Chapter Text
Harriet discovered she hadn't prepared herself for Hogwarts to simply look the same, as though the past terrible months hadn't happened. As though the stone floors hadn't been cracked and the walls hadn't bled smoke and debris and the people she'd loved hadn't died in the corridors between the entrance hall and here. The enchanted ceiling was its usual September self. She sat at the Gryffindor table between Hermione and Ron and tried to feel like a regular student.
Of course, it wasn't going well. The 8th graders occupied an odd position at their respective tables. Having fought a war and vanquished dark wizards and witches, they felt too old and out of place for another year of school life. The younger students around them looked awed and slightly intimidated sharing a table with the famed war heroes.
Ron was talking to someone two seats down about Chudley Cannon's latest upset in Quidditch. Hermione had a small book out. Harriet had her fork in her hand and was managing, more or less, to pay attention to the sorting.
The ceiling shifted. A cloud moved across the stars as Headmistress McGonagall rose. The Hall quieted with the automatic response of several hundred students who had been trained since age eleven to stop talking when the Headmistress stood up. Harriet set down her fork. Around her, even the bewildered and scared first years, still reeling with the shock of the sorting and sharing space with famous magical folk, obeyed and fell silent.
The announcements were normal at first, with the customary annual warning that the Forbidden Forest remained forbidden. As if that ever deterred the truly determined students, Harriet snorted. McGonagall continued speaking. Apparently, the grumpy Filch had updated his list of prohibited items. Library hours had been extended for N.E.W.T. students, and the returning 8th years had no official curfew hours.
Harriet began to reach for her fork again.
"I have one more important announcement to make, concerning the students who are above Seventeen years of age" McGonagall said, and whispers followed.
Something in the old witch's voice made Harriet uneasy. It wasn't an alarm. McGonagall was too controlled for it. Was she overthinking?
"As some of you may be aware, the Ministry passed new legislation recently. A traditional wizarding courtship law dormant for some two hundred years, has been formally reinstated as part of the post-war restoration efforts."
The murmur that ran through the Hall was immediate. The pureblood students, seated on the Slytherin table especially, reacted with the flicker of recognition, of prior knowledge. Others were catching up in real time. Harriet had no idea what it was, and how serious it was. She looked at a frowning Hermione who appeared equally clueless for once.
McGonagall continued. She explained the law in detail. Apparently, any eligible witch who was single could be formally pursued by a wizard. Courtship tokens were to be accepted or declined only within the law's narrow parameters. Refusal without a strong and valid cause carried penalties. Only a formal declaration from one party following the acceptance of their courtship by a witch carried the power to suspend all other courtship offers. There were requirements for documented engagement, ministry appointed chaperones in case one of the involved parties were below twenty-one years of age, durations, public appearances…
The rest of the words were literally washing over Harriet. For a brief moment, the Headmistress's gaze moved down the Gryffindor table and found Harriet. It moved away again almost immediately. But in that fraction of a second there had been something almost like pity in McGonagall's expression that wordlessly conveyed to Harriet that she was in for another trouble.
Oh, Harriet thought. Oh, this is about me. She groaned.
Professor Snape was seated on McGonagall's right, in his customary scowl of apparent willingness to be anywhere but here. He had returned to Hogwarts this year not as Headmaster, since he'd effectively abandoned the post before the final battle. Not even as the Potions Master, that position had gone to Slughorn again, who'd come back with a renewed energy after having fought and survived. On McGonagall's request, Snape had agreed to return as Defence Against the Dark Arts professor after being acquitted. Harriet knew he wasn't particularly keen on returning. But Hogwarts was his home. An unkind and scarring one undoubtedly, but it was as close to a home as could be.
She hadn't spoken much to him since the war. She'd thought about it. She'd written letters she hadn't finished. She even stood outside his ward at St Mungo's for several weeks and then walked away without meeting him. She didn't know what she would have said to him. I'm sorry for misunderstanding you? Thank you for everything?
But none of it seemed enough. She understood words would be awkward. So, she poured all her gratitude and apology into securing his release and getting him the much deserved Order of Merlin, First Class. It had taken months of petitions, testimonies, and stubborn persistence, but she never considered doing anything less. She knew he'd appreciate gestures more than words.
Even so, she sometimes wondered if he knew. If he understood that every form she signed and every argument she made was her way of saying all the things she couldn't bring herself to say aloud.
Perhaps he did. After all, Severus Snape had always been good at reading what people left unsaid.
From this distance, he looked pretty much the same. The dark robes suited his role, which was probably intentional. He had the look of someone who had put himself back together painstakingly and was not one for publicly discussing the process. Intimidating in his black robed glory, Snape was one of the constants in her life.
Right now, he was watching McGonagall with an expression that Harriet, who had spent six years studying his face and eyes, could read easily. He was furious. Perhaps it wouldn't be so obvious to other students around her. But she knew that his jaw was set in a specific manner, and his hands on the table were fisted in the way that conveyed something was being actively suppressed. He found the ancient courting law beneath contempt. He found its reinstatement offensive.
Snape’s gaze shifted. It moved along the Gryffindor table exactly the way it had moved through his dungeon classroom for years, cataloguing, assessing, and sneering while deducting points and assigning detentions that weren't always fair. When his eyes found her, Harriet held his gaze. She wasn't sure why. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was the only familiar face in the Hall with unmasked contempt toward the newest law. Before she could overthink and assign another reason, his gaze was gone again in an instant, his attention moving back to McGonagall, leaving Harriet with the odd residue of the moment. She looked down at her plate.
"Harriet."
Hermione's voice carried an edge of outrage. Under the resumed noise of the feast, McGonagall had sat down. The Hall had erupted into chaotic discussions, with many seventh and eighth wizards eyeing Harriet greedily.
"I know," Harriet said, sounding defeated.
"I'll research it tonight. I cannot believe they brought back such a sexist law. There must be a way out–"
Ron leaned across from her other side, red with anger. He had, apparently, caught enough of the announcement to understand it, or Hermione had communicated something nonverbally. They did that very often now, with the ease of people who had recently publicly confirmed they were in love with each other, which Harriet found mostly lovely. Occasionally, however, it felt like standing slightly outside a warm room she felt like she was rudely intruding.
"Mate," he said, in the voice he used when he had something important and assuring to say and wasn't quite sure how to say it. "That's– I mean, you'll have–"
"Ron," she said with a smile, "It's alright."
She watched the enchanted ceiling shift through its slow September dark and tried to suppress the unpleasant feeling coiling in her gut. Across the hall, at the staff table, Snape’s dark eyes darted once again to Harriet.
She left the feast earlier than usual, telling her worried friends she just needs to rest. She slipped out mostly unnoticed amid the buzzing crowd, something she'd gotten better at in the past year of hiding and hunting horcruxes. The corridor outside the Great Hall was quiet, the torches throwing their amber light in pools across the ancient stone. She paused, and stood there for a moment with her back against the wall.
The Girl Who Lived Twice.
She'd spent the past months trying to dodge the unwanted privilege. She'd refused Kingsley's Auror program fast-track offer to finish school education like a normal student, declined the international speaking invitations, the offer of her own permanent column in the Prophet, the Chief Ministry consultant position, and approximately thirty-seven more requests from various Wizarding ministries and professions. She'd come back to Hogwarts because Hermione had made a very convincing argument about needing to finish their N.E.W.T.s. Lastly, it was because she desperately hoped for a year of something resembling ordinary. The newly reinstated ritual, apparently, had other ideas.
From inside the Great Hall she could hear the noise of a feast continuing without her. Hundreds of people eating and laughing and being young in the way that she could observe but not quite live, like trying to catch air.
"Miss Potter."
She didn't startle. She'd grown up with that voice. Snape was in the corridor with her. She hadn't seen or heard him leave the Hall, which said something about how practiced he was at moving without sound, like a feline. He stood a few feet away from her. The torchlight illuminated the sharp features of his face and the silver scars on his throat, just visible above his high collar. She waited for him to speak.
"The law is as inconvenient as it sounds," he said. "Miss Granger will research it thoroughly and find fewer loopholes than she anticipates. I would advise you to begin considering practical options now rather than after the tokens begin arriving."
Harriet looked at him. "How long have you known about it?"
"Long enough," he said bitterly, "to know that the Ministry's timing, and the directives to have it announced at the start of term, was not coincidental."
She absorbed the information and her irritation spiked. "You mean they intentionally timed it for my return."
He didn't say anything. But the subtle tightening of his jaw was confirmation enough.
Harriet looked at the stone floor, silently cursing the Ministry. "What would you do? I mean, if you were me," she asked suddenly. Of all people, he'd certainly understand what being used felt like.
Snape looked slightly taken aback by the question. "I would not touch any token before it had been examined by someone qualified to do so," he told her.
She looked at him. "That's yet another piece of advice," she smiled.
"Consider it a warning," he said, betraying a hint of impatience. "Good evening, Miss Potter."
Without waiting for her reply, he turned and walked back toward the Hall. She stood in the corridor for another moment. Then, she pushed off the wall and went up the stairs, knowing the year will be anything but ordinary.