Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).
***
From the journal of Hermione Granger
(undated - first week of July 1998)
The dreams seem to know that I'm sleeping in a new room. Now it isn't Bellatrix but the snatchers—I'm dreaming a repeated loop of the moment when they dragged us out of the tent and I just had time to hit Harry with a jinx to make his face unrecognizable. I never did ask him if it hurt. I don't think any of us were thinking about that at the time.
That moment that plays over and over. And then I wake up, uselessly early. It's four or five in the morning, too early to get up, too late to think about more sleep, and I'm still on high alert. So I'm lying awake without being about to do anything about it.
This room doesn't have windows, so I have wandlight or candles and that's it. No fire, of course, because the bed curtains keep me warm enough through a summer night.
Over and over. It's the way that I used to review my tests, what I answered on what item. In this case, the test item is the casting of that jinx. I don't know why my brain has fixed on that. It was all I had time to do, and it worked, or so I tell the examiner in my brain. They—the enemy—didn't recognize Harry, and that bought us enough time—enough time to be saved by chance.
Only then that takes me to another thread, which I don't want to think about. The questioning. I knew it wasn't going to end well, no matter what happened, but it was those agonizing moments when Lucius dragged Draco over to look at us, and he mumbled and shuffled and didn't know. "Yeah, could be," he mumbled, when Lucius asked him if it was Harry, which was odd because he never was a mumbler before. I would have expected him to be crisp and certain about it, and recommend Ron and me both for torture forthwith even if he wasn't sure about Harry.
Fifth year, I remember him looking us all over when Umbridge had caught us out in her office, and she was going to torture us right there. I remember that look: pale eyes alight and gleaming, yes and (the really repellent detail) the gleam on his lips too—he must have been licking them. Avid, greedy for the naughty parts which were about to transpire. Nasty. He was fully expecting to get off on it.
Maybe he just didn't expect to be asked to identify people he knew. Or didn't want the Dark Lord summoned because he was more afraid of him than he was eager to get us back…
I really don't want that nasty little git in my brain at four a.m. But there he is, lodged like something stuck in an impossible-to-reach spot. What bothers me about that memory is how it doesn't line up at all with what we've known about Draco since first year…
Fourth year, when we were fourteen. The little Death Eater reunion at the Quidditch World Cup. He was lounging there at the edge of the woods, pointing at the Muggles lofted sixty feet above the ground and jeering that I'd best keep my head down if I didn't want to be up there too showing my knickers. I've been threatened with worse since, but for some reason that still gives me a chill. Coming-of-age for a baby Death Eater is threatening the Muggle-born girl with your rudimentary idea of sexual humiliation.
Well, if it comes to it, he's gotten his comeuppance for that comment. Neville still won't tell me what they were threatening to do to him, but that refusal and the fact they were starting by tearing off his clothes… and the way he couldn't stop shaking afterward.
I am absolutely not going to feel sorry for him. Except that when Neville told Ron what happened and Ron started laughing, I felt chilled to the bone. And that was the beginning of the end with Ron, wasn't it? I refused to laugh along at the humiliation of an enemy. Not that Draco wasn't perfectly vile about Ron's family (more coaching at home, I'm sure). And about Harry. And about Neville's family—except that Neville seems to have forgiven that, or made allowances for Draco being all talk. After all, he's been launching these little verbal missiles at us for six years, and judging his next effort by how big a flinch he got. I don't think he actually ever thought about the reality behind his words. After talking about how Ron's mother was fat and Ron's father was shabby, he turned into a bundle of hissing indignation if you said anything about his parents.
Particularly after his father went to prison.
And as an Azkaban escapee, Lucius is up for the Dementor's Kiss, unless I misunderstood something. I suppose they're holding off for the trial. I really want to hope that it will be a real trial, but their notion of justice seems to change with the seasons.
Ye gods and goddesses, I want to sleep. There's plenty of time to think about this tomorrow.
***
After a week or so of systematic cataloguing of the Pensieve vials and unsystematic sampling of same, Hermione learns that this has been Derwent's test of her curiosity.
The questioning begins in the usual way, over tea and biscuits. Quite nice biscuits, in fact, Hermione notices. Today's are shortbread, not a whit inferior to those that Headmistress McGonagall serves to visitors.
At first, she's asked how the cataloguing is going, and she answers, truthfully, that it is coming along nicely, although it's occasionally obscure who collected certain memories. In other cases, the identity of the donor is unclear. Some vials have multiple initials on them. She's set those aside, along with those whose collection date is uncertain.
She's already making notes about what items of information should be attached to a particular memory. For the most part, there's one memory per vial, although there are exceptions—for example, the vial labeled "2.5.1998 SS (Posthumous HJP)." This appears to be an anthology, so they'll have to attach an identifying number to each vial and memory separately. (A vial may contain more than one memory.) At a minimum, she's thinking each memory should be marked with collection date, donor, collector, and the beginning and end dates for the events in the memory.
Derwent sips her tea and nods approvingly. "That's good. You're already thinking about what you want to put in the structure. Don't worry your head yet about the details. That's why we have the Arithmancy and Charms folk in reserve. They know their business better than either of us ever will. Our task is to know what to ask of them."
Hermione frowns. "So what will queries look like? I'm assuming some kind of complex spell… maybe an Accio with an elaborated direct object? Like 'Accio all vials containing memories collected by BD, HJP or HS between 1995 and 1998 inclusive'… or are you more interested in summoning the details of the memory than the container?... Does the War Crimes Commission know what questions it wants to ask?"
Derwent smiles. "That's one of the challenges, I'm afraid. They actually have very little idea of what we're about here, and some of them have less interest. Nor do they have an entirely clear picture of what they wish to accomplish even as it bears on their own work."
Hermione shrugs. "Oh well, they don't sound too different from Muggle clients, in that case." She takes another biscuit and tries to nibble it without making too many crumbs.
Derwent says, "That's why we're both attending the War Crimes Commission meetings, including the tedious ones." She takes another sip of tea and smiles. "Particularly the tedious ones. And the ones where no one is saying aloud what they mean." Another Mona Lisa smile. "So, of your preliminary review of the memories, what do you find most interesting?" Hermione's taken aback momentarily. "I assume you've been dipping into them, to get an idea of what's there."
She nods. "Well, I was intrigued by the set of vials collected by…" (she recites the initials carefully, not having seen quite so many on any of the other vials except for the ones collected by Dumbledore) "…E.A.S.S.C.N.L…"
"Ah yes, the Thaumaturgical Engineering Consultant. What did you make of them?"
"I wasn't quite sure what they were, at the beginning. They're always at dawn or dusk, and there's just the one person—I'm assuming that's the donor, the witch in the black cloak?—pacing out the perimeter around some building." Derwent nods. Good so far. "And I—er, recognize some of those buildings." (Malfoy Manor, at least, and Spinner's End, an ugly mill-worker's row house that could be sarcastically designated Snape Manor.) "And she's doing a whole series of spells that seem to set off various reactions. In at least one case she has—what, homunculi?—that she sends across the perimeter lines." She gulps. "And some not particularly nice things happen to some of them. So I'm guessing she's studying the defenses. Then I found a whole set of parchments in the supporting documentation with the specifications for the spells, and what she figured out about the defenses."
Derwent smiles. "That's another art they don't teach at Hogwarts. Tradecraft, as you noted about the memory charm. Of course, it's all applications of what you learned there."
Hermione says, "I really liked some of her little gadgets. The one with the prisms and the brass dragons is really nifty. The thaumaturge, it said in the documents." She frowns. "Though I would never have thought of using homunculi as…er, crash dummies."
"A relatively rare practice, actually. You only do it when you suspect you're up against a fair bit of Dark magic—specifically, Dark blood magic."
At this point, Hermione makes a conscious point to sound less knowing than she actually is. She's actually figured out this bit herself and has used it to test the design for the defenses on her parents' house. "So why does she use two different sets of homunculi?"
"Blood magic, remember. One set is incubated from the blood of the Family, and the other is—well, Other."
"So blood-magic defenses are like the immune system of the house." Derwent goes politely blank, and Hermione remembers that what she knows of modern medicine is actually alternative medicine in this world. "The house recognizes the Family and rejects the Other." Derwent nods.
"So that's why Twelve Grimmauld Place never liked me," Hermione says.
"A very fine example of modern blood-magic defenses," Derwent says. "The Engineering Consultant speaks very highly of that one, although she's never had the opportunity to study it. It's fortified with nearly every defensive charm known at the time of the First War with Voldemort, and those defenses have never been breached. Very powerful and very subtle at the same time."
"And it was under Fidelius on top of that," Hermione adds. "The Spinner's End defenses are similar, I think. Though there are some nasty little twists. Severus Snape was not a nice man, and from what I've seen he had little cause to be trusting."
Derwent nods again. "More tea?"
Hermione offers her cup and the teapot levitates to fill it. "The defenses on Malfoy Manor, on the other hand, are a lot simpler but there are more layers. Rather like a castle, with the moat and then the outer wall and the keep and so forth, with escalating nastiness the further in you go." She shudders and tries to put out of her mind what she remembers of the place. The mysterious Engineering Consultant only saw it from the outside, at least in the memories she's reviewing.
"And of the personal memories you've reviewed, which did you find most interesting?"
That question is easy to answer. "Severus Snape. I think because I knew the man, or thought I did."
"So how did the memories change your mind?"
Hermione finishes her tea, puts her cup down and Vanishes the buttery crumbs on her lap. "Well, to begin… He was an appalling excuse for a teacher, but he really knew his stuff. And he hated me personally, or that's the impression I always got. He certainly hated some of my friends, and he favored students from his own House. So that's my point of view as an ex-student of Professor Snape." She pauses. "And the rest is public record: he killed Albus Dumbledore, he was Headmaster of Hogwarts under…" (she wants to say Voldemort, but catches herself in time to substitute the official locution) "… under the Thicknesse Ministry, and he was killed by Voldemort's familiar Nagini during the Battle of Hogwarts.
"But when I started to dig into the memories…" she takes a breath. "Okay, some of it was personal. When I saw the bullying, the way he was treated… even by people he should have been able to trust… all right, I know those memories aren't the whole picture, but I can see why he might have been attracted to Voldemort's program. He was younger than I am when he joined, and then he spent the next fifteen years making up for it. And he was boxed in, absolutely reduced to no choices left by the end of it. The memories from the assassination of Dumbledore are really horrible. He was blackmailed into it from two sides: Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange on one side, and Dumbledore on the other."
She adds, "He had an absolutely thankless role to play. Everybody hated him by the end of it, and he played that role up to the very last." By now the tears are standing in her eyes. "You know, the label on that vial isn't accurate. There's another set of initials that should be on there. It should be HJG as well as HJP. I helped collect it, in lieu of administering first aid. We thought he was the enemy, so we just let him die."
"You are not a trained Healer," Derwent says.
"I knew enough," Hermione said. "I could have at least made an attempt. Aren't medics supposed to help people from either side?"
Derwent says, "I understand why you feel as you do, but you should remember that you were not bound by a Healer's Oath."
Hermione says, "But I should have tried. What bothers me is that I didn't try, and I didn't think to try. It's not much of an excuse, but I was thinking like a soldier. And as far as I'm concerned, Snape was a lot braver than some of us who got public credit for it."
It's late, much too late, and nothing she can do is going to change what happened. The only thing left is a gesture, and she knows it's empty. "I know that posthumous praise isn't worth much, but I'd really like to see his Order of Merlin upgraded to First Class." She remembers that he'd really, really wanted that back in third year, for capturing Sirius Black—and he'd been disappointed. Rather the story of his life, actually.
Derwent says, "I came to the same conclusion on viewing those memories. I understand that your friend Mr. Potter has already approached Minerva McGonagall about this matter, but your additional endorsement will be most helpful."
She puts her cup down and favors Hermione with a smile that's brilliant in its beneficence. "I think you will make a most excellent Recording Angel for the War Crimes Commission. You are capable of changing your mind, which is the first qualification of an historian."
***
From the journal of Hermione Granger
Some notes about Snape
And here's what I didn't say to Boudicca Derwent this afternoon, because it really was too personal:
I felt sorry for that grubby little boy, the one who grew up to be Professor Snape. There's something ratty and desperate and hungry about him even at nine years old, and I don't know if it would have made a difference if he'd found real friends when he got to Hogwarts.
And there was something familiar about him, that tugged at me. Tugged at my heart, specifically—as if I'd seen a feral cat who looked like Crookshanks. I know if I tried to pick up such a creature it would claw my arms to shreds, but it doesn't keep me from feeling the impulse. I couldn't figure out what was so familiar, though, until I got back to Hogwarts and I was sitting at dinner listening to Neville tell the story of his day. It was those round, warm Northern vowels. Neville has the same accent as little Severus Snape, an accent that Snape had managed to shed by halfway into his first year at Hogwarts.
And it's very middle class of me, but my first urge with that grubby little boy would be to throw him in a tub and scrub him clean—including that regrettable hair—and then to feed him up properly and put him in clothes that fit. I don't know if he would have been amenable to hugs and bedtime stories; by age nine, he seems to have been more acclimated to hexes and duck-and-cover.
I must say some other things too, that I daren't ever say to Harry.
Lily Evans, his mother, looks frighteningly like Ginny Weasley. Maybe it's my eyes, but they could pass for sisters. I can't help wondering if some male Weasley or Prewett of a previous generation got up to some mischief in the Muggle world. The resemblance is just uncanny. I really don't want to think about the implications. Just recite that comforting mantra: in the wizarding world, everybody is everybody else's cousin.
And I don't like James Potter. At all. I can't think of anything that would make up for what he and his friends did to Severus: dangling him upside down in view of everyone, making fun of his ragged underwear, and then taking it off. And Lily sold him out. I'm sorry, but the M-word uttered under duress doesn't count as betrayal. Shouldn't count. Doesn't count with me.
In present tense: points to Draco. Unless there's something I'm forgetting, I think that James Potter trumped him for sheer nastiness before he was even born. (Excepting his brief career as a not particularly successful baby Death Eater, that is, and the jury is still out on how much of that was Draco's choice in any case.) What's very clear is that James Potter was acting in perfect free will, and he chose to be an obnoxious prat.
Sirius Black, well, I'm really disappointed in Sirius, because he seemed like a good fellow and it turns out he was party to that disgraceful scene. Not to mention pointing Severus in the direction of Remus Lupin at full moon. Nasty, nasty, nasty piece of work. I'm trying to remember, but I don't think I ever heard Sirius express any regret about what he did to Severus.
And here I am referring to my dead, very much ex-Professor by his first name. Oh, well, no more House points to be deducted for that. Unless Snape, excuse me, Professor Snape, can do that from beyond the grave.
***
Author's notes: The thaumaturge is borrowed from A.J. Hall (Dissipation and Despair); the notion that Ginny Weasley looks too much like Lily Evans, from Arsinoe de Blessenville (see The Golden Age). The speculation about Snape's class and region, initially from JOdel aka RedHen, though I have seen it mentioned elsewhere (I believe it's also mentioned in one or more essays on HPLexicon).