A/N 1: I'm so sorry I didn't get this up over the weekend. Normally when I update I just grab the next chapter, upload it, give it a final edit, and then post it. This time I found a massive, problematic, terrifying plot-hole when I tried to do my final edit. I couldn't sit down to overhaul this chapter until tonight, and it's not as polished as I normally like, but it's readable, and I wanted to post ASAP. Hopefully I can have Chapter 15 up at the usual time (Sunday evening NZ time), but it might be slightly delayed to early next week because it'll need a correspondingly heavier edit than usual. I'll do my best, my dears. You all deserve it.

A/N 2: I ADORED your responses to the last chapter. You guys give me warm and fuzzies.

Chapter 14

Autumn swept over the castle in cold winds from the north and a darkness that crept over the grounds as the sun rose later and set earlier every day. The castle residents braced themselves for winter. Hermione, most of the teachers, and the DA fortified themselves as the Carrows attempted to increase their influence over the castle by heightening their cruelty, tracking DA members, and recruiting an enthusiastic, sadistic Filch.

Luna Lovegood countered this last blow by proposing something outlandish: they recruited Peeves the Poltergeist as an honourary DA member, much to the chagrin of Nearly Headless Nick and the other ghosts, who had been increasingly helpful to the insurgents throughout the term. Peeves proved a formidable counterweight to Filch; he followed the latter incessantly through the castle, creating a constant warning of rude noises, hand gestures, and cackled songs to anyone who might otherwise have been caught by the caretaker.

Nonetheless, the Carrows gained ground. Although the vigilant teachers, the determined DA, the castle ghosts and portraits, and the obnoxious poltergeist compromised the Carrows's authority throughout the castle, their classes were scenes of horror, where disobedient students were made to perform abominable magic on one another, where obvious bigotry and ignorance prevailed, and where students were punished severely, frequently and so immediately that interference was impossible. This was where the DA lost their ground, and Hermione despaired as more and more DA members turned up to their weekly meetings with bruises, curse scars, and hollow, horrified eyes. Neville, an especially vocal opponent to the Carrows, continually appeared battered and bruised, but it was to him that the younger students turned after they'd been forced to commit horrors, or after they'd been on the receiving end of the same – he became the morale booster of the DA, and Hermione couldn't reprimand him for his outright defiance of the Carrows, despite her earlier orders.

Hermione and Ginny had reconciled after the nearly disastrous episode at the end of September. After the exhausting – yet oddly stimulating – tête-a-tête with Snape, Hermione had dragged herself back through the castle to the Room of Requirement. She'd expected to find Parvati Patil keeping the Room open for her as planned, but it was Ginny who stood on the other side of the door. Hermione felt her brows rise, but Ginny rushed forward and gave her a hard hug. Hermione did not return it.

"The last time you did that, you stole the Map out of my pocket," she said quietly, and Ginny pulled back as quickly as she'd come forward.

"I know," she answered simply. Her eyes scanned up and down Hermione's body, as if looking for marks of injury. "Did Snape hurt you?"

"No. There wasn't really any punishment. He mostly just… reiterated what I already knew." Hermione thought of her agreement with Snape – of the lessons together – and shuddered to recontextualize them as punishment.

"Right," Ginny sighed. Then she looked away, over Hermione's shoulder at the list of DA members tacked to the wall, and then, finally, down at her own shoes. "I… I'm sorry."

"Sorry it didn't work out the way you wanted? Yes, I'm sure you are."

Ginny looked up at her suddenly, warily.

"You're not angry." It wasn't a question.

"No."

"But… you – you should be. You realise that, right?"

Hermione just shrugged. She had been angry – furious when she'd first realised that Ginny had stolen the Map and endangered them all, but her encounter with Snape had sapped most of the emotion from her. Now she felt empty, and tired.

"I…" Ginny drew herself up, and met Hermione's eyes squarely, "I understand if you want my resignation from the DA."

"Why on earth would I want that?"

"I disobeyed you. And… I did something that could have had some bad consequences for you. And for Neville and Luna, too."

"Yes, and for everyone in this school. So? I should have seen it coming."

Ginny's face reddened, and she looked back down at her shoes again.

"It won't happen again."

"No, I don't think it will. Snape is removing the sword from his office."

"No! I mean I won't go behind your back like that again. Ever. I swear it."

Hermione looked at her friend, at the strained line of her shoulders, the blazing brown eyes, the beautiful mane of fiery hair. She stepped forward, smiled slightly, and leaned her forehead against Ginny's shoulder.

"'Mione?" the girl sounded startled. "Are you sure you're ok? Are you sure that Snape didn't – "

"No, I'm fine. I just… I'm so tired of all of this and… it's only just the beginning, isn't it?"

Ginny pulled away from Hermione and peered closely into her face. Hermione gave her what felt like the bleakest, saddest smile she'd ever worn. To her surprise, Ginny's eyes filled with tears for the second time that night, and her friend gathered her into a fierce hug. This time, Hermione hugged her back.

"I'm so sorry, 'Mione."

"It's alright, Ginny. It's alright."

Ginny had been chagrined for some time over it. Despite the conflict they'd created, her efforts had served to galvanise the DA further, as Hermione gently pointed out later on in October. She didn't tell her friends that Snape had Obliviated the Carrows, nor that he had returned the Map to her; she had placed a jinx on it should any other enemies – or allies – attempt to steal it. Hermione felt more alone than ever; she trusted her "lieutenants," as Snape had called them, but she now was forced to recognise the limitations of that trust. Hermione's word had become law in the DA, much to her own discomfort, and although Ginny still occasionally grumbled about their situation, she had entirely redirected her energies toward outsmarting the Carrows and protecting her fellow students.

Harry and Ron were another challenge for Hermione, despite her distance from them. Although they had been cheered by the sword debacle, notwithstanding Hermione's viewpoints on it, they had all grown despondent when they related the fact that the sword, if the boys' overheard conversation between Griphook, Ted Tonks, and Dean Thomas was correct, was a fake anyway. They had run into wall after wall on the Horcrux front, and after Harry confessed that he and Ron had begun arguing more and more, Hermione demanded point-blank that they stop taking turns wearing the locket. Harry had been reluctant, but agreed to keep it in the moleskin pouch Hagrid had given him. They fought less now, without the constant influence of the evil object, but they had come no further in their enormous undertaking.

Hermione took to reporting the DA's victories to them every chance she had, and the boys drew obvious comfort from their faraway allies. The three of them continued to brainstorm all possibilities – Harry kept coming back to Godric's Hollow, despite Hermione's absolute disagreement, and she herself scoured The Tales of Beedle the Bard, but to no avail. They were getting nowhere. Their written discussions were roundabout, pointless affairs that Hermione started dreading, despite her longing to see her friends.

"It's horrible. You have no idea. To run around like mad everywhere and get nowhere."

"I know, Ron, I know. It's kind of similar here, believe it or not. The DA can only do so much to – "

"At least you have decent food to eat! We're lucky to get one crap meal a day! I –"

The text cut off, and Hermione imagined Ron running his hands angrily through his hair, standing it on end. Harry's writing appeared on the parchment next.

"How's the greasy git doing, then? Still holding the place hostage?"

Hermione glared at Harry's writing, hoping that somehow her magic could cross the distance between them and smack him upside the back of the head.

"He's not holding anything hostage," she wrote out savagely, angry that he'd almost divulged the little he knew of her secret arrangement with Snape in front of Ron. "He's running the school almost like normal, really. It's the Carrows and Filch who give us the most trouble, and who keep hurting the students."

"So bad they make SNAPE look cuddly then?" Ron wrote. Hermione sighed.

She changed the subject back to Horcruxes, and sighed when Harry brought up Godric's Hollow yet again.

And so it went. They wrote in circles, whittling away at the problem without ever seeing its true shape, and meanwhile Hermione herself was being unravelled, slowly, one step and one lesson at a time. Snape had kept to his word in all respects: he'd taught her all the rudiments of Occlumency within their first month or so of lessons, and now he tested her harshly as he conveyed the finer points of the art. It was hard to defend her mind from his, especially as he continually revealed himself to be quicker and slicker in his offences than she could ever be in her defences. She held fast to her Intercision blade, sharpening it whenever she could, and stashing the most sensitive memories ever more securely behind others.

Despite her disadvantage in their arrangement, Hermione stayed true to her nature: she pushed things farther in her Occlumency studies than Snape ever demanded, and she had begun not just to defend herself, but to fight back. Whenever he loosened his psychic grip on her, whenever she felt him tiring, whenever she could, Hermione either blasted Snape from her Mind's Eye, or reversed the attack so that she saw flashes of his memories instead. He'd taken it in stride, had even praised her for one particularly good defense one night, but Hermione ended up pushing even further.

He'd seemed more tired than usual that night, and as she defended herself, Hermione searched for an opening. She found it at last – a loosening of his attack as he viewed one of her deeper memories – and she dove into his mind as readily as he had torn into hers. There, she found herself in the muddy, murky plane of his Mind's Eye, and she plunged into the first memory she came to, surprised to see it open and unguarded. Hermione found herself watching a young boy with greasy black hair sitting at a tiny desk in a small, dingy room. She heard sounds coming through the door: raised voices and – suddenly – a loud crash, the sound of breaking crockery, and a woman's abbreviated scream. Hermione watched this Snape's young face as he stared at the door. He can't be more than thirteen, she thought, watching as his high, hollow cheeks reddened slightly, his dark brows coming down over his black eyes in obvious, fierce anger. She stepped forward to examine the boy, but the memory shifted around her and dissolved so that she was hurtling back – mind and body together – until she landed on the floor of the real Snape's office.

He stood above her, tall and powerful, staring down his long nose and into her eyes, and Hermione had to look away. She started to clamber to her feet, but stopped when the dark man reached down and held out a hand. Hermione looked into his eyes – opaque, expressionless – and took his hand. It was cool around hers as he pulled her gently to her feet. He let go of her immediately.

"I –" she stuttered to a stop, unsure, before starting again, "I'm s-"

"Do not apologise," he snapped. He looked away and ran a hand through his greasy hair. "You… you did precisely what you should have done. It simply worked better than either of us expected."

Hermione nodded, but felt puzzled nonetheless. Snape waved his wand, and their usual chairs arranged themselves in the middle of the room. He nodded to her, and she sat down across from him.

"We have discussed the reversal of Legilimency in some detail," he began in his Potions Master voice, "and we have gone over various ways that attacks can be deflected. We have not, however, discussed what occurred a moment ago."

He looked at her, and Hermione almost smiled at the somewhat ironic expectation in his eyes. She took the bait: "So, what was it that occurred a moment ago?"

"It is something I have yet to find in the literature, but which I have experienced once before. I call it inversion. What happens, Granger, when an attack is reversed?"

"If the Legilimens either fails to protect from magical intervention, or loses his psychic grip on the Occlumens, the attack will reverse naturally and immediately unless one of the two has interrupted the psychic exchange. The Occlumens will then see a stream of memories," she reeled off quickly.

"Textbook as always." He sneered slightly. "Now, what happened just now between you and I?"

"It…" Hermione thought for a moment, closing her eyes, trying to remember what it had felt like, "I was able to access your Mind's Eye itself, instead of seeing a stream of memories. Is that the difference?"

"Partly. What kind of memory had I been observing in your mind?"

Hermione felt herself flush slightly.

"It was… I was watching Ron and Harry fighting during Fourth Year."

"And at that time you felt…?"

"I felt… unhappy. And powerless. And angry. They were being so stupid, and so –" she cut herself off, and stared at Snape, who nodded. "And that's what you felt during that memory I saw."

"Correct."

"So that means that inversion is when… when the Occlumens not only reverses the psychic flow, but also gets to the same…" she trailed off, unable to articulate it.

"To the same emotional and psychic level," Snape finished.

His eyes were piercing now, but Hermione couldn't seem to look away.

"Why isn't it in the books you lent me? Why isn't it – "

"Because it is not in the literature." He shifted slightly. "Not anywhere I have looked, anyway."

"So it's rare."

"Legitimate texts on psychic exchange are rare. Decent Occlumency texts are rarer still. We can say that inversion is rare, but that would be conjecture. As I have mentioned before, there is no exhaustive, authoritative text on this branch of magic. There are, therefore, many undiscovered aspects of the practice. This might be one of those, or it might be something that occurs more often but has not yet been remarked upon."

"And you've had this happen before," Hermione said, her usual curiosity redoubling. "Why did it happen? Who was it with? Did they have the same kind of – "

He held a hand up to forestall her.

"I will not disclose details of that past incident. It was years ago… I do not wish to –"

He looked away, frowning, his hands weaving together in his lap, the knuckles white. Hermione thought briefly – insanely – of reaching out and enclosing his long hands in her own, in bridging the space between them.

"Ok," she said instead. "That's ok. You don't have to tell me." She took a deep breath, half-frustrated, half-intrigued, and fully wishing she could ask the dozen probing, impertinent questions flitting through her mind. She settled on the least offensive one: "Will it happen again?"

"I do not know," he answered, still looking down at his hands. He raised one shoulder in half a shrug. "I suspect so. Judging on my singular previous experience, it seems to occur when there is some… affinity, for lack of a better word, between Occlumens and Legilimens."

"Ok." Hermione nodded, before stopping herself, realising that she had been nodding like a ninny for half of this uncomfortable conversation. "Does this mean that you… that you will have to be more careful when you – I mean, before we…"

"I have precautions in place regardless, Granger," Snape said, his voice sharpening into its usual crisp tones. "Do you think I would come to a lesson unprepared?"

Hermione stared at him, but he still refused to meet her eyes.

"Prepared?" she asked.

But she thought she already knew. Finally, after sighing deeply, he met her eyes and raised his eyebrows, the expression mildly challenging, and entirely guileless.

"You use the Pensieve before our lessons?" Her voice rose to a shrill note as she asked it, but she didn't attempt to rein it in.

"Of course I do."

Hermione felt anger overtake her, setting her hair to crackling, her eyes to flashing, and her Mind's Eye into a spiral.

Snape leaned forward, holding her eyes, a small, sad smile curling his mouth.

"Did you actually think this would be a fair fight, Granger?"