Postal

Seven

"Harry, mind your eggs," warned Hermione, nudging him with her elbow and looking up through the Great Hall at the swarm of post owls.

Harry followed her gaze upwards. He readily recognised a familiar white speck soaring determinedly above the Staff table. Hedwig coasted towards them, dodging an extravagant wing movement by a South American Rumbah owl. She hooted indignantly at it, before landing with a self-righteous flutter onto Harry's shoulder.

Harry absently put a piece of toast in her beak and untied the letter from her leg. By this time, Ron had paused with his juice glass in mid-air and Hermione had stopped eating. Leaning forward, they listened as Harry read in a low voice.

"Harry,

Can't explain in a note, but if you're right about her identity, we could all be in danger. Meet me tonight outside the last greenhouse at 8:30 on the Forest side. Take the Cloak. Be careful.

(here there was a muddy pawprint)"

All three looked at each other. Then at Snape's place at the staff table. Dumbledore himself was staring at it thoughtfully. It was empty.

"I never thought I'd say this," said Harry, "but I'm worried about Snape." Hermione nodded.

Ron grimaced out of habit.

Harry turned to him. "I am. Didn't you see the look on his face when we told him...?"

Despite himself, Ron's face softened with pity. "Terrified. And the way he ran..." Only to be too late, he thought. He and Harry had seen the four dots on the map vanish into the fireplace in Snape's chambers, seconds before the Potions Master arrived. After they had gone back to their dormitory, the map still showed Snape, motionless, just inside the threshold. This morning before breakfast, they had checked again and Snape's dot had moved, but only enough to have closed the door behind him.

"Why would they take her?" mused Hermione, pushing pensively at her waffles. "And if she never left Snape's apartments, who could have told them she was here?"

Harry's eyes darted to the Slytherin table. Just quick enough to see Draco Malfoy's pale grey eyes swivel away.

***

The sun had set, leaving a cape of amber and violet cloud over the greenhouses at the bottom of the castle slope by the Forbidden Forest. Crouched under the Invisibility Cloak, Harry, Ron and Hermione sucked in their breaths as Professor Sprout trundled past on her way to dinner, muttering something about passive aggressive Merobabic behaviour.

As they rounded the last and most dilapidated of the greenhouses on tiptoe, a large shaggy black dog appeared, stopping and wagging its tail. Despite the cloak, it sniffed them out and moved forward a few paces. Harry threw off the cloak and smiled, scratching the dog behind the ears. It raised a dusty paw, which Harry took and immediately the animal grew taller and less hairy, revealing a tall, rangy man with short dark hair, bright blue eyes and angular features, lightly shadowed with stubble.

"Hi, Harry," said Sirius, clapping a hand on his godson's shoulder, before shaking Ron's and Hermione's hands. They sat down on the greenhouse steps underneath a mouldy porch light. "Thanks for meeting me." (Sirius wrinkled his nose.) "Ugh! What is that smell?"

"Dragon droppings," they answered at once.

"Fertilizer," supplied Ron.

"Oh." Sirius blinked. "So, tell me, where is she?"

"WellÛ" began Harry, but was interrupted by an impatient Hermione.

"Sirius, do you know who she is?"

Sirius's face looked as grave as it had been in the first few months after his escape from Azkaban. "If this woman with Snape is Esmerelda Plofufnik, then, yes." He paused, seeing the three expectant faces before him. "She was in Ravenclaw, two years below us. She... was a very good friend of Snape's in those days. Really a whiz at Potions."

"What was she like?" asked Hermione in earnest. Ron and Harry looked at her quizzically, but both, in truth, were keen to know the same.

"Like? Well, she was..." Sirius sighed, grinning, "... devilishly attractive. In a really understated, unconscious sort of way. And she had these swimming robes thatÛ" (His hands were gesturing in mid-curve when his head shot up, as if realising they were there. He coughed.) "But she was... er, extremely shy. Incredibly academic. Most comfortable in the company of books." (Ron frowned curiously at Hermione, who was smiling strangely to herself.) "She probably never would have guessed, but we all fancied her, I reckon. Snape certainly did."

"So she and Snape were...?" prompted Hermione.

"Lab partners."

"Oh." Hermione exchanged frowns with Harry and Ron. That wasn't exactly the answer they had expected.

"So... why is her presence here a danger to us?" asked Harry.

"Because of what she knows," he replied. "The last I heard, after graduation, she went into service as a mediwitch for the Ministry and was supposed to marry some baron in Sussex. She was very secretive about that, I remember. At least, that's the official story."

"And the unofficial?" said Ron, leaning forward with Harry and Hermione.

"For a time, she was an undercover agent in the Muggle community where she conducted her research. Something to do with time and space."

"Her research on Potions?" frowned Hermione. "A potion to alter time and space?"

Sirius shook his head. "Something about a new catalyst. But don't ask me for the details. I didn't know her all that well and I never pretended to understand what it was she was doing."

"Do you think Snape would know?" ventured Ron.

"If he's able to tell us," muttered Harry.

Sirius turned his eyes questioningly to each of them. "Well, why not just ask her?"

Harry swallowed. "Because last night she was kidnapped by Lucius Malfoy."

"Oh, no," said Sirius, suddenly rubbing his temples as if they hurt. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. They heard the scratch of stubble as he dragged his hands despairingly down his cheeks until he was looking at them through his fingers in horrified disbelief.

"Yeah, we know," commiserated Ron. "It's bad."

"No," said Sirius, shaking his head. "You don't understand. It's worse."

"What do you mean Îworse'?"

Sirius looked at the three of them. "I think she's Dumbledore's Secret Keeper."