The Prisoner of Hogwarts
In the years Albus Dumbledore had known Severus Snape, he had developed a mild affection for the younger man. Despite his various flaws, at least Severus provided Albus with an apparently limitless supply of surprises. Today, Severus had appeared in Albus’ office with one of those surprises in the form of Theresa Black, her head bowed and her hands folded like a prisoner, an enormous carpet bag slung over her shoulder.
“Hello, Theresa, Severus,” Albus said. “What can I do for you?”
Severus glanced at Theresa, who made no move to speak. “Headmaster, I have persuaded Theresa to stay with us for a while,” he said, a gleam of triumph in his eyes.
“Really?” Albus looked at Theresa. “You seemed eager to get away from here last time.”
She met his eyes sullenly, and for the first time since her sudden reappearance in August. Albus couldn’t resist a casual glance at her thoughts, but all he got was a bitter resentment of Severus. It was a primitive form of Occlumency, unhealthy for the practitioner and not proof against an aggressive attack, but sufficient to cloud her motivations for the moment. “I’ve changed my mind, Professor,” she said, her voice low but hard-edged. “If you’ll but let me use a room, I’ll earn my keep.”
Albus turned his gaze to Severus, whose smirk was reminiscent of the last time Slytherin had won the House cup. “Very well,” Albus said. He snapped his fingers, and a house-elf appeared at his elbow. “Dobby, would you please take Mrs. Black to one of the guest rooms?”
“At once, Professor Dumbledore!” Dobby bowed with a flourish and ushered Theresa to the door.
“I believe Mr. Filch will have some work you can help him with, Theresa, ” Albus said.
Theresa glanced at him, her eyes momentarily unguarded, and Albus caught a glimpse of a struggle with a dark-haired man. He turned back to Severus and noted the bruise spreading into the murky Potions Master’s eye socket. What on earth had passed between them?
Theresa followed the house-elf out. Severus watched her go and turned to Albus smugly. “Severus,” Albus sighed, coming around his desk to sit on its edge. “What do you hope to accomplish by imprisoning her?””
Severus looked startled. “Imprison her? I am keeping her safe. You saw what Black did to her!”
“You can’t keep her safe against her will, ” Albus said sadly, “and she will hate you for trying.”
“I am prepared to face that consequence.”
“Are you?” Albus remembered the first year of Severus’ tenure at Hogwarts “ weeks of stormy, self-destructive passions between weeks of frosty silences. At the time, Albus had blamed it on Lily Potter’s death, but now he was reconsidering. Severus had months to get over Lily’s death “ and years to get over her rejection of his friendship “ before he came to work at Hogwarts, but he had signed his teaching contract less than two weeks after Theresa had left the country.
Severus turned his stony face away from Albus to glare at the door. His voice was barely more than a whisper. “I would rather die than see her come to harm.”
Albus didn’t doubt that. But what would Severus do if she turned on him? “Tread carefully, Severus,” he advised. “A unicorn is beautiful in the wild, but it must run to live. Cage it, and it dies.”
Severus took that as a dismissal, muttering something about “damned riddles” under his breath. Albus returned to his chair and shook his head. Theresa Black would not be the one who lost this battle.
****
“Theresa? Is that you?”
Bent over double to peer behind a suit of armor, Theresa raised a finger behind her to quiet the young voice. Scarcely breathing, she raised her wand into the dark crevice. “Petrificus totalis!”
Her spell exploded on blank stone; in its brief glow she spotted her quarry, a snuffbox with legs that had escaped from the Transfigurations classroom, skittering away. “Dammit!” she shouted, hurling herself around the suit of armor. “Look out!”
A small clutch of students scattered as she barreled through. She chased her little quarry around a corner of the corridor, where it vanished behind a vase that was taller than Theresa. She flicked her wand at it, but instead of rolling away, the smooth black porcelain hurled her spell right back at her, knocking her backwards hard enough to do a somersault.
Theresa groaned, rolling over. Someone took her arm and helped her sit up against the wall of the corridor. Harry Potter grinned down at her. “All right, then?”
“I think so.” Theresa spread her fingers and flexed them, stretched her legs out and rotated her ankles one by one. “Yes, everything seems to be working.”
A slightly-built girl took Harry’s arm from behind. “Harry, let’s go.”
“You go on. I want to talk to Theresa.” Harry sat down beside her and drew his knees up.
The girl exchanged glances with a gangly, red-haired boy, then frowned at Theresa. An awkward moment passed, while she and the boy silently agreed not to leave Harry alone with Theresa.
Theresa sighed and said, “Introduce me to your friends, Harry?”
“Oh, right. This is Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.”
“Pleased to meet you.” She hauled herself to her feet and returned to the vase, running her hand down its cool, matte surface.
“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” Harry offered, following her.
“Severus has given me a detention,” Theresa said, lowering herself to the floor to peer under the vase’s plinth.
“He set you to chase a snuffbox?” Harry lit his wand and peered behind the narrow part of the vase.
“No, he confined me to Hogwarts. Filch set me to chase the snuffbox.” In the light from Harry’s wand, she could see a jagged hole in the stone wall behind the vase, just big enough for a mouse “ or a snuffbox with legs. She sat up. “And I’m going to catch the bloody thing, too; I don’t care how many years it’s eluded the staff here.”
She stood up and gave the vase an experimental tug. Nothing terrible happened, but it didn’t budge, either.
“Professor McGonagall can turn herself into a cat,” Hermione said. “What makes you think you can catch it when she can’t?”
“Minerva,” Theresa grunted, hauling on the vase as hard as she could, “has never had to make a living hunting Norwegian Pixies.” It still didn’t move, so she released it and took a step backwards to consider. “She also never lived in the desert and ate monitor lizards for six months.” During which time Theresa had learned that if you can’t move the rock above, sometimes you can move the rock below. “Wingardium Leviosa!”
The black vase’s plinth rose ponderously into the air, carrying the vase with it. Harry danced backwards out of its way as Theresa guided it out of its niche and settled it carefully on the ground. There was no telling what the vase would do if she broke it.
Half a dozen spiders that had been living under the plinth ran for cover. Theresa crouched down to shine her wand into the hole.
“You’re an exterminator, aren’t you?” Ron said. “Cool.”
“I thought exterminators killed bugs,” Harry interjected.
“Muggle exterminators kill bugs.” Hermione tossed her hair over her shoulder as though explaining something that everybody knew. “Wizard exterminators remove unwanted magical creatures from places where people live.”
“Read that in Hogwarts: A History, did you?” Ron asked archly.
“Of course not. It was in Wizarding Careers: How to Avoid Becoming a Dismal Failure. Which I gave you to read, Harry.”
“Err... right. I must not have gotten to that chapter yet,” Harry hedged. “Exterminating sounds exciting, though.”
“Not really,” Theresa said. “Not in Britain, at least. All the really dangerous creatures were run out centuries ago, or confined to places like the Forbidden Forest. You spend most of your time getting pixies out of potting sheds. But in the rest of the world....” She smiled in spite of herself. “Yes, it can be fairly exciting.”
At that moment, the snuffbox bolted out of the hole and straight past Theresa. She cried out and scrambled after it. Ron and Harry took shots at it with their wands, but missed widely.
“Harry! Ron!” Hermione cried, scandalized. “You can’t do magic in the corridors!”
The snuffbox scuttled into a hole under the wooden trim at the top of the stairs. Theresa dropped to one knee and jabbed her wand into the hole. Summoning it would be no use; most magic seemed to just slide right off the slippery little monster. Instead, she cast a spell to see how deep the hole went. “What the“?”
Harry was right behind her. “What’s wrong?”
“This hole“ it can’t possibly go that far!” She reached through the railing and felt around the back, but the wooden trim was solid. Withdrawing her wand, she reached into the hole with her fingers and yanked the trim up from the floor. Its nails released with a crack, and she flattened herself on the floor to look underneath. “Dammit.”
“Where did it go?”
There was no hole under the trim, no space at all. Theresa muttered another spell, and pink sparks dribbled out of her wand and gathered on the hole in the outside of the trim. “That’s what I was afraid of. This is a magical hole.””
“How did it get there?” Hermione asked.
“It’s something you learn in seventh-year Charms. The school is probably full of them. There’s no telling where it goes.” She put the trim back in place and tightened the nails with her wand. Then she poked her wand into the hole again, found the edges of the spell that held the hole in place, and carefully unraveled it. When she pulled her wand out of the hole, there was nothing but smooth wood trim in that spot.
“Maybe we’ll be lucky, and it came out in Antarctica,” Harry suggested.
Theresa smiled at him. “Doubt it. It wasn’t cold enough in there.”
A bell rang somewhere. Hermione gasped. “I’m late for Muggle Studies!”
“You mean Divination,” Ron corrected.
“No “ yes“ of course, you’re right “ but we have to go! Harry?”
Harry sat down next to Theresa. “You two go on. I’m skiving off.”
Hermione looked like she’d like to argue with him, but she was more worried about being late to class, so she turned and dashed up the corridor. Ron ran after her, shouting, “When do you go to Muggle Studies, anyway?”
Theresa smiled at Harry. “You’re going to get me in trouble.”
“Professor Trelawney drives me crazy.” He gritted his teeth.
Theresa got to her feet. “All right, then, but we should probably get out of sight. Come along, I know a good place to hide out.” She magicked the black vase back into its place, and led Harry up the stairs.
On the fifth floor landing, there was a broad, double window that looked out over the forest and the lake. In Theresa’s day, it had been a little-known fact that there was a tiny balcony outside the window, just large enough to admit two friendly teenagers. Now, she edged onto the balcony, drawing her cloak tighter against the wind, and slid her legs between the railposts to sit with her feet dangling over the edge. Harry followed her out and sat with his back to the railing and his knees drawn up to his chest, just close enough that his sneaker touched her leg. “Excellent,” he said. “How did you know this was here?”
“I used to meet Sirius up here now and then.” She refrained from elaborating on what they did together. “So, how is your year going?”
Harry shrugged, toying with his shoe laces. “Same as usual, I guess. It wouldn’t be Hogwarts if no one was trying to kill me.”
Theresa laughed. “That’s quite an education you’re getting, then.”
“You have no idea.” He glanced up at her. “So, how did Snape persuade you to come back and stay?” His voice was casual, but when he glanced at her, his eyes added: When I couldn’t.
Theresa sighed, looking out over the forest. No more fibs. “Sirius broke into my hotel room.” Harry looked alarmed, so she said, “It was all right“ he just wanted to talk. But Severus interrupted us, and those two go together about as well as fire and gasoline.”
“I heard a rumor that Snape had a black eye yesterday. Is that how he got it?”
“Yes. It’s my own fault. I used to play them against each other on purpose.” She hugged herself. “I was such a stupid girl.”
“They obviously didn’t think so.”
She smiled at Harry. “They’re biased.”
“So, is Black mad, or not?”
“In a way, perhaps. He was always a little volatile, but not like this. One minute he was threatening me, and the next he was kissing me. It was like he couldn’t control himself. But that doesn’t mean he’s wicked, or that he’s after you.”
“Why didn’t Snape turn him in?”
“Because I agreed to come back to Hogwarts.”
Harry bristled. “He’s blackmailing you? And you still think he’s such a good friend!”
“Perhaps not, but in case you haven’t noticed, good friends are in short supply for me these days.”
“Why don’t you go to Dumbledore and tell him what you know?”
“Dumbledore didn’t believe me twelve years ago; he won’t believe me now. Not unless I can get proof.”
“How are you going to get proof if you can’t leave the castle?”
“I don’t know.” She leaned back against the warm stones of the castle wall behind her. “Maybe everyone’s right; maybe I should leave him to the Aurors. I came back to Britain with the intent of divorcing him. I thought it might prove to Minerva that I’m not a follower of Voldemort.” She closed her eyes. “I love him, Harry, but I’m so tired of being alone.”
Harry reached toward her. She thought he was going to take her hand, but instead he merely shifted his weight. “You should at least stay for a couple of weeks. It’s almost Christmas.”
In the past twelve years, she had become accustomed to spending Christmas with whomever she happened to be around, even if they were Muggles or, as was the case more than once, tribesmen who had never heard of Christmas. It would be nice to spend it with people who actually cared about her, as few as they might be. She opened her eyes and smiled at Harry. “I think I’d like that. You’re staying here, I take it?”
He grinned. “Yeah, I stay every year. Ron and Hermione are staying this year, too. It’ll be great. There’s a feast, and if it snows, we have a snowball fight.”
“That sounds lovely.” It was her turn to pat his hand. “Thanks for listening to me talk, sweetheart. I feel much better now.”
Harry ducked his head suddenly, but not before she saw the color rising in his cheeks. She wondered if anyone had ever called him “sweetheart” before. Probably not that he could remember, at least. Theresa got to her feet. “Brr, it’s colder than I expected out here. Let’s go inside and see if there’s hot cocoa in the Great Hall.”
“Good idea.” Harry scrambled to his feet and led the way inside.