Title: 'Looking for Magic in All the Right Places'
Genre: Challenge. Response to the WIKTT 'Summer School Challenge'
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Occasional poetry!
Disclaimer: See Chapter One.
Special thanks: Do please see the Author's Notes!
Chapter Ten: Hold Nothing Back, Miss Granger
The aim was elimination. Only two finalists would stand.
As the judges called Lupin and Harry forward to compete, Hermione knew without even looking that Snape was shooting dark glances at her. Pretending a vast and sophisticated indifference, she leaned back in her chair and fixed her attention on the invocations. She'd assumed that Lupin, with his tortured past and his still-fresh memories of running four-legged through wild moonlit nights, would be more imaginative than Harry, who seemed better suited as a warrior than a poet. Indeed, of their two poems, she preferred Lupin's ironic depiction of a fierce, proud captive animal reflecting on the strange creatures trapped outside his cage. However, Harry's fiery heroic couplets re-living the incandescent experience of fighting enemies on dragon-back took enough of the popular vote to award the round to him.
It was hard to tell who was happier: Harry the winner or Lupin the proud teacher. Hermione gave Harry's arm a little squeeze when he sat back down, and he grinned at her. At least their friendship was rock-solid again.
In the next elimination, Susan Bones stood up better against Snape than poor old Ernie. Even though Susan couldn't sustain the brilliance of her semi-final performance, the popular vote skewed heavily toward her. This result puzzled the judges; as far as they were concerned, Snape had clearly won. Snape scowled as the judges conferred, then smirked when McCourt stood up to announce that the judges respectfully had to over-rule the popular vote for the student in favour of the professor's more powerful and cleverly structured invocation.
'Well, we tried,' Terry sighed, as Susan made her way gratefully back to the Hufflepuff crowd. They welcomed her with applause.
'You voted for Susan? Cripes, why ever for? We want to see Hermione go up against Snape, remember?' hissed Parvati.
'So to speak,' Lavender leered.
'Stuff a sock in it,' said Ron. 'Look, it's their turn now.'
No friendly buzz greeted these two competitors. As soon as Hermione and Snape rose to their feet and moved to the centre, silence reigned. Hermione felt pinned by those avid gazes like a butterfly to a wall.
'You may take the offensive, Miss Granger,' said McCourt. His light, melodious voice calmed her. Gathering strength, she straightened and looked her adversary in the eye. Though Snape's expression gave nothing away, Hermione could almost see tension radiating from him, like waves of spectral light.
The time to put Severus Snape in his place was at hand. When Hermione opened her mouth, the words of her perfect invocation made the farthest corners of the room echo.
'You are the hollow man.
You are the uncrying man.
You are a shape filled with darkness.'
Her voice rolled over Snape like smoke. The room seemed to dim.
'Your cold hand crushes dried roots.
Your dried voice whispers cold spells.
You are quiet and chill
As wind in dead grass
Or rats' feet over spilt potions.
You raise the dungeon stones,
And seal heart and soul within
A cage of bones.'
A vast wall of grey air swirled between Hermione's extended hand and Snape; from this inchoate mass she could hear faint shrieks as if people were being tortured. She could see Snape only dimly, as though the room were filled with fog. He fell to his knees, his back bowed as if something huge and heavy were pressing down on him.
How good it felt to cage him. To crush him.
Arms pinned her from behind and pulled her hand down. Hermione struggled, crying out.
'Hermione, no, no! Break your focus. Don't look at Snape! Don't look at him!' Hands clamped over her eyes. Immediately her urge to crush Snape vanished, and all she could feel was a stunned, abject horror. She slumped, eyes squeezed shut. The arms supported her to a chair.
When Hermione dared to open her eyes again, Lupin was crouched in front of her, and Harry sat beside her, one hand on her shoulder, his brilliant green eyes wide with concern.
'Hermione, are you all right?' Harry said as soon as she met his gaze.
She took a deep, shaky breath and nodded. 'I think so.' She turned to Lupin. 'Professor . . . what happened? Did I--oh gods--did I hurt Professor Snape?'
Lupin gave her a crooked grin. 'I broke your concentration on time. He felt some discomfort, but otherwise Professor Snape is fine.'
As if to confirm this, Snape moved into her field of view. For a moment, Hermione kept her eyes fixed on the front of his robe, with all those tiny buttons. She considered counting every single one of those tiny buttons--anything to avoid meeting his eyes.
Summoning that much-vaunted Gryffindor bravery, Hermione raised her chin. Snape met her apologetic look with the raised eyebrows and long, slow nod of a seasoned knight realising he had been bested and was sporting enough to concede the joust. She swallowed. She didn't deserve such graciousness.
'I'm so sorry, Professor.'
'For what?' said Snape briskly. 'For doing what you're supposed to do in this competition?' His mouth twitched, and Hermione realised she was witnessing a smile. 'I'd say you held nothing back.'
'What exactly did I do to you?'
'You--raised an aggressive emotional force. It had the unpleasant effect of making me re-live some of the less noble moments of my Death Eater days.'
Hermione buried her face in her hands. 'Oh gods. I didn't mean . . .'
'Oh come, Miss Granger. You performed admirably, so please stop having the vapours. Perhaps later you will do me the courtesy of explaining what motivated you to concoct such an--interesting--theme. But for now, it's time to finish this round. Unless, of course, you wish to admit defeat.'
'I really don't think,' said Hermione, mustering her dignity, 'that declaring defeat is an option.' At his look of quickly veiled admiration, she felt that restless heat again, that . . . whatever it was he did to stop her breath and churn up her thought processes. Annoyed at herself, she got up, shaking her head at Harry when he tried to support her.
As she followed Snape back to the centre of the classroom, she noticed Jones and McCourt regarding her with great interest and more than a bit of respect. She looked out at the audience for the first time since she'd invoked the grey cloud. The students were clearly gob-smacked. She felt an odd twist of satisfaction.
But Dumbledore, that wise old bird of prey, looked at her with a small smile and not a trace of astonishment.
'Your response, Professor Snape,' McCourt said, his voice betraying a hint of trepidation.
It took all of Hermione's willpower not to cringe in anticipation of whatever the former Death Eater might blast in her direction. But the situation called for nothing less than sang-froid of Snapeian proportions. Without expression, she faced her adversary.
Snape looked back at her with that strange hint of a smile. 'Mine,' he whispered, his eyes never leaving Hermione's face.
Hushed murmurs and one stifled giggle rippled through the audience. Snape threw a black look in the direction of the giggler, invoking deep silence. Then once again he held Hermione in his gaze. His voice reached out and caressed her.
'Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw
of darkness;
My friend, my lover, my slave, my toy.
Let us walk in the night.
I'll teach you to read the grimoire of the hunt--
To fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to pounce,
To devour.'
His words curled slowly around her. She found it hard to breathe.
'My emotions are pure as crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes;
I speak greed with my claws and fear with my teeth.
Desire lashes my tail.
Come. I will teach you to hunt
As naturally as wandering the deep reaches of night.'
Black eyes, edged with fire, promised things unspeakable. But as heat twisted within her, the poem's relentless, hungry cadence gentled into longing.
'And you will teach me the poetry of touch
Then learn to shape my name.
And learn to speak
A word--
One word
The only word
Taming me entire.'
As Hermione, ensorcelled, took two stumbling steps toward her predator, a shriek rose from the audience. The spell shattered, and she swayed and would have fallen if two strong hands hadn't caught her shoulders and held her tight. 'Minerva!' Snape shouted almost in her ear, not letting Hermione go. She turned in Snape's grasp to look in the direction of the shriek and saw students backing away from the empty place where Professor McGonagall had just been sitting. Dumbledore, on his feet faster than she had seen him move in months, swept students and faculty out of the way and approached the empty table, his eyes wary.
'No, Potter!' Snape hissed, still holding Hermione tightly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Harry, his wand out and teeth bared, pull up short.
'Wait,' said Snape.
Dumbledore suddenly laughed--a deep, genuine laugh, the kind of laugh that hadn't echoed within Hogwarts' crumbling halls for far too long. He took a step back. A tabby cat with square markings around its eyes hopped onto the table, regarded Dumbledore steadily, and meowed twice.
'Minerva,' said Dumbledore, laughter still bubbling in his voice.
'Oh gods,' said Lupin. Low, incredulous murmurs erupted from various places in the room.
The tabby gathered itself into a soaring leap and landed almost at Snape's feet. As he and Hermione stared down, the cat stalked around the pair, completing a perfect circle.
'Do you think you can change back, Minerva?' said Dumbledore softly.
In a blink, McGonagall appeared. Not a single hair of her bun was out of place.
'A very effective invocation,' she said dryly, though her face glowed and a smile trembled at the corners of her mouth. 'Congratulations.'
'Thank you, Minerva,' said Snape, for all the world as if a colleague had just said something complimentary about a well-planned lesson. Hermione wondered if only she could hear the slight tremor in his voice.
McGonagall leaned a bit closer and whispered, 'I think you can safely let Miss Granger go, Severus.' She smiled mischievously. 'At least for now.'
'Oh.' Snape snatched his hands away from Hermione's shoulders and stepped back, clearing his throat. 'I trust you're well, Miss Granger.'
Hermione grinned, raising her eyebrows. 'Very well indeed, Professor Snape. I'm looking forward to the final round.'
Author's Notes and Special Acknowledgements:
--Hermione's 'You are the hollow man' draws its overall structure and much wording from Stanza I of 'The Hollow Men' by T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1963). Other fanfic writers who have recently used a 'hollow man' metaphor for Snape include JestersTear (creator of the WIKTT 'Hollow Man' Challenge) and Doomspark, whose 'Invictus' is a response to that challenge.
--I'm grateful to FriendlyQuark for giving me permission to riff on her delightful depiction of Snape-as-a-cat in 'A Terrible Temptation.' Thank you, Barrie! 'The cat's song' by American poet Marge Piercy (b. 1936) seemed irresistibly perfect for Snape and forms the basis of his seduction-spell 'Mine.'
Warm thanks to Retkula, Wacoramaco87, and Alaynthe for reviewing . . . I do hope you'll enjoy the original poems as well!