Hello people! Welcome back.
As per usual, you are all amazing and wonderful for giving me feedback so I can improve and sharing your own thoughts and theories. You guys rock!
I am surprised about something though. I really thought you guys would get a laugh out of the mentioning of Simone once trying to hatch a chicken's egg under a toad and getting detention for it.
Glad Severus's thoughts on the whole Mary situation were we received. I didn't want people thinking he'd honestly used someone he became friends with for a petty revenge against Lily. He honestly just has no clue how to deal with this because aside from Lily, he's never encountered a girl who liked him that way before. Hell, even with Lily he had no idea what to do.
Anyway, to the merry making!
If Someone Cared Enough
Chapter Sixty-Three: Downtime
"This is ridiculous," Severus griped from his seat on the floor.
A slight jerk of his hair stifled his complaints.
"Hush," Nesme said, seated on the couch behind him, "I need to concentrate."
Delicately weaving her fingers through Severus's dark locks, Nesme trailed the pads of her fingers across the boy's scalp, feeling out every little detail, each lump and hollow. Mindful of her nails, she tapped at different places on Severus's head in intervals, careful not to miss anything. Every so often, she cast a glance at a worn book sitting open on the couch beside her.
"You have such nice hair," she commented, allowing some of the ebony locks to fall through her fingers like a waterfall, "Soft."
Severus said nothing, but inwardly he was relieved to hear it wasn't greasy. Even with proper shampoo and hygiene, he found it hard not to be self-conscious after years of people's mockery over his appearance.
"Phrenology is bunk muggle science," Severus huffed instead, arms crossed over his chest.
"Doesn't make it any less fun," Nesme chirped back in reply. She parted Severus's hair down the middle, running her finger down the center as if scanning the index of a book. Parting a new segment and beginning her search anew, her movements were slow and deliberate, careful not to miss a single variation in Severus's scalp. She flipped sections of the Slytherin's hair like pages, rubbing her fingers against his skin with feather light touches.
Nesme lifted a section of Severus's hair straight up so that she could feel out a spot at the roots with her free hand, carefully inspecting the spot before dismissing it as inconsequential and moving on.
"Anyway," Nesme said, gathering the back of Severus's hair up and flipping it forward over his head, "Phrenology isn't really about exact science; it's more about dragging things out of your subconscious."
"I somehow highly doubt that," Severus said from beneath his curtain of hair, feeling very much like Cousin It from the Addams Family.
"It's true, though," Simone said from the settee, bottle of nail lacquer in hand. She'd managed to talk three of the kitchen house elves into getting pedicures or foot massages, "There are many 'sciences' out there in the muggle world that don't do what they claim, but allowing people to think they do gives them better insight into themselves—other foot now, please," she requested of Grie, a knobby kneed elf.
Davis looked up from cleaning his chess pieces, "You mean like muggle tarot and palm readings?"
Simone nodded, "Exactly. Naturally, the readings these so-called psychics make are not accurate, but it forces people to supply answers for themselves, based on thoughts they were unaware were bothering them. The reader claims a person has a past regret, so naturally the person scrounges their subconscious looking for an event that caused them guilt or remorse and attributes that to the reader's claims."
Simone filed down the nail on Grie's big toe before careful applying the first coat of lacquer, blowing on it softly to quicken the drying time, "It's a great way to make people pry things out of their mind they once buried; gives them circumspect."
Lily listened intently from the armchair, threading her long fingers through Mary's hair, "But I thought tarot and palmistry were actual magic; we learn them in school."
"Yes, but true divination of any kind requires magic," Simone explained, not taking her eyes off the toes she was in the process of painting fuchsia, "A proper tarot reading requires channeling ones magic into the cards during shuffling, ensuring the cards drawn accurately describe the client based on what your magic sensed of them. The same goes for Palmistry; you have to use the inner eye to understand the true meanings behind the lines."
"Technically, you're reading the clients magical core, not the lines," Thea corrected, lounging with a copy of the Beedle Bard.
Lily nodded in understanding, sectioning off the center of Mary's hair to beginning braiding. Taking Simone's advice, she'd started requesting a lot of bonding time with Mary, frequently spending time with the girl both in groups and just the two of them.
She felt bad about interfering with Mary's relationship with Severus—though Simone assured her there wasn't one yet—but, considering she'd had Severus first and they never had a chance to officially discuss whether they were over or had even been together, it was only fair Lily get the answers she needed before Severus moved on to anyone else.
If waiting for Severus to forgive her enough to talk to took weaseling between him and Mary in the meantime, Lily wasn't going to miss the opportunity. She knew what she had with Severus was something real and even if it was over, Severus—and in part Mary—owed it to her to clear the air and see where she stood with Sev before he sought out any new entanglements.
Lily took comfort in the thought that her attempts to win Severus were not dastardly like Potter's past attempts to woo her. She was getting between Sev and Mary, but not maliciously. Potter mocked Sev ruthlessly and dogged his steps, all in some misguided attempt to flatter Lily with his antics. James deliberately riled Severus up so that Sev's hostile attitude afterwards would drive a wedge between him and Lily.
Lily was at least spending time with Mary making the girl laugh and smile…it just happened to cut into Mary's alone time with Severus.
She hoped that the time spent together would show Mary how much Lily did honestly care about her, so that the friendship could be saved if and when Lily got back together with Sev.
"Okay," Nesme announced, breaking Lily's concentration. The Hufflepuff sat back, holding her grandmother's phrenology book.
Using her free hand, Nesme arranged Severus's hair back into natural order, allowing him to see again unobscured by hair.
"It says here," Nesme said, tapping a spot at the front of Severus's crown, "that the traits of humor are focused right here. The bigger the lump, the better your sense of humor is. However…" she dragged her finger back and forth across a dip inward on Severus's skull, "The hollower that section is…the less humor you have. Severus…you have no sense of humor."
"I could have told you that," Simone quipped as she waved the next elf—Autch—to take a seat before her while she lathered up her hands in moisturizer.
Severus scowled, "I have a sense of humor."
"Sarcasm is not humor," Simone said with authority, "That's called being a prick."
"You're pretty sarcastic, Simone," Lily pointed out.
"Yes, but I am also bloody hilarious," Simone declared, rubbing moisturizer into Autch's feet with gentle firmness.
"Riiiight," Severus drawled, causing Lily to snicker. The pair smiled at each other before seeming to remember themselves, looking away.
"A Phrenologist once told Mark Twain that a cavity on his skull indicated he lacked a sense of humor too," Davis decided to add to the conversation, "He'd gone under a fake name. When he came back months later as himself, the Phrenologist had no clue it was the same man he'd already looked at once. He declared Twain had a wonderful sense of humor because he already knew Twain wrote satire. Never mentioned any cavity that time."
Severus smirked, "There you have it; a satirist accused of having no humor. What further proof do you need that this is all a load of dragon dung?"
"Focus," Nesme scolded, moving onto a new place on Severus's head, "Over here on the side of your head we have things like acquisitiveness, secretiveness…" she paused, smoothing her hand across the spot, "I see your secretiveness and cautiousness are immensely large…"
"You know, they say P.T. Barnum scored high in all traits except for cautiousness," Simone said absentmindedly, working the tension out of the soles of Autch's feet.
Severus snorted, "Now that I believe."
"Down by the ear we have destructiveness," Nesme went on, circling a place just above Severus's left ear, "Hmmm…it's not as big as I expected it to be."
"Okay if those lumps are telling you Snape's not destructive, then it has to be bunk," Simone joked, earning a few giggles from the others at Severus's expense.
Severus sent a rude gesture Simone's way.
Nesme shushed everyone soundly, eyeing her book, "Behind 'destructiveness', we have combativeness, which—ooh! I knew it, this one is extremely large."
"Phrenology vindicated!" Simone cried uproariously, making a few of the Ravenclaws in the blue clad common room send glares in their direction.
"Hogwash," Severus grumbled.
Nesme hummed, "The lumps don't lie, Severus. Your combativeness section is massively oversized compared to the other planes of your head."
"All of the lousy—," Severus reached up, touching the spot Nesme's finger was on, "That's not 'combativeness'; that's where Black deliberately struck me with a bludger in third year," he scowled, "He sent it right into the stands where I was sitting."
"Whoops," Nesme giggled, flushing red, "My mistake."
"I want to try," Simone said, dismissing the final house elf with an affectionate pat on the head. She jumped to her feet and came up behind Severus. Using Nesme's book for reference, she jabbed her finger at the back of Severus's head, "It says here that this is where 'inhibitiveness' is. Judging by this divet, you have no inhibitions."
"I think that says 'inhabitiveness', Simone," Nesme corrected.
"Really? The writing's so cramped," Simone looked closer at the book, Severus's head still firmly grasped in her hands. She looked down at Severus contemplatively, "Hm…safe to say this one's uninhabitable."
"Okay," Severus said sharply, batting away Simone's hands and standing up, "That's enough fun for now. Let's do something else."
"The hell with that," Simone said, throwing herself down in front of Nesme on the floor, "Do me next."
Severus rolled his eyes as the process started all over again.
"Phrenology is absolute drivel," he told Simone.
"Don't care; it feels amazing," Simone said dreamily, luxuriating in the sensation of Nesme's fingers gently carding through her hair.
Lily plucked a few hairpins from the tin in her lap, pinching them between her pursed lips while she finished off the end of Mary's braid. Using the pins to secure the hair in place, she admired her handiwork.
"It's done," she declared.
"Ooh, let me see," Mary pleaded, taking the mirror Lily offered her. Turning this way and that, she examined her reflection.
"It's beautiful," she said happily, patting her hairdo, "Sev, what do you think?"
Severus cleared his throat awkwardly, "Well it's…very nice…?"
Mary beamed at him, while Lily held back a frown of displeasure.
"How about you do mine next, Mary?" Lily suggested.
Mary nodded eagerly, enjoying some girl time, "Okay, let's switch seats."
The pair traded spaces and Mary straight away began finger combing out Lily's long hair.
"You're so lucky your hair is straight," Mary mused as she smoothed out any tangles, "Mine takes an hour to get all the snarls out; curly hair is the worst."
"And yet nearly ever straight haired girl wants curls," Simone murmured, leaning back into Nesme's touch as the girl did her examination.
Lily laughed, recalling her sister, "Petunia once slept sitting up just so she wouldn't mess up the curlers she put in before bed. She'd read in a magazine that curly was in."
Simone grinned, amused at the mental image that created, "I myself never got into the curls obsession; it's more work to accomplish that look with my hair."
"Yeah, you have a different texture than ours," Nesme noted thoughtfully, twisting a lock of Simone's hair between her thumb and pointed finger, "Why do you straighten it?"
"Easier upkeep," Simone replied, "I'm actually quite proud of my natural hair, but keeping it clean and tidy takes a lot of time and braiding. Most cosmetic charms can't quite replicate the intricacy of cornrows; a spell to make it sleek and straight is simple though."
"You use to cornrow your hair by hand," Thea remembered, "It looked so pretty."
"That was before the course loads increased more and more," Simone explained, "There's hardly any time in the morning to do a proper hair care procedure these days."
"Not that all this hair talk isn't fascinating," Davis drawled, "But are we actually going to do anything productive today? So far we've been sitting around doing nothing."
"I'm doing something," Nesme defended.
"Speaking of which, any lacking qualities in Simone, Nesme?" Severus asked sardonically, "Any massive hollows in her head indicating some profound shortcomings?"
Simone stuck her tongue out at Severus, "I'll have you know my head is as flawless as the rest of me."
"Actually," Nesme said interestedly, "This dip right here would indicate you lacking in appropriateness."
Severus pointed triumphantly at Simone, "Ha! Stick that on your broom and fly it."
"I'm chalk full of appropriateness," Simone insisted, "So fuck off."
Thea, being unfortunate enough to have chosen that time to take a sip of tea, promptly choked.
"Classy, Simone," Davis said, patting Thea on the back, "Very classy. Ranks right up there with the time you went an entire week pointing at things with your middle finger to see if anyone would notice."
"Made a lot of enemies that week," Simone mused fondly.
Davis shook his head, bringing the conversation back to the topic at hand, "Anyway, I was asking if we were going to do something today? You know…something important."
"The important matters you're obviously speaking of aren't the sort to be discussed with so many prying eyes and ears around," Simone replied, gesturing to the other students in the common room.
"I've got that covered," Severus announced, casting muffliato with a lazy flick of his wand.
"We're sadly at a standstill regarding both the diadem and the Chamber," Severus said with disappointment, "We don't know how to open the Chamber's entrance in the girl's room and we have no clue how or why Riddle cursed the diadem, which makes destroying it near impossible too."
"We've also reached a dead-end with information on Riddle," Davis added, "there's no one in the school we can safely ask."
"That's true," Simone agreed, "Slughorn is sort of out of the question since he'll avoid answering and any other teacher we ask might eventually repeat it back to him. He'll get suspicious of why we're poking around in that subject, maybe even run to Dumbledore if we're not careful."
"That leaves us up a creek without a paddle," Lily stated.
"Unless we got his school records," Mary said, clearing doubting it even possible.
Severus snorted, "I had considered that, but it's not possible. It's unlikely we could get access to the archives."
Nesme paused, her hands stilling on Simone's head, "Maybe not…"
All eyes turned to her.
"What do you mean, Nes?" Davis asked.
Nesme tapped her chin thoughtfully, "Technically, the school records are only protected for the safety of children."
"Yeah…" Simone prompted expectantly, "So?"
"So Riddle's not a child anymore," Nesme clarified, "His records aren't really under the same stature of confidentiality that they were when he was a student."
"Then his records are already discarded," Davis sighed.
Nesme shook her head, "Not necessarily. If I recall, older records are moved from the archives into storage once someone graduates."
"How do you know all this?" Severus asked.
Nesme grinned, "My first year here, I fell from the staircases no less than 27 times; couldn't get used to them moving on their own at random. It had to be logged in my record as incident reports to cover the school for liability. Madam Pomfrey usually summoned my file to make the write ups right in front of me. I got curious so I eventually asked about it."
Nesme giggled at the memory, "I guess I asked a lot of questions; she got really exasperated with me and offered me a calming draught just to shut me up."
"Aside from the humorous visual of you falling down a never ending staircase…" Simone began.
"How does that help us?" Lily finished.
"Well, from what I understand," Nesme elaborated, "No one physically removes the records when a student graduates, the records are moved magically by the school itself and only returned to the archive drawers when requested by a teacher, typically the Headmaster or Pomfrey."
"So?" Severus asked.
Nesme turned to Severus, "Soooo, if there isn't necessarily a place Hogwarts keeps old records, then they're simultaneously here and not here…sound familiar?"
Simone sat up, "You think we can get them through the Come-and-Go room?"
Nesme shrugged, "It's worth trying. The room supposedly turns into whatever you need of it, so why not a storage room for dusty old records no one looks at anymore?"
Severus frowned, "Dumbledore was exceptionally distrusting of Riddle, yet he and Slughorn both seemed to have kept his secrets hidden for some reason. Who's to say Dumbledore didn't have Riddle's records destroyed to keep others from learning about him?"
Nesme waggled her eyebrows, "It's not the Headmaster's decision; it's Hogwarts. According to our history books, the school can technically override any decision made by the Headmaster if it so chosen, acting with a will all its own. Just like any name in the student roster, Hogwarts adds the names itself when a witch or wizard is born and no authority can strike a students' name from the list unless they attend a different school or are expelled. Riddle graduated Hogwarts, so there is no legal authority to remove him from Hogwarts personal records. Maybe they're still here."
"That's a fairly big maybe," Simone said, mulling it over, "But I suppose it couldn't hurt to look into it. The worst that could happen is we find nothing and are back to square one; no harm, no foul."
"Exactly!" Nesme cried, happy to have someone on board with her idea, "So let's get going."
"I'm afraid we'll have to put off your experiment on hold for now," Mary informed the excitable girl, "Filch has been up in the seventh floor for hours, cleaning some sort of muck off the walls. I think Gideon and Fabian had something to do with it; they seemed pretty smug about something this morning."
Nesme deflated visibly, sitting back in her seat with a pout.
"Notice how those two hellions can prank without hurting anyone," Severus said of the Prewett boys, "A feat Potter and his lot seem incapable of accomplishing."
"But they've stopped bothering you, haven't they?" Lily asked.
Severus frowned, "Technically, though I've been hit in the past with some tripping jinxes and such that I'm positive were them. Though they haven't actually bothered me since this term started."
Lily smiled, relieved, "Good. I'm glad Potter's finally leaving you alone."
Severus scowled, "For all you know, this just means they're planning something bad."
"Or it means they're changing for the better," Lily argued. She didn't actually care what Potter was accused of, but she wished Severus wouldn't waste so much energy hating the guy when he could just spend time enjoying himself. Bitterness had to be exhausting.
"What makes you think he's capable of change?" Severus asked angrily.
"Nothing, I just think it's getting a little old to be hating someone who is no longer bothering you," Lily insisted, "Can't you bury the hatchet."
Apparently that was the wrong thing to say.
Severus's scowl deepened, "If you think Potter's so reformed, why don't you go pick flowers again together."
Lily sat back with a start, surprised, "What?"
"You heard me," Severus snapped, "Go get all cozy with him in the moonlight."
The other's watched the exchange with interest, Davis and Nesme looking exceptionally confused.
It was Lily's turn to scowl, "I'm not sure what you thought was going on, but I didn't do that for fun, Severus. He wanted to get a flower for Jess. He even threatened to deliberately get caught and lose us points if I didn't help him."
The frown slid of Severus's face, giving way to genuine surprise and prompting Lily to wonder just what Severus thought she was doing with James.
"Now, now, let's not fight," Mary soothed, misreading the tension. She moved to sit next to Severus, wrapping her arms around him, "Lily's not about to turn her back on your friendship to date James, Sev. You two are best friends; she wouldn't let some arrogant jerk come between that."
"Right," Severus said lowly, looking away, "We're still friends."
Lily masked her sadness well, passing her frown off as annoyance for the overall argument.
Nesme caught Lily's eye and gave her a questioning look.
'I thought you two were together,' she mouthed when Mary wasn't looking.
Lily shook her head.
'It's complicated,' she mouthed back.
"Am I…" Davis started, gesturing between Mary, Severus, and Lily, "Missing something here?"
"No, you're not," Simone interjected quickly, "Davis, get over here and let Nesme feel your head. Let's find out what your shortcomings are."
Davis frowned, "I refuse to take part in such obvious ridiculousness. We've already determine that Phrenology is based on zero facts or research."
"Don't be a spoilsport," Simone chided, tilting her head back to look at Nesme.
"Don't you want to know how lumpy Davis's head is?" she asked her pleasantly plump friend.
Nesme nodded eagerly, "I do!" she turned puppy dog eyes to Davis.
"Please, Davis," Nesme begged, batting her wide hazel eyes at the studious boy, "I'll be real quick. Think of it as a massage."
Davis flushed, "That hardly makes the concept more desirable."
"Are you sure?" Simone teased, "It doesn't titillate you a little bit?" She looked back and forth between Nesme and Davis, waggling her eyebrows.
Davis flushed deeper, hunching down so that his shoulders came up past his neck, "I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about."
Simone leaned forward, a shark toothed grin etched into her face, "Really?"
Nesme tilted her head, completely oblivious to the undertones of the conversation, "I'm confused; what's so funny about a massage? Davis, if it's your first time, I promise I'll be gentle."
Davis went tomato red while Simone cackled gleefully.
"What?" Nesme asked, lost, "What'd I say?"
"Nothing," Davis snapped, "Let's just get this over with." He plonked down in front of Nesme, his arms crossed and face scarlet.
Everyone else laughed. Even Severus allowed himself a slight smile, the previous tension temporarily lessening.
Still, he wouldn't meet Lily's eyes for the remainder of the day, meaning Lily was going to have to try a lot harder to get the stubborn boy to soften to her.
I may have been channeling a little asmr in this chapter. It's actually very, very soothing to write about things like brushing hair or anything involving quiet, personal attention really. For me at least.
So I had a fun time with; got inspired on the Phrenology snippet after watching an epi of Mysteries at the Museum that covered the occasion where Mark Twain went to a famed Phrenologist; once under a fake name, once as himself. When the phrenologist thought Twain was some regular joe, he was quite adamant that a hollow in Twain's head indicated a severe lack of humor. But when Twain came back months later the Phrenologist, not recalling the previous encounter and knowing Twain to be a famed satirist, claimed that Twain had a great lump on his head indicating a vast capacity for humor. Twain marked this down as indisputable proof that there was no science to Phrenology, it was all a new aged (for the time) hoax.
Nesme is the sort of girl who is into all sorts of kooky things, even knowing when some of it isn't real. If magic didn't exist, she'd be the sort of girl who would still put out fairy houses for the ones that lived in her imagination, because it's more fun to indulge in make believe and fantasy.
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