Chapter Text
Slowly, magnificently, the ship rises out of the water, gleaming in the pale sunlight. It has a strangely skeletal look about it, as though it is a resurrected wreck, and the dim, misty lights shimmering at its portholes look like ghostly eyes. Finally, with a great sloshing noise, the ship emerges entirely, bobbing on the turbulent water, and begins to glide toward the bank.
Severina watches from a high, dark window in the castle, having slipped away the moment the carriage from Beauxbatons departs. Waiting for foreign students in the biting October chill is not something she desires. She doubts even Slughorn notices her absence. No one does these days.
From the ship's enormous, gushing maw, the fur-clad students spurt out onto the dock. Intrigued, she regards them. Durmstrang is the school she has most wished to see. She often imagines a life where she is one of their students. Things, she is sure, would not be so very different, but at least their curriculum would hold fewer foolish restraints. Their texts would be more fitting. More interesting. Severina has always possessed an affinity for the Dark Arts; it is simply a fact of her nature, which she acknowledges as coolly as one might note the colour of her own hair.
"They look like they're in their thirties," says a voice beside her.
Severina flinches, whirling to find Charity Burbage peering through the brass telescope she holds, watching the arrivals closely.
"What are you doing here?" Severina bites out. The Hufflepuff has, since the start of their shared project in sixth-year Charms, developed a habit of popping up from nowhere. Though obnoxiously talkative, she is pleasant company in a continuously jabbering manner. And, much to her chagrin, Severina concludes that she doesn't mind how Charity fills the awful silences, yammering on until the darker thoughts slink back into their corners like whipped Crups.
Still, Severina cannot help but eye her with intense scepticism, forever waiting for the moment it will all be revealed as some sick prank perpetrated by that bastard Potter and his cronies.
"It's cold," Charity says, making a face at her as if she is stupid. "Bitterly cold. My nose is about to turn into an icicle and snap off. Also, you're here too. Why?"
"Cold," Severina repeats flatly, turning her black eyes back to the scene below.
"Who do you think will win the tournament? My wager's on Durmstrang. They look like they're in their thirties," Charity repeats, lowering the telescope.
Severina considers. She cannot speak for the other houses, nor for the gaggle of students who keep to themselves, but she knows the likely candidates from her own year. And she thinks it rather depends on whose name spews from the Goblet of Fire. If, for example, someone like Peter Pettigrew manages to become Hogwarts' champion, then the school will come dead last in every task — likely setting the record for fastest disqualification in Tournament history. She tells Charity as much.
To her astonishment, the Hufflepuff girl giggles. "You're probably right. But wouldn't it be hilarious to watch him try?"
A faint, almost imperceptible snort escapes Severina. She keeps her gaze fixed on the distant, torchlit figures below, but for a moment, the rigid set of her shoulders softens just a fraction. She toys with the end of her braid where it rests against her shoulder, noting the greasy feeling absently. The diluted shampoo she has been stretching far beyond its proper use has run out a week ago, and with it went any small luxury she might have afforded herself. Now she will have to rethink her Galleon plans — the money from the upcoming skin-clearing potions she brews for the girls in her House to make ends meet, or even the occasional Wit-Sharpening Potion for Ravenclaws that supplies her with cigarettes instead of coin. She needs to stop smoking and start making them pay her in sickles, she knows — better to build a small nest egg while still at Hogwarts. She adjusts her ushanka as she watches under the pale morning sunlight while her yearmates mumble excitedly about the arriving champions. Her dark eyes sweep over the crowd — until they catch.
There, by the crumbling balustrade, is Lily, standing on her toes to press a quick, laughing kiss to Potter's grinning mouth.
Severina looks away as if scalded. It should not be that painful, she thinks, a familiar, corrosive ache tightening in her chest. But it is.
Charity stiffens beside her. The Hufflepuff clears her throat, her voice deliberately bright. "I find it scary, you know. How high the death rate is in this tournament."
She is attempting to distract her. Severina knows it with a clarity that is both grating and pathetic. She is half-annoyed and bone-tired, for this is not the first time Charity has caught her looking at them — caught her stewing in that private vat of bitterness and misery like a Mandrake left too long in its pot. Every other time, Severina has snapped. A hissed Mind your own business, or a hateful glare that sends most people scurrying back to their common rooms with their tails between their legs.
But today, the energy for that venom is absent. Siphoned away, rather, by the lingering image of Lily's red hair against Potter's shoulder. She feels hollowed out. Sick with it. As though someone has performed a rather clumsy Vanishing Spell on her insides.
"I can imagine," Severina says dully. She turns to the brewing table, where three cauldrons sit simmering in a neat row — Skin-Clearing Potion, Wit-Sharpening Potion, and a Beautification Potion, all bubbling away in various shades of pearlescent mist and steam. Both of the cosmetic potions are her own recipes, hard-won things recreated from attempting every famous formula in the library and then tweaking them until they actually work. Her own cycle is irregular and heavy and painful — that is why she has stopped testing her potions on herself two years ago. The only things she can test now are potions applied to the skin, because those are wipeable and she can sample them on herself rather than the drinkable ones.
She glances at Charity in consideration, something shifting behind her dark eyes. "Say," she begins slowly, almost reluctantly. "Do you want to test my new Skin-Clearing and Beautification Potions? They're my best-selling line. And I want to see the results of the trials, because I've adjusted them a bit — shortened the brewing process and maximised the effects."
It would be a waste to throw out all these ingredients after her modifications, but Severina cannot stop herself from trying to improve them — to at least waste fewer ingredients and make more, so she can start raising her prices.
Charity eyes the blue cooling potion. "Yeah, sure." She cranes her neck for a closer look. "I've got one of those deep pimple things — under the skin, you know. The absolute worst." A pause. "You know what? My roommates'd probably want some, too."
And so they spend the next two hours locked inside the old potions workshop, its door bolted with three iron deadbolts and a Silencing Charm so thick it muffles the very dust motes, their faces slathered in a herbal cream the colour of swamp water. In a tight, spidery hand, Severina scratches notes across a roll of parchment, comparing Charity's dramatically radiant complexion with her own dangerously sallow, pimple-dotted skin. The Hufflepuff, when she wipes her face clean with a damp rag, looks supple and nourished, as if she has just stepped out of a spring shower. Severina, by contrast, still looks sallow and sad. She barely glances at the mirror. She hates looking at her own face. Hates her mother's dark eyes staring back at her, her father's hooked nose, her lank, greasy hair that never seems clean no matter how she scrubs with stinging soaps.
"That's amazing, Severina," says Charity, beaming at her own reflection in a small hand mirror. Her skin — already marvellously smooth and pretty — now seems to glow with a soft, dewy radiance.
Life isn't fair, Severina thinks bitterly. Unfair for making her plain-faced to the generous and ugly to everyone else. Unfair for making her too tall, too gangly, too thin, with cheekbones like blades and those hateful black eyes that seem to drink the light, and a nose so hooked it belongs on the face of some crone in a witch's tale. Lily Evans used to insist her most striking features were those absurdly long-lashed eyes and that very nose — said they made her look tenderly wistful, which, according to Lily, gave her a lonely sort of charm. But Lily always had a way with words. A way of plucking Severina's most painful insecurities and trying to dress them up in sugar-spun compliments, saying things like you look fragile and you look doll-like and you have such an interesting face, Sev, really. Never realising it only made Severina feel more nauseous. More examined. More like a specimen under a glass slide, pinned and labelled curious, but not beautiful.
She bites down on the snarl that rises in her throat, swallows it whole like a particularly nasty dose of Skele-Gro.
At least the potential customers are happy. She jots down a note — in that cramped, furious hand — to try making it work on different skin types, since it seems only to work on Charity's.
The Great Hall blazes with its customary splendour. Golden plates and goblets wink in the light of a thousand floating candles that drift serenely above the tables. The four long House tables groan under the weight of chattering students; up at the top, the staff sit in a row along the high table, gazing down at their charges. The air is much warmer in here, and excitement flickers on every face at the prospect of the coming tournament. The Hall seems oddly more crowded than usual, though barely forty extra students have arrived — perhaps it is because their foreign uniforms stand out so vividly against the sea of black Hogwarts robes. Now that they have shed their furs, the Durmstrang lads are revealed to be wearing robes of a deep, clotted crimson, like old blood.
Severina prods a roast potato on her golden plate. The rich, savoury smells of the feast, usually so welcome, feel cloying and heavy tonight. They remind her of home in a way that turns her stomach. Beside her, Wilkes leans in close, his breath warm against her ear as he speaks in a murmur barely audible over the clatter of knives and the babble of eager talk.
"Care to wager how much I can bleed from this lot?" he mumbles, not bothering to swallow a mouthful of pheasant first. His eyes hold that familiar, calculating gleam as they rove across the Hall and linger on the visitors. "Odds are shifting by the minute. The Beauxbatons lot are pretty enough, I'll give them that, but those Durmstrang brutes… look like they could wrestle a mountain troll and come back for pudding. Galleons are piling on Durmstrang."
Wilhelm Wilkes has a gambling addiction so poorly concealed that it wraps itself around another addiction — cheating — like bindweed around a dying rosebush. It is an open secret, almost boring in its predictability. He reminds her, in some faint, unpleasant way, of her dead father — only Wilkes is sharper. When he loses, he swindles; when he welches, he slithers free with a smirk. Tobias Snape has never possessed that particular brand of cunning. He has possessed only his fists.
She follows Wilkes's gaze to the Durmstrang students seated at their table — stern, hard-bitten faces that look utterly out of place among the frivolous candlelight and floating puddings. She has to agree with his assessment. A traitorous thought slithers into her mind: if she sells a few vials of her Modified Euphoria Elixir, she can place a bet herself. Earn a little coin…
She eyes Wilkes. "What's your suspicion, then? Who's the real favourite?"
"Looking at you, actually considering a flutter," he grins, revealing a flash of half-masticated pheasant. "The world truly is ending."
She rolls her eyes.
"Do you even have money to wager?" Mulciber shoulders his way into their conversation, bulk casting a shadow over the table like a circling troll.
"I plan to sell you some Euphoria to get it," Severina replies coolly, not deigning to look at him.
"Agreed," Mulciber says — too hastily, with a greedy little light kindling in his own eyes.
She makes a faint face of disgust, which he either fails to notice or chooses to ignore. It is the grubby cornerstone of their unspoken arrangement, this: she supplies the brewing genius for her singular, potent Euphoria — a recipe Avery has once tried and failed to claw from her, all hexes and snarled threats — and he, in return, bankrolls the often-exorbitant ingredients. Sometimes she names things not even required, and he is either too stupid to notice or feels generous enough to keep his potion-maker appeased. Her weekly brewing buys a fragile, artificial peace.
They will all retire to the highest tower or a secluded dungeon corridor, Wilkes and Mulciber growing giddy and slack-jawed on her concoction, giggling themselves silly, sometimes joined by a languid Avery or a sharp-eyed Aurora. The potion does not bring her joy — precisely, she only ever drinks the watered-down dregs — but it blunts the edges. It shoulders half the weight of her depression, like a second person carrying a coffin. The prospect of facing those long, dark evenings stone-cold sober makes her feel as though her very soul has turned to lead.
She never, of course, simply hands him a finished phial. Consumption is a joint ritual, always under her watchful eye. She trusts him not an inch. She suspects he would either turn her in if he had tangible proof, or — more likely — hoard a sample to have it analysed. Severina is not by nature smug, but she doubts even Slughorn can reverse-engineer her brew from the final product. Still, she is not a witch who has survived this long on carelessness.
"The moment has come," says Dumbledore, his voice cutting through the murmurs and the clatter of cutlery, smiling around at the sea of upturned faces. "The Triwizard Tournament is about to start. I would like to say a few words of explanation before we bring in the casket—"
A sudden, anticipatory silence falls over the Hall.
"The what?" she mutters.
Wilkes shrugs.
"— just to clarify the procedure which we will be following this year. But firstly, let me introduce, for those who do not know them, Mr Bartemius Crouch, Head of the Department of International Magical Co-operation" — there is a smattering of polite applause — "and Mr Hamish MacFarlan, Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports."
There is a much louder round of applause for MacFarlan than for Crouch, perhaps because he is a former star Chaser for the Montrose Magpies, or simply because he looks so much more likeable. He acknowledges it with a jovial wave of his hand. Bartemius Crouch Sr does not smile or wave when his name is announced.
"MacFarlan and Mr Crouch have worked tirelessly over the last few months on the arrangements for the Triwizard Tournament," Dumbledore continues, "and they will be joining myself, Professor Poliakoff and Madame Clairmont on the panel which will judge the champions' efforts."
At the mention of the word 'champions', the attentiveness of the listening students seems to sharpen.
Perhaps Dumbledore has noticed their sudden stillness, for he smiles as he says, "The casket, then, if you please, Mr Filch."
Filch, who has been lurking unnoticed in a far corner of the Hall, now approaches Dumbledore, carrying a great wooden chest, encrusted with jewels. It looks extremely old. A murmur of excited interest rises from the watching students.
"As you know, three champions compete in the Tournament," Dumbledore goes on calmly, "one from each of the participating schools. They will be marked on how well they perform each of the Tournament tasks and the champion with the highest total after task three will win the Triwizard Cup. The champions will be chosen by an impartial selector… the Goblet of Fire."
Dumbledore now takes out his wand, and taps three times upon the top of the casket. The lid creaks slowly open. Dumbledore reaches inside it, and pulls out a large, roughly hewn wooden cup. It would have been entirely unremarkable, had it not been full to the brim with dancing, blue-white flames.
Dumbledore closes the casket and places the Goblet carefully on top of it, where it will be clearly visible to everyone in the Hall.
"Anybody wishing to submit themselves as champion must write their name and school clearly upon a slip of parchment, and drop it into the Goblet," says Dumbledore. "Aspiring champions have twenty-four hours in which to put their names forward. Tomorrow night, Halloween, the Goblet will return the names of the three it has judged most worthy to represent their schools. The Goblet will be placed in the Entrance Hall tonight, where it will be freely accessible to all those wishing to compete. To ensure that no underage student yields to temptation," says Dumbledore, "I will be drawing an Age Line around the Goblet of Fire once it has been placed in the Entrance Hall. Nobody under the age of seventeen will be able to cross this line. Finally, I wish to impress upon any of you wishing to compete that this Tournament is not to be entered into lightly. Once a champion has been selected by the Goblet of Fire, he or she is obliged to see the Tournament through to the end. The placing of your name in the Goblet constitutes a binding, magical contract. There can be no change of heart once you have become champion. Please be very sure, therefore, that you are whole-heartedly prepared to play, before you drop your name into the Goblet. Now, I think it is time for bed. Goodnight to you all."
She sits upon the rug of her dormitory, legs dangling from the edge of her four-poster, swathed in shapeless pyjamas that have once been black but are now more grey than anything. Being a seventh-year Slytherin — and a house so often starved of girls that they are a near-curiosity — means she shares her sleeping quarters with but a single roommate. And Robert is not here. Robert has spent most of the evening fluttering her lashes at a Durmstrang delegate built like the gates of Hogwarts itself, and seems utterly convinced she will be spending the night in his company. Severina is not entirely sure whether Robert's lanky Ravenclaw fiancé — has there ever been a fiancé? has a ring ever existed, or has it been as imaginary as Robert's fidelity? — would have an opinion on the matter. Nor does she much fancy knowing, being far too Slytherin to wade into another witch's romantic disaster uninvited.
Severina uncorks the small glass phial. The Modified Euphoria Elixir within glows with a soft, honeyed light, pulsing gently in the gloom like a captured sunbeam in a bottle. She tips it back and drinks.
All the rottenness of being newly orphaned — the gnawing, rat-like anxiety of being piss-poor and utterly alone, with no certain roof nor table since her father's miserable death, unless Lucius Malfoy makes good on his vague promise to 'see her settled' (which feels less like kindness and more like a chess piece being nudged into place) — seeps away like a foul drain finally, mercifully unclogged.
She feels light-hearted. Not quite joyful; she has not drunk enough for that giddy, reckless abandon that Mulciber chases on his darker nights. But content. A warm, amber contentment pools in her chest like melting honey, insulating her from the dungeons' perpetual chill and the future's yawning, unfathomable uncertainty.
She lets herself sink back onto the thick carpet, staring up at the serpentine carvings coiled upon the bed's canopy. With a lazy flick of her wand, she sends a silent command to the music player in the corner. It whirs to life, and the bright, determinedly cheerful strains of muggle song burst into the silence.
"You made me feel alive, but something died, I fear," she sings along. Fishing a crumpled cigarette from a hidden pocket in her trunk, she lights it with an absent-minded tap of her wand, takes a deep drag, and thinks — with a fresh wave of misery that tastes of ash — how she is acting exactly like her parents. Her mother would smoke, sprawled upon the threadbare sofa, lost in scratchy, skipping records, while her father sat drunk and silent in his chair, staring at nothing. No inheritance test needed, it seems. The self-loathing settles about her shoulders like a familiar, threadbare cloak, but a new, unsettling part of her suddenly understands them — especially her mother's retreats into her own head. That same understanding, however, makes her feel violently, impotently angry. She snatches the potion and takes another sip.
Lying on her back, she miscalculates. Gravity does its work as she tips the glass, and a larger, warmer gulp than intended pours into her mouth. She swallows reflexively — though a stingy, Slytherin part of her screams to spit it back into the phial — and blinks as the usual haze of contentment sharpens into a brilliant, buzzing joy. The music swells.
"When you're gone, though I try, how can I carry on?" the music player pleads into the room.
Severina pauses mid-motion, her greasy hair falling across her face as she stares at the whirring device. A sudden, sobering clarity pierces the golden fog. How can I carry on?
She takes another sharp drag, the potion making her feel reckless, fiery abandon coursing through her veins like Liquid Luck gone wrong. With a decisive swish of her wand, she silences the music. She is, at her core, a Slytherin — pragmatic to the bone. She needs a moment to marshal the riot of thoughts. But the joy is undeniable, a solid, stubborn presence in her chest, like a Cushioning Charm on a stone floor. She feels light. Nothing frightens her. Not the future, not her poverty, nothing.
"Fuck it," she announces aloud to Robert's white fluffy cat, Archibald, who watches her from the dresser with undisguised loathing. "I'm going to join."
She snatches up her school robe, throws it over her shapeless pyjamas, and retrieves the scrap of parchment where she has scrawled Severina Snape - Hogwarts in her cramped, loopy handwriting. She slides it into her pocket, then wrenches open the heavy dormitory door. The golden fire of the elixir blazes in her chest, propelling her out like a Bludger shot from a cannon.
The Slytherin common room is quiet this late. The greenish lake-light wavers through the submerged windows, casting eerie ripples over half-empty armchairs. Two fifth-years are locked in a silent game of wizard's chess by the mullioned window; a trio of sixth-years murmur around the dying fire, their gossip a low hum. Severina glides past, utterly unnoticed.
The corridors are empty — or perhaps she simply isn't noticing anyone anymore, skipping and weaving through the torchlit gloom like a woman bewitched, too drunk on potion and too high on euphoria to care if Peeves himself pops out of a suit of armour. Every step feels like floating. Every shadow seems to bow.
When she reaches the Entrance Hall, she finds the Goblet of Fire sitting enshrined in the very centre, perched on the same stool that usually bears the Sorting Hat. A thin, shimmering golden line is traced upon the flagstones, a forbidden circle ten feet in radius, its runes pulsing with ancient, warning magic. She walks right up to its edge, vaguely bemused, tilting her head at the intricate wards as though they are a mildly amusing puzzle. Then she lets out a high and a little unhinged giggle and steps over the line.
Nothing happens. Just the cool, dungeon-damp air and the steady, blue-white flame dancing in the goblet's cup, indifferent as a statue's stare.
Severina stares at the crumpled parchment in her hand, then, with a shrug, tosses it into the flames. It catches immediately, flaring a brief, brilliant gold before vanishing into ash. Again, nothing happens. No thunderclap, no sign. The silence is profound, almost insulting.
She steps back, the reckless fire in her veins cooling into a flat, grey disappointment. She is about to turn when the click of footsteps on stone makes her freeze.
Argus Filch materialises from a shadowy alcove, Mrs Norris weaving around his ankles. His pouchy eyes bulge, rheumy and furious. "Out of bounds!" he wheezes, brandishing a rusty lamp that casts grotesque, leaping shadows across the walls. "After hours! Prowling! I'll have you in detention for a month, you mark my — Snape, is it?"
She doesn't wait for the rest. With a skittish, almost skippy gait, she darts past him, her tatty robes flapping behind her. Wandlessly, almost lazily, she floats back down the staircase towards the dungeons, leaving the silent Goblet and the sputtering caretaker behind in her wake.
Later — hours later, when the last of the potion's artificial calm has guttered out like a dying Floo flame — she blinks.
And a raw, cold misery blankets her heart.
The clarity is worse. So much worse. She realises, with a sinking certainty that tastes of ash and bitter regret, that she regrets putting her name in that blasted goblet. What in the name of Merlin has she been thinking? She shuts her eyes tightly, cursing under her breath in a vicious, fluent stream — every foul invective she has ever overheard from her father's drunken tirades, and then several she has invented on the spot.
She paces the length of her room until the frantic energy bleeds out of her, leaving only a hollow, gnawing exhaustion. She hasn't eaten dinner. The realisation comes with a dull clench of her stomach. Robert hasn't come yet, which means she has found her own way to that lad's room — thankfully, the witch will not be here to judge Severina. Not that Severina has ever cared for her endless, silent condemnation, but the gossip is another matter entirely. That, she would rather be free of.
Archibald the fat cat glares down at her from the dresser, his yellow eyes half-lidded with undisguised judgment. Severina sometimes contemplates dropping a slow-acting poison into his milk — just a little something to rid herself of this ugly, hair-shedding menace that fills the place with fur and disdain.
"Sod off," she tells the cat.
Archibald does not sod off. He merely blinks slowly, judgmentally, and begins to wash a paw.
Finally, she simply falls onto her bed, still in her clothes, and stares at the canopy above. Wide awake, she watches the darkness slowly bleed into grey, then a pale, accusing gold as the sun rises over Hogwarts, indifferent as ever to her misery.
With a groan, she pushes herself up. Her head throbs — a dull, persistent ache centred right behind her eyes, the kind that sobering draughts never quite touch. She re-wears yesterday's robes, the fabric stale and heavy against her skin, and gathers her things with numb, unfeeling fingers. She searches the bedside table for an energy potion and finds one half-empty bottle lurking at the back, behind a stack of dog-eared Potions journals.
She takes only three drops.
Carefully. Precisely. Because she cannot afford to brew more — not unless she manages to sell those skin potions. Charity has promised her at least seven buyers. Which means ten Galleons, probably. Perhaps twelve, if the stars align and no one haggles her down to knuts.
The effect is meagre — a faint, flickering warmth, like a dying ember stirring briefly to life beneath a layer of cold ash. It will have to be enough. It always has to be enough.
She searches for a hair tie. Finds none.
Irritated, she snatches up the tortoiseshell hair claw instead. It has a chipped tooth, missing three others, which is why she has stopped using it months ago. It has been a gift from no one in particular, bought from a bin in Hogsmeade for three Sickles, and it shows. She twists her greasy hair into a low, lawless bun, wiry strands immediately escaping around her face like startled spiders. They cling to her cheeks, her temples, the corners of her mouth. She cannot muster the will to care.
She straightens her shoulders. Lifts her chin. Adjusts her robe, though it hangs no better than before, its hem frayed, its cuffs stained with old potion splatters. Then she walks out to face the day, the faint warmth of those three drops already fading in her chest.
The Great Hall buzzes with a frantic, electric energy that has nothing whatsoever to do with lessons. Whispered bets float from every table like steam from the morning porridge.
"We can't have a fucking Gryffindor as Hogwarts' champion," Nott spits into his porridge. A fleck of oatmeal clings to his chin; no one tells him.
Rosier, sliding onto the bench beside Severina with the languid grace of a well-fed snake, catches the tail end of the conversation. "Who threw their names in?" he asks, voice low, eyes half-lidded.
Avery — unusually energetic today, not tucked away in the hospital wing thanks to his blood curse, apparently juiced by the feverish energy thrumming through the entire castle — takes a slow sip of tea. His face pulls into a sour frown, as though the brew has personally offended him. "Many. Black," he says, the name dropping like a curse. Like a hex. "And Potter, of course."
Severina keeps her eyes fixed on her plate. A familiar, cold knot tightens in her stomach, the kind she usually drowns with potions or silence.
"At least the death rate is high," she tells them as she serves herself a single poached egg. She smears it onto dry brown toast, the bread crumbling under her knife. Half of her is ravenous — a hollow, gnawing hunger that makes her hands tremble. The other half churns with a nausea so fierce that the very sight of food makes her gorge rise. But she needs to force something down. Fainting again in the corridor would be intolerable. None of the Slytherin prefects have been remotely amused last time, having to drag her limp form to the Hospital Wing.
The boys snort. They appreciate the jab — or perhaps her palpable resentment is simply an amusement to them. She doesn't know. Honestly, she doesn't care.
"Who put their names in from our house?" she asks, if only to steer the conversation away from the hollow behind her ribs.
"Mulciber. Nott. All the Quidditch team, I tell you that." Wilkes lists them off, ticking names on his fingers like a merchant counting sickles. "Surprisingly, even those Flints nerds."
Cecilia Filt has been one of her roommates before they have grown old enough to claim separate chambers. Not that surprising, really, that she has tossed her name in. Cecilia has always burned for glory the way moths burn for flames — recklessly, prettily, inevitably.
"Well," Rosier announces, his sleepy, hooded eyes sliding towards her with an intensity that does not match his languid posture, "I'm now compelled to add my own too. Do you have a slip of paper, Snape?"
Severina looks up from her egg.
Wordlessly, she pulls the small, hand-sized notebook from her robe pocket — the one she knows he knows she always carries. He takes the tiny pencil she has charmed to stay diminutive and tethered to the spine, and writes his name in an elegant, showy script.
"Aren't you worried?" she asks him. Because she is worried — achingly, nauseatingly worried — and hates that impulsive submission she has scrawled on parchment the night before, when the potion's pinkish courage has long since evaporated like morning mist over the Black Lake. She takes a bite of her egg. Tasteless, like chewing on damp chalk. But she forces it down. Then another. Forcing herself to eat, Madam Pomfrey has said, is to train her body to accept food again without bringing it straight back up. Her stomach churns in protest, a writhing serpent of nausea, but she ignores it.
He looks at her, pausing mid-letter. "Why, Snape? Are you calling me a coward?"
"You aren't one to enjoy the attention," she tells him, meeting his gaze. "Nor do you seem to enjoy showing off what you can do."
That much she knows. He is the one who has taken her to the Room of Requirement, teaching her to duel properly in exchange for her tutoring him in advanced spells or helping with his more temperamental potions assignments. A fair trade, in her estimation. She is privately proud of winning against him lately. When she isn't too mired in that particular flavour of misery to focus, at least. Half her victories, she suspects, come from the eager, ruthless half-haze she only possesses when under the influence of her own Euphoria Elixir, a state he finds both endlessly amusing and deeply irritating, judging by the way his eye twitches every time she lands a particularly clever Disarming Charm.
It reminds her of her father, that haze. And if Severina Snape is anything, she does not like to be like her parents. As much as she loves them and misses them and hates them all at once, in a tangled knot that no Severing Charm can unpick, for never being what she has needed. For being absent while present. For the smoke and the silence and the empty chairs.
"For having a line in the history books, I do see the appeal," he says simply, sliding her notebook back. Before she can retort, he picks up another egg from the platter and deposits it onto her plate with a quiet plop. The yolk wobbles, indecently bright. "Eat something. You look horrible, and I need to beat someone later. I don't enjoy kicking a dying dog."
"Sod off," she tells him, but she picks up her fork. She eats. This one is easy to swallow, soft, warm, almost pleasant. Then another. The fork, for some reason, moves of its own accord, hunger waking slowly in her belly like a cat unfurling from a long nap.
Rosier smiles down at her through his pale blond eyelashes, his eyes the colour of a winter sky, blue-grey and fathomless and something she cannot quite name. It makes her flustered. She slows her chewing, washes the bite down with a gulp of water that is too quick and makes her throat ache.
"For what it's worth," she says, not looking at him, "I wish you luck."
"Why? I don't need that." A pause. Then, softer: "But thank you."
Under the watching eyes of nearly everyone in the Great Hall, Rosier then stands and walks with languid purpose to the Goblet. And he tosses his folded parchment into the blue-white flame, where it is instantly consumed in a silent flash.
A smattering of younger Slytherins cheers from their end of the table. Some of the elder ones pound their knuckles against the table in approval. Rosier turns and nods back at them, a wolfish grin curling across his vulpine face, all teeth and confidence and something just sharp enough to draw blood. Severina watches him over the rim of her cup, chewing slowly on her toast. He always looks like someone else when he is excited, she notes. Someone looser. Wilder. Even so, his movements remain lazy, unhurried, as though his limbs are moving through honey rather than air. It is a strange contradiction — the fire beneath the ice — and she cannot decide if it is charming or unsettling.
She looks down at her plate and blinks. Empty. Her stomach is full — properly full, for the first time in days. The warmth of it spreads through her chest like a weak Pepperup Potion. She pushes the plate away and stands, gathering her bag for class.
She pushes the plate away and stands, brushing crumbs from her robe. Wilhelm falls into step behind her as she gathers her bag, his shadow long and familiar.
"Do you want to bet on Evan?" he asks, keeping his voice low as they thread through the departing students.
"If I had money to waste," she replies flatly.
"Ouch." A grin in his voice. "I will not tell him that."
She bites down on the inside of her cheek. "I don't mean it like that. But I genuinely don't have money." At this point, the admission has stopped shaming her. Poverty is simply a fact, like the colour of the sky or the dampness of the dungeons — unremarkable, immovable, hers. She pulls her robe tighter and adds, quieter, "But I do think Evan would win."
After all, he is foxlike and shrewd, dashingly strong in a way that belies his languid frame, with a repertoire of mean-spirited tricks that Severina secretly admires. He fights like a Slytherin should — dirty when necessary, clever always, and without an ounce of Gryffindor's fraudulent purported honour. If anybody in their house has a chance, it is him.
Wilhelm hums, noncommittal, his breath fogging faintly in the cool morning air of the Entrance Hall. "I'll still not tell him you said that. Wouldn't want his head getting any larger. It barely fits through doorways as it is."
The sky outside is stormy. Low, bruised clouds press against the enchanted glass ceiling of Greenhouse Three, rain lashing the panes in furious silver sheets. Severina peers up through the dripping glass, a ushanka perched crookedly on her head, its fake fur damp and sagging. She pulls her gloves farther up her wrists, the worn leather cracking at the seams, and begins cutting down plant leaves with quick, practised snips of her shears. Some she snatches secretly, tucking them into the same gloves — clever, hidden pouches she has stitched herself — to use later for her potions. The professor drones on about Fanged Geraniums, oblivious.
"Pssst."
Severina sighs. She doesn't turn. "What?" she hisses through gritted teeth, praying Mulciber won't draw the professor's attention to her theft.
"Did you make that thing?" he murmurs, leaning close enough that his sleeve brushes her elbow.
"Yes." She feels eyes on her then — a prickling at the back of her neck, the unmistakable weight of unwanted attention. She looks up.
A cluster of Gryffindors stands by the venomous tentacula, pretending to study their Herbology worksheets. The moment Mulciber glances their way, they look away in a chorus of averted gazes, suddenly fascinated by their own plants — no doubt threatened by his aura. He has that effect on people. Severina sometimes envies him for it. For being feared. She herself is feared too, yes, but also scorned and mocked in equal measure. Greasy Snape. Snivlous. The dungeon bat. A strange, contradictory creature they cannot decide whether to dread or deride, so they do both. It is exhausting, being both terrifying and pathetic at once.
She hates them so much it isn't even out of character anymore. The hatred has settled into her bones like a second skeleton.
She feels the need to take away this scoffing feeling — this tight, suffocating pressure that makes her stop breathing for a moment. The Euphoria Potion calls to her from the depths of her trunk. She needs it more than Mulciber does, she is certain. More than anyone does. The potion is the only thing that smooths the jagged edges of her days, the only thing that makes the staring and the whispering and Lily's turned-away face bearable. Even if the joy it gives is fake. Even if it leaves her emptier than before.
What does authenticity matter, she thinks bitterly, when the real thing never comes?
"You know the usual," she says, forcing her voice flat and steady. "I will write down the ingredients, and you get them for me for the next batch. Tonight's ones are already ready."
"Maybe you should make more," Mulciber muses. He has stopped pretending to work entirely now, leaning with his back against her workbench and crossing his arms over his chest. His gaze sweeps across the greenhouse, cold and challenging, daring anyone to look too long. "Make more for the whole house. We are upon celebration since the tournament. I'd even bet those foreigner students will want some."
"They're a military school," she points out dryly, snipping a particularly juicy leaf and palming it with practised ease. "I doubt they'd even think about it." She pauses, weighing her next words. "In any case, you know now more than ever I cannot broadcast anything. I will be punished. I cannot afford detention."
She doubts Dumbledore would expel her. The old man needs her silence far too much — not when she knows about his werewolf pet, not when keeping her quiet is more useful to that disgraceful, twinkling manipulator than making a spectacle of a penniless Slytherin. But detention is another matter entirely. Detention would steal her evenings, her precious stolen hours of brewing and experimenting, her time to concoct the potions that earn her meagre coin for the post-graduation scramble. She will need to find a home soon. Face the world as an adult with no parents and no house and no safety net but her own two stained, trembling hands.
She hates Spinner's End. The very thought of it makes her stomach turn. She would rather die than go back to that hellhole that awaits her like an open grave. And yet it remains an open possibility, yawning and inevitable, no matter how fiercely she tries to outrun it.
"I can bring you the trustworthy customers," Mulciber offers, his voice lowering conspiratorially.
"There are no trustworthy customers as far as I'm concerned. However, you can bring me anyone who wants Wit-Sharpening Potion or has acne."
Mulciber snorts. "No one will trust you with their skin with that sallow face of yours."
She doesn't bother to glare at him. Too knackered, too wrung out, too empty to waste breath on the same dull insult that is too familiar to stir anything in her now. She simply turns back to her plants and continues cutting, the rhythmic snip-snip-snip of her shears filling the silence.
Mulciber, however, seems talkative today — no doubt because Avery is in a different class. Avery hates fiddling with dirt, always blames his cursed bloodline for his inability to breathe in the greenhouse's thick, loamy air, and has managed to wrangle an exemption. Without his usual partner in idleness, Mulciber has apparently decided Severina will do.
"When I'm chosen, of course," he goes on, as though she has asked, "I will want more. In fact, I will pay for a whole basket. For the end-of-term celebrations. And graduation."
"You are so sure of being chosen."
"Maybe not," he agrees easily, not even angry — a rare thing for Mulciber, whose temper is usually as quick as his wand hand. "So many tossed their names in. But I do hope that if our school champion is a Gryffindor, he gets smashed. Splattered across the first task like a bug on a broomstick. A fine, red mist."
"I would pay to see that," she agrees, thinking of James Potter's smug, Quidditch-captain grin. Thinking of his skull being smashed against a rock, his perfect hair matted with blood. The image is vindictively so satisfying, like a sip of stolen firewhisky. "Might even hand out Euphoria for free. Make a day of it."
Mulciber barks a laugh, loud enough to turn a few heads. "There she is. Knew you had it in you, Snape."
By the end of the third lesson, most of Severina's pre-brewed potions have vanished.
Vanished. Not a single phial remains in the hidden pockets she has stitched into the lining of her robes, and though a few of the small glass bottles still lurk beneath her trunk's false bottom — guarded by a Disillusionment Charm she’d taught herself from a pilfered volume — those, too, she suspects will be gone by the week's end. Mulciber himself has taken a Wit-Sharpening Draught, knocked it back like a shot of Ogden's finest Firewhisky, and not a quarter-hour later one of his cousins comes slinking round the library stacks, hunting a Skin-Cleansing Potion and a Beautifying one. Perhaps Mulciber is making some half-arsed attempt at doing good in the world — banking a bit of karma, or trying to sweeten Severina so she will part with more Euphoria. So he can float blissfully through the nights with his pureblood cronies in their pureblood club, behind doors she is never invited through. Still. A customer is a customer.
The girl — the cousin — is insufferably persistent. She whinges about the price, the colour, the smell. And yet, after all that whining, she buys a bottle of Skin-Cleansing and Beautifying anyway — at a reduced price that makes Severina's teeth grind down to nubs.
Charity's friends, by contrast, are simplicity itself. They ask the price, pay it without fuss, and vanish back into the torchlit corridors. It occurs to Severina, not for the first time, that she would be far better served directing her efforts to the Hufflepuffs. At least they pay what is asked and have the decency not to taste-test her stock without permission.
The potion Severina has sampled — pressed upon her by that wretched, haggle-addled cousin — misses her stomach entirely. Of course it has. Because nothing ever goes quite right for her, does it? And so she finds herself hunched over a toilet on the third floor, Moaning Myrtle wailing somewhere above her head, lamenting about someone having "stolen her favourite u-bend." One finger jammed down her throat, then two. Bile and the sickly-sweet remains of a bad reaction burn her esophagus as she heaves and heaves — and nothing but tears and bitter-tasting air comes out.
She has missed the last two classes. By the time she stops trying to make it to the third — Potions, double with Gryffindor, and she would rather drink Felix Felicis off Filch's floor than sit through that while still tasting her own shame — she has given up entirely.
She will have to go to the Hospital Wing. Get a signed slip. Something to wave at Flitwick and McGonagall so they will let her rot in peace without detention.
Madam Pomfrey takes one look at her greenish tinge and pinched lips. "What have you done? Trying out potions on yourself again, are you?"
"No," she says. Half a lie. "My stomach's upset. I was sick again."
Pomfrey asks everything — when did you last eat, have you been taking Sleeping Draughts again, is this about a boy, don't lie to me, missy. Any cramps? Colour of the vomit? Bowels? — each question landing like a small, fresh humiliation, and Severina bears them, staring at a point just above the matron's shoulder. Finally, mercifully, the nurse stops talking and scratches out a permission slip with a quill that looks as though it has signed a thousand such slips before. She settles the girl onto a stiff, biscuit-thin cot, drips two sharp-tasting potions down her throat (one purple, one the precise colour of swamp water), and, of all things, presses an appetite stimulant into her hand.
"You will feel wretched until you eat," Madam Pomfrey says briskly, already turning to her next victim. "For goodness' sake, eat. And take the potion I gave you. Covering up your illness with skin-care and Beautifying Potions will only make things worse."
Severina bites her tongue. Half-embarrassed at being caught red-handed drinking such things — at being exposed as someone so insecure, so needy, as to require them. Explaining that she has drunk them in order to sell them would land her in even deeper trouble. Selling potions in Hogwarts is illegal. Strictly forbidden. And beyond that, beneath that, there is the shame of being known as someone who needs these potions at all. Ashamed of how awful she looks. How they do nothing for her the way they do for others. The way Charity's skin has glowed. The way that wretched cousin has sniffed and found Severina wanting, even after the sale.
She wants to throw up again.
She takes the slip and flees, her stomach still churning. Another drop of Euphoria would make things better. Just one. Enough to smooth the edges.
Severina is not delusional. She knows she is the finest potioneer these miserable school walls have ever seen — perhaps the finest even with Slughorn busy drooling over Lily Evans and ignoring her in favour of those with names and money and prestige, and that is saying something. She knows there is something in her head, deep within. Everyone says so. A little creature, they might have called it, that has been slumbering for years, then woke with every cruel turn of her life. The bullying in first year. Her mother's death. The fallout with Lily — her only friend, her only fringe of light in the dark. Then, six months later, her father's death, leaving her truly alone in the world.
With every loss, that dark thing inside her wakes further. And wakes. And eats at her heart until it leaves her lazy and dull, staring at the walls for hours, or else grinding herself into dust with overwork. It is only the Euphoria that makes her start living again. Working again. And perhaps that is a problem, because she has grown up on Spinner's End, where half the people her age are either drugged insensible or pickled in cheap ale. Her own father has been rat-arsed on vodka most nights — it is what has killed him in the end, after all.
But she likes to think — no, she knows — that the Euphoria she brews, heavily adjusted to rid it of every last side effect, does not make her an addict. After all, she only takes small doses. She never overdoes it. It has happened only maybe seven times before — most before dulling with Rosier, and then yesterday, because she has been stupid enough to drink that potion while lying down.
That isn't addiction. That is simply… smoothing the pain. Putting that beast back to sleep. Although even drinking a full dose is always exhilarating, she has to admit — it fills her with a giddy, euphoric rush that chases the laziness clean away. And surely, surely, that is no bad thing.
The Halloween feast seems to drag on as though someone has cast a sluggishness charm over the very hourglass. Perhaps it is because this is their second feast in two days. Perhaps it is because Severina doesn't much fancy the extravagantly prepared food. She has a vague memory of tipping that particular appetite stimulant down the girls' lavatory drain, though it might have simply slipped from her fingers; she cannot quite remember, and the difference seems about as useful as asking whether a Blast-Ended Skrewt prefers a sunny garden or a thunderstorm.
What she does remember is the book. A very interesting tome on familiars and magical bonds, recommended by Aurora Sinistra herself, now spread open beside a congealing plate of pumpkin pasties. Severina feels slightly joyful and — there is no other word for it — lazy, a warm, honey-thick sensation that has settled into her limbs after she, Mulciber, and Wilkes have taken four drops of the Euphoria Elixir in the bathroom. Avery has not been with them, being sickly as of late, but she can hear his cane limping just behind her back as he takes his place. No Avery means an extra drop for every one of them. It is genuinely — strangely — pleasing and exciting, and also feels rather like being underwater: the candlelight swims, the voices come to her muffled, and she reads the same line many times in a row without the slightest bother.
"The familiar bond, when properly established, tethers the witch's magical core to—"
The Head Girl is glaring at her from across the Slytherin table, clearly under the impression that books have no business at a feast. Severina glares back, and does not close the tome.
Wilkes is misty-eyed and beatific from the potion, a soppy grin plastered across his face as he attempts — and fails, quite magnificently — to flirt with Avery. Avery, for his part, looks horrified, which greatly amuses Severina, Rosier, and Mulciber in equal measure. The sound of their quiet snickering is the only thing keeping her from sinking entirely into the warm underwater dark.
All around the Hall, necks crane. Faces wear impatient expressions. Students fidget, rise half out of their seats, peer down the staff table to see whether Dumbledore has finished eating yet. Severina rereads the same line again.
"—tethers the witch's magical core to—"
She blinks. Tries to focus. Shoves a forkful of something into her mouth, then regrets it immediately. She swallows with difficulty, puts the fork down, picks up a pencil, and carefully underlines the very line she keeps trying to read.
The thing about Euphoria is this: it makes her slow in mind unless she is active, moving, doing something with her hands. Pacing, preferably. That is why she hates feasts. That is why she hates Slughorn for keeping an eye on her and forcing her to attend. Had it been any other day, she would have been reading this book while walking the length of the dungeons, and it would be lodged in her memory before the Elixir's effects even faded. But here she sits, drowning in candlelight and chewing noises, the same twelve words swimming before her eyes like stubborn golden fish.
At long last, the golden plates return to their original spotless state; there is a sharp upswing in the level of noise within the Hall, which dies away almost instantly as Dumbledore gets to his feet.
"Well, the Goblet is almost ready to make its decision," says Dumbledore. "I estimate that it requires one more minute. Now, when the champions' names are called, I would ask them please to come up to the top of the Hall, walk along the staff table, and go through into the next chamber" — he indicates the door behind the staff table — "where they will be receiving their first instructions."
He takes out his wand and gives a great sweeping wave with it; at once, all the candles except those inside the carved pumpkins are extinguished, plunging them all into a state of semi-darkness. Severina huffs, annoyed to her very core, that she can no longer read the same bloody sentence in this wretched darkness. She shuts her book with a sharp snap.
The Goblet of Fire now shines more brightly than anything in the whole Hall, the sparkling bright, bluey-white of the flames almost painful on the eyes. Everyone watches, waiting… a few people keep checking their watches.
"Any second," Flint the Elder whispers, two seats away from Severina, his voice reverent.
The flames inside the Goblet turn suddenly red again. Sparks begin to fly from it. Next moment, a tongue of flame shoots into the air, a charred piece of parchment flutters out of it — the whole room gasps.
Dumbledore catches the piece of parchment and holds it at arm's length, so that he can read it by the light of the flames, which have turned back to blue-white.
"The champion for Durmstrang," he reads, in a strong, clear voice, "will be Yelena Petrova."
A storm of applause and cheering sweeps the Hall. Severina glimpses Yelena Petrova rise from the middle of the Slytherin table — tall, with long silver-blond hair that cascades down her back like molten moonlight, each wave catching the blue-white glow of the Goblet's flames — and walk up towards Dumbledore. She turns right, walks along the staff table without so much as a glance at the gawping professors, and disappears through the door into the next chamber.
"Cor," says Mulciber, low and appreciative, his Euphoria-dilated eyes following her every step. "She's fit."
The clapping and chatting dies down. Now everyone's attention is focused again on the Goblet, which, seconds later, turns red once more. A second piece of parchment shoots out of it, propelled by the flames.
"The champion for Beauxbatons," says Dumbledore, "is Olivier Duclair!"
The boy who rises to his feet does so with such effortless grace that several girls at the Gryffindor table sigh audibly. He sweeps up between the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables, every inch the fairy-tale champion.
Severina checks on her goblet. Half-empty. She frowns at it as though it has personally offended her.
"Pss," she whispers to Wilkes on her other side, prodding him with an elbow. "Do you have some?"
Misty-eyed and barely present, Wilkes blinks at her slowly. Then, with the unthinking generosity of the profoundly intoxicated, he thrusts his flask of firewhisky towards her. Normally he would have milked her for a potion, or a favour, or at least a promise of something in return — but he is far too gone for that now. Severina pours a generous measure into her juice, swirls it once, and returns the flask.
"Thanks," she mutters, and drinks.
When the very boyishly handsome Olivier Duclair — who looks rather like he has been carved by a lovesick sculptor — has too vanished into the side chamber, silence falls again. But this is not the expectant silence of before. This is a silence so stiff with excitement you can almost taste it, metallic and sharp on the tongue. Every student in the Hall seems to be holding their breath at once.
And the Goblet of Fire turns red once more; sparks shower out of it; the tongue of flame shoots high into the air, and from its tip Dumbledore pulls the third piece of parchment.
"The Hogwarts champion," he calls, and opens the parchment.
He pauses. For one long, dreadful moment, the Headmaster stands utterly still. Then his eyes rake all over the Slytherin table — a slow, searching sweep that makes several students sit up straighter under the weight of the Headmaster's gaze. For a second, Severina thinks he is looking at Evan Rosier. Everyone thinks he is looking at Evan Rosier. Evan Rosier certainly thinks he is looking at Evan Rosier, if the way he puffs out his chest is any indication. Then Dumbledore's eyes find hers.
"Severina Snape."
Severina chokes on the firewhisky. It burns its way down the wrong tube entirely. She coughs, sputters, feels the liquid dribble embarrassingly from the corner of her mouth as every head in the Great Hall swivels toward her like a field of sunflowers following the dawn. Even the ghosts turn. Even Peeves, for once, forgets to cackle — though his mouth is open in a perfect little 'o' of delighted scandal.
All around her, the Slytherin table has gone utterly still. Mulciber's jaw hangs open so wide she could have charmed a flobberworm into it. Wilkes blinks his misty, Euphoria-clouded eyes as though trying to process a sentence that makes no sense — his gaze drifting from Severina to the Goblet and back again, slow as treacle.
There is no applause. There is no cheering. There is only the thick, suffocating silence of a thousand people all thinking the same thing: her?
Severina herself isn't sure. She thinks she must have misheard him. Perhaps the Euphoria has addled her ears. Perhaps the firewhisky has stolen her wits. Perhaps Dumbledore has simply misspoken — though Dumbledore, she reflects dimly, is not known for misspeaking.
"You put your name?" Mulciber blurts, his whisper cutting through the silence like a knife through over-risen bread dough. He sounds almost betrayed.
"I was drunk," she whispers back, equally sharp, equally scandalised. None of this feels real. It feels like the sort of dream that ends with you falling off your four-poster and waking up on the cold stone floor with a headache and a lingering sense of dread.
"Too late to regret it now," says Avery from somewhere to her left, his voice half-amused and half-spiteful, the way he says most things. He is leaning on his cane, his sallow face lit with a queer, crooked smile. "That's the thing about magical contracts, Snape. The Goblet doesn't care whether you were drunk."
Evan pushes her to stand up. His hand is firm against her shoulder, shoving her upright before her legs have decided they are ready. He squeezes her hand once, roughly, the way one might squeeze a soldier's shoulder before sending him over the top.
"Go," he says.
She squeezes back without thinking. Swallows thickly. Nothing makes sense. The candlelight swims. The faces around her blur into a sea of pale, staring moons. Somewhere at the Gryffindor table, she thinks she hears someone laugh — a high, incredulous sound that might be James Potter or might be her own imagination.
She is not afraid, because she is too high to feel afraid — too wrapped in the fading, honeyed remnants of Euphoria and the sharp, reliable burn of firewhisky to muster anything so coherent as terror. But she can vaguely sense those feelings anyway, lurking just beneath the surface like grindylows in dark water: fear, regret, the dawning horror of what she has apparently done. They tug at the edges of her consciousness, cold little fingers reaching for her throat.
She ignores them. She wipes her chin with the back of her hand. She picks up her book on familiars — because Merlin forbid she leave it behind — and begins the long, silent walk toward Dumbledore, with every eye in the castle burning holes into her back.