You sleep as you hang beneath the bar you support. You appear to be asleep nearly every moment we share in the dungeon. I think now that you merely appear so... Do you know that I'm here? Or am I only a tortured spirit now?
You now are draped in something new; a heavy brown blanket has replaced the worn black cloak. Why a blanket, why provide you with warmth? I have to know, if I just stretch a bit further...
I barely brush the edge of it with the very tip of my fingers, enough to feel it is rough and a bit sharp, some sort of matted hair. It's very unpleasant on my fingers even now that I've let go, and yet it is covering your entire body, the bar across your shoulders digging it into you. The brief touch gets your attention and as you slowly turn to look at me for the first time my heart leaps into my mouth, because for the briefest moment you look both serene and intensely haunted. And then it's gone, the look is wiped from your eyes and replaced with your usual stony glare.
"You?" is your astonished rasp, but the questioning in your voice is not reflected at all in your eyes. No, the look that is dawning is NOT confusion at all. It's resolute and slightly murderous.
My heart leaps as I realize that I am real, and I DO know you, not just a memory, not an illusion, and that you weren't aware of my presence, and I'm no longer alone! I cannot answer out loud, but send a nod and my best closed expression. I try not to show the pain and fear. Not your student anymore, many years from the giggling girl you knew...(And the giggling walks in the garden, ah those are in hiding, for sharing later perhaps.)
"But how? How long have you been here?" Your voice is losing the harshness of misuse now.
I do my best to think my answer, over and over like the prayer of a child the single simple phrase, 'I cannot speak'. My gestures and look are imploring you to hear my thoughts, and understand my plight, the mistake of my own cleverness. Maybe I am that insufferable schoolgirl still...
The chain gives me just enough slack to point to my throat and shake my head. Even this exhausts me as I hang my head briefly to hide the pain in my face from you. And I hear your reply in my thoughts, 'then show me here.' I recoil from the look of your eyes as you take in my appearance finally. I know I am cold and wet, dirty and beaten and miserable, but I haven't seen my own face in so long now, and there it is reflected in your eyes. I can't bear to look.
"You must look, its easier for me," you implore. This time you wear the blank scowl so long practiced. Somehow it comforts me, so familiar to me. "How long have you been here with me? Is there anyone else here? I should have noticed..." you break off with a note of anger.
My thoughts come hard and clear, the night you disappeared and I was captured several hours later, the week of rape and torture before I was brought here. That I only knew it had been a week because someone had said it aloud to me. The few days of madness here alone in the damp, only the faintest glimmer of the rising sun to note the time by. Three times the sun has cast its faint glow since They brought you to me. That you are only here when there is that glow, and then They come to take you, and I'm again alone in the dark. The silence so loud I retreat back into myself to keep from going mad. Where do They take you for so long, what punishment do They visit on you...
"Stop, Hermione, please. Don't think of where that might be, your mind is too open," you grimace darkly. "Why are you here with me? What have They done this for?" you ask not me, but yourself. Now I can feel you thinking, relishing the feel of your thoughts in my burning lonely mind, turning the thought over and over, 'what can They gain from this pairing?'
'To see what has become of the traitor, what They brought my mentor to, he who dared to defy the Dark Lord. To show you what They think of the filth you taught and plotted with, how easily They break the circle Potter holds dear,' my thoughts assault you again, in the Death Eaters own words. I think up the memories I absorbed while They...
You look away during my answers, but now fix that murderous glare on me.
"No, don't show me that image girl, I can't bear it," you growl at me. Of course, you have become my own invention these last days, but you wouldn't really care for the filthy girl before you, my bruised and ruined intelligence. In my obsession to wake you, hear you, know... so many answers, I forgot again who you are. Distant Professor Snape, not a fixture of my pleasant thoughts of release.
"We will leave this place, I swear it!" Your words bite into my reverie. Clipped and fierce, but words to what, make me hope?
I realize you mean it, and that I believe you! How is this? My tall black haired frightening professor, tormentor, mentor.... protector?
The frantic giggling bubbles up again, threatening to pull me back into the comforting fantasy... 'No child, stay here with me, it hurts I know but trust me, its better here with me.'
And my answer? 'Dear cellmate, my dark and dangerous tree, you don't know how wonderful it is...my Garden.' I begin to share my private haven, pulling you along insistently, carefully walking you into the light slowly, stepping across the grass on my tip-toes... to my shock you are in my mind not free and blissful, but brooding, dressed severely and scowling at me! (Tsk tsk, what have you done girl, ruined your only escape.) You pull away, back into the nightmare, using all your powers to make me follow. I'm stunned to find I can resist, more stunned that I am winning this tug-of-soul! The student has found a secret power, desperation. 'Just let me show you where I've been, Professor,' my thoughts are sent slowly, softly, like a whisper. 'Its beautiful, I may be safe here, and They cannot follow.' As we fall into the path, struggling ceases and you relent some, ok, a peek.
You answer my mad escape into peace with dour thoughts, 'show me your madness girl, but then come into reality with me, you must.'
I don't know how long I was gone, (we were gone, it is WE now!) but I am somehow more myself now. You are so tired, I finally see what I couldn't dare before...They are winning their battle with you as well.
You spend the next few hours drifting in and out, not sleeping as I thought but meditating, rebuilding your strength and closing your mind into itself. You share this all with me, openly sending this comfort to me. I feel the madness and desperation leaving me as I float along on these thoughts of yours, and try to imitate your concentrations. It gets harder to see you; I know They come to take you soon. "Be ready," you command. And then you sleep. I drift back into myself. 'I will, I promise I will be ready.' Is this thought in your mind or mine now?
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