She arrived the next day, and each following day, at exactly 7 'o clock in the morning. Her days were spent laboring over hot cauldrons that bubbled and simmered with any number of potions. She regularly went to bed at 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning, and even then she was given only a slight reprieve before Snape began probing her memories. She understood this to be part of clause two of her contract. His mental inspections, however, were growing increasingly invasive, probing her feelings concerning Harry and Ron, the guilt she still carried for surviving Voldemort's final attack during her seventh year, her increasing resentment toward Snape, but most crushingly, her sense of isolation.
She could not speak or write anything about her work with Snape, as per clause three of her contract, and she had learned the consequences of violating that particular clause the hard way. Once, roughly two months into her apprenticeship, she decided to approach Dumbledore about her treatment. Surely, she reasoned, there was something improper about her apprenticeship that should be reported to the appropriate authority. She had marched into his office, head held high, ready to admit to Dumbledore that she had made a mistake, that she hadn't calculated well enough, hadn't researched thoroughly.
But the moment the word "Snape" passed her lips, she found her voice closed off, as though her throat was a doorway and the door had been slammed shut. She tried to speak, but she only succeeded in flaying her arms about and moving her soundless lips. Dumbledore had gently placed his hand upon her shoulder and ushered her to the door. He knew why she had suddenly become mute, and he smiled knowingly down at her, handing her a lemon drop before closing the door in her face. It had taken her a week to regain the use of her voice.
She tried again to reach out to someone, this time Harry, who was far away in Wales training with the Chudley Canons. She reasoned that if she didn't mention Snape by name that she should be able to communicate something about her situation to Harry. She scrawled out on a piece of parchment an idiotic paragraph about the weather, her living quarters, her parents, and the food the house-elves provided during the summer. Drawing up all of her courage, she decided to get to the point of the letter. She began to write, "He really is a horrible person, I never realized…" But the words quickly disappeared as her quill moved across the paper.
She flipped the paper to see if the words had simply bled through, but she knew this was not the case. Clause three had struck again. The next morning she learned that everything she had attempted to write about Snape appeared on a sheet of parchment in his office. She was forced to listen to Snape's extended rant on the necessity of secrecy, and would she kindly stop attempting to break possibly the single most important clause of the entire contract? She was forced to test several batches of varying polyjuice potions as punishment for her transgressions. But the worst part had been Harry's reply to the asinine letter she decided to send him anyway: Didn't she have anything more interesting than the weather to discuss?
Falling into bed after another long and draining day, Hermione wanted to fight the urge to close her eyes, but found herself incapable of doing so. Soon enough she saw the robed figure approach her in the Great Hall, which in her dream was inexplicably filled with squawking parakeets. She could hold on to her dreams for increasing periods now, but she always succumbed to his pull, eventually falling into her memories.
She was resisting with all of her strength on this particular night, as it had been an exceptionally demanding day spent gutting, chopping, slicing, grinding, and preserving various creatures that arrived on her table in various stages of death, and life. The robed figure had to move closer to her, closer than he had ever moved before, and soon she found him standing directly in front of her. He reminded her of the dementors of Azkaban, but she was not filled with cold. The figure's arm rose up and his sleeve slipped down to reveal a shadowy version of Snape's long fingers. They were beckoning her to follow him, and she knew that it was a summons she could not resist.
As she drew closer to the figure, she felt her dream slip away, aware of the encroaching darkness that was soon to swallow the much more inviting parakeets. Before it reached the point of total darkness, Hermione reached out and grabbed the arm of the figure. This time she would hold on. There was a scream unlike anything Hermione had ever heard, and all was black.
She found herself in a dark, foreboding manor house she had never seen before. Momentarily confused, she looked around for some confirmation of her surroundings. Looking at what appeared to be the main door of the house, she saw an ancient looking engraving that provided her answer: Snape Manor. She was inside his memories. Frenetically, she looked around her, trying to absorb it all before she lost control. She saw a young boy sitting on the edge of the long yard, patiently dangling a rat from its tail over a small puddle. She started to move toward the boy, but was quickly pushed forward into another memory.
Now she was standing in the same room in which she had signed her own contract. Only now a large red-faced man was towering over a skinny sallow young boy whose long black hair hung in his dark eyes.
Hermione could see blood dripping from his fingertips onto the floor, and knew she was watching Snape as an apprentice. Scenes of his apprenticeship flew by her: he was scrubbing cauldrons clean with a brush, he was dissecting rats, he was on the floor crumpled into a ball as the large red-faced man's foot swung back to kick him again, he was nursing a badly swollen black eye with a piece of dragon meat, he watched the fire consume his carefully prepared potions analyses. Scene after scene whizzed past Hermione, and when it was finally over, with Snape receiving his Potions Master certification from the large red-faced man who also handed him a bottle of fire whisky and a new belt, she found herself floating alone in the empty black. She was alone. The figure had gone away. She melted into the first complete sleep of her apprenticeship.
"Get to work, I don't care how tired you are, else I'll take advantage of the corporal punishment clause of the contract." He snarled at her as she walked through the door to his office at precisely 7 'o clock. After witnessing the horrors of his own apprenticeship, Hermione had felt slightly more kindly toward her Master, but that quickly stopped when she heard his morning greeting.
She looked at him, confused, "Sir? I don't understand. What corporal punishment clause?" He rolled his eyes at her before replying, "Clause four, you halfwit. Please tell me that you actually did read the contract before you signed. The Master and Apprentice Accords of 1382 allow for the corporal punishment of apprentices who…overstep their boundaries. I believe you know to what I refer. Now you may either apologize and accept your punishment, thirteen batches of invisibility serum, or I shall have to enact the corporal punishment clause." Snape looked disdainfully down at her, as if she were an ill-trained dog.
To her surprise, Snape's venomous attitude no longer surprised her. She had come to accept him as a truly despicable person.
Her reaction to him had shocked her, naïve as she was, she had believed that if a person did right than there had to be something right about that person. Now, she considered that there was nothing good and redeeming about Severus Snape, and that he had turned his back on the Deatheaters not out of a sincere desire to do good, but in order to play both sides and see who came out the winner. Still, she reasoned with herself, this was a professional relationship that needed to be maintained, which meant she needed to hold on to some kind of politeness.
"There really is no need to be this way. I'm more than willing to do my best to be a good apprentice without all this." Her hands swept out to encompass the room, as if to say, "This entire, crazy ordeal. All of it. It isn't necessary." But her arms fell to her sides when she looked at the expression on Snape's face. Hermione had never seen such complete and utter rage expressed so flawlessly on a human face before this moment. It took her breath away.
"I see that I have no other option. We will have to enact the corporal punishment clause. It is time you learned your place in this business. You insolent little fool! How dare you break into my memories! They were never meant for you!" Hermione heard a note of hysteria in his voice that surprised her. She knew he was losing his control, and that she would pay the consequences. His fingers gripped her right arm in a tight unbreakable clasp, and for the first time in a long while she thought about the carvings on her arms. They bound her to him, and there was nothing she could do to escape now.
Holding her tightly, he flung her out of the office, and she landed roughly on a worktable, knocking over several cauldrons in the process. She could hear various ruined potions pop and sizzle around her, but a strong hand pressing into her back prevented her from rising up. There was the distinctive sound of Snape unlocking and rummaging through a drawer near her right leg. She heard something large and clunky emerge from the drawer and slap hard onto the table next to her. She could make out something that locked suspiciously like a well-worn belt. The belt disappeared from beside her, as did the hand that had been pressing into her back. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around her head, preparing for the first strike. She waited.
The seconds stretched into minutes, and all she could hear was her own heavy breathing. Slowly, she uncoiled herself and twisted her head to glance behind her. The sight of Snape, arm raised and ready to strike her with the belt, frightened her, making her wish she could dive under the table and run for the door. But she froze when she looked more carefully at his face. His eyes, usually open and alert, were staring at something far over Hermione's prone body. The belt slipped out of his hand and hit the ground with a soft thud and clank. He lowered his arm. He absently began rubbing the area where Hermione knew his signature had been engraved into his flesh. Still staring far away, Snape withdrew into his office, quietly closing the door. Hermione slowly rose off the table and stared at the office door, unsure of whether to follow him or remain in the laboratory. The door remained closed and no sound came from the isolated office.
Gradually, Hermione began to take in the condition of the laboratory. The batches of polyjuice potion that she had been constantly brewing were now splattered across the walls, tables, and floor. Unthinking, she began to move toward the mess. She began the automatic process of cleaning up the mess, but her mind was not on her work. It was focused on the man behind the closed door, who she doubted she would see anytime soon.