New Perspective 2
TAKEN ON TRUST
By Bellegeste
Disclaimer: The characters are the property of JKR and her publishers. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: Sorry it's been a while since the last update. Holidays, teaching my son to drive, decorating etc all seem to have got in the way.
It seemed about time to have another meeting between Hermione and Snape – and this time he's not invisible. Perhaps he'll be able to tell Hermione something about Mrs weasley's disappearance.
Many thanks to my reviewers and especially Duj and Cecelle for their comments at first draft stage.
Chapter 4:NO RELATION
Apparating is brilliant, simply brilliant, decided Hermione. Flushed and elated, intoxicated with the sheer improbability of wizard travel, she dumped the bundles of fresh herbs, which Neville had pressed upon her as a parting gift, onto the kitchen table. It's practical, flexible, environmentally friendly and free. It's so much better than a student railcard or a bus pass; it's quicker than a car and it's an instant solution to the problems of carbon emissions and traffic congestion. The Muggles are truly missing out here.
Funny how today the Muggles were 'them'; other days they might just as equally be 'us'. Wizards and Muggles; Muggles and wizards. Us and them. And which side of the fence was she on – or was she sitting on top of it? Fence? More like a revolving door which flung her out in one direction or the other, then swept her round again in a dizzying whirl of loyalties and allegiances.
Today had been a distinctly magical, witchy day. After calling in at The Burrow, as she did most days now – sadly still no news – she'd popped up to Pendle (ha! How she loved having the freedom to do that, the ability to determine her destination at the flick of a thought,) to spend the afternoon with Neville. It was about time she filled him in on developments.
And now she was home again before her parents had even got back from work. It was all so wonderfully efficient. She pitied her mum and dad, separately leaving their city centre practices to spend an hour or more in the grasping remnants of the rush hour gridlock, catching up on 'The Archers' and 'Front Row' (her mother); or listening and repeating in dutiful tri-lingual rotation to 'Enrich your Holiday' Teach-Yourself French, Italian and Spanish tapes (her father). And to think they were seriously urging her to learn to drive!
'Consider it as another string to your bow, dear,' her mother had counselled. 'It may come in useful one day.' Humouring her, Hermione had unenthusiastically agreed to take a couple of lessons.
The boundless scope of Apparating was only now beginning to dawn on her. The fun of it. When she'd first passed her test last Spring, she'd been rather guarded about applying her new skill: like flying it was another awesome wizard accomplishment, but she much preferred the tried and tested methods – what form of travel could surpass the comforting dependability of the Hogwarts Express? School hadn't afforded much opportunity to try it out either; for months it had been just one more laudable qualification. Nor had it been easy, despite what Ron said. He always implied that she didn't have to try, that these achievements came to her naturally, with no effort on her part. Not so. Those Apparition lessons had demanded all her energies; she'd had to work at it, to focus and concentrate, concepts unfamiliar to R. Weasley Esq. Success was the result of talent and application.
With practice she was also getting used to the unpleasant sensation of de- and re-materialising. However unsettling the process might be (and she was lucky, it didn't affect her nearly as badly as it did poor Neville), the benefits more than outweighed the inconvenience. The potential was…breathtaking.
"Breakfast in Bordeaux, lunch in Lima, tea in Timbuktu, dinner on the Danube… How's that for an itinerary, eh, Crooks?" she crooned at the cat, scooping him up from the chair into her arms and slow-waltzing him round the kitchen. Crookshanks tolerated the indignity with aloof, yellow-eyed indifference. His ambitions for tea didn't extend much beyond a dish of 'Whiskas' on the kitchen floor.
"Where would you go then, Cuddle-cat? Katmandu? Catford? Catterick? The 'Catacama' desert? The 'Puscat' of Oman…?"
x x x
"Popocatepetl?"Oh no! Hermione whipped round, more mortified than afraid. First fluffy slippers and now dancing with her pet – how utterly, utterly embarrassing. Her scholarly reputation was scuppered, floundering in frivolity. How did he do that? Turn up when she least expected it? Had he been snooping about, waiting to catch her in a rare moment of levity? How many nights had she gone to let Crookshanks out and spent as much time as the cat hovering on the doorstep, scanning the garden for shifting shadows? How long had she lingered outside on the pretext of checking star readings for an astronomy assignment (her parents didn't know any better), in the hope that the professor would return? She had been determined not to be taken unawares a second time. She had planned to be calm, unfazed, professional, - even if he were invisible.
And now this! He arrives at the very minute she is looning around like a kitten spaced out on cat-nip. Did Crookshanks have Snape sensors? Was he jinxing her to behave like an idiot every time the man appeared?
The back door was half open, the dark figure of Snape filling the gap. He was visible.
"We do have a front door, you know. And a door bell." Too arch, too conventional - Hermione heard herself sounding prim and suburban, like the receptionist at her mother's surgery ('Have you an appointment? Do take a seat – Mrs Granger will be with you in a minute'.)
"You also have a neighbour washing his vehicle in the driveway," Snape replied dryly. He came in, shutting the door noiselessly behind him.
Make yourself at home, why don't you? Aren't wizards supposed to have rules about appearing unannounced?
"If Muggles address their offspring in the same way as their animals, it explains a great deal." Yes, go on, rub it in. It was too much to expect him to let that little cameo pass without comment. Though surely Snape could have come up with something more trenchant – that barb-less jibe was virtually small talk. Or was it an attempt at an ice-breaker? Could it be possible that he too was uncomfortable? Hermione bent to deposit a dizzy Crookshanks on the floor, all the while keeping a wary eye on the professor.
"You startled me, Sir. You shouldn't -""You shouldn't leave the door unlocked. What is the point of my warding your house if you neglect to observe the most rudimentary precautions?"
It's good to see you too, Sir. He had warded her house?
"Harry got the note," she ventured. "He wasn't too happy about it, but he's been staying at The Burrow."
Snape's face registered no surprise.
"Indeed. I'd heard that the proposed ambush was abortive."
Working full-time for Voldemort had improved neither his temper nor his social graces. Hermione scoured Snape's features for any trace of the lonely, demoralised man she had last seen at Spinner's End, the man she had pledged to help. Health and revived hope had straightened his shoulders, squared the blurred outlines, sharpened blunted angles - it was as if the shaky grey edges of his being had been firmly redrawn in black using a ruler. It was difficult to recapture her earlier twinges of sympathy when he looked so forbidding.
"My parents aren't back from work yet," she told him over her shoulder, running the cold tap to fill the kettle. Try to pretend it's perfectly normal to have Professor Snape in your house. "You won't have to meet them."
"I'm aware of that."
Of course he was. Silly comment. Would he have turned up in her kitchen if there were the remotest chance of a confrontation with Mr or Mrs Granger? But how did he know they were out?
He was observing her now, with an almost scientific detachment, waiting for a reaction, to see how long it would take her to climb the pole, cross the rope, crawl through the tunnel and finally press the button to release the peanut. Hermione hated these lab-rat tests, having to perform for his approval. Oh – her hand almost shot in the air – there were no cars in the drive! Not clever, not magical – just a logical deduction. For a second she'd had a suspicion that he might have diverted her parents' journey, sent them off to some non-existent event like the deluded Dursleys.
Reaching out she rocked the switch 'on' and the kettle began its sequence of preliminary clicks and grumbles before settling down to boil.
"Mrs Weasley disappeared – did you know?" Know? He'd probably masterminded the whole kidnapping! Perhaps that was why he was here – with news of Molly.
"So I heard." In three flat words he dashed her hopes.
"Do you – do you know anything about it, Sir? Do you know if… …if she's still -"
"Alive? I've been told nothing to the contrary." How could he be so unconcerned? Molly Weasley may not have been a friend, but they were both members of the Order, weren't they? That made her a colleague.
"The Weasleys are terribly upset. They've been searching all over."
"They're wasting their time." Snape shot her a warning glance: don't pry any further; draw your own inferences.
"It just seems so unfair. She's such a fantastic mother. She's like… like the archetypal mum."
"She possesses the requisite experience." Snape couldn't bring himself to eulogise.
"If it's a question of a ransom, or…or of 'leverage' – Mr Weasley says he – You-Know-Who – can have everything they've got, such as it is. He says he doesn't wield that much influence at the Ministry, but… Can't you tell Vol- him that, Sir? The Weasleys are desperate - they'll do anything."
"Have they been contacted with any demands?" Snape's expression was calculating. Hermione wasn't sure if she liked it or trusted it.
"I don't think so. Not yet."
"Then assume they will not be."
Was that good or bad? What did that mean? That Molly was already lying mutilated in a ditch? That she was still under interrogation? That the motive for her disappearance was not coercion? Snape definitely knew something. And he had no intention of telling her what it was.
Behind her the kettle bubbled to a turbulent climax and clicked itself off. Snape jumped at the sound, hardly more than a twitch, but Hermione saw. That twitch was the net-curtain of his insecurity: he wasn't as assured as he would have liked her to believe.
She didn't know if he wanted tea, if he would be staying long enough to drink it, but she needed to hide her own nerves in the chinking of cups and saucers, the dispensing of tea-bags, the pouring of water. Anything to dilute the intensity of that stern re-assessment. Was it inevitable that each time they met she would be required to re-establish her credentials? Wasn't there some short-cut back to that oasis of honesty they had stumbled upon, briefly, at his house that night? Couldn't they agree on a route to fast-track them to a level of mutual confidence which said, 'We are in this together'? Perhaps they could designate a code word to represent everything about trust and need and commitment that they found so impossible to articulate? Millicent's cardigan?
There was nothing in the brewing stage of the tea making ritual that even remotely demanded her attention. Hermione turned back to Snape, wondering what had brought him back to her house. Another mission? Something was still bothering her from the last one.
"Sir, what if Harry had been there already – at the Weasleys', I mean. If I'd simply handed him the note. He'd have known the message wasn't from Ron."
"It wouldn't have been."
What did he mean? Hermione was on the point of asking when Snape forestalled her.
"I haven't come here to discuss Contingent Transfiguration. Look it up if you don't understand the principle. Ask McGonagall when you see her. Next time -"
"Next time?" exclaimed Hermione. "Excuse me, but is this what you expect me to be – an owl? I thought -"
"You thought what? That you would be required to mount a persuasive and spirited defence before the entire Wizengamot? That you would sway the verdict, win my case against all expectations, and receive grateful plaudits from all and sundry for your intelligence and tenacity? Is the role of messenger too lowly, too infra dig? I thought you might have grown out of that by now - it was never enough for you to know the answer; you had to be seen to know it. That hand of yours barely stopped waving long enough to take notes in class."
Unfairness stung like a wasp in the mouth. Hermione's tongue swelled with indignation until she was unable to speak. Smarting in choked silence, she poured the tea, setting the two cups on the table without meeting his eye. From the scrape of wood on tile she could tell that he had taken the chair opposite her. The sullen standoff extended into awkwardness. Feigning unconcern, Hermione focussed on her tea cup, finding a sudden fascination in the delicately scrolled handle, the fine lip of gold around the cream china rim. Examining the indecipherably tiny stamped squares of the hallmark on the back of the teaspoon, she finally risked a surreptitious glance at Snape, in time to see him rubbing a weary hand across his forehead.
"Have you even tried to get in touch with McGonagall?" he sighed. And there it all was in one sentence: recrimination, bitterness, an admission that he needed her help after all… and that flash of reproach which surfaced from somewhere deep and private for the briefest instant and disappeared – like the silver glint of a fish darting through the shallows on its way to the safety of dark water.
Hogwarts was closed for the summer. Although Hermione had Apparated to the main gate on more than one occasion, not even the miserable Filch had answered her call to be let in. The headmistress was unavailable and, without owls, uncontactable.
"It would make things a whole lot easier if you'd release that antidote of yours and get some owls back into circulation," she grumbled.
Snape cocked an eyebrow.
"All in good time."
"I was going to ask one of the Weasleys to send a Patronus," she told him, "but I couldn't very well – not with everything that's happened." As excuses go it wasn't one of her best, and she was talking to a pro – he'd heard them all before. She might as well have told him that Crookshanks chewed her homework. The next one was worse. "And I've been spending so much time in the library…"
…looking up references for Harry. He was anxious to continue where Dumbledore had left off, investigating the life and background of Tom Riddle – as long as he did not have to do the spadework himself. With magical sources inaccessible, Hermione had been concentrating on Muggle connections: Riddle's peer group at the orphanage, associates of his father, acquaintances made through his dealings on behalf of Borgin and Burkes. Most of it was old ground, already trodden by Dumbledore. There was precious little to go on.
While Hermione was talking, Snape had been evaluating the bunches of Neville's herbs with a professional eye, pulling at a sprig here and there, crushing the odd leaf, sniffing the juice-stained ends of his long fingers. Very soon the air was flavoured with the scents of mint and sage and sorrel.
"Excellent," he muttered.
It was unclear whether he was referring to the herbs or Hermione's endeavours. Assuming the former, she passed on Neville's best wishes.
"So, Potter is expecting you to supply him with information," Snape mused, shredding a head of lavender and thoughtfully pushing the fallen flowerlets into a perfect, purple pyramid. "That could be advantageous."
"How, Sir?"
He answered slowly, choosing his words with care.
"If I find myself in possession of information which may assist Potter in his, ah, quest, you will be admirably placed to pass it on."
The undue emphasis on the word 'quest' caused Hermione to look up sharply. If Snape knew about the Horcruxes why didn't he come out and say so?
"You're saying you may be able to help Harry find what he's looking for?" she angled back, shrewdly alert for any reaction. There was no mistaking his implication, but why wouldn't he mention the name? Was Horcrux another taboo wizard word, like Voldemort? "Sir, if you know where they are -"
"They? Merlin! How many are we talking about?"
The lavender flowers forgotten, Snape's hands had gone very still. Dismayed, Hermione stared at him in confusion.
"Six. Well, four really. Two have already gone – the ring and the diary. But you know that already, don't you? Don't you, Sir?"
Evidently she had been wrong in her assumption that Snape, of all people, would have been in Dumbledore's confidence.(1) She had taken it for granted that the headmaster would have enlisted his right-hand spy-cum-Death Eater to obtain information about the missing Horcruxes. Who better to help him search for clues? And Snape had sounded knowledgeable enough just now when he was proposing himself as an informer. She'd never have brought up the subject if she hadn't wanted to tap into his insider knowledge of Voldemort and his history. Whereas all the time he had been milking her…
A hot wave of fury brought a rush of colour to her cheeks as intuition ambushed her with the truth.
"If you want to pick my brains, why can't you ask questions like everybody else?" she railed.
"And raise a prohibited issue about which you might be in total ignorance? And to which you would then devote hours of conscientious but ultimately fruitless research?"
How well he knew her.
"Fat chance of that. I can't get near a magical library 'til next term. But why all the subterfuge?" she demanded, upset ringing in her voice. Naively she had hoped they'd progressed beyond this stage of mistrust. "How do I know that you're not just using me to get to Harry? This information-gathering is a two-way street."
"Hermione -" The name brought her up short, until she figured that was precisely why he had used it. Ignoring her petulant outburst he went on. "You must tell me everything you know about the night Professor Dumbledore died – the events prior to my, ah, involvement."
There was no mistaking his sincerity now. The authority and seriousness of the request made it imperative. So she told him, as Harry had told it to her, starting sketchily with Harry's 'lessons' with Dumbledore, and leading up to the events of that night: the journey, the cave, the locket, the Inferi, the poison.
Snape listened in absolute silence, his face fixed and grave, but betraying nothing. Hermione was watching him anxiously as she spoke, realising how difficult it must be for him to relive those memories.
"I'm so sorry, Sir. I thought you knew. I'd assumed that somehow Professor Dumbledore had been able to communicate to you what was happening," she concluded on an apologetic note, finishing well short of the final moments on the Tower.
"At the end there was only one thought in Albus' mind," Snape muttered bitterly. "That, and the pain of the poison… I didn't have time to use full Legilimency. And since then…"
Since then he had been living the life of an outcast, hunted down by his former colleagues; Death Eaters his only contacts. How then could he have discovered the truth? Harry, Ron and she were the only ones who knew the whole story.
Snape's cup of tea sat cold and untouched on the table between them, a murky, unappetising brown ring of scum already forming on its surface.
"I'll make you another," the girl offered. "You look like you could do with it." The sympathy twinges had kicked in again with a vengeance. It was a relief to have an occupation, while he brooded over her news. She hadn't expected him to be quite so shocked. "But did you never suspect, Sir?"
Dumbledore had trusted Snape, hadn't he? It was inconceivable that he would have concealed from him something so important.
"Of course I suspected," he bridled. "As soon as I saw the damage that damn ring inflicted I suspected a Horcrux Curse. In all my experience of the dark, I'd never come across anything like it. But Dumbledore made light of it."
"Why would he do that, Sir? He must have known you'd be the best person to help him? Harry said that he kept asking for you, when they were coming back from the cave. You were the only one he wanted."
Hermione gazed at Snape, feeling helpless. She'd intended to show how much he had been appreciated, but her words had had the opposite effect. At the end, Dumbledore had shown such a touching faith in his abilities – why had he not trusted him earlier? Had he been protecting Snape from Voldemort, in the same way that he had tried to protect Harry – by shielding him from the truth?
Snape toyed with the tea cup. Perhaps she should have offered him something stronger.
"He was not expecting a cure. He knew… Before, last summer… I did what I could… but I was unable to save his hand." Even when I challenged him he said he'd merely been careless, that the ring was a cursed object, but nothing more. I should have insisted. Curses can be pernicious - the one the Bell girl took was nasty, but I could counter it sufficiently to prevent its being mortal. This one was beyond my skill to reverse. If only I'd got there sooner…
"You saved his life!" Hermione protested.
"Saved it? Prolonged it. Eventually he would have succumbed to the corruption of the curse, whatever I did." Snape took a gulp of the new, hot tea. For almost a year he had been living with the guilty suspicion that he might have done more to save his old mentor, if only he had been trusted with the full facts.
"I assumed you'd been working together to locate the Horcruxes. It would have made sense…" Hermione was aiming to ease him away from retrospective soul-searching and towards an area where his input could still be useful.
"Made sense? When did anything that man do ever make sense?" Snape took another angry gulp of tea, piqued on two counts: at being excluded by the headmaster, and at being informed of the fact by this girl. Dumbledore had required him to report minutely on anything he heard relating to the Dark Lord's earlier life and possessions, ostensibly for the sake of the 'portfolio' he was amassing. There had never been any intimation that the old duffer was interested in specific objects. Snape's repeated questions had been countered with genial evasion. "And you say he's known about this since when – your second year?" Hermione became the blameless target for his wrath; he was 'hexing the messenger'. "I raised the question – after the ring – and he categorically denied that he had any proof of the existence of a multi-fold Horcrux. Bah!"
"Well, he didn't have proof, not then anyhow. It was only a theory. He may have hoped the ring was the only one. It was only after Harry got the memory from Professor Slughorn -"
"That fat, corrupt, social-climbing lush!" Annoyed and betrayed, Snape was not inclined to be charitable about his portly colleague.
"Professor Dumbledore probably thought you'd got enough on your plate – what with the Vow and Draco, and your jobs…"
"Quiet, girl; let me think." Any hint of sympathy and the shutters slammed down.
Several minutes passed, during which Hermione became increasingly and acutely aware of her surroundings - the electrical drone of the fridge thermostat, the neatly ticking wall clock, the aromatic pungency of the cut herbs, the hardness of her chair, the solidity of the table, the tea, her fingers circling her cup, Snape's hand only inches from her own – and then oblivious to them as her attention became ineluctably drawn into the orbit of the man sitting opposite her. It was not often that one got an opportunity to study Snape; he shrank from outside scrutiny. She observed him closely: the changing frown lines marking shifts in concentration from one problem to the next; the deeper lines of tiredness etched more permanently around his eyes; the beaky nose foreshortened and less prominent viewed from this angle. She wished she could as clearly see the thought processes going on inside his head. So absorbed was she that she started when he spoke.
"So, Potter is devoting his energies to Horcrux hunting. And you, I take it, are assisting him with his investigations. Presumably you have already ransacked the library at Hogwarts? And failed to satisfy your enquiries?"
Hermione nodded.
"It was useless, even the Restricted Section."
Snape's raised eyebrow was not, for once, accompanied by a scowl of disapproval.
"Quite so. Horcruxes are a banned subject at Hogwarts. Professor Dumbledore insisted that all references should be expunged or expurgated from the texts. He was particularly exacting on that score."
"But if there are no wizard texts about them, how am I ever going to find out anything - even if the library was open, which it isn't?" moaned Hermione, discouraged before she'd even begun. Research, which usually underpinned her discoveries, now seemed sabotaged to undermine them.
"Who says there are no wizard texts? You have limited your searches to Hogwarts?" His tone implied that she had been parochial, narrow in her thinking.
"Well, I did wonder about trying Grimmauld Place. The books there would have belonged to the Blacks, wouldn't they? But Harry and Ron went over the house really thoroughly a couple of weeks ago(2), - though I don't expect they read any books - and they wouldn't let me come, and now it's all locked up again, and…"
"The Ministry? Knockturn Alley?" Snape aced her with suggestions.
But she'd need official authorisation to access Ministry information – it wasn't like a public lending library - and as for the Alley… On her own? That brief foray into Borgin and Burkes had been creepy enough, and at the time she'd known that Harry and Ron were waiting for her in the street outside.
"I know there's been a big security crack-down at the Ministry since Scrimgeour took over," she said. "I don't know if they'd let me in. Harry might stand a better chance. Scrimgeour's always gunning to get Harry on side; he might do him a favour. But he'd expect something in return." She took a breath and steeled herself. "So, if I went to Knockturn Alley, Sir…"
"On second thoughts, don't bother." Snape was crudely dismissive. "Looking as you do, you'd attract undue attention. They're a canny lot – they'd spot your sort in seconds. It's hardly the place for lone females, unless…" A trace of embarrassment prevented him from completing the sentence. "I am assuming you do not have a secret supply of Polyjuice? Has McGonagall covered Full Body Transfigurations with you yet? No? Maybe just as well; that too is a fraught business. I couldn't risk… Very well, one must narrow the field. Sticking for the time being with Hogwarts, then. Have you exhausted the possibilities of the Room of Requirement?"
The Room of Requirement? Did he know that was where Harry had stashed his old Potions book? Was he trying to retrieve it? How could one hope to 'exhaust the possibilities' of a place when its appearance, and (for all she knew) its very existence, depended on the varying needs of each visitor? When Harry had been trying to access it to find Draco, it had remained stubbornly unavailable. She might struggle for weeks simply to find the door.
Glumly, she shook her head. She was still smarting from his 'your sort' comment. What sort?
"Hogwarts seems to be all locked up too."
"We can work on that obstacle."
We! He'd said 'we'. In Hermione's brain, Snape's unconscious use of the plural pronoun eclipsed the meaning of the sentence. He was finally taking her seriously.
"Miss Granger, has it ever occurred to you to wonder why the headmaster should be so, ah, punctilious on the subject of Horcruxes?"
Because they are bad, evil accessories used in the vilest, darkest, most despicable magic, and he was protecting his pupils? Isn't that enough? Or because -. An alarming thought occurred to her, something she would never have previously considered.
Snape's eyes were on hers, sensing the sudden expansion of her awareness, the enhanced receptivity to the unthinkable.(3)
"No. Dumbledore would never have done anything like that…" she breathed, ducking away from the unwelcome, persistent horsefly of a thought.
"No, indeed. Now, concentrate. Can you think of another wizard who devoted his life and expertise to the pursuit of immortality?"
As the name leaped into Hermione's protesting mind, Snape's lips curved fractionally upwards.
"Very good. I suggest you begin your investigations with some groundwork. See what other connections you can unearth. You need not confine yourself to wizard texts. You said you had access to Muggle sources of reference?"
"I've got a reader's card for the British Library. But I don't see what good -"
"Because, Miss Granger, Nicolas Flamel was Muggleborn."
x xx
By the time they heard the crunch of tyres on the driveway, Hermione was armed with an action plan.
Snape slipped soundlessly out of his seat.
"By the way, Miss Granger," he paused in the doorway. "You can put the idea right out of your thoughts. He is, I can assure you, no relation."
"Who isn't?"
"Machiavelli."
End of chapter. Any comments will be much appreciated. Thanks.
1 I have taken the premise that Dumbledore had not confided in Snape on the subject of the Horcruxes, based on the lack of canon evidence. The opposite hypothesis, that Snape was helping Dumbledore to locate the Horcruxes, could be equally valid. But I had to chose one or the other!
2 Harry and Ron at Grimmauld Place. There is a reference to this in The Chosen.
3 His eyes were on hers – I'm not suggesting that Snape subjected her to a full unauthorised Legilimens here (though in the first chapter, Hermione suspected that the invisible Snape may have done just that). But he may have used his powers to enhance his intuition and help him to assess her reactions, and in doing so he picked up on a couple of her front-of-mind thoughts.