THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER
By: Scatterheart
A long time ago in a campus far, far away…Section Five
Hermione let her feet carry her senselessly through the familiar, blackened stone hallways. What was she doing? What was she doing? What was she trying to prove? She desperately hoped that the frigid evening air would shock her to some sense and make her dive back into the sanctuary and comfort of the Common Room; instead she only tingled with heightened awareness.
Awareness, awareness, awareness. The word babbled incomprehensibly in her mind and mixed with a jumble of inner voices that clambered to her in the deathly silence. These voices… she identified them to be her thoughts, previously unspoken and now uncovered in the darkness. They ran every which way, loudly shouting and inaudibly whispering in foreign languages, and then shimmering off on fleeting tangents. These were the thoughts that made up the core of her soul.
And Hermione Granger could not recognize any of them. She had never been given any opportunity to recognize them; after all, her waking days were crammed with textbooks and homework, and her evenings were spent dazedly chatting or collapsing into exhausted slumbers.
What was it that she had said not so long ago? "I'm bored."
Yes, perhaps she was bored, but she was also ignorant. And lost. Her universe was a teeming volcano of emotions, and she had bottled it and categorized it and squeezed it into the size of a gaming marble. What, was she afraid to let it out? She had built up her walls and shields so high for so long that she could not comprehend her own being, even when she came screaming at herself in these rare, tomblike nights.
And now, as she turned the corner to slowly make her way down the spiral steps leading to the dungeons, she fully understood it for the first time: the bookish girl with the mane of frizzy brown hair had lived for seven years in this tower known as Hogwarts, but Hermione Granger did not even exist.
Hermione Granger, the real Hermione Granger, was utterly and totally alone.
But what did it mean? Another voice was piping up thinly among the rushing, passing mass. And then it was consumed by another wave of thoughts, and was gone.
Hermione Granger found herself standing motionlessly in front of the Potion Master's private chamber.
And all the voices left her and everything was quiet.
She snapped out of her confusion. The immediate task at hand suddenly presented itself to her as very incredibly (and there was no other word to put it) stupid.
"I am going to get the lesson plan from Professor Snape. At ten in the evening," she said to herself, just to let the words ring ridiculously into her ears. She shook her head and started to retrace her way to the exit. And took about four steps before that wild, insatiable urge for – something – overwhelmed her again and she rushed back to the slab of cold door and knocked before she could change her mind.
The knocks echoed hollowly through the icy corridor. She knocked again; was met with the same answer of nothingness.
Well, it was a bloody idiotic plan, anyway, she thought, turning on her heels to leave.
And a blast of air, not entirely cold, hit the back of her neck.
Hermione spun around to see the figure of Professor Severus Snape standing in the open doorway of his room.
"Oh, it's you, Miss Granger," the professor said, evenly, but the paleness of his knuckles clutching at the doorframe betrayed his shock. "What do you want?"
"I…" Hermione faltered. She took in the sight of him, dressed in dark slacks and a white cotton shirt that was unbuttoned at the neck. He was backlit by a roaring fireplace from somewhere behind him, and the edges of his black hair burned red like old copper. "I was wondering if… if you could, you know… Professor, the thing is, today… remember how you gave out those assignments? And we didn't…"
"If you have a point, Miss Granger, feel free to get to it," Snape helped.
"I want to see your lesson plan for chapter eighteen of the Advanced Potions Handbook," she blurted out.
Snape blinked, once. "Pardon?"
"The lesson plan," Hermione repeated.
"Yes, I heard you the first time."
"You see, the thing is, you assigned us the chapters for homework, but you never really went over the lesson in class, and I was wondering—"
"No."
"No?"
"Please remove yourself from my sight and go back to your dormitory, Miss Granger," Snape said.
At that moment a dusty voice creaked out from the distance, "Who's there? Show yourself if you don't want to get hurt!" It was unmistakably Argus Filch, and the sound of his rapidly scuffling footfalls neared as he made his way around an unseen hallway.
"Fifty points from Gryffindor for your troublemaking," Snape murmured crossly under his breath. He took Hermione by the top of her arm and pulled her inside of the room.
Hermione practically needed to grab onto him to stop herself from swooning unsteadily and falling. The events that had unfolded in the past few minutes seemed like a dizzying scene from a nightmare or a dream. And now the door had clicked shut behind her, and she was standing inside Severus Snape's chamber, alone with the Potion Master.
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