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Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition – Season Seven – Round Eight
Beater 2 for the Tutshill Tornados
Round Eight: You Can't Predict It All
… Except, we're going to try our best to do just that! So, grab a seat, and be prepared to read your future! You may choose either upright or reversed, and your plot must revolve around the meaning of the tarot card given.
BEATER 2: Six of Swords — Upright: Transition, Leaving Behind, Moving On, Reversed: Emotional Baggage, Unresolved Issues, Resisting Transition
Additional Prompts:
(action) To spill something/knock something over
(word) Concrete
Thanks to the Tutshill Tornados for betaing!
A Refuge of Concrete
Words: 2624
"Ron!" Hermione shouted, but it was too late. He continued moving, and his robes, carelessly trapped between the flask he'd just filled with a sample of his potion, moved with him.
The flask flew into the air, spinning end over end, before crashing with a tinkle against the flagstones. The warm liquid of the cooling potion sprayed through the air and caught her full in the face.
"Weasley, Miss Granger," Snape snarled as he prowled towards them. "Explain."
Hermione cowered slightly, even as she tried to scrub the potion from her face. She'd erased herself from her parents' memories, been on the run, and helped to defeat Voldemort, but she still couldn't shake the way her stomach tightened and her nerves jangled when her Potions professor turned his considerable attention upon her.
"I dunno what happened," Ron muttered, looking dumbly between the broken flask and Hermione.
"I got splashed with his potion," Hermione explained. "It was an accident."
"Tergeo." At Snape's muttered spell, the potion lifted from her skin and disappeared as it reached the tip of his wand. Snape lifted the stirring rod Ron had been using from his half-rusted cauldron and gave it a sniff.
"Shock of all shocks, Weasley appears to have brewed the Sensitising Solution correctly. Your senses will be magnified for the next twelve hours or so, Miss Granger, but, other than that, you should be fine."
He strode back to the front of the class, robes billowing as he turned. At least we weren't punished, Hermione thought with a mental sigh of relief.
"You'll receive a zero for today, Weasley." Snape didn't even bother to face them as he spoke. "And I'll take ten points apiece from Gryffindor."
It happened slowly.
First, her uniform began to prickle at her skin. The starch of her collar and the wool of her tights made her hot and uncomfortable.
Next, the tapping of Professor McGonagall's wand against her desk rang through Hermione's skull, sending pain shooting behind her eyes.
"Is something the matter, Miss Granger?" Professor McGonagall's eyes were soft as she spoke, her brow tight with concern.
"Not a thing, Professor." Hermione forced a smile. "I think I'm just hungry."
Walking into the Great Hall after class was a mistake. Plates clattered and glasses tinkled, students shrieked with laughter and chattered ceaselessly. Noise crashed over her in a wave, but it was nothing compared to the smells. The sweetness of desserts mingled with the savoury of the roast beef and the steamed vegetables. And beneath it all was the sourness of hundreds of sweaty bodies. It turned her stomach.
"I'm going to bed," she announced to Harry and Ron. "You go ahead, and I'll see you tomorrow."
Harry looked concerned, his mouth turned down at the corners, and Ron was puzzled.
How can she turn down food after last year? he thought.
It wasn't until she was half-way back to Gryffindor Tower that she realised he hadn't spoken aloud.
Her sheets scratched and clawed at her limbs. She threw them off, hoping for a reprieve, but the cool air chilled her skin. She couldn't get comfortable, and she kept thinking about Ron and what he hadn't said.
After hours of lying as still as she could, desperate not to irritate her skin further, she fell into a restless sleep. Her dreams were fraught and confused. Foreign, yet familiar. She waded through other people's nightmares and was sucked into their fantasies.
When she awoke, her alarm clock dinging at its reassuringly usual volume, she no longer felt allergic to the world. She rubbed her hands over her bedsheets, relishing how perfectly normal they felt beneath her fingers.
The breathing of her roommates, both still fast asleep despite her alarm clock, was slow, even, and barely audible. She threw open her hangings and stretched in the watery light that bathed her bed.
Won Won, she heard. Come back to bed.
Lavender's voice echoed through her skull as though she'd whispered the words into Hermione's ear. She was immediately on her feet.
Don't be like that, Won Won. You know you want to.
Hermione gathered her school clothes and wash-kit as fast as humanly possible and darted from the room, heading to the bathroom on the floor below. She had no desire to hear the rest of whatever dream she assumed her roommate was ensconced in.
The shower was bliss after the day before. She ran the water as hot as she could stand it and just stood there as it pounded her skull, drenched her hair, and ran down her skin. She closed her eyes and willed the world away.
What is happening? she asked herself. It had to be a side effect of the potion. Ron must have brewed it incorrectly despite Snape's assurances to the contrary. She supposed the potion had made her sensitive to more than just the usual five senses. Temporary Legilimency was not unheard of, after all. But why hadn't it disappeared with the rest of the potion's side effects? It should be well and truly out of her system by now.
The library, it is then, she thought. At the very least, it would provide her with a quiet place to gather her thoughts.
It wasn't as peaceful as she'd imagined it to be.
Why, for the love of Merlin, is she here so early? Hogwarts's erstwhile librarian thought as Hermione quietly shut the heavy door behind her. Doesn't she have better ways to spend her Saturday?
Hermione huffed in annoyance at the woman's rudeness and stalked into the library's depths, determined to find a space where she wouldn't be disturbed. She settled on the combination of a small but sturdy table with a squashy chair by one of the large windows. The lake was dark and peaceful in the distance, a black mirror reflecting Hogwarts back to her. Dropping her bag to the floor, she started to explore the shelves around her.
Whether by fate or accident, she found herself ensconced in between the shelves devoted to Mind Magics. She pulled book after book from their homes and made herself a small stack to work through. She had no idea how exactly Ron had messed up his potion, so it made sense to start with what she did know: She could hear what people were thinking.
And she wanted it to stop.
She opened the cover of the first book—Legilimens of Legend—and began to read.
The library had proved virtually useless. None of the books she had found offered practical advice; most simply spoke of various witches and wizards of the past that'd had this or that ability. Frustrated, she'd even asked Madam Pince to grant her access to the Restricted Section. She'd been denied (with many a mental expletive from the dour librarian) and told to come back when she had a signed note from a teacher.
And now she was in the Common Room, already regretting leaving the relative peace of the library. The noise of Gryffindor Tower was normally bad enough, but the extra voices made it near unbearable.
But why doesn't he like me?
Why that filthy little—
What does she even mean by that?
Europa, Ganymede, Io, Callisto…
Wingardium leviosa. Come on! You can do it! Wingardium Leviosa. For the love of Merlin, levitate you damn book.
The antidote for a blended poison will be equal to more than the sum of the antidotes for each of the separate components. What the chuff does that even mean?
So, if Hufflepuff beat Gryffindor but Ravenclaw lose to Slytherin then… what? I still don't get it.
Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts, teach us something please. Whether we be old or bald or young with scabby knees… Stupid song. Get out of my head.
What an absolute git! Who sets a thirty-inch essay?!
"Honestly, Ron," Hermione snapped at his thought. "If you'd simply started a fortnight ago, when the essay was assigned, instead of two days before it's due in, you'd notice that a thirty-inch essay isn't beyond the realm of possibility."
"How did you—"
"Never mind how," she said, cutting him off. "I'm going to patrol."
She stood, turned on her heel and left the Common Room.
Ron's voice floated behind her as she left. "It's not even her night."
She slammed the portrait hole closed a little louder than she'd meant to.
Students! No respect for their elders, the Fat Lady thought in response.
She walked away as quickly as possible, looking for a less crowded hallway. She made her way down several flights of stairs, all of them blissfully stationary, and found herself in the east wing of the castle. There were no classrooms here and, more importantly, no portraits. The wing used to house the multitude of apprentices Hogwarts used to employ and teach, but now the wing stood empty. She wandered around the corridors, peering into open rooms or simply staring out of the windows.
The peace and quiet helped to calm her frayed nerves.
She turned a corner, hoping that the corridor led to a bathroom, and ran smack into something warm and solid. She nearly failed to keep her feet, but a vice-like grip on her upper arm steadied her.
"Miss Granger," Snape said in a low voice as he released her, "I would appreciate it if you refrained from crashing into teachers when you should be in your Common Room."
"Sorry, Professor." She rubbed at her arm. "Hang on…"
"Hang on?" he asked, tone scathing.
"I can't hear you!"
"Then I suggest you clean your ears out. And maybe a detention for good measure."
Hermione ignored him, too elated by her discovery.
"I meant that I can't hear your thoughts, sir."
"I should hope not."
"But why? Every since the potion accident I had yesterday, I've been hearing everything other people are thinking. Why can't I hear you?"
"You've been suffering unexpected side-effects from the accident?" Snape's voice seemed somehow softer than moments ago. "Why haven't you reported to the Hospital Wing? Or to me?"
"Oh, umm." Hermione sighed. "I suppose I didn't really think about it. I got a little preoccupied with trying to figure out what was going on. Silly of me."
"The understatement of the century." Snape rolled his eyes.
Hermione concentrated on Snape himself, stretching out her senses, trying to hear the smallest peep from his thoughts. His mind felt cold and smooth, like a ball of perfectly set concrete, and nearly impossible to crack. She pulled back into herself once more.
"Why can't I hear you?" she asked again.
"Think, Miss Granger," Snape said in a voice she recognised as the one he used when speaking to 'dunderheads.' "Why would I be able to keep you out of my head when others cannot?"
Hermione thought for a moment, her mind racing. "Oh, of course! You're an Occlumens."
"Bravo." The sarcasm resonated through his low drawl. "Take a half a point for Gryffindor."
"So, if Occlumency can keep me out of your head, do you think it could keep other people's thoughts out of mine?"
"It's a reasonable hypothesis, yes."
"Will you teach me?"
"And why should I do that? If you hadn't noticed, Miss Granger, my last attempt at teaching such a skill proved to be a dismal failure."
Hermione winced at the mention of Snape's Occlumency lessons with Harry. 'Dismal failure' didn't even begin to cover it.
"This isn't the kind of thing I can just learn from a textbook, sir. Believe me, I'd have done it by now if that were the case."
"There's got to be someone else—anyone else—who can teach you."
"I'm open to suggestions." She waited politely for his answer, watching in surprised amusement as his eyebrows drew tightly together before he threw up his hands in defeat. "So," she tried again, "will you teach me? "
Snape released a long-suffering sigh. "I suppose I must."
And so, Hermione found herself thrown into a new routine.
Every morning, whilst the castle was still asleep, she knocked on the door to Snape's office and was bid to enter. There she would be put through her paces, forced to visualise a way to keep people far from her mind—she chose the concrete she had found in his own.
She came to relish those mornings. Sure, Snape was frequently grumpy and often snapped, but she treasured the cool concrete of his mind after the interminable chatter and thoughts of the rest of the castle.
She felt more comfortable in his office than she did in her own bed.
One morning, instead of immediately trying to force his way into her mind as was his custom, he was sat behind his desk with his fingers steepled together.
"I've been doing some research," he explained without preamble once she'd taken a seat. "I think that the Sensitising Solution was brewed correctly. I've triple-tested the sample flask Weasley handed in." Hermione supposed it was lucky that Ron had handed his potion in before knocking the remainder to the floor; she hadn't realised that Snape had a sample.
"But then why—"
"If you occasionally refrained from interrupting, you may learn something to your benefit." The warmth in his voice that she was used to hearing by now suggested he was more amused than annoyed.
"Sorry, sir."
"Quite. As I was saying, I think that the potion triggered a natural inclination for Legilimency within you, that until the accident, had lain dormant."
She waited a moment, to be sure that he had finished. "I thought Legilimency required intent? How can I be doing it passively?"
"Usually, it does. But there have been cases where people had little to no control of their Legilimency. They could no more keep people's thoughts from their heads than they could keep people from talking."
"So, you're telling me that it's irreversible?"
"It would seem that way, yes."
She felt her chest tighten. An eternity of other people's voices.
She was getting the hang of keeping him out. But keeping her mental defences intact was exhausting. Snape was a natural Occlumens; the way he told it, he'd been shielding his mind for longer than he could remember. She would never be able to shield her mind indefinitely.
The tightness in her chest squeezed harder, and her eyes began to burn. She blinked away the tears that gathered in a film over her vision, willing them away.
"But I'll continue to look into it." His voice was soft and warm once more.
"I don't know how long I can keep this up," she whispered, not trusting her voice. It wasn't the fact that she could hear other people's thoughts that was the problem, it was knowing precisely what they were thinking. A harsh thought in her direction brought up every nasty taunt and jeer she'd had to sit through in primary school. Each shared nightmare left Bellatrix Lestrange looming over, knife in hand. And each foreign pang for a lost loved one left her mind swimming with her parents, with Sirius and Remus, with Fred.
"Much as I'm loathe to admit it, you're one of the brighter students I've ever had the displeasure of teaching. You can do this." His dark eyes bored into her own. "And, if it gets too much, you can always come here."
Relief flooded her system.
Less than a fortnight ago, she was tense and jumpy around this man. Now, she didn't know what she'd do without him; he was peace, security, and the calm within the storm of thought that was Hogwarts. He was, and would continue to be, her refuge of concrete.