Certain Dark Things || Book Two

xli. misery loves company

lxxxi. misery loves company

Severus hated the holidays.

He said the same thing every year, and every year the sentiment deepened; he despised the juvenility of it, the forced cheer, the interruption to his schedule. He cherished the brief, fleeting respite when the dunderheads first departed and quiet descended, as if the whole of Hogwarts held its breath—but then the stillness shattered; the castle mourned, his colleagues meddled, and Severus worried himself to distraction over Slytherin's plotting.

He hated the Yule time—and that had nothing to do with the fucking snake roaming loose in the school.

The Chamber of Secrets. The moment Severus saw the writing on the wall, he—and Dumbledore—both knew Gaunt was testing the waters, testing his own power and Slytherin's hold on the student body, probing for weakness. No one else could find the Chamber, not even Albus bloody Dumbledore himself, and so the only person capable of opening it was Slytherin—or Gaunt, or Voldemort, or Riddle. It was all the same wretched person in the end.

The situation cycled back to the events of summer, beginning with Gaunt sending out lackeys to find the Potter girl. The Minister knew something odd had occurred with Potter before the Mirror of Erised shattered, and he shouldn't know anything at all; they had a traitor in their midsts, one informed by the Minister on how to open the Chamber and move the Basilisk. It was curious that this informant knew to relocate it somewhere Slytherin couldn't find; the schisms between Slytherin's and Gaunt's minds made themselves apparent at the worst possible junctures.

"Black and Potter are up to something," Severus said as he leaned into the wall by the Headmaster's hearth. Night sunk fast over the highlands, lacing the stones with a harsh, biting chill that raked its claws against his bones. "Though it hardly needs saying."

"Oh?" Albus commented from behind his desk, having the audacity to pretend he didn't understand what Severus meant. "How so?"

The Potions Master thought it obvious; if Potter dumping hot cider down her front that afternoon like a twit hadn't been clue enough, then Black's stiff, blank expression confirmed his suspicions. Neither could lie to save their own skins.

"I didn't pursue them. I found my time better served keeping Slytherin preoccupied instead of chasing those idiots about like a madman herding spiteful cats."

Albus chuckled, blue eyes bright, and then sobered, turning his attention inward, following thoughts beyond Severus' knowledge. "She knows."

"Who knows what?"

"Harriet knows about the Basilisk—or, I should say, Harriet knows the creature set loose from the Chamber is a snake, not that it is a Basilisk."

Severus stared, and the cold at his back reached deeper, past his skin and bones and into his heart, a psychosomatic spasm curling his fingers in upon themselves. "How." It wasn't a question, and the Potions Master was sure he didn't want the answer. What if they'd...missed something? A curse laid by Quirrell? New curses were made every day, and who knew better what had occurred before the Mirror than the girl herself? Who else better equipped to speak the language of snakes and open the way in the Chamber?

What if she was being controlled? What if—?

"She can hear it," Dumbledore said, ignorant of Severus' building terror. "I imagine it scared the poor girl half to death the first time it spoke near her."

"Why didn't she come forward, then?"

"Why does any child hide information? Because she was uncertain and afraid. Her upbringing with Petunia and Vernon—." And here Severus saw a shadow of the man Voldemort still feared, no matter his diminished power and ability. For the Potions Master, thoughts of Tuney curdled hot and hateful, surging with the kind of terrible longing that swayed him toward the Dark Arts; a lust for violence, for retribution, for ten long years of his wrist burning in agony every time she and her dumb waste of a husband raised a hand to the girl. Dumbledore's anger was a different beast entirely; it was cool, quiet, and subtle. It existed in his eyes, in his voice—and it cut all the more deeply for its reservation. "—has taught Harriet caution when approaching adults with her concerns."