks, he stubbornly went about his day without talking to a single Gryffindor, save Granger. At first she kept him company, sitting with him for classes and meals, but eventually she tired of this self-imposed pariahdom, and began taking some of her meals with Potter and Weasley again.
“They’re my friends, and I miss them,” she snapped, in response to his (somewhat passive-aggressively) pointing out the change. “You can’t ask me to go cold turkey with you, that’s unreasonable and you know it. And it’s such a stupid fight, I’m sorry, but it is! All you have to do is walk up to Neville and say, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that about your dad, let’s make up.’ That’s it! I can write it down for you, if you want.”
What birds had to do with it, he had no idea. “Get over it, Granger. I’m not begging for forgiveness from the squib son of blood traitors.”
“Three things.” She counted them off on her fingers. “One: it’s not begging, it’s asking. Two: he’s not a squib, that’s rude, and you should be nicer to him. Three: there’s no such thing as ‘blood traitors,’ and if you keep saying things like that, I’m not going to sit with you anymore.”
That this was a real threat with some meat in it, and which was capable of making him nervous, annoyed him beyond measure. He stuck three fingers in the air. “Three things,” he said, mimicking her high-pitched voice. “One: asking for something in exchange for nothing is always begging. Two: everybody’s nice to him, and it doesn’t do him a bit of good. He’s been coddled and carried his whole life, and that’s why he’s so miserably ill-equipped for everything now. Three: ‘blood traitor’ is a perfectly real word for a perfectly real thing, and it’s not even a bad word, so I don’t know why you’re getting hysterical about it.”
“I’m not hysterical,” she said calmly. “It may not be a slur, but it’s still cruel. It’s an unkind name for people whose only crime is not hating muggles. You know — like my parents?”
“Not this again.”
“‘This’ is my family,” she insisted. “For someone who cares so much about family lines, you must be able to understand why it’s important—”
“I’m not saying it’s not important, I’m saying you’re being dramatic about the most irrelevant things. I didn’t insult you! You’re not a blood traitor. You’re not a muggle. You’re a witch, and if you must know, I happen to respect you. You’re probably one of the only people at this school who’s actually earning her place in it, instead of coasting on basic competence and grade inflation.”
Granger, for some reason, failed to be charmed by this compliment. “I know you’re in a bad mood because Snape’s gone,” she told him, regarding him dispassionately with her dark brown eyes. “I understand that you’re worried about him. And I apologize. That must be very hard for you. But that’s no excuse for treating everyone else poorly. I’m sorry you have to hear this from me, but you do have to hear it: Nobody likes a bully, and nobody cares what their reasons are.”
And she said nothing else to him for the rest of the day.
The weather turned warm again in the middle of April, and one balmy Sunday evening, under a cloudless twilit sky, Dumbledore made an announcement.
“Attention!” he cried, as the remains of dessert shimmered off their plates. “Attention, dear friends, peers, and students! A brief announcement, before you wander off to your various evening occupations.” He bowed his head. “It is my great sorrow to announce that your beloved Potions Master, Professor Snape, will not be returning for the remainder of term. He has been recovering steadily but slowly, and wishes me to communicate his disappointment at being unable to share in this segment of your education.”
A chorus of dismayed shouts arose from the Slytherin table, and one sole gasp of dismay from the Gryffindor’s. The rest of the hall shuffled in poorly concealed glee.
Granger, sitting amidst a flock of several Weasleys, shot a worried look down the table at Draco.
“As we cannot in good conscience ask Professor Quirrell to proctor and grade two separate exam periods, Potions will be taught for the remainder of the year by a substitute teacher. His replacement, Professor Sebastian Dagworth, has served for several years as an adjunct professor at Durmstrang…”
But Draco did not hear out the end of the sentence. He sprang up and ran from the hall, heart pounding.
By now he knew the way to the dungeons well, and he made short work of the distance. He threw himself down a flight of stairs, rode the banister to the bottom, and dashed down a stone corridor lit only by guttering torches, skidding a corner and slipping through a crevice behind a statue of Ptolemy. This spat him out in front of the Potions Master’s quarters, and he hurled himself against the door, hammering on it furiously.
“Professor!” he shouted. “Professor! Are you in there? Can you hear me? It’s Draco! Let me in!”
No answer came. He hammered again, shouted some more, and then fumbled for his wand. Fine, he thought. He would break into the room, if Snape wouldn’t come out, and if that didn’t work, he’d blast the door open. Answer me, you greasy old goat. If you’re dead, so help me, I’ll kill you.
“Mister Malfoy? What is the meaning of this?”
It was Quirrell. He had emerged from the Potions classroom, holding an enormous stack of books under his arm, and he peered at Draco as if he couldn’t quite make out his face. Draco quickly hid his wand behind his back.
“I want to speak to Professor Snape,” he said, with a lack of courtesy that would have shamed his mother into hiding.
“Indeed?” said Quirrell mildly. “Well, I hope you do not expect him to answer, if you intend to be yelling at that door all night.”
“…Sorry, sir?”
“He is not in there,” said the professor, nodding at the door. “He has been in the Hospital Wing for some time. I do not think he is taking visitors. I have come several times to see him and Madam Pomfrey is usually shooing me away.” He gazed absently at one of the braziers, his expression distant. Then his eyes snapped up to Draco’s, and Draco was unsettled by the way the flames played across his irises, which were preternaturally pale. “I was bringing him chocolates and flowers, you see,” he added. “To wish him speedy recovery. He is very ill.”
The idea of anyone wanting to bring Snape flowers and chocolates, or indeed thinking Snape would accept them, was perfectly comical.
He narrowed his eyes. “Very kind of you, sir,” he said.
Quirrell stepped forward and held out his hand. “If you have a message you would like to give to him, you may give it to me. I will see that he gets it.”
He stepped backward. “No, sir.”
“You are not trying to give him a message? You were saying you wanted to speak to him.”
“No, sir, I… I’m sorry, it’s nothing important.”
At this, Draco decided it was time for a stylish exit. He turned around and sprinted from the hall, and didn’t stop until he was back to Gryffindor Tower.
“Potter!”
“Mmf.”
“Potter!”
“Mmmgh — Malfoy? What the—”
Draco shoved him a third time, and Potter went flailing off the mattress in surprise. “Wake up,” he hissed. “I need you to do something for me.”
It was past midnight. Draco was still fully-dressed, but the rest of the dorm was fast asleep. Snores rose from Weasley’s bed, thick enough to disguise their whispering.
“What?” Potter said blearily. He squinted. Without his glasses, his eyes looked funny somehow, like they were naked. “Malfoy? Is that you?”
“Yes. Glad you asked. I need to get into the Hospital Wing, and you’re my accomplice. Now, here’s what we’re going to do. You’ll distract Filch, and I’ll sneak in—”
“Hold on. No. Hang on. What?” He sat up, snagging his glasses from the bedside table, and fumbled them on. “It’s the middle of the night. Go tomorrow.”
“I can’t go tomorrow, there’ll be people about. I need to break in.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to see Snape.”
“Great,” said Potter. He put his glasses back on the bedside table, and started climbing back into bed. “Have fun. Don’t get caught.”
Panicking, Draco hauled Potter out of bed by the scruff, like a wayward puppy. He let out the same kind of indignant yip. “Come on! You’re going to help me.”
“NO — leggo, you sallowy git—”
“Stop squirming! Come on, I’ve got your shoes here, there’s no time to waste—”
Potter, who was surprisingly strong, wriggled free of Draco’s grip. He scuttled across the bed and glared at him, though because he wasn’t wearing his glasses, most of it ended up directed at the wall over Draco’s shoulder. “You’ve got some nerve, after what you said to Neville.”
“What I said to Longbottom? Who cares?” He wanted to tear his hair out. “Why is everyone so up in arms about a tiff between me and that snivelling lump?”
“Oi. Because he’s our friend,” Potter whispered hotly. “And because he doesn’t deserve how you treat him, especially given the way he’s been singing your praises all year for helping him with Potions.”
At this, Draco paused. “He has?”
“Yes. Neville’s told everybody who’ll listen how you’ve helped him, how you’re the only reason he’s close to a passing grade now. He says you’re the only tutor he’s ever had who makes Potions make sense. He’s been incredibly gracious. And all year, you’ve been jeering at him behind his back. It’s cruel.”
“I… but he’s not passing,” Draco said, bewildered. “He’s probably going to have to repeat the year. I failed.”
“You think he cares?” Potter rubbed one of his eyes with a knuckle. “He knows perfectly well he’s failing Potions. He doesn’t need you to tell him that. He’s just excited to feel like he’s learning, for once.”
Draco frowned. He hadn’t thought that Longbottom was taking anything away from their weekly exercises in failure. He’d assumed that they both hated it equally.
He said haltingly: “So he thinks I’m a… good teacher?”
“For some reason,” Potter grumbled. “Don’t ask me why, I’d rather eat a wurst-flavored Bertie Bott’s than have you for a Potions partner.”
“Yeah, feeling’s mutual,” he said automatically, but he couldn’t muster much malice. “I … all right, listen. If I promise to apologize to Longbottom, will you help me?”
Potter looked at him searchingly.
“No,” he said incredulously. “What kind of negotiation is this? Apologize to Neville because it’s the right thing to do, and go to the Hospital Wing tomorrow, when we’re all awake!”
“Shh! I can’t do that, I told you, they won’t let me in!”
“So? That’s your problem!”
“I thought you were a Gryffindor!” Draco whisper-shouted.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re helpful! And selfless! And you do stupid things without asking questions!”
“Oi!” A pillow came winging over from Weasley’s bed and smacked Draco in the back of the head. He had the faultless aim of a boy who had been raised in a bedroom with several other boys.
“Quiet, boffaview,” he slurred. “Wuzzall the noise?”
“Nothing.”
“Go back to sleep.”
“Naw,” he denied, blinking. “Wuzzat? Wuzz going on? Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes,” said Draco.
“No,” insisted Potter.
Draco curled his hands into fists. “Potter,” he said, thinly. “I seem to recall, not too long ago, that someone did something rather selfless for you, and it involved both of you being in a place where you shouldn’t have been.”
The other boy’s face flickered with guilt. He argued, “That was hardly selfless. You got to fly around, too.”
“I didn’t need to invite you. I could’ve gotten into the lockers all by myself.”
Potter dragged a hand down his face. He groaned.
Then he rolled out of bed, grabbed his robe, and shrugged it on over his pajamas.
“Wipe that smirk off your face, Malfoy.”
“I’m not smirking,” Draco said, smirking.
Weasley, now fully awake, poked his head through the hangings. “Whaz’ going on,” he demanded. “Where’re we going?”
“Nowhere. Go back to sleep.”
Weasley ignored him. “Harry? What’s Malfoy up to?”
“We’re going to the Hospital Wing. Wanna come?”
Weasley considered this, pursing his lips, and then gave the universal shrug of: ‘eh, might as well.’
“No! We’re not bringing Weasley!”
“Ron can come if he wants to.”
“This isn’t a Gryffindor field trip! This is a clandestine mission!”
“Yeah, sure. Ron, you’ll want socks, mate, it’s cold out there.”
“Good call. Thanks, mate.”
Draco folded his arms. “You lot want to get caught, do you?” he said coldly. “Because it’s hard enough to sneak around with two students. With three, we’re sitting ducks.”
Potter grinned. “But we won’t get caught,” he said.
“Oh? Need I remind you what happened last time?”
“Last time,” he said, “we didn’t have this.” And he produced from the bottom of his dresser a long cloak made of a shimmery material that moved like liquid in his hands.
“What’s that?”
“Invisibility Cloak,” Weasley crowed. “Harry got it for Christmas.”
“You mean a Disillusionment Cloak.”
“No, that’s the cool part. It’s the real deal.”
He rolled his eyes. “Invisibility Cloaks are an urban legend.”
“I thought so too, but you’ve got to check this out. He’s fully invisible, look.”
“No. Weasley. This isn’t one of those ‘competing evidence’ debates, I mean it’s genuinely impossible. There is no Disillusionment Charm strong enough to achieve complete invisibility, so a bespelled cloak, no matter how good it is…”
“Mate, just look.”
“…can never… fully… achieve…” Draco spun around in a circle, looking for the dark-haired boy. But there was no sign of him.
“Potter?”
“Right here,” said an amused voice behind him. He jumped.
Weasley snickered.
“Potter,” he hissed, heart racing. “Are you there? How the devil—”
Potter’s face appeared from a crevice in thin air, grinning wickedly. “Cool, isn’t it?” he said. “I’ve been using it to sneak around for months.”
“Where did you get that?” Draco reached out and rubbed some of the material between his fingers, jaw agape. “Do they sell these? Where can I buy one?”
“Like Ron said, Christmas present. No clue who from, they didn’t sign the note. Apparently it was my dad’s.” Potter spread his arms and beckoned Draco in. “It fits Ron and me, so the three of us shouldn’t be a problem.”
“So long as you don’t mind getting a bit friendly,” said Weasley with a leer.
Admittedly, Draco’s resolve did waver. But he steeled himself with thoughts of Snape on his deathbed, subject to the mysterious whims of Quirrell.
“If either of you step on my toes,” he warned, “I’m hexing your tongue into rubber.”
They made it as far as the common room.
The portrait hole was open, and they were almost out the door, when a voice from the corner demanded: “What are you doing?”
Draco tipped his head back and let out a moan of impatience. Weasley patted him on the shoulder. “Told you we should have put the cloak on in the dorms,” he advised Potter.
Granger appeared from behind an armchair, wearing the ugliest pink pajamas Draco had ever seen. They were embroidered with bunny rabbits, and were about two sizes too small for her, so her ankles protruded from the cuffs. “Are you sneaking out?” she asked. “All three of you? Together?”
It sounded like this last part was the hardest for her to believe.
The boys looked at each other. An unspoken agreement formed as to what their strategy would be.
“No,” said Draco.
“Nope,” said Weasley.
“Why would you say that?” said Potter, holding the portrait hole open with his foot.
“No, no, no! You can’t go out! You’ll be caught, and you’ll get Gryffindor in trouble!” She folded her arms and stamped her foot. Draco found this ridiculous and somewhat endearing.
“No, Granger, look. This is important—”
“I won’t let you!”
“Hermione,” said Potter, in appealing tones, “we’ve got the cloak. It’ll be alright.”
“And what happens if someone hears you? Or if Mrs. Norris smells you? Or if—”
“Hang on,” Draco said indignantly, holding up a hand. “You knew Potter had an Invisibility Cloak? And you didn’t tell me?”
She ignored him. “Or if there are alarms on the Hospital Wing? And what do you want in the Hospital Wing, anyway? It’s the middle of the night!”
“His dreadful godfather,” sighed Weasley. “Unfortunately.”
“…might have let me in on it,” Draco was muttering, “not that I’m important or anything, but seeing as half of Gryffindor gets to know…”
“Oh,” said Granger, in a small voice. She looked at Draco. “You’re going to see Snape?”
He shrugged.
She tapped her foot and bit her lip. “Because they won’t let you see him in the daytime,” she guessed.
“Private ward,” he told her.
She fidgeted furiously for a few moments more.
“Fine,” she said. “All right! We’ll go.”
“We?” said Weasley in alarm. “What’s this ‘we’? Who invited you?”
“Well, obviously, I’m going to help,” she said loftily, binding her hair back with a bit of elastic. “I’m not taking any chances of you getting caught and losing Gryffindor any points.”
She glanced at Draco, and he suddenly found himself staring at the ceiling, filled to the brim with uncomfortable emotions.
“I don’t know if four can fit under the cloak,” Potter said uncertainly, shaking out the fabric. “I mean, we’ll try it, but we’ll have to move slow…”
Indeed, as it turned out, he was right to be skeptical. Ample as the cloak’s original owner must have been, even a large cloak could not comfortably fit four children, and they roamed the hallways in fits and starts, stopping every now and then to readjust, or because someone had to tie their shoe. Weasley, who was the tallest, had to stoop so their feet wouldn’t show, and Granger ended up wedged uncomfortably between Draco and Potter. Altogether it took far too long for Draco’s liking to reach the Hospital Wing, and by the time they approached the oaken double-doors, the Great Bell was striking one o’clock.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” whispered Granger. “Ron, you wait here with the cloak and watch for Filch. Harry, you come in and watch the door to Madam Pomfrey’s office. I’ll stay in the main ward and make sure no one wakes up.”
“Why am I on Filch Alert?” complained Weasley. “I’m stuck out here, am I, while you lot go in?”
“Oh, honestly, Ron, if you’d like to swap with Harry that’s fine—”
“Oi,” Potter whispered loudly, silencing both of them. “Quiet.”
It was well-timed, for the oak doors had parted. The four of them scurried behind the corner, and Weasley crouched low, so the cloak covered them.
A hooded figure crept out of the Hospital Wing, its face hidden by cowl and shadow. It paused, appearing to scan the area, and then prowled toward them, gliding seamlessly over the floor.
Draco’s neck tingled as it drew closer, and he pressed himself against the wall, suddenly terrified for the integrity of the Invisibility Cloak. Though he knew intellectually that it couldn’t see them, something in his hindbrain insisted that it was no good, they were done for, of course it could see them, they were standing right smack in front of it.
The figure checked the corner before turning, and stared right through them at the stairwell beyond. As it did so, a ray of torchlight fell on its exposed profile. Granger gasped, and Weasley kicked her ankle.
It was Snape.
The Potions Master looked terrible. Gaunt and sallow, with cloudy bags under his bloodshot eyes, Draco could count the individual beads of sweat on his forehead, plastering his greasy hair to his temples and dripping down his long nose. As they watched, he took a rattling breath, and drank deeply from a silver flask. When it was finished, he seemed to straighten up — though he looked no less miserable — and moved with fresh purpose down the hallway.
“No wonder he’s been sick for ages,” Weasley marveled, at a volume that made Draco desperate to remind him they were invisible, not inaudible. “Somebody poisoned the wanker.”
“Stop it, Ron, you don’t know that,” said Granger, with a nervous glance at Draco.
But quite frankly, Weasley had a good eye, and Draco agreed. He had seen roadkill with more vitality.
“But where’s he going?” Potter wondered, watching the cowled figure begin a long, laborious journey up the stairs. “It’s the middle of the night, and he’s sick as a dog. What’s so important he’s got to do it himself?”
“One way to find out,” suggested Weasley.
Potter shrugged and looked at Draco. “He’s your godfather,” he said. It was clear he did not personally care for Snape and all, and that all else being equal, he would not risk one iota of his own health and happiness in Snape’s defense — but he was extending the offer anyway, because it was obvious Draco cared, and for some reason, under Potter’s maniacal rules of honor, this mattered.
Draco filed away these confounding realizations to address later. “Let’s go,” he said.
The fourth member of the group was kneading her hair in distress. “I really, really don’t think this is a good idea!”
She continued her efforts to deter them all the way up to the third floor. But because she couldn’t leave the Cloak without risking being caught, she was trapped in their inexorable march onwards.
It wasn’t difficult to follow him: though the Cloak was a slow-roaming, eight-legged animal, Snape walked with a limp, and had to pause to gather his strength.
At the head of the third-floor corridor, they spotted Mrs. Norris skulking around the banister.
“Oh, let’s kick her, just the once,” begged Weasley.
Draco, who thought this was a great idea, started to say so. But Potter gave his veto with a headshake, though he was grinning.
Snape, on the other hand, held no such reservations. Pointing his wand at the feline, he rasped, “Petrificus Totalus.”
The cat snapped to attention, its legs bound together. Its body rigid, it swayed where it stood, and then flopped on its side, stiff as a board.
“Good one,” Weasley crowed. “Maybe he’ll punt it, and we can watch.”
Snape disappointed Weasley, however, by stepping carefully around Mrs. Norris and continuing through the corridor. The four hurried after and watched him slip through the door that contained the three-headed dog.
Weasley made to follow, and Potter and Draco hauled him back. This was not easy: Weasley was as dense as he was tall, and could probably have lifted either of them with ease.
“That’s the three-headed dog,” said Potter. “He’s going after the thing it’s guarding. The treasure, or the Stone, or whatever it is.”
“It doesn’t sound like he’s fighting a three-headed dog,” Granger pointed out.
“Maybe there’s a Muffling Charm,” said Draco.
“Or the dog isn’t there anymore.”
“Or he’s found another way past it…”
“Hang on, shut up for a second,” said Weasley. Ignoring Draco’s indignant look, he turned his ear to the air, and the others heard what he had: the tinkling melody of a harp.
Potter pushed the door open. Because of the Cloak, they were forced to follow him, even though Draco was feeling queasy and not altogether sure about this. He respected his godfather — certainly liked him, and thought he was one of the better adults out there — but he didn’t much fancy dying for him.
As the door creaked, the harp music swelled. The dog was curled up in a pile of straw at the back of its chamber, dozing fitfully, while a magical harp played lullabies at its feet. The trapdoor in the middle of the chamber was open.
“That’s clever,” said Granger. “You wonder how much trial and error it took to figure that out…”
Without waiting for them, Potter ducked out of the cloak and hurried over to the trapdoor. “It’s all dark down there,” he said. “No ladder, it’s a straight drop. That’s where Snape must be.”
“What do you think he wants down there?”
“Anyone’s guess,” he said, and stuck his hand experimentally into the hole. Draco almost shouted.
But nothing happened, and he pulled it out, waggling his fingers, checking the back for residue. “But if there’s more traps down there, he doesn’t look like he’s in a fit state to take them on.” He looked at Draco. “You still want to follow him?”
In truth, the answer was no, not a chance. He didn’t think Snape wanted anyone following him, and Draco’s sense of self-preservation (which had awoken, bleary and confused, at the sight of the dog) was starting to clang a cowbell in the back of his brain, howling: Not good! Terrible idea! Go back to bed!
“Well,” he said, dithering.
Granger, seeing her opportunity, seized on it. “We should get another professor,” she hissed into his ear. “If we run and get McGonagall, and tell her what’s happened, she can come and find Snape and she’ll be loads more equipped to face what’s down there anyway, and yes, we’ll lose points for being out of bed, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
“How noble of you,” Weasley said dryly.
“It’s better than going by ourselves! What are we going to do down there? The dog is only the first obstacle; do you think they’ll get easier the closer you get?”
“Hermione?” said Potter.
“What?”
“I wish you’d kept your voice down,” he said, in a small voice.
The harp had stopped. A growl rumbled the stone beneath their feet. Draco, still safely hidden beneath the cloak, balked and drew it tighter around himself: but Potter, who was freely visible, was caught in the dog’s yellow glare.
The four of them stood absolutely still. The beast clambered to its full height, shaking itself awake.
Potter, still astoundingly calm, said: “The three of you start walking away, slowly. I’ll keep it distracted—”
He didn’t have time to finish. The dog lunged, jaws snapping, and with a shout, Potter took the only escape he had: he leapt into the black square of the trapdoor, and was gone.
One of its jaws snapped shut over the place he had been seconds before, with a hard crack.
“Harry!” shouted Weasley. He shook himself free of the cloak. Charging, he dodged a swipe of the dog’s massive paw, and hurled himself into the trapdoor after him.
“No,” Granger said, terrified, white-knuckling his arm. “Oh, no, no, no, what if they’re dead?”
The dog, unable to see them under the Cloak, took to circling the chamber, growling and slobbering. Its footsteps rattled the walls. Draco was shaking so badly he was surprised the Cloak hadn’t fallen off.
“Who cares? We’re about to be,” he hissed, edging toward the door. He put an arm around her back and tried to steer her in his direction. “Now come on, let’s get out of here—”
“We can’t leave them!”
“I assure you, we most certainly can!”
“I’m not going to run away, when — when they might be lying at the bottom of that shaft, bleeding out, with broken necks—”
“If their necks are broken, they’re not bleeding to death,” he pointed out, and realized only after she gasped, stricken, that this might not have been the most convincing thing to say. “No, never mind. Listen, do you know what? If we want to be realistic about this, we should’ve heard them hit the bottom by now. If they broke their necks, we would’ve heard that, too. They’re probably not dead or dying. So I say, we do your plan, we go get McGonagall, she goes, gets them, we lose a mountain of points, big deal, we don’t get eaten, bigger deal, and we all live happily ever after!”
“We can’t.”
“Of course we can. What’s your problem now?”
“The dog’s fallen asleep in front of the door,” she whispered.
It had. The three-headed beast, having prowled a full circuit of the room, had laid down in front of the sole exit to the chamber, and closed its eyes once more. Draco moaned in despair. He wracked his brains for how to get around it: a diversion, perhaps, or a Knockback Jinx…
“That settles it,” Granger decided. She looked at him, and seized his hand. Her fingers were very small and very cold. Automatically, he let her lace them between his.
“Together?” she said.
“What? No. Not together. Stop. What are you doing?”
He realized her intentions only too late. The barmy witch ran forward and leapt into the trapdoor.
He shrieked in dismay, feet scrabbling against the floor, but Granger was too strong, and they both went tumbling down into the darkness.
Cold, damp air rushed past him. Down they fell in total darkness, tumbling over each other, until after what felt like a lifetime (but was probably only three or four seconds), they landed with a hard thump on something soft and warm.
“OUCH!” roared the something.
“Ron!” Granger said delightedly. “You’re alive!”
“No thanks to you!” said Weasley, wrestling his way free of the tangle of limbs. “What’s the big idea, swan-diving onto me with no warning, I’ll be lucky if I still have a spleen!”
Hands wrapped around Draco’s shoulders and hauled him free of the pile. Potter set him upright, and then went back for Granger, whom he helped daintily to her feet. “Glad you’re alright,” he said, with a nod to Granger and — surprisingly — to Draco. “Snape’s gone, by the way. I think he got past whatever this chamber used to be.”
They were standing in a damp, stone cell with walls stained black by moisture. Dozens of chains dangled from the ceiling, and from each chain hung a wilted plant of some kind, its brown and snakelike tendrils hanging limp like rattlesnake skins. It was clearly dead: the dusty brown of the leaves gave no evidence of life, and black scorch marks dotted the skin here and there.
“Wonder what this is,” Weasley remarked, lifting one tendril and dropping it. “Should’ve brought Neville, he’d know…”
“Devil’s Snare, I think,” Granger said, studying it. “It’s a carnivorous plant, and it strangles its victims before eating them. It hates light and heat, though, so I think Snape must have used flames to kill it; that explains these little scorch-marks.”
“Or he just saw a big wriggly thing trying to strangle him and set it on fire,” said Weasley, which Draco had to admit was fairly plausible.
Granger dusted off her pink pajamas, which were distinctly more gray and grimy than they’d been before contact with the cell floor. “Well,” she said, in a bracing tone. She lit her wand, and a beam illuminated the narrow passage leading out of the chamber, which sloped downward into shadow. “That’s our way out.”
Draco looked up. Above them, far in the distance, sat the tiny square of the trapdoor. The walls of the shaft were slick and seamless rock. Even if they could manage to levitate themselves — which he didn’t half trust any of them except Granger to do — they’d still have the dog waiting on the other side.
He lit his wand, too. “If they bury me next to you people, I’m coming back as a ghost to sue,” he announced, and marched out of the dungeon cell.
Before long, they passed through a vaulted archway and into another room. It was a brilliantly lit chamber with a high ceiling, and its floor was littered with a host of glittering feathered keys. Across from them, the door to the next room had already been unlocked, and it stood ajar, leading them to the edge of a huge chessboard.
Weasley wandered onto the board. “This was a great game,” he said, with feeling. “Look how many pieces they’re down. They bled each other out. Black’s down to four pawns, a bishop, and the queen, and it’s still got White bunched in the corner, except for the poor knight. They knew what they were doing.”
He leaned down and picked up a knight’s discarded shortsword. When he hefted it, a bead of light ran along the blade: it was real metal.
“Careful with that,” Draco said, ill at ease.
“Nah, it’s not that sharp,” Weasley said, swinging it experimentally. “The edge is wrecked from hacking on stone all the time. Nice to have something meatier than a wand, though. Malfoy, Harry, you want one of these?”
“I’ll go without, thanks,” said Potter.
“I’ll also go without, thank you,” said Granger primly.
“Didn’t mean it like that, I just figured since you were—”
“A girl?”
“I was going to say a bit smallish,” he said guiltily, and she walked past him with a huff.
In the next room, they passed the corpse of a vast troll, and Draco fought the urge to throw up. The chamber beyond that held a ring of black fire and a row of colorful bottles, along with a note. One of the bottles was empty. The note was untouched.
Granger got to the table before he did. “This is Potions,” she said, which Draco found a bit obvious. “It says one of them lets us through the fire ahead of us, and one of them takes us back towards the entrance… well, that’s a bit useless, isn’t it, since there’s no way to get back up through the trapdoor? I suppose if we’d thought to bring a rope… Oh, well. But if Snape’s already been through ahead of us, and he drank the one that lets him go forward, that means all of these are the wrong ones.”
Weasley, distracted, swept his sword in a playful arc through the air. “Don’t any of the other ones do anything?”
“Three are poison, two are wine. And there’s a logic puzzle, here, to figure out which is which… oh, that’s interesting…”
She drifted off. Draco read the note over her shoulder, quickly, and deemed it useless.
He approached the black fire and held out his hand: it was hot. When he shone his wand over it, they didn’t shimmer or change like an illusion. Holding out his hand, he noticed that the lights over the flames were yellow, bright yellow, like candlewax.
He muttered “Nox,” and then cast Incendio, feeding a stream of red fire into the black. The flames shuddered and warped at the exchange, and when his flames met the black, they shimmered and turned black, too.
He bent and examined the fuel at the base. It was coal, dark and unremarkable, with peppery white bits of cinders flecked here and there. He sniffed. The smell of kerosene was strong.
Potter and Granger were conferring.
“Just strip naked, I reckon, and run straight through?”
“Don’t be stupid, you’ll certainly burn yourself. What if your hair catches fire?”
“I don’t hear you coming up with any other ideas…”
“Oi, Gryffindors,” Draco called, standing up. They attended. “I’m willing to bet an indiscreet number of galleons that the empty bottle was a Fire Resistance Potion. They’re not hard to make, but some of the ingredients are quite hard to get, and they’re not the sort of thing one tends to carry around.”
“Okay,” said Potter, as in: so what?
“Which means I doubt this is Conjured, because the Fire Resistance Potion doesn’t work on Conjured flames — it’s notoriously ineffective against Fiendfyre, for example. So this is a gas-fire, same as you use for a cauldron burner. In fact, I don’t think it’s magical at all: you can turn regular flames black by burning sodium residue under a sodium lamp.” He lit his wand again, and passed the beam over the flames: wherever the light touched, they turned yellow. He smirked. “See?”
“That’s clever,” admitted Granger, which was quite possibly the highest compliment he’d been paid all year. “But I’m not sure if that helps us, exactly, Draco.”
“No, it does,” Potter said suddenly, and he peeled off his cloak. “Because it means you can do this.”
He threw his cloak on the fire and started stamping on it. Granger yelped, but Weasley understood, and he shucked his robe to do the same. Together, they smothered the fire under their cloaks, beating it out with their feet. Smoke poured from the fire in billowing gusts, but slowly, the flames disappeared, suffocated by heavy wool.
“First day of Potions,” Potter said cheerfully, brushing off his hands. “Fire safety. Snape’s a pill, but I did listen to him.”
“Don’t tell him, it might give him a heart attack,” said Weasley.
Granger coughed, waving away blooms of smoke. Her eyes were watering. Feeling bad for her, Draco offered her his handkerchief, and she gratefully held it to her nose, breathing through it.
“Next one?” suggested Potter gamely, gesturing to the passage ahead.
Granger stopped them. “Cloak?” she suggested.
Draco, who had been hoarding the Cloak under his arm, relented to share it. Slowly, cloaked and cautious, they ventured forth into the next room.
They were in a vaulted limestone chamber, shaped like a cathedral, with a tall gilded mirror propped in the center dias. Before it stood Professor Quirrell. He was staring into the mirror intently. At his feet lay strewn a pile of dark robes, which Draco recognized, with a jolt, as Severus Snape.
He must have made some kind of noise, because Quirrell glanced up, checking the doorway in the reflection. His eyes pierced them. Potter gave a sharp intake of breath.
“Who’s there?” he called. His accent was gone, and there was a presence to his voice there hadn’t been before, as if he had finally woken up.
The four of them huddled low, so the cloak covered their ankles. Draco tried to see, from this distance, if Snape was still breathing. He felt sick.
“I can hear you.” Quirrell turned around. He held a long, spindly wand with a bend in the middle, and it was this he pointed at the door. “Reveal yourself.”
Granger let out a small whimper. Draco snatched her wrist and squeezed, willing her to shut up.
Quirrell’s eyes narrowed. He tilted his head to one side, scrutinizing the passageway behind them.
“Ventus.”
A blast of wind exploded from Quirrell’s wand. It raked through the chamber and knocked the four of them on their backs, ripping the Cloak from their shoulders. Weasley’s sword went flying. The Cloak itself swept back up along the passageway, flapping and twisting like a great silvery bat. Draco sprawled out and flipped over, scrambling to his feet. The others did the same.
“Mister Potter!” Quirrell sounded delighted. “I had wondered who would come for Professor Snape first. I confess, I am surprised. And Mister Malfoy! I had not taken you for an adventurer.”
Potter drew his wand. This was almost as admirable as it was stupid. “What’d you do to Snape?”
“Nothing more than was merciful. I admit, I did not expect him to be half so resilient to the henbane; of course, I suspect he ceased to drink Pomfrey’s curatives after his first few bouts of sickness. Such a suspicious mind, has Severus. Nevertheless, he had the right of it. He must have realized, when his morning’s tea came without the usual odor of henbane, that I had something planned for tonight. It was a good effort. Yet he underestimated my strength. He thought I was Quirinus Quirrell, the feeble potioneer, instead of my true self. But who could blame him? No one else could achieve such a perfect disguise. He tested me for Disillusionment Charms, glamour spells, and Polyjuice Potion, but he could never have understood the true genius of my deceit… the idea of using another human being as a mask itself! Even he, a wise and clever Potions Master, could not comprehend the brilliance of Lord Voldemort.”
Draco was frozen. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Weasley shimmying forward on his belly, one arm outstretched to reach his sword.
“None of that,” said Quirrell, and flicked his wand. Ropes flew from the tip and snared Weasley, wrenching his arms behind his back and knotting his ankles together. The boy gave a grunt that was more surprise than pain. With two more brusque flicks of the wrist, Potter and Granger met the same fate, and Draco staggered backward, into the shade of the archway, in a fruitless attempt to protect himself. But Quirrell’s wand fell still, and did not move again.
“Draco Malfoy,” he intoned. “My child, what are you doing here? You should have been in Slytherin.”
Draco’s mouth dropped open.
“Don’t listen to him, Draco,” shouted Potter. But neither Quirrell nor Draco appeared to hear him.
“How they have shamed you,” said Quirrell sadly. “How they have brought you low! Last scion of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Malfoy, denied his birthright, and consigned to live among mudbloods, traitors, and thieves. What a crime it is. This promise I will make to you freely: for these and other injuries against us, they will be repaid tenfold.”
Draco could not speak. His tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. Cold sweat coursed from his temples and slicked his shirt to his skin. He edged still further from the dias, his feet fumbling over uneven stone.
“I thank you, though,” mused Quirrell, “for bringing Harry Potter to me. You have served me as well as your father did, in this. Now, attend me, young Malfoy; the night is young, and my work is never-ending.
“The mirror is the key to finding the Stone,” he murmured, tapping his way around the frame. “Trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this… but he’s in London… I’ll be far away by the time he gets back…”
Quirrell came back out from behind the mirror and stared hungrily into it. “I see the Stone… I’m presenting it to my master… but where is it?”
Draco wasn’t sure what the mirror had to do with anything, but so long as it kept Quirrell distracted from talking about Draco, he was content to let him sniff around it. In the meantime, Granger had managed to sit upright, and was rolling her wrists around in their bindings, trying to chafe them free. When Quirrell put his back to them, she twisted around and mouthed, Diffindo!, lifting her bound wrists at Draco.
Terrified, he shook his head. Was she mad? What was her plan after that? Make a run for it? It would take Quirrell all of a millisecond to cast a Killing Curse. Even if he freed her, they didn’t stand a chance.
Meanwhile, Weasley had flipped onto his belly and started inchworming his way across the floor of the vault, his eyes fixed hungrily on the sword.
“I don’t understand,” said Quirrell, tapping the glass. “Is the Stone inside the mirror? Should I break it?”
“It shows your heart’s desire,” said Potter, in a voice thick with loathing. “It can’t make it real.”
How on earth do you know that? Draco craned his neck to get a glimpse of the mirror, but it was too far away, and he couldn’t see anything clearly in it. The best he could make out was a blond man in the doorway, clad in dark robes, which he took to be himself.
“Nonsense. It’s in this vault because it holds the stone. You simply lack the imagination to produce it.”
Weasley hauled himself forward another few feet, rolled thrice, and pressed the binding on his wrists to the edge of the knight’s sword. Draco stared at him. With all his might, he compelled Weasley telepathically not to do anything stupid. This had the sum effect of dropping a water balloon on a rabid wolverine.
“So it’s the Sorcerer’s Stone you want?” said Granger, drawing Quirrell’s attention again. She exchanged a glance of some kind with Potter that Draco couldn’t read. “To resurrect Lord V-Voldemort?”
“Lord Voldemort needs no resurrection,” boomed Quirrell, and his voice was doubled again. “Lord Voldemort is now as he has always been — strong, powerful, magnificent—”
He started to walk backward from the dias. His knees snapped in the wrong direction, and he reached behind his back, contorting the joints of his shoulders in horrible ways. The thing — Quirrell, Voldemort, whatever it was — lurched down from the pedestal and stumbled on its own backwards-facing feet, falling onto its hands and knees. At least, it looked like its hands and knees: it snapped Quirrell’s elbow joints in the wrong direction, and then crawled forward, while from the back of its head, Quirrell screamed.
Granger shrieked and scrambled backwards on her knees. Weasley sprang to his feet, sword in hand, and charged the creature, swinging gracelessly. Quirrell reared up, its knees bent backward, and wrenched its broken wand-arm around, hissing like a snake.
And if it had been any other man — literally anyone, Albus Dumbledore or Harry Potter or Nicholas Flamel — anyone instead of Severus Snape… If it had not been Snape, his godfather, his father’s friend, who had lurked in the background of Malfoy birthday parties and Christmas dinners and anniversary celebrations for eleven years… who had saved Draco from drowning in the duckpond when he was four, taught him to make Pepper-Up Potion on the kitchen stove, and shared his umbrella at Lucius Malfoy’s funeral — Draco might have taken this chance and bolted out of there as fast as his legs would carry him. He would have indulged, proudly, in the age-old Malfoy family tradition of saving his own skin.
Instead, he summoned every scrap of Gryffindor courage he owned — it was, altogether, not much — to force himself to turn around, and he walked slowly back into the face of death.
It occurred to Draco that he was unlikely to get a better chance. He dove forward and seized Potter’s wrists, muttering “Diffindo” at the bindings. It was clumsy, and the spell went wide, slitting a bright red line down each of Potter’s wrists, but Potter didn’t seem to notice. He hurled himself at Quirrell with the abandon of someone whose plan of action protruded no further than three seconds into the future. His fist connected with Quirrell’s jaw.
The Quirrell-creature gave a scream of pain and scrambled backward, ruined limbs flailing. A scorch-mark in the shape of Potter’s fist marred the skin of its cheek, black and almost ashen, as if the flesh were wrought from clay. Clutching its face, the thing brandished its wand, and howled, “Avada—”
A sword collided with the back of its head.
Weasley had been right: the blade was dull, but with enough force, anything could hurt. The Quirrell-creature bayed and fell to the ground, a sword-handle protruding from the back of its spinal cord. Weasley ripped it out and made to swing again, but he had to break off to dodge a flash of green light, which jetted under his right arm and created a verdant firework against the ceiling of the chamber. Potter took his chance and lunged, palming the creature’s jaw, and the thing gave out a scream that was not human, like ten cats being drawn and quartered at once.
While Potter and Weasley kept it distracted, Draco dropped to his knees and seized Granger’s bindings.
“Took you long enough!”
“I didn’t want to get either of us killed! Hold still—”
“Hurry, hurry, hurry! My wand’s in my back pocket—”
“Hold still, I said, or it’ll be your own fault if I open a vein—”
His second Diffindo was cleaner, and the severed ropes fell neatly away. He did her ankles next, and she leapt to her feet, wand outstretched. “Rennervate!” she shrieked, and a flash of brilliant red light flew across the chamber — sailed over the creature’s shoulder — and missed it.
Draco hissed, “Lower, you’ve got to aim lower, it’s not ten feet tall—”
“I wasn’t aiming for it!”
A stirring came from the dias. Slowly, the pile of dark robes drew itself upright. Severus Snape, in what must surely have been the worst shape of his life, hollow of eye, bloody of mouth, soaked in sweat that was pink with rivulets of blood that trickled from a wound in his forehead, stood and drew his wand as if he intended to die fighting. He took in the scene inside the vault, beheld Potter and Weasley locked in combat with the inhuman remains of Quirinus Quirrell. His lip curled.
“Stupefy.”
The Quirrell-creature collapsed. Weasley, who had been about to deal a mighty blow with the sword, dropped it and fell to his knees, panting. There were tears on his face.
Granger gasped with relief, and collapsed against Draco (who felt this unfair, as he was barely up to the task of standing himself.)
“Professor,” he shouted. “Professor, are you all right?”
“Draco?” Snape’s expression transformed in an instant from weary relief to unadulterated shock. “What are you doing here?”
But he didn’t have time to answer. Snape looked up, saw something coming down the passageway, and his expression reverted from shock back to relief.
“It seems I have come too late, Severus,” said a soft, elderly voice.
Snape slipped his wand back into his pocket, relaxing. “Something of a motif, with you, Albus.”
“You have every right to chastise me. We each have our hamartia, as the Greeks would say. Mine, I fear, is to always arrive in the right location precisely five minutes later than I should have been.”
Dumbledore strode into the vault, and Draco noticed that his wand was drawn. It was a long, knobbly piece of wood with a grip of scalloped stone. To his recollection, Dumbledore had never revealed his wand before.
“Meanwhile,” said Dumbledore, stooping to help Weasley to his feet, “it appears our young friends have a knack for arriving precisely when they mean to. I consider this an auspicious sign for their futures.”
“Professor,” blurted Granger, and (bless her) actually raised her hand. “What on earth was—”
“Miss Granger, you have done far more tonight than anyone can justly expect of you, and though I have no right to ask for your patience, I fear I must,” said Dumbledore. “In fact, I must ask for your forgiveness, too, for the impoliteness of what I am about to do.”
“But you haven’t done anything,” she said curiously. Dumbledore smiled and lifted his wand.
A piercing white glow filled the chamber, and Draco screwed his eyes shut against it. When he tried to open them, he felt himself descending into a soft blackness in which there was nothing, no light, no sound — nothing but a woman’s laughter, and a scent that reminded him of home.
NEXT CHAPTER: 9/10/22
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