Chapter 82: Tightly held Memories
There were several rules to set for the teaching of Occlumency, not least because Lily always found the ways to bring out the most outrageous side of him. For one, he had always regarded Legilimency to be an intrusive ability, one not to be wielded against allies and those he wished to keep the trust of. Lily, however, treated it like a game she had just learned the rules of.
Lily had shown herself reasonably adept from their first lesson together, having successfully buffered her mind from Snape's skimming touch. Already far greater a success than his previous attempt at teaching this particular branch of mind arts. The resemblance between mother and son was nearly non-existent when it came to their natural affinity with magic, but few could claim such a natural talent.
"Try me now," she would say, having only had one lesson in true since their agreement to set upon this course. The pressures of life left the both of them very little time to hash out a formal schedule for such lessons. Perhaps that was why Snape had been so malleable to Lily's blasé approach to the Mind Arts.
But all it took was one misjudged foray for Snape to drill some semblance of discipline into proceedings.
"What am I thinking?" Lily had asked one evening in a strangely low-pitched voice. Perhaps that should have been Snape's first clue.
Sitting by the cosy fire lit within his chamber's fireplace, with his nose buried between the pages of The Wizarding World News, Snape had missed the playful lilt of her voice. Ever so obligingly, Snape didn't think twice about testing his wife's mind with a probe of his own. She didn't even try to hide her thoughts this time. He immediately snapped from his paper to find his wife standing by the sofa, robed in a dressing gown yet so absolutely aware what she wore beneath.
"Happy birthday, Sev. I remember how much you like this lacy number…"
Like it he did, without reason or explanation. That form-fitting garb that seemed to accentuate her already vivid appeal. His basest instincts evoked by the mere brush of a thought, then pressing on for naught but the seeking of pleasure. His own mind grasping hers, refusing to release until well past the point of what was appropriate and seeking pleasures that were not his to
After that night, Snape no longer trusted himself with a liberal approach to the teaching of defensive mind arts, despite what Lily seemed to believe herself okay with. She knew little of the liberties she was surrendering if she allowed her husband to do such things with the sanctity of her mind and will.
Rules were set in place so that Occlumency lessons were to be only pursued in a classroom setting, in his office or her laboratory. It was a private affair to deal with, but one that should not cross with personal boundaries. For a man who valued privacy, and whose very life once depended on the sanctity of his mind, Legilimency was not a tool to use between the trusted and the loved.
Lily, however, had no such reservations. Treating each broach of her mind, on her own invitation, without so much a second thought. But she was a different person to Snape entirely. Where his heart was full of self-loathing and misgivings, hers was bright and vivacious. Light touched every thought he did. Even thoughts pertaining to himself.
But even though her heart was light, he still touched upon moments he knew were not for him. Her mourning of her father, a sorrow meant to be carried in private. And her loneliness, which he did not know how to even begin to remedy. His own being dispelled by her mere presence, yet finding his own presence insufficient for her.
He feared to delve too deep. Feared what he might find there at the root of his place in her heart. All of this despite overwhelming evidence that his place there was secure, that her heart had set upon him and never shifted.
Legilimency came naturally to Snape, but with its ease came his natural understanding of the limitations. Legilimency was an ability that from its inception had been wholly reliant on an ignorant or unprepared victim. Most would be able to keep a probing mind at bay with control and dogged resistance. Even talented Legilimens such as Snape found it difficult to delve successfully into the mind of a prepared adult who had some notion of Occlumency. In that Snape differed greatly from the Dark Lord, who made sport of shattering minds. But should Lily be in a position where she had to defend her mind against one such as the Dark Lord, then mastery of Occlumency was the least of her concerns, and Snape's.
As expected of a heart as open as hers, progress was slow. None of this was unexpected for Snape, having prodded around a heart similar to hers. An open heart swirling with emotions, but with one distinct difference. Where Harry Potter had once loathed Snape, the extent of which the aforementioned was unsurprised to find within the boy's unshielded mind, Lily had no such reservations.
When he would pierce her rudimentary Occlumency, where he expected to find anger or frustration within the mind he invaded as he once did with the child that no longer existed, he found an assault of colours and titters of amusement. Unlike her would-be-son, Lily did not fight him every step of the way. In many ways, that was the least ideal reaction to the exercise. A heart unburdened by genuine resistance.
The point of Occlumency was to oppose the invasion of one's mind. Lily's comfort with her thoughts and his intrusion made for a poor basis from which to learn this craft. Despite it all, she was improving. Perhaps it was her perseverance- even going about the craft in entirely the wrong way, her skills were improving at a steady pace. Or maybe she was simply more talented than that boy who was entirely reckless bravado and little sense.
Or perhaps her emotional maturity was her true advantage in this gallery. Emotions being a source of instability to the shield Occlumens would attempt to erect about their heart.
That was one ability Snape could never boast a natural affinity for. His world had always been tinted by a haze of emotion. The rage that had followed him through childhood ended only when his spiralling despair began. All of this he pressed behind his Occlumency, his will wresting it all in place. A writhing seethe contained beneath the powerful walls of his mind.
For Snape, it was his natural blood-ties with the mind-arts and a titan will that fostered his skills. Though his heart was never truly made tame, that mattered little against the strength of his resolve.
The Potter child had never understood that measure of discipline, and perhaps that was what had driven Snape to such annoyance. The constant lament of what was unfair and unjust, measured by a boy who was born to wealth and the adoration of all. To not have the basic strength of character to pursue something that he was not naturally gifted at with hard work.
In this respect, Lily fell somewhere in between. She had a strong grasp of hard work but possessed too great of a Gryffindor soul for any true measure of discipline. Her passion instead was her driving force, her will to get up in the morning and place her mind to purpose.
Nobody could say Lily did not have a driving passion for this task, least of all Snape. Every time he happened upon her, whether in the peace of their chambers, the ruckus of a classroom or even the bustle of a general hallway, he would find Lily with a nose buried in a tome or a scroll. Not always pertaining to the mind arts, for he knew she was still working herself to the bone to learn the basics of everything that made up his conjured hand. But enough for Snape to notice the difference each time he delved into her mind.
How he had to hurt her now to pierce that barrier.
Lily winced as Snape delved into her mind, her pain rattling him through and through as he felt it from within. He immediately withdrew as if stung himself. He caused no lasting damages with that one sharp jab of his Legilimency, this he knew. But all the same, he felt a terrible pang of guilt for that hurt he rendered her. Despite consent, despite the purpose of their exercise.
Lily, by comparison, had already shaken off that smarting glance. She was quick to smile, quick to forgive. Quick to want to try it all again.
"Just one more try," Lily begged, holding up her finger to demonstrate the digital representation of that number.
"Lily. You may have the next period free but I have no such privilege," Snape muttered as he gathered his tomes from his office shelves. Lingering blood curses and how they are passed. A theory heavy lesson with nil demonstration taught to fourth years late in the school year. He had little hope in controlling wandering minds in those except the most studious.
Lily pulled a face, though whether it was commentary about Snape's reluctance to subject her to Legilimency or the general idea of theory, Snape could not tell. In many ways potioneering was for her, for there was never a theory which you couldn't demonstrate by practice.
With a point of his wand Snape snuffed the fire out in the fireplace, and with another he gathered his tomes and the box of his marked homework. Lily didn't think twice, following him out of the office and down the staircase into his classroom.
"You've got five minutes, just one more try," Lily begged as Snape set the items down on his desk.
"This is hardly a task to take in a public setting," Snape replied as he tasked a stick of charmed chalk in etching up the study plan. But honestly, they might as well have been the only ones there.
Most of the Ravenclaw students had already found their seats despite, as Lily had mentioned, that class was five minutes from its start. Most of them with their noses pressed into tomes, not even noticing another soul within the room. Some, however, took to their pandering natures for the mere whiff of the prospect of a complimentary remark.
"Professor. Professor! I have my homework ready right here! A foot and a half on doxies and their habitat and behaviour." Came an irritating proclamation from the front seat. But where else would that attention-seeking cretin of a boy Gilderoy Lockhart sit except front and centre of every class.
"I expected as little, Mr Lockhart," Snape replied bluntly, biting back the scathing remark that threatened to follow. He held much dislike for the boy and his boasting. Reminded him too much of James Potter as Snape darkly remembered him. Even had he not known the utter fraud he would grow up to be, his constant peacocking and cajoling for the limelight was not something that invited Snape's best regards.
"I even added a foot and another foot and a half about the properties of doxy venom in a potioneering sense," he stated, as if expecting it to impress those listening by any small amount.
Unfortunately, Snape was not the professor for such wide-eyed pandering. "As I have only set a foot and a half on the creature's ecology, you better hope your valid points are made in the first half of your three foot essay."
The vain boy blanched, "B-but Professor. I'm a genius potioneer and soon-to-be alchemist and master of the Philosopher's Stone. And isn't Defence Against the Dark Arts a craft that makes use of every discipline, too!"
Genius Potioneer… That's stretching it. The future that Snape knew did not bode well for this child's bloated ego.
"Well then, come fifth year you may choose the subjects that you wish to study. Until then, I expect you to follow the guidelines of your homework question," Snape returned, exasperated by that grandiose proclamation. Eyes rolled throughout the classroom as the chairs filled up, Lockhart's fellow students sharing Snape's prognosis.
Turning a nasty shade of beet, Lockhart spluttered. His grandiose sense of self was not at all receptive to the judgement of others. Around the boy, snickers arose from his peers. It seemed even among overachievers, Lockhart's pandering was viewed with contempt.
"Oh, you want to be an Alchemist. That's wonderful!" Lily suddenly proclaimed. "Your professor Snape's somewhat of a prodigious alchemist himself. Maybe he'll show you a thing or two."
Snape internally sighed as the boy's eyes lit up. Lily seemed to have gotten the idea into her head that he was actively gathering strays by how pleased she looked with herself. No doubt she thought herself to be helping. There was honestly no helping anyone that in love with the image of themselves that they were willing to sink to the depth of deep fraud for the sake of that pretence.
"I will see you this afternoon, Lily," Snape spoke to her in a firm voice that suggested no room for negotiation. And honestly, the minor pre-class discourse had whittled away what little time they might have had. The seats were slowly filling up with the hardworking souls within Hufflepuffs as the sound of hurried footsteps echoed from the direction of the Grand Staircase.
Lily didn't debate. For all the Gryffindor in her, she was seldom one to argue a lost point in public, and for that Snape was grateful.
Without a word, she stepped forward to lay a kiss upon his lips in front of too many watching eyes. When she retreated from the classroom with such a loving smile, it left Snape's heart at jarring odds with the red face she left him with.
Snape could not help his self-consciousness; as used to Lily's affection as he was, he could barely manage a chaste kiss among his adult peers, let alone before the flawed sensibilities of children. Snickers and grins irked him from every corner of the filling room, even some odd soft sighs from a cluster of whispering girls. Not doing any wonders for Snape's grasp of dignity. This was why professors seldom found love among staff. It made for poor discipline.
It was one of those rare moments in life that Snape felt relief for the arrival of Potter. Ever tardy, he at least grew in his sense of morals and maturity and no longer likely to feed upon Snape's embarrassment. And though he glanced around at the cohort of grinning children and grinned back in kind without any hint of mockery or malice. A rare thought to have about the boy he once hated as bitterly as the darkness of his own soul. Lightly packed, the bespectacled man set up in his corner of the room by the blackboard, despite no longer needing to assist as a scribe.
"Heya, Snape. Cracked a joke?" he asked as he unpacked, evidently missing what started this chaos. As if that were likely.
"Homework," Snape barked fiercely, taking reign of the unruly class with heavy-handed measures and willing his displeasure to drown out his embarrassment. "And if a single assignment is handed in under the length of a foot and a half, the entire class will find their weekend without the luxury of spare parchment."
Potter jumped too, trading each student's marked work for their newly completed scrolls. Efficient at the only task he didn't fail miserably at in the setting of the classroom.
A nervous hand arose in the corner. A Hufflepuff boy whose smile had well and truly fled murmured sheepishly, "Umm, sir… I seemed to have not… placed it in my bag."
Snape's glare was immediate and dire. "Well, Mr Tybalt, you had best hope you are a quick study of the Summoning Charm."
"I knew you weren't actually going to bury them in homework." Potter uttered once that hellish classed had ceased.
Snape scowled as he set himself back behind his office desk. Potter brought up the rear, levitating with him the boxes of newly gathered homework and the heavy tomes back into their shelves. If the man was no good at marking or scribing, then the only thing he was good for in a theory-based lesson was heavy lifting.
"Against the betterment of my judgement, if you believe otherwise," Snape muttered as he stowed away the newly gathered unmarked third-year homework. With a flick of his wand, Snape summoned forth the box of fifth year homework, marked and ready to dispense.
Potter gathered up the offered boxes, balancing one on his hip and levitating the second. The man didn't have the agility of mind to juggle two spells at once it seemed. Or, at the very least, placed far more value on his bodily strength than Snape ever had.
"Snape, I've been meaning to ask," Potter began slowly. A caution well-earned and deserved, for casual conversation was still not a common ease between them. "How is your hand now?"
Snape flexed his silver fingers instinctively. "If you speak of my hand, it is rotting somewhere on a forest bed. This silver one is merely its replacement. Not as dextrous, but fit for function."
A grimace flickered across Potter's face. "Then, how are you feeling?" he concluded questioningly.
Snape's eyes narrowed, "What is the purpose of your questions? Tell me so that I may answer it and be done with this pointless exchange."
"Concern, Snape," Potter replied with stilted smile. "It's a human thing. You might not understand."
A grimace flickered across Snape's visage. He had no right to feel so much the petty child for rebuking the man. "Your concern is noted but not necessary. Any feelings I have for my new hand has thus far all been positive."
His smile lost its tension. "I'm glad. I really am. It's hard to watch friends face hard times."
"We're not friends," Snape answered, an automatic reflex by this point though his heart was less and less in his rebuke. What ever happened to his suffocating hatred that not even death could shed?
Potter's smile faded a touch. The silence indicative of the young man's dejection, though lord knows why he still felt so strongly at such a rebuff. Or why Snape cared a whit how Potter felt. Curse his weathered heart. No longer secure in his convictions. No longer comfortable in his hatred. Too aware of his own hypocrisy.
"Potter. Have you any grasp of the animosity between us?" Snape asked, rather more bluntly than he ever known himself to be.
Potter appeared momentarily sheepish, his lapse in concentration evident in the dangerous wobble that touched his levitated box of marked homework. He set the levitated object, down though not the one he hefted one-handed. His brawn well exceeded his magical might of concentration. "Umm yeah… I mean... it's a bit too soon to forget."
That was but only one stone weighing in Snape's heart. The humiliation, the persecution, the stains of trauma upon Snape's heart. And that he coveted Lily and won her. That this boy, who was born with the world at his feet saw fit to take the only thing Snape had in his life.
"I'll be the first to admit, Snape. I mean, it wasn't a secret that I liked Lily… and you… well…" Potter paused, hefting his box as if the negligible weight bothered his athletic frame.
"I was in the way," Snape finished the trailing sentence quite bluntly.
Potter grimaced as if struck sheepish by the very thought. "Yeah… I guess." He shook his head with an expression akin to aghast. "I can't believe what a shit I had been. It was only three years ago too."
Three years to change.
A thought that struck Snape strangely, for Potter had always been this static spot of darkness within Snape's mind. A corner of hatred within Snape's darkened heart that was blessedly assigned not to himself. A hatred that had remained a lifetime unchanged.
"I'm not going to make any more excuses for myself, Snape. I did wrong by you," Potter continued solemnly. "All for a girl who never looked twice at me. It was always you and Lily. There was never really any room for me. I never really had a chance."
"No, you didn't," Snape lied, knowing keenly the true irony of it all.
Potter grinned, seeming to take Snape's response in the good humour it was not intended. "Well, I'm glad it worked out. For the both of us."
The sincerity by which that sentiment was given incensed Snape so inexpertly. "You seemed to have made peace rather quickly. Did you love her at all?"
Potter blinked, struck silent by the pointed, and no doubt unexpected question. And to Snape it was equally baffling, though for different reasons. To meet a man whose heart could come to terms so quickly with his losses struck him as utterly disingenuous.
"What was I supposed to do? Pine?" Potter finally answered, grimacing as if the very thought seemed ridiculous. "She liked someone else. I moved on. I found someone who would actually love me."
"A novel thought, to be sure," Snape replied dryly. Their lives were different. Their circumstances, different. Her absence from Potter's side had been but a footnote in his blessed life, to Snape it had been the extinguishing of the only flame flickering in an eternal night.
The only joy in Snape's life had been taken by a boy who could make do without. A galling thought, though one that Snape had always known. A thought that no longer had the power to incense Snape any further.
"For what it's worth, Snape. I'm sorry."
But in this lifetime, this same boy's perspective ended with their hurtful exchanges. He never knew the victory that Snape carried as such bitter defeat. The weight within Snape's heart was not equal the history they shared. The heinous things they did to one another was a burden neither could escape, but the past was a shackle Snape was slowly learning to shed.
"I accept your apology," Snape muttered, glancing away so he didn't have to meet Potter's astonished eyes. "I am willing to… start… back at the beginning."
"Then… can I call you Severus?" Potter asked, his voice unreasonably hopeful.
Snape permitted few to call him by his first name. His family, his closest friends, and those to whom he had no power of say. Potter was none of those, yet he presumes so. But after finding in himself to pluck out that one last thorn in his heart, he no longer felt so strongly.
The sound of bustle could be heard from beyond the door. The sound of children's feet striding by Snape's office a whole floor above where his classroom would be filling by some of those very same children.
"No one begins as friends, Snape finally replied. He said not a word more as he gathered up his charts. "But we can begin on first name basis, James."
Snape glanced back not once as he headed for the door in his office that lead to his classroom. Not yet ready to meet those bespectacled hazel eyes he had held with hatred for so long.
They said time healed all wounds. A falsehood known all too well by a man who bore his wounds though even death. But heal he did… pieced together by a greater force than time.
The fire was roaring merrily in the grate of the cosy staffroom. Though quite fully occupied, the bustle in the staffroom was minimal comparatively to that of the Gryffindor common room. Adults seemed to have learned their indoor voices.
Severus would sit in an armchair across from her by the fire, newspaper in hand. Rarely did he ever speak to another, Merlin forbid he did some social. At the very least Lily had a reading partner, though if it were up to her, she wouldn't have leafed so quickly and without note through the article about the dragon trapped in the basement of a tavern in London, devouring beer kegs like the average Londoner. That sounded absolutely hilarious.
Lily sighed as she set down her unwieldy tome of Mind Games; A comprehensive guide to Defending Against the Mind Arts and sunk into the over-stuffed armchair. Her head was spinning from all the reading and Occlumency practice. It was coming to the point where her contractually mandated duties as a teaching assistant were becoming a welcome rest. The lunch break was soon to end and afternoon classes were all that separated her from another exhausting bout of Occlumency exercises.
Lily bared an unsightly yawn too quickly for her to conceal for politeness sake. Taking on two enormous branches of study on top of full-time work was taking a toll on her rest. Straight after her duties in the dungeons were complete, Lily spent her afternoons assisting the good Madam Poppy Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing, where she would spend upwards of an hour learning at the feet of one of the Medical World's finest. For Lily, learning was always better done by practical means. In recent days, much of that learning had been directed to treating the epidemic of sniffles that ripped through the student body. Luckily, Lily had never slacked on filling out the Infirmary's order of brew, and the Pepper-Up potions continued to outlast the onslaught of pervasive sickness.
After weeks of study, Lily was still leagues away from even touching the magic that made manifest the miracle that was a conjured wand-hand. She could only look on with seething jealousy as Poppy, as Lily knew her now, applied the incredible magic to Silvanus Kettleburn's left limbs. Dumbledore had conjured the right leg as an example for Poppy to follow and learn from while she took on the responsibility of care and maintenance of the remaining left leg and hand.
The maintenance of the conjured limbs had initially required daily visits to the Hospital Wing, a schedule Silvanus attended faithfully. There, Lily had witnessed the mastery of a craft. Poppy took that time to study the magical decay of her conjured limbs before dispelling and painstakingly recreating them for the sake of practice and perfection. After a while, she got comfortable enough with her newly acquired magic to order Silvanus' check-ups reduced to a weekly appointment.
Oddly, throughout that period, Silvanus' right leg decayed at a far slower rate. Almost as of Gamp's sixth law of Elemental Decay in Spellwork did not apply. So rarely did she see the decay constant dip below its saturation limit that it seemed the magic from the headmaster's wand knew no mortal limitations.
"Is Albus a healer?" Lily had absently asked Poppy one day as she watched the matron weave together a beautifully crafted hand.
"He's not," came the unexpected reply from the only healer Lily had ever known.
"He's got an impressive list of achievements, but I'm afraid a stint in medical meddling was not in his resume," Silvanus agreed from his seat his hospital bed.
The answer only opened up more questions to the expectations forming in Lily's mind. Her question left her lips before she could more tactfully word it. "How did he master such a spell if he didn't have any healing know-how?"
Silvanus answered that one, happy to weigh in despite the topic being one that did not involve those with wings and claws. "Well, I wouldn't say he didn't have any healing in his repertoire. Live to be a hundred and I'd imagine you'd become a Jack of all Trades. And have a mind like Albus' and you'd be a master of more than a few."
"I believe you're holding the idea of healing in your mind in a far more complicated light than it is." Poppy agreed as she had been affixing the conjured leg to Kettleburn's thigh stump. "Healing is but a branch of highly specified Transfiguration."
"Just like Defence Against the Dark Arts is simply a very aggressive form of Charms," Silvanus interjected helpfully.
Poppy's kept in her stride, constructing the complexities of a hand without breaking conversational stride. "Think of healing as human transfiguration with magical decay slow enough that the body's own natural healing mechanisms would tend to the wound as the magic fades. Practice is what you most lack, but without a basic knowledge of the body you plan on practicing your magic upon, you will not be permitted to practice. Finish the tome I lent, you and after that we shall see."
St Mungo's Aid: The comprehensive guide to basic Healing was a book that spanned over five hundred pages. Finishing that hefty tome of very technical chapters was no easy feat, especially not on top of her pursuit of Occlumency. Lily would read well into the night, between classes and meals, somehow still miraculously finding time to keep on top of her mandated marking.
With her time whittled away, she barely found time even for Severus, though he took her sudden scholarly focus in stride. With the both of them engaged with their respective works, it wasn't uncommon for their day to pass in silence except for those brief moments where he would allow her to test her middling Occlumency skills against his time-honed Mind-Arts.
She had even forgotten her birthday when it loomed on the horizon without so much as a footnote to her mind. Severus, however, did not, and made the fatal mistake of asking her what sort of gift she wanted for the date. Lily hadn't even thought on it. It was the same time every year, yet it just seemed so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Instead, she made a game of it.
"If you find out when digging around in my brain, tell me," she had joked. Not that he'd ever agree. He showed far more restraint than any mind reader had the right to be. Far more restraint than she could ever show.
Sev had been silently supportive since Lily's decision to commit to the headmaster's task. A task she still had nothing but imaginative speculation on. One that he knew the truth of and held deep and troubled thoughts about.
He spoke little of it at all, or anything, really, when they set to task together. She could see his worries brewing behind his eyes. Seldom did he speak of anything other than technical points yet she could sense a tension arise each time he tested her mind. Each time she improved, each time she pushed back harder, his brows would crease all the more. His fears worn upon his face so plainly for her to read. Who needed Legilimency?
But it all made her heart ache to know how much he feared for her. She understood it did not come from a place of unfounded anxiety. In his lifetime, she had invited the ire of the Dark Lord and her life had ended upon the tip of his wand. A target unintentionally painted by his hand. This lifetime already brought them close to a similar calamity; Severus would forever carry the cost of surviving it.
But Sev was ever the rational soul. He knew, better than most, the longer the war wore on, the greater the power of You know Who would grow, and the less likely that any of them would survive. That he placed no more resistance to Lily's place in this war spoke volumes of his faith in his own faltering confidence in the war's end. Whatever this task awaiting her was, it truly was something critical, for she could not think of her husband relinquishing her to this risk for anything less.
To that end, Lily could only forge ahead to the best of her ability. Anything less would simply not do. Exhaustion was gnawing on her in a way she had never experienced in the past, for it felt as if she had taken upon herself the study load of her seventh year on top of a far diminished availability of time.
Every day, if it isn't work, food, hygiene or sleep, it was study. Two tasks she took upon herself, one chosen and the other appointed. But if she were completely truthful, both took equal importance in her heart. Tasks she had to pursue with focus and haste. And of this she reminded herself, each time her eyelids grew heavy.
With a sigh, Lily blinked away her murky thoughts. With her break time whittling away, daydreaming was a luxury she could ill afford. Wearily, she cracked open the textbook, finding her place among the miniscule ink-scribed words.
Across from her sat Minerva, a similarly technical book cracked upon her lap in a similar fashion. The professor sat reading with one hand trailing down the back of a dozing tabby cat in an almost absent manner. Not once had she glanced up in distraction as Lily was unable to stop herself from doing.
"How do you do it, Minerva?" Lily groaned out of the blue. "I can hardly keep from going cross-eyed from all this reading."
Minerva glanced from her pages, her fingers pausing upon its rhythmic stroke upon her feline's back. Its ears flickered back with annoyance but it made no attempts to unfurl itself. "I need no encouragement to read, Lily. The pursuit of learning is a noble thing."
"Figures," Lily sighed. "Dogged determination is the only way."
Minerva pursed her lips, an expression Lily had long learned was not meant for disapproval. "Am I to understand you are not reading through the restricted section for pleasure?"
Lily winced. Even though she was a member of staff and not subject to the restrictions a student had, she can't help but feel caught out like a naughty child. "Umm no. I mean, it's interesting," she quickly assured as she hefted the heavy tome up to better show off the title. "But really, the reason is to learn Occlumency. You know. For those reasons."
She didn't need much more than that to catch the meaning between the lines. Or much prompting to exercise discretion. The secrecy of the Order was intended for the attention of the ministry as well as the forces of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Lily had never realised how much political discourse was bubbling in the background of this war, not until Minerva had joined.
Minerva's history derived from that very ministry, having stepped from the offices of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and into the hallowed halls of Hogwarts. She had transcribed her work with the iron fist of the law into her strict and fastidious style of professorship.
It was from her that Lily had learned that though most had no name for this faction, it was known that opposition to the Dark Lord was sprouting up among the civilian populace. But the noble actions of the Order and the conflicts they undertook were viewed by most as vigilantism.
The true threat of the Death Eaters was not yet fully realised by a world content to bury it head. The Order's efforts were not afforded the appreciation they deserved. Most still believed the only true way to stamp out radicalisation was wholehearted faith in their Ministry. Minerva was one of those believers.
Unbeknownst to Lily, and to likely all that were not privy to precognition, Minerva had been spending her nights upon the prowl. Her feline form, though known through the very public Animagus Registry, had been enough to disguise her presence when listening in on secret meetings within the magical urban sprawl. This information she then passed on to her old comrades in arms, protecting the Aurors she had once supported from the offices of the courts.
Her destiny was to serve out this war in that role. But with a confidence that only came from knowing the future, Dumbledore had approached Minerva with the truth of the Ministry she served with such faith. The truth of how deep the corruption had seeped. How those she sought to protect had their good intentions subverted by villains who were poisoning the well from within. A harsh truth to learn for a valuable ally gained.
"First of all, you must find a teacher who is a skilled Legilimens," Minerva began after a moment's contemplation. "The Mind Arts is a rare skill to cultivate. Rarer still among our allies. Albus has a grasp of the skills, and thankfully the control to not abuse it."
"Well actually, Severus is a Legilimens. Albus had been getting him to teach me," Lily stated, and immediately second-guessed the wisdom in her admissions when Minerva's lips pursed again, this time with a frown.
"Legilimency is difficult skill to learn for those without the natural affinity."
"Oh he's got natural affinity," Lily quickly offered, realising a little too late why Severus may not have been so forthcoming with the extent of his abilities.
But Minerva was far from satisfied with that. "Even then, one would not easily gain exposure to the knowledge under the curriculum offered at Hogwarts. Due to its alignment with Dark Magic, the tomes are kept strictly in the restricted sections."
"He's a quick study…" Lily muttered, her defence bleeding dry.
"And even then, I've not heard of one so young finding a firm foot in this complex magical specialisation."
"He's got a forty-year old soul."
Minerva frowned, taking the comment in the jest it was only half meant as. "You know, Lily. There is something about Severus that I've been meaning to ask about." Her grey cat-like eyes fixed piercingly upon Lily's. "I don't suppose you know what I mean?"
"Oh I couldn't possibly," Lily quickly dismissed as nonchalantly as she could possibly manage.
Minerva did not question her assertion. "That makes me all the more concerned, Lily."
A lapse of silence answered. A thousand words in defence lay unspoke on Lily's tongue, held by the knowledge that Severus would not appreciate anymore compromise of his secrets. "Albus trusts him," she finally uttered. The words she had learned that had once washed away the dark blood-soaked stains of his past in the eyes of his peers. "And so do I."
Minerva's expression softened, a softer heart than those stern eyes belie. "Now, I know Albus knows more than he's willing to share. Am I right to think that you too have things you will not speak of?"
"It is not mine to share," Lily relented.
The worry that lined the professor's face faded a touch. "Then that takes some burden from my mind, Lily. I trust Albus' judgement, and yours too in matters of friends, kin and loyalty. If you believe Severus' secret is one that needs keeping from even those that are allies then let us depart from this topic."
Lily offered a small smile. "It really is. Thank you."
Minerva managed a tight smile. "Well then. Were we not speaking on Occlumency just before we gone off on a tangent?"
"Oh yes," Lily hurriedly grasped for the offered olive branch.
Minerva folded closed her book, a motion that startled awake her feline lap companion. "Learning from a Legilimens is all well and good. They know best how to enter one's mind and have natural affinity in the defence thereof. But given that teaching has been my lauded territory for the better part of two decades might I venture a suggestion?" she paused, peering over her square-rimmed spectacles. "I find that those with natural proclivities to a talent fare poorly when teaching them. They find it difficult to empathise with the struggles of those otherwise talented."
A bell sounded, a clear ringing from the bell tower in the courtyard. A sound magically threaded through the hallways of the school such that no matter where one stood within the castle, they would always know the moving time of a school day.
"I do say, where does the time go?" Minerva uttered as she stood, stowing her book away into the nether space with a flick of her wand. "Take it from a witch who had once worked in a branch of the Ministry where secrecy was not just encouraged, but policy mandated. If we were to only wait for the naturally talented to walk through the doors, we would never be able to keep positions filled."
Minerva stepped to the staffroom window, cracking it open a sliver. With a tilt of her head, she directed her feline towards it. And without so much as a meow in protest, her feline companion hopped up onto a nearby shelf and slipped through. "To that end, the Ministry had designed exercises to the very purpose of teaching one to defend one's mind. A process that I am rather familiar with. If you are interested in learning, then my office door is always open."
A/N: How the world has changed since the update of the last chapter. I hope everyone is keeping well. Eat well, exercise and find ways to stay in touch with people online. Keep physically and mentally well during these uncertain times. Humanity has survived worse plagues than this.
Next Update: Saturday 9th May 2020
Chapter 82: The Task for the Enchanter
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe and do not seek to profit in any way, shape or form from this fan work.
