The Observer Effect

      Tough, leathery ivy leaves playfully brushed Harry’s head and he angrily flicked away a coiling tendril from his face. ‘Heads down! Duck—duck down!’ the giant was calling, somewhere ahead at the head of the flotilla of enchanted little boats ferrying the prospective students to Hogwarts.       The boats, rounded like walnut shells, seated four apiece and took the whole of Harry and Draco’s party nicely. Crabbe and Goyle, two abreast in the bows, looked about with solemn interest. Draco, beside Harry, folded his arms and hunched his shoulders—he seemed a touch afraid of toppling into the lake. Harry couldn’t blame him—the little craft rocked, swayed, and pirouetted; no sooner had they slipped into a cleft in the rock masked by vegetation than something behind them fell into the water with a tremendous splash. A woeful cry followed: ‘Oh no, Trevor!’—which only heightened the drama. Thankfully, a second later the curly‑haired Mudblood girl’s patter—‘Got him! Here’s your toad!’—made it clear the alarming noise had been nothing more than a runaway pet, and not a schoolboy sinking without a trace.       The ivy‑choked cleft opened into a tunnel driven straight through the rock. Torches sprang to life on the walls of their own accord (Tom had told Harry they were enchanted to react to human presence). The half‑flooded gallery ended at a small underground landing where their escort told them to disembark and briskly checked the boats, handing a forgotten pointed hat to one person, a glove to another, and a discontentedly croaking Trevor to Neville.       In Neville’s shoes, Harry would have resigned himself to the fact that he and the toad were not meant to be together; but Neville seemed more stubborn and persistent than you’d expect from someone who’d chosen such a useless familiar. The amphibian, clutched to his chest, feebly windmilled its legs. Its owner—whom Harry finally had the chance to look over properly—proved to be a plump lad with a round face and round, sleepily blinking eyes that put Harry in mind of a cow’s.       The flames burning over the landing and all along the walls drowned the giant’s paraffin lamp—the light shrank, dimmed, and was barely noticeable by comparison. The giant himself, however, stood revealed in all his glory: the darkness no longer hid his colossal height, and it turned out he was not only bearded but exceedingly hairy besides—altogether reminiscent of a rearing bear that some malign whim had shod in soft lace‑up boots and buttoned into a gamekeeper’s coat.       Once he’d finished with the boats, the giant led them through a lofty arch sunk in the rock—beyond it lay a long, steep flight of stone steps. At the very top stood a door, studded with crossing iron bands, so monumental it looked more like a set of castle gates. The moment the giant banged the knocker a couple of times, the gates swung wide. Before the first‑years, huddling nervously and craning their necks like chicks, stood a spare, elderly woman in moss‑green robes, with black hair frosted with grey at the temples. Her lips were pursed in disapproval; her eyes were watery and cold; and her nose was hooked. In Harry’s view, this was exactly how a wicked witch ought to look.       ‘Professor McGonagall,’ the giant said, as respectfully and meekly as a being of his build could contrive, ‘got the firs’-years fer yeh.’       She swept them with a stern look that warned, ‘Don’t you dare start anything,’ and said curtly: ‘Thank you, Hagrid. I’ll take them from here. Children, this way.’       She led them across a huge, cave‑like hall paved with flagstones. At the far end, a grand marble staircase could be seen; from a pair of double doors on the right, not quite shut, there leaked the sort of clamour only a crowd of children at fever pitch can produce. As it turned out, however, they weren’t heading there at all, but into a small, empty chamber, where Professor McGonagall gave them a preliminary briefing.       ‘Welcome to Hogwarts,’ she began, looking, for some reason, almost exclusively at Harry—who at once pricked up his ears. Wizards like barmy Ollivander and that dotty barman Tom, who had the odd knack of spotting the boy‑with‑the‑famous‑scar at a glance, generally behaved in decidedly eccentric fashion. Well, there were only two such examples—but both were striking enough.       ‘Shortly we’ll begin the Start‑of‑Term Feast,’ McGonagall was saying, ‘but first you are to be Sorted…’ She went on to explain the school Houses, stressed that from now on their House would be their family, outlined the points system, and advised them to tidy themselves up and collect their thoughts.       ‘I shall be back in a minute. Please keep quiet,’ she finished, again giving Harry a pointed look—and indeed left.       The brand‑new first‑years, who had spent the whole of her talk jostling and breathing nervously down one another’s necks, clearly had neither the strength nor the inclination to follow a single piece of advice, and therefore did precisely the opposite—burst out chatting, loudly and excitedly.       ‘How do they do the choosing?’ peeped a timid little voice.       It was promptly answered by another, speaking in tones of doom: ‘There’ll probably be some sort of ordeal!’       ‘I heard it really hurts,’ a third voice broke in—cracking and trembling—and, to Harry’s amazement, he recognised Ron.       ‘You have to beat a troll!’       ‘Not beat—talk round! And not a troll—a hat!’       ‘What? You have to beat a hat?!’       All this nonsense was being shouted over Hermione Granger’s unending rapid-fire chatter as she reeled off spells she had already learnt and wondered aloud which one they’d ask her to perform for the Sorting.       Draco, who had been separated from Harry in the crush, wriggled closer and rolled his eyes meaningfully.       ‘Muggles with wands,’ he said—and Harry couldn’t help agreeing in part. Ron’s contribution impressed him particularly; it was one thing to know that blood traitors renounced magical learning and tradition so zealously they scarcely counted as wizards any more, and quite another to see a demonstration. By the look of it, Weasley’s grasp of what was about to happen was on a level with that of the Muggle‑borns—and perhaps worse, since, like it or not, he came of a wizarding family.       ‘I reckon quite a few were brought up as Muggles until their letter came,’ Harry observed sagely. Draco pulled a sour face.       ‘Ghastly.’       ‘Agreed.’       Their orderly chat was cut off by a scream that chilled the blood.       One of the first‑years, farthest from the door, was shrieking—and with reason: through the wall before her there oozed the pearl‑white, translucent outline of a dumpy little monk in a friar’s habit, his face contorted in a ghastly grimace.       ‘He’s coming! He’s coming!’ the ghost howled, in chorus with the still‑howling girl—and it was plain that what his features expressed was nothing but sheer, unalloyed terror. ‘He’s here already!’       A score more ghosts burst from the walls. They scattered in all directions and whirled about the room, sowing panic.       ‘He’s here! He’s coming! Save yourselves! He’s coming! Run!’ they wailed, shooting straight through the bewildered and frightened children. An icy draught sprang up. Some were openly crying now. Then, with a single moan of animal fear, the whirlwind of ghosts swept away, soaking into the pores of the stonework like water into sand.       Some small part of Harry had already guessed what must follow; so he was not as surprised as he might have been when another ghost stepped into the room—this one through the door. Unlike the pearly, shining shades, he was in full colour and more or less solid to the eye—only he cast no shadow.       ‘Ah,’ he said, with a crooked smile, ‘seems I gave them a bit of a fright.’       And of course it was Tom.       ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ Harry hissed, snakelike, pushing his way through his slowly recovering year‑mates. Luckily, in the still‑swelling hubbub he could speak without lowering his voice at all. Time was short—Draco, who’d watched him with surprise, had started squeezing along in his wake. From Draco’s point of view, Harry must have been behaving oddly, making straight for a door that had opened of its own accord.       ‘Experimenting,’ Tom said, one brow arched, clear amusement on his face. ‘Exploring uncharted edges of magic—what else would you call it? Later,’ he cut Harry off the moment he opened his mouth to paint his views of the matter in vivid colours. Panting, Draco leaned into Harry’s shoulder, and Harry had to admit Tom was right—and hold his tongue.       Just then McGonagall returned. The babbling, overwrought crush did not meet with her approval.       ‘Silence!’ she barked, in such a parade‑ground tone that everyone did, indeed, fall instantly quiet. ‘Form up—at once. And follow me!’       In twos they passed through the doors they’d seen before, and Draco—who had managed to pair up with Harry—began jabbing him in the ribs with breathless delight.       ‘Blimey!’       ‘Cor…’       ‘Look—look!’       A vast hall—even larger than the cyclopean entrance hall—spread before them. Four long tables ran its length, students seated at each—younger years nearer the doors, older years farther in. The golden dishes on the tablecloths—oddly, still empty—shone, throwing back the light of hundreds of candles floating in the air, and above them, where the vaulted ceiling ought by rights to have been, there stretched a bottomless, star‑strewn sky, mesmerising in its beauty.       ‘It’s specially enchanted… I read about it in Hogwarts: A History,’ came Granger’s irrepressible whisper from behind.       At the far end of the hall, on a dais beneath a vast school crest that covered the wall, stood the high table, where adult witches and wizards, presumably the staff, were seated. Among them, dead centre in a high‑backed chair, sat a long‑bearded, long‑haired, grey‑as‑a‑badger old man in very familiar half‑moon spectacles. His robes were crimson, patterned with tailed comets that actually moved, and an embroidered fez perched on his head. Tiny bells braided into his beard completed the picture of a harmless eccentric—only Harry wasn’t buying it. He’d already twigged who this was: the super‑evil Professor X himself, in the headmasterial flesh.       On either side of Hogwarts’ Head sat figures no less striking. A grey‑haired witch with a round, kindly face, wrapped in tartan robes, propped her cheek on a plump hand and gazed about with a vague smile. Next to her a woman thin as a rake had her eyes downcast, as though trying to make something out at the bottom of her goblet; the very thick lenses of her spectacles, which distorted her eyes, and the several layers of lacy shawls on her shoulders made her look like a dragonfly that had folded its wings in sorrow.       On the Headmaster’s other hand, a wizard with a luxuriant, curly beard turned out to be a dwarf—Harry wondered whether this was the result of ‘dalliances with non‑humans’, as Draco had put it earlier, or an inborn condition. The fellow in the next chair looked like Frankenstein’s monster—or a Picasso come to life: he had one eye, one arm, one ear, and only half a nose, and the riot of crossing scars made his face look roughly pieced together from scraps. To his left (the side with the surviving arm), a young wizard in a robe with purple piping and a purple turban was clearly unwell—his pale face twitched in a constant tic. A nondescript, middle‑aged blonde and a short, curly‑haired brunette in spectacles, further along the table, kept casting him anxious glances.       The hook‑nosed Potions master was there too. Harry sincerely hoped Tom hadn’t made a dog’s breakfast of wiping his memory—but by the look of it, all was well; at any rate, the man wasn’t leaping up, wand out, to fling accusations. He just sat there, slouched back in his chair, staring at the ceiling with the air of someone long since and utterly bored with the world. At the far end of the table, Harry also spotted Hagrid, his excited, beetle‑like eyes darting as he grinned into his beard. The seats beside him were taken by a striking dark‑skinned witch in a sparkling orange robe and a tall, close‑cropped woman with a coarse, mannish face. One place was empty—presumably Professor McGonagall’s.       All this Harry took in while McGonagall led him and the rest of the first‑years along the long house tables and set them with their backs to the staff and their faces to the hall. Tom, who had slipped in through the doors at the tail of the fledgling students’ procession, moved off to one side and now stood with his arms folded, not far from Snape. When Harry glanced his way, Tom nodded to him, smiling—not so much encouraging as mocking—but Harry appreciated it all the same. He felt sick with nerves—the fateful encounter with the Hat was upon him.       The Sorting Hat, by legend—oh, Tom had never missed a single legend tied to his alma mater; after his stories, reading Hogwarts: A History was a waste of time—had belonged to Godric Gryffindor himself, who at some point had had the brilliant idea of enchanting it to read the minds of would‑be students. And, looking at it, its venerable age was easy to credit—the patches alone! It could plainly have done with a thorough clean—but Harry decided that might risk damaging the magic worked into the artefact. Given its purpose, the spellwork must be exquisitely delicate and fine.       McGonagall placed the headgear—carried in both hands with almost reverent care—on an ordinary little stool, cleared her throat and unrolled a long parchment scroll. A degree of quiet fell—at least the loud chatter shrank to a faint susurration. The Hat stirred, arched as though stretching—and sang.       While Godric’s legacy croaked its uneven, not overly tuneful (nor very well rhymed, if one were picky) account of the virtues of the Hogwarts Houses, Harry thought. It had belatedly dawned on him how awkward things would be with his classmates and Tom both about.       They’d only be able to talk properly in private—and how much privacy did one get in House dormitories, or in a common room? Not to mention classrooms or the library (and talking in a library was sacrilege in itself—it existed for other purposes). So he needed to find some other place, secluded enough that no one would poke their noses in, and cosy enough to spend, evidently, a fair chunk of time there. On that score, Harry would have to rely on a hint from Tom—no one, likely not even the staff, knew these walls better than he did.       His first thought—the Chamber of Secrets—he dismissed at once. Open it too often and it would cease to be Secret; besides, the theatre of opening it would be squandered.       By the by—what would Tom do with himself while Harry was in lessons? He couldn’t be planning to sit through the entire first‑year syllabus again—and that at the very least, for they’d had precious few sound ideas for bringing him back, and those they had needed creative tinkering. Most likely, Harry decided, rumours would soon spread that the library had acquired its very own poltergeist. A fairly spiteful one, no doubt, should anyone lay hands on a book Tom had marked out. The Restricted Section shouldn’t be too crowded in any case, and, by Tom’s assurances, the most interesting volumes were shelved there. He wondered whether Tom could smuggle a couple out.       But Harry’s thoughts were cut off by the hush that fell. The Hat’s song had ended—the Sorting was about to begin.       ‘When I call your name—step forward, sit down, and put it on. We’ll start!’ McGonagall commanded, firm as you please, and dropped her gaze to the parchment, which proved to be the roll of first‑years. ‘Abbott, Hannah!’       Harry shivered. Draco, shifting from foot to foot beside him, let out a small sigh—he was doing his best not to show it, but Malfoy was jittery too. Crabbe kept tugging at his ear; Goyle gnawed nervously at the knuckle of his bent forefinger. The other newcomers could hardly stand still either; Granger was about to burst. She kept rising on tiptoe and settling back on her heels, shaking her mane so constantly that Neville—whose surname Harry had yet to learn—stood behind her and had to keep spitting out loose curls. The podgy boy submitted to the assault of the hair‑monster with apathetic resignation. As Harry noticed, he’d already managed to mislay his toad again.       ‘Boot, Terry!’       ‘Ravenclaw!’       The Sorting went on. Goyle’s name was called—sent off with a pat on the shoulder, he sat under the Hat but moments before being dispatched to Slytherin. Crabbe drew a noisy breath and started worrying the other ear. When Granger’s turn came she all but ran to the stool.       ‘Gryffindor!’ the Hat pronounced—rather to Harry’s surprise. Everything about Granger screamed an absolute swot—straight to Ravenclaw. What had gone awry? His surprise swiftly curdled into a fresh bout of nerves: what if something went awry for him too? Draco wasn’t helping—his teeth were quite audibly chattering.       ‘Crabbe, Vincent!’       Crabbe, eyes skewed with anxiety, crossed the fateful line successfully enough—so there were two of them at Salazar’s table now. They were grinning with relief and waving at Draco like clockwork toys.       ‘Longbottom, Neville!’       So Longbottom was the hapless toad‑owner. He distinguished himself twice: he stumbled as he stepped out of the line and nearly fell, and, after the verdict of ‘Gryffindor’ delighted him so much that he almost carried the Hat off to his new house table, he had to turn back midway to return it. And again ‘Gryffindor’ left Harry rather puzzled. He knew, of course, that Godric’s House ran on dunderheadedness and derring‑do—but there’d been precious little sign of derring‑do in Neville so far. Perhaps the toad had put in a good word.       Meanwhile the queue shuffled on.       ‘Malfoy, Draco!’ came at last—and Harry saw, then, that befriending this boy had been a capital idea.       As Draco walked—no, not walked; he practically strutted, and Harry was reminded again of the fashion‑model comparison—towards the Hat, his back was ruler‑straight, shoulders proudly squared, and when he turned as he sat, his face wore such lofty composure that no one would ever have guessed how badly he’d been rattled a moment before. Harry had seen that kind of mastery over oneself in Tom; only Tom’s mask looked native, like chain mail worn always and without thought, whereas Draco had gone from jelly to solid stone in the space of a second.       ‘Slytherin!’ Harry clapped, delighted—drawing puzzled side‑glances from those nearby. The not‑yet‑Sorted didn’t applaud—only those seated in the hall greeted their new housemates. Harry couldn’t have cared less.       ‘Parkinson, Pansy!’       ‘Slytherin!’       ‘Patil, Padma!’       ‘Ravenclaw!’       ‘Patil, Parvati!’       ‘Gryffindor!’       McGonagall had got as far as P—Judgement Day drew near, and everyone who might have supported him was either already at the Slytherin table or standing vexingly far off. Harry glanced back at Tom again. He looked bored and cold—hands clasped behind his back, eyes sliding indifferently over the hall. As though sensing Harry’s look, he turned his head and gave the smallest nod.       ‘Potter, Harry!’ However steeled he was for the phrase, Harry still started. As if on cue, every head in the hall turned to stare. A few even stood to get a better view. Whispers rose from all sides—some not whispers at all.       ‘Is that him?’       ‘The very one?’       ‘What did she say—Potter?’       ‘Where’s Potter?’       ‘Hurrah for Harry Potter!’       ‘Merlin—it really is him?’       ‘Nightmare,’ Harry thought; it was exactly like a bad dream—only lacking the part where he suddenly discovered he was starkers.       He sat down. The Hat, far too big for his head, slithered down over his nose. Harry screwed his eyes shut.       ‘Well, well,’ came the familiar rasping voice—but soft this time, like someone leaning in at his ear; the effect was oddly, unnervingly intimate. ‘Well, well—let’s see what we have here… you’re no simple case, my lad. Now—where shall I put you?’       ‘I’ll set fire to you!’ Harry blurted—silently—and only then realised in horror that nerves had made him mix up his line.

* * *

      The strange, unnatural, disquieting sound dragged Severus out of his half‑doze. It took him about a second—a delay that, in other circumstances, could have proved fatal—to work out what the sound was, and when he did, Snape was taken aback. It was laughter—and it was coming from that singing bit of cast‑off Godric the wag had bequeathed.       The Sorting Hat was laughing.       ‘Slytherin!’ it yelled—and a nasty chill touched the Head of that House’s heart. Even before the first‑year on the stool had lifted the Hat off his head, Snape knew whose face he was about to see.       And of course it was Harry didn’t‑take‑after‑his‑mum Potter.       Up to that very moment, the chief concern of the evening had been not falling asleep face‑first into his plate. He wanted sleep beyond belief—perhaps even more than he wanted to drink himself into a stupor; mistrusting himself, Severus had even made a point of sitting with his back against the chair—so that if his wits did slip for a minute or two, he’d at least keep up the appearance of a decent posture. The monstrous strain of the past weeks had suddenly let go—and the backlash had hit, as was only to be expected.       When, this morning, the latest check with the potion—an exercise that had turned into a useless daily routine—up and worked, Snape hadn’t believed his eyes. The map showed Muggle London, King’s Cross station, and a moving dot that, beyond any doubt, was heading for the famous Platform Nine and Three‑Quarters. A couple of minutes later the view changed and confirmed it—so it was. The boy had been found—and what’s more, he was on his way to Hogwarts.       A great weight slid off Severus’s chest. Whoever had taken the child (or whomever he’d run away with—there was that to be sorted yet), they had no wish to see him dead. If they were letting Potter go to school at all, then he was in friendly—odd as it sounded—hands. The boy would live—and that meant Severus would live a bit longer too. The meagre, hard‑won scraps of intelligence on the Order of the Phoenix were, for the moment, surplus to requirements. There was no one to bargain with—and nothing, happily, to bargain for. The riddle of Potter’s disappearance—intriguing in itself—could wait.       From this evening on, Minerva—who had, most conveniently, taken to heart the famous orphan’s hard childhood—was to take over responsibility for the child, lock, stock, and barrel. Potter’s future House had never been in doubt for anyone—his parents, the trimming of the world’s evil in the cradle, even the difficult temperament—well, where else with such a bundle? Hufflepuff? No—Gryffindor in spirit would soon be Gryffindor in name; then the cards would be in Minerva’s hands—she was used to it. As for Snape himself, he had only two tasks: report to the Headmaster, and somehow endure the Sorting and the feast to follow. After that he could drink and sleep. He’d even decided in advance to skip breakfast—a precious forty minutes of extra sleep; he could have wept for the thought of it.       He did not, however, rush to gladden the Head of the Order with his news. First, he sent a note to Lucius. It read:       ‘You‑Know‑Who is on the train with your son. Possibly that You‑Know‑What is with him. I shall try to learn more.’       Even that said far too much to anyone in the know; but Snape had a way of near‑guaranteeing a message’s safe arrival. In the course of the overlong hunt for something like a diary, Lucius had ordered Dobby to obey Severus as he would his master—and had yet to rescind the order. Snape tapped a finger on the lectern at which he’d been writing and summoned a school house‑elf.       ‘Pop to Malfoy Manor, find Dobby and bring him here. Tell him I command it,’ he ordered. A minute later, the note was on its way to its addressee, and Severus himself—to the Headmaster’s office. He braced for an afternoon of pointless palavering.       If his forebodings were wrong, it was only in underestimation—the emergency meeting of the Order of the Phoenix did not keep them waiting. Five minutes would have done—to declare the search over; indeed, there was no need even to meet for that. But of course everyone urgently had to discuss the new facts. Which, to tell the truth, didn’t exist at all—first the boy needed to be questioned properly, and—why not, for Mordred’s sake—given at least a light reading. A couple of drops of Veritaserum in the tea, too, always did wonders for a person’s frankness. But for that they’d have to summon up patience till evening—and patience was precisely what no one was keen to show.       The ‘abducted’ hypothesis—authored by the Headmaster and the lead theory thus far—collapsed like a house of cards, and in its place came ‘ran away from home’. How? Why? What for? Everyone had a theory of their own—each more fanciful and far‑fetched than the last.       In the view of Moody—by now irretrievably barmy—Potter, tempted by a mysterious Dark wizard, had plunged into the depths of depravity and evil, personally smashed the blood wards on the house, then done a runner to become that warlock’s apprentice, and was now riding to Hogwarts brimful of cunning plans to seize the school—and, while he was at it, the rest of the world. The ex‑Auror’s paranoia was playing him a cruel trick; yet the theory had a certain grand sweep—like most conspiracy theories, it explained absolutely everything. Thankfully, no one much took to it—Snape had no desire to be the one to abduct the ‘warlock’s apprentice’ at speed and go on the run with him to escape the ensuing witch‑hunt.       More down‑to‑earth, Vance reckoned that on first setting foot in Diagon Alley, Potter had heard his life story from other mouths and been so terrified of pursuit by the Dark Lord’s surviving supporters—or perhaps he’d even met one of them, say that Malfoy chap—that in a panic he holed up first in the Leaky Cauldron and then properly went to ground. Where and how, she found hard to explain; but she supposed the boy might have friends in the Muggle world whom the Headmaster’s tail—by some oversight—hadn’t been aware of.       The tail, in the person of the shifty Fletcher, repudiated these vile insinuations and, for his part, suggested that it was old Mrs Figg who had brought Potter to the Leaky Cauldron—only to be put to a cruel death by the resurrected Dark Lord. Before dying, however, she had contrived to signal to the boy not to return under any circumstances; and he, dutifully following the fallen heroine’s injunction, hid as best he could until a kindly soul took the orphan in. The soul, obviously, was from an old family—only they were in the habit of living in places where blood tracking didn’t work. The Weasleys, for instance—they could have dyed the lad’s hair ginger so he blended into the horde of their offspring, and then seen him onto the Hogwarts Express themselves. As with Alastor, Snape was mesmerised by the flight of fancy. There was a sort of noble madness in it, even a touch of psychology—Fat Molly could quite easily have pulled a stunt like that. But in that case Albus would certainly have known.       The Headmaster himself was in no hurry to scatter hypotheses. He asked—demanded—that Severus speak, though Severus had hoped to sit it out.       Why not Elphias Doge, whose contribution had amounted to two lines—‘May I have some more tea?’ and, to Moody’s effusions, ‘He’s a good boy’? Why not Dedalus Diggle, who did nothing but ooh and aah, mopping his sweating face every other minute, and very nearly keeled over during Moody’s blistering tirade? Why not, finally, drag along Lady Longbottom—excused on the grounds of seeing her grandson off—and ask her view? But no; they hauled Snape out, busy or not, as per ruddy usual.       It fell to him to carry the can for the useless old wrinklies—him, the ill‑starred double agent whose past would not stop serving as a stick to beat him with. Severus reshuffled his cards and decided to lead with hearts—to see how much the Headmaster actually knew of what had gone on in the boy’s foster home.       ‘It’s possible Potter had a falling‑out with his relatives,’ he said, closely watching Albus’s face. ‘Children often run away from home to escape ill‑treatment.’       Kindly old eyes peered at Severus through the spectacles, clear as day; not the faintest flicker of worry or embarrassment crossed the bearded face.       ‘Now, now, Severus,’ the Headmaster chided, gently reproachful. ‘I’m quite certain all was well in that family. We did keep an eye on the boy—didn’t we, Mundungus?’       ‘Like he was me own,’ the man agreed fervently, lighting his pipe. The room filled with the smell of burning socks. Snape winced—the delicate nose of a Potions master suffered particularly.       So he did know, by the look of it. Mordred—how filthy. Severus pretended to swallow every word and tried another tack.       ‘In that case… could sudden fame have turned the boy’s head? Picture it—he’s in Diagon Alley, everyone recognising him, shaking his hand, thanking him, fêting him as a hero. Small wonder he’d want to bask in the crowd’s adoration for a while. One word leads to another, and before you know it there’s an invitation to visit. In youth, friendships—often the least suitable—spring up in a trice. You, of all people, know that.’       The Headmaster took the dig without demur—didn’t even tug his beard.       ‘You may be right, Severus,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps we’ve all grown too used to very bad things and can no longer grasp how the world—and oneself—appear to a carefree childhood.’       ‘Or perhaps he didn’t know after all,’ Severus revised—and felt low.       The babble, of course, went on for ages yet; but everything ends. Alas, the Order’s conclave broke up late enough that Snape hadn’t even half an hour left for a kip.       Being one of the first into the Great Hall, Severus assumed the carefully considered posture on his chair that would prevent him slumping should sleep ambush him—and let events proceed without his participation. Truth be told, he didn’t even hear Potter’s name called; the Sorting, he was sure, held no surprises. Nor did it—until that dreadful laughter.       Potter, rising from the stool with the Hat in his hands, shot Severus a frightened glance. Against his will, Snape stared back with matching panic—praying it didn’t show too plainly on his face.       Salazar—whom Severus’s over‑sentimental charges liked to call the ‘Patron’—was, in fact, Salazar the Prick, as the Head of Slytherin had long suspected. The next seven years loomed before his mind’s eye in the very blackest colours. He hated the boy; he pitied him; he had pledged to keep him alive at any price—well then, Severus, here’s the national hero dumped squarely in your lap; isn’t that damned convenient?       ‘Do sod off,’ Snape thought at Salazar—and looked away.       The boy—at whom a trio at his newly acquired House table were waving like mad—turned and flashed his friends a victory sign. Looking closer, Severus nearly groaned—among the wavers was his godson.       ‘We’ve got Potter! Er… hooray, I suppose?’ someone said, bleakly, into the general hush.       For the first time in Severus’s memory, no Sorting drew a single clap. There were puzzled looks and a low murmur—that was all that fell to the most famous child in magical Britain as, head held high, spectacles glinting, he strode to the Slytherin table—and sat down at it.