"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."- Arthur Schopenhauer
The conversation ended there, with Harriet a little shaken and Tracy outright terrified. Daphne, for her part, had just come to understand the saying: pain doesn't disappear, it gets passed on. Seeing the state her two companions were in made her smile.
"Oh, wipe that smile off your face. I understand you're relieved to get that off your chest, but still." Harriet composed herself, then pulled three butterbeers out of her expanded pocket, sealed with a stasis charm, essentially a magical inventory system straight out of a video game, and handed them out. Daphne took hers calmly, while Tracy grabbed hers with both hands, having settled down a little by then. "And Dumbledore lived through that hell up close. So the question I'm asking myself now is, why does he keep putting sticks in everyone's wheels? Ever since he became headmaster, he's infantilized every piece of knowledge and cut out anything that could be considered remotely dangerous. He's seen hell firsthand, so why force the rest of us into a world wrapped in cotton wool?"
"It's frightening," Tracy said, still caught up in the earlier conversation, "but there's nothing we can do about it right now, so there's not much point imagining the worst case scenario. Yeah. Whatever happens, happens, I suppose." She sounded fully composed again by then, if nothing else, her mental fortitude was clearly considerable.
Daphne looked at her friend and seemed reassured by it. "That's a good question, Harriet, but I imagine you already know the answer. What does a dog do, regardless of breed, in front of someone stronger than itself?"
Harriet understood immediately. "Ah, right, it shows its belly and its paws. Yeah, that tracks. I can't even imagine how exhausting that day must have been for him, honestly."
That enormous gap in power also meant something else. Wizards have so little raw power compared to the giants of this world, but that's precisely why they've gotten so good at inventing new spells. For devils, it seems like it's all about how much power you can throw around. When you don't have that luxury, you learn to be clever instead. Harriet thought.
The conversation carried on in a lighter tone after that, and the topic eventually turned to the holidays. Daphne planned to stay with her parents for the various galas being organized, after all, in times like these, she needed to be there for her family. The Greengrass family's neutrality was bound to be tested soon enough. Tracy, meanwhile, planned to go skiing in Switzerland with her parents before coming back to stay with Daphne afterward, to help however she could.
"What about you, Harriet? Want to come?" Daphne asked. "It's an evening hosted by a neutral family, all sorts of people will be there, and even you, with everything that follows you around, wouldn't stand out too much. After all, you started it, or rather, your dear colleague Yuna did, reaching back out to the various families and even scamming the more gullible ones, who happen to be, oddly enough, families with rather questionable philosophies. Was that you nudging her in that direction?" Daphne asked, fishing a little.
"Send me an invitation with a plus one, I can't promise I'll actually make it," Harriet said. "And if it was me who encouraged her... well, guess?" She winked. "Either way, I've got people to see, places to visit, and oh, I almost forgot, a devil to summon." This time, she said it with a grin, looking like the cat that got the cream.
At that, both girls paled slightly. "You're joking." "Potter, that's not funny." Before catching themselves and shooting her a dirty look.
"Oh, well don't believe me if you don't want," Harriet said, drinking from her cup before raising it. "Well then, a toast, to our long awaited holidays."
It didn't take much convincing for Tracy to raise her glass, and a little more for Daphne, forced as she was to toast with something so cheap.
And so the witches' tea came to an end.
...
Beyond simply impressing the two witches, the confrontation in the forest had several consequences, most notably a sharp increase in attention from the rest of Hogwarts. Students now looked at her with far more fear, and far more reverence, than before.
If there was one thing about Harriet that remained ever changing, it was how she was perceived, and it had practically become a spectacle, especially for those who'd been there since her arrival at the school. Sometimes she was loved by everyone, sometimes despised, sometimes feared. It was easy for people to sort her into a single emotional box, after all, it was simpler to follow the crowd, even if that wasn't true for everyone, and controversy tends to be reserved for celebrities who aren't actually anywhere near you.
This time, the emotions were mixed, if anything, ranging anywhere from awe to unease, and it mostly came down to the fact that she didn't seem to care what anyone thought and didn't react to any of it, as though she'd simply given up on them and started treating them like monkeys at a zoo.
Still, they'd managed to piece together a rough version of what had happened. The sheer violence Harriet had shown hadn't left them unmoved, and it raised plenty of questions, chief among them why so much had changed after the announcement of Voldemort's return, which the Ministry had dismissed as false.
The Slytherins, who represented the Dark side in most people's eyes, had never liked Harriet to begin with, but even so, they'd gone far enough that it hadn't gone unnoticed, not just the final confrontation, but everything that had led up to it.
Not that anyone had actually tried reaching out to her before any of it happened. It would have meant standing out, and worse, being seen taking her side before it was clear which way the wind was blowing. Easier, and safer, to wait until the outcome was certain before deciding who deserved sympathy and who didn't. The Slytherins who hadn't been present in the forest, but who had taken part in the earlier incidents, were now too afraid to even be in the same room as her.
The professors, for their part, were trying harder and harder to figure her out, to understand what could have driven Harriet to inflict wounds like that on her own "classmates."
It might sound ridiculous, given everything else going on, but a massacre like that wasn't easy to overlook, especially with some of the Slytherins still in the hospital wing. These professors, true masters of their craft, had after all been personally selected by Dumbledore, and he would never have hired, or kept, anyone who saw students as more than students and more as children of parents who had done unforgivable things. They were, of course, missing the full context, but they didn't need it.
Dumbledore, who already knew what had actually happened, had judged it wise to increase the surveillance on Harriet. He was willing to let her schemes play out, but there was a line that shouldn't be crossed, and for good reason, he feared she might cross it. She'd grown far more confident in herself, which was good, but that confidence had also made her a little too decisive at times, which was somewhat less good.
No punishment had been handed down, either to Harriet or to anyone on the "other" side.
One piece of good news came, unexpectedly, from Umbridge's direction. Seeing an act like that go entirely unpunished had started to make her question Dumbledore's mental state, and to wonder whether the Minister might have bitten off more than he should have.
It might sound rich coming from her, but as a result, her own misdeeds had quieted down considerably, to the point where she hadn't even bothered retaliating against Hermione for having "failed to be properly put back in her place." This came down to the fact that she'd grown more cautious. Disciplining Mudbloods, or anyone else she disliked, with the Blood Quill had also slowed considerably. She'd decided she wouldn't expose herself too much until she'd had a long conversation with the Minister.
There are probably as many Harriets as there are people to think about her, a different Harriet in every single head, rebuilt from whatever each of them has seen, heard, or wanted to believe. But it would be a strange kind of conceit to imagine herself as anything more than a minor detail in any of those thoughts. She almost certainly isn't the center of those worlds either. And maybe that's, in the end, the only real equality between people. Not being seen the same way, that will never happen, but each of them starting out with a world entirely their own, woven from their own perception. Everyone is born rich with that much, at least. No one is the center of anything, and everyone is, a little, each in their own. Harriet thought.
Harriet's rise in power up to that point had been nothing short of phenomenal. She hadn't been lying when she said she was closing in on the level of the two great powers still active in magical Britain. The flow of mana through her body had developed considerably, and both her control and raw magical strength were frightening compared to where she'd started.
Her body was keeping pace too, improving at a remarkable rate, she'd already broken past human limits without her body tearing itself apart from the strain. Bit by bit, she was becoming an unmatched force within her own little sandbox, but that was precisely what made it dangerous for her. Arrogance grew from exactly that kind of thing, and it was what led people to underestimate others.
That was why she couldn't afford to forget that even the strongest could fall into the hands of the weak, and why she made a point of maintaining control, whether magical, intellectual, or physical, if only to keep from drifting too far from the people around her.
It was with these thoughts still in mind that Harriet made her way back to her dormitory.
"Waiting for an invitation, maybe? Or is lurking in a corner just your idea of a cool entrance?" Harriet said, glancing toward a side passage just off the corridor, and at that, Snape stepped out of it and stopped in front of her.
Harriet looked him straight in the eye and felt, at that exact moment, a mental attack trying to breach her defenses. It was a very subtle one, something like an unauthorized person slipping into a bank with all the right access codes, only to be caught and thrown out by security regardless.
Once she'd dealt with the attack, Harriet drew her wand, visibly irritated. "You know your professor title isn't going to protect you. I've got every reason to hex you right now, and trust me, I'm certainly not afraid of you, Snape."
"That's Professor to you, and don't flatter yourself. I couldn't care less what a fifteen year old girl might have rattling around in that empty little head of hers," Snape said, as calm and composed as ever.
"Oh, so that was just a reflex then? Is that what you're telling me, Snape? And you can call yourself professor all you like, but I don't recall you actually teaching anything. What I remember is you whining, 'Potter, don't do this, Potter, don't do that.'" Harriet said, visibly a little amused at having twisted the story that way.
"You really are nothing but an irritating little brat. If you actually listened, you might learn something. I'm not going to lower myself and jump through hoops just for your benefit. Dumbledore asked me to teach you Occlumency, as if I had nothing better to do, and what a pleasant surprise to find out you're not a complete waste of time, and that you can actually manage something. At least that'll spare me from having to spend time with the arrogant little thing you are," Snape said, his expression still perfectly unchanged.
Harriet relaxed slightly, though she swore to herself she'd punch him one of these days. "I see, so you can leave then, it's not exactly a pleasure for me either... unless you're here for some kind of revenge on behalf of your students? That's the sort of petty thing you'd do, isn't it?"
Snape looked her straight in the eye, without a single further attack this time. "You're the little favorite around here, after all. It wouldn't exactly reflect well on me."
Harriet muttered, "As if you've ever reflected well on anyone, at any point in your life."
Snape ignored her and continued. "I also have another message. Arthur Weasley has been injured and is in the hospital. He was poisoned. It's serious, but he'll pull through."
Harriet looked briefly unsettled by that before composing herself again. "That's what happens when you put your trust in Dumbledore..."
Snape kept probing. "That's all it does to you? He was injured because of you, after all, protecting something that concerns you directly."
Harriet had no intention of playing along and kept walking, passing him and stopping a meter further on. "I won't take responsibility for that. And are you sure you should be telling me that much? To protect me, wouldn't it be better to keep that kind of thing quiet? He made his choice. He decided to fight, and he has to accept the wounds that come with it. And it wasn't even in my name, not really. Deep down, it was Dumbledore's name he was fighting for.
But at least it's not the worst case scenario. And it's rich coming from you, honestly. A minute ago you were calling me a 'child,' and yet none of you hesitate to push that same 'child' onto the front lines, somewhere she could get herself killed, without anyone ever asking me first... You really are a hypocrite, Snape."
Harriet left after that.
"As if I didn't already know that," Snape murmured to himself, before leaving as well.