I got the idea to involve this scene from The Silence Of The Lambs one day when I was watching the movie. (Really, who would have guessed.) Also I have not read any of the Harry Potter books and have only seen, collectively, about an hour an a half of the movies. I was bored one day and decided it would be entertaining to start reading random fanfiction of which I had not viewed the orginal material, and I've been reading Harry Potter fanfiction ever since. So I thought that not only would I challenge myself to write an FF with this scene involved but I would also write it in the Harry Potter fandom using only the knowledge of it that I have gleaned from other FF.
I hope you like it and that It's accurate.
I don't own 'em. But I'd play student to Snapes teacher anyday.
The moon not so much hung as loomed over Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, tainted red in those moments when it actually could be seen. Blood on the moon: a sign of trouble not far behind. Though it seemed fitting, tonight at least, as rain poured with an almost intentional brutality and lightning cracked, accurate, loud and fierce. All seemed lifeless, though nothing ever was, all except a constant flickering of light from a tower window.
Someone was awake after curfew.
Hermione sat legs crossed in the lotus position, a quilt of marone and gold pulled up to her waist. A laptop, perpetually charged by a charm of her own creation, rested atop a cushion in front of her, her eyes intently glued to the screen. She was quite the contradiction. For she was in the world of magic after all and there she sat with something so ordinary, so unnecessary as a laptop and while she was indeed paying apt attention to the scene before her she was also comfortably shielded by a forest of of books, spread across the covers in a half circle between herself and the bedroom door.
It was obvious that she was doing some kind of research, such multi-tasking presenting no challenge for her. Switching efficiently between the movie, her homework and some research of her own. But Hermione Granger was no ordinary girl, this, no ordinary homework. For every book, with the exception of one, was to do with magic. Certainly nothing you or I could ever hope to peruse. Our exception, clutched firmly in her lap, bared perhaps the only title of recognition. The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius imprinted, gold against green, down the spine.
"First principles, Clarice. Read, Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is it's nature? What does he do, this man you seek?" hissed Dr. Lecter.
His smooth tones, so soothing one moment and piercing the next, ready to tear and shred when needed, echoed through Hermione's mind, the very last place one would want the words of Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The last ring filling her thoughts with the memory of the sultry drawl of another voice, so sharpened with wit and snark.
That of Professor Severus Snape.
Well, not a Professor anymore...
Some were not surprised when they had heard the news. Devastated that Headmaster Dumbledore had been murdered, yes, but not at all surprised at who had murdered him. Others, Hermione included had felt Severus Snape's betrayal like a punch in the gut. But, like him or loathe him, everyone was aware of how powerful he was and for that no one was happy that he was no longer their man.
"He kills women." Hermione answered with Clarice.
"No," Barked Dr. Lecter, "That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does, what need does he serve by killing?"
Hermione looked down at the parchment settled between the pages of the open book in her lap, her own private research on the man who had fascinated her so. Information gathered from paintings, from teachers, Moaning Myrtle had been a surprising fountain of information. Though whether or not it was all true was was another question entirely. Tales of student segregation and unrequited crushes, teasing and pranks, of constantly being humiliated by his peers. Compiled onto what she already knew about the incident in the Shrieking Shack. A glance upward led her eye to a couple of photos adhered to her mirror, their movement barely visible in the light of the laptop, but she knew them by heart. Harry, herself and Ron at the Burrow, mid pillow fight, walking with their arms around each other at Hogsmead, one as the three lay on the grass at Hogwarts. Talking and laughing, feeling as though Voldermaut were just a thing of bad dreams.
"Anger, social resentment, sexual frustration..." she rambled.
"No," Dr. Lecter hissed.
Hermione jumped, as she always did in that moment. It felt to her as though Dr. Lecter were looking at her instead of Clarice Starling. Seeing into her very innards, as if she were made of nothing but clear glass, sifting through her thoughts and her secrets.
Another quality he and Snape seem to share.
"He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer," Lecter crooned.
Quickly Hermione answered, out of sync now with (would be) Special Agent Clarice Starling as our on screen heroin began and then faltered. "We covet what we see-."
A flash of lightning and the screen went black.
Ooooh, busted. One of the teachers probably did a scan to check for unnecessary use of magic after curfew and performed Finite Incantatem. Oh well. At least they can't trace who's doing the magic. And it probably wasn't a coincidence that my laptop went out just as lightning hit. Sigh, wizarding professors and their flare for theatrics.
Another flash and her circumstances hit home with all the disgusting drama of a bad horror movie. The dark was suddenly more ominous as her breathe quickened, every sound magnified in her heightened paranoia. The lightning's voice boomed above and she could have sworn she had felt the tower shake, even as common sense told her otherwise.
She'd always had a problem with storms; since she was five years old and the babysitter had left her asleep alone in the house one night as a storm raged. Hermione had woken, terrified and screaming, while the babysitter and her boyfriend were fucking in the boyfriends car. They hadn't found her until three hours later. Hiding, knees pulled up to her chin, arms wrapped tightly around her legs, under her quilt in the cupboard underneath the stairs.
It hadn't been the storm itself that had scared her, it had been what the storm meant to her at that age. It was the same now, only the storms significance had changed. When she was five it was the fearful, innocent knowledge that nothing good ever happened during a storm, fairy tales and Disney movies were proof of that and all the proof needed in her five year old mind. Everything was dangerous during storms. Bad witches came out, bad people came out, things that ate children walked freely only to the sound of lightning and the boogeyman, once confined to closets and the space under the bed suddenly had free reign. Now storms symbolised the things she had felt that night so long ago. They were fear and sadness, of needing the comfort and reassurance of having a larger stronger body near by and finding none. They were the feeling alone and needing someone to make you feel safe, and having no one.
She stood quickly at another, closer crack of thunder. Eyes closed as she tried to ignore what was happening around her. She tried to gain back her train of thought, to regain her calm. She hated panic, hated that it made thoughts so erratic and nonlinear. That it could rob you of your ability to think at all and rule you, your mind, your body, with fear alone. With one last breathe she opened her eyes to the darkness and centered herself.
"We covet what we see" she began slowly.
Then freezes. She wasn't alone in the room. Her whole body shook as her eyes met a particularly black spot in the darkness and her fears were confirmed with another flash of lightning. The room lit up and her vision was filled with Snape, as tall and severe as ever, head tipped to the side curiously, eyes burning into her. All over her. Her own eyes widen as the room went black and she ran for her wand, for safety, scaling over her bed and her books to grab it from the nightstand. She was aware, vaguely in her panic, of movement in the darkness as hands pulled her back against the hard form of a body. Both kneeling on the quilt where he had caught her. She struggled violently when those same strong hands, followed by stronger arms, wound around her, pinning her own to her side, and his face delved into her neck through thick, brown ringlets. She could not help the sob that came when his hand slipped under her nightdress and stopped atop her flat belly, palm down fingers splayed. The dreadful scrape and whisper of teeth and lips against her neck as he spoke.
"We covet what we see every day."