LOST PERSPECTIVE 5
READ MY MIND
By Bellegeste
Author's Note: We go back two years to Harry's year 6. It is a couple of days after Hermione walked out of Snape Cottage .
This chapter contains some strong language from Harry (which I usually reserve for Draco) but he is very upset, even to the point of being deliberately offensive in order to get back at Hermione.
Working on the principle of 'the first cut is the deepest', I have portrayed Hermione's passion for Snape as very intense and overwhelming - though she is rational enough not to make a fool of herself by going public. I don't think this is OC - even intellectuals have their fantasies! I think she is inexperienced and naïve, though, so it doesn't get lurid… (After all, I am a responsible parent - don't expect it to get much more graphic than this! Sorry.)
Chapter 2 :HERMIONE : HARRY
November 1996 Hogwarts
"I want to talk to you! Now. Outside."
Harry didn't even bother to lower his voice. The whole room echoed with the promise of scandal. A chorus of half-hearted "Shhhs" hissed from behind the desks and partitions and, at the far end of the library, Madam Pince was already flapping to her feet to evict the noisy intruder in her hushed, studiously silent domain.
Harry rudely flipped the text-book shut, before Hermione had a chance to mark the page.
"Thanks a lot! I was reading that!" she grumbled.
"Not any more you're not. Out! Come back for your stuff later," he instructed coldly.
Madam Pince was almost upon them, her beaky intolerance whetted into pecking mode. Harry, who had been lowering over Hermione where she sat, drew himself up from his intimidating pose, and swung round to face the diminutive librarian. He was at least a foot taller than she was. He spread his arms with a half-shrug, in a gesture of mock surrender.
"OK, OK, we're going," he said, insolently.
"Who the hell do you think you are, Harry? What's got into you?" Hermione muttered. But she got up and followed him out into the corridor. She had been expecting a visit from Harry for the past two days, ever since her abrupt, unscheduled departure from Snape Cottage. She had left without a word of explanation or apology - without even a goodbye. That was 'bad form' and she knew it. Her middle-class conventionality demanded a note, an owl, at the very least.
She had felt that staying would serve no useful purpose. There was nothing she could do to help Snape: by the morning the antidote would have taken full effect, and, until then, Harry could look after him adequately enough.
Hermione had known from the second Snape had uttered Lily's name, that she had to go. However much it hurt to leave, she couldn't stay to be the object of his indifference. It was too humiliating, too painful. He might have guessed the truth and laughed at her, derided her or, worse still, pitied her.
It had all been a fantasy after all, a foolish delusion. What madness had ever let her imagine, for one instant, that she might have meant anything to him? He was undoubtedly lonely and stressed and depressed, and now the stupid snake had bitten him too… but he'd get over all that. None of it meant that he needed her, or was remotely interested in her. She'd been kidding herself. What a joke! How insufferably presumptuous!
She'd realised the truth when she'd held him for that brief moment. It had suddenly ceased to be a game. Up until then she'd been dabbling with a dream - she'd known it, even at the time, but had allowed herself to go along with it anyway. Building her romantic folly in her rose-tinted garden… an exercise in snake-charming, dragon-taming… she would be the one to subdue the beast, discover the gentle, sensitive, inner core, win-over the wild, passionate heart of the Potions master… Hermione Granger would succeed where everybody else had failed. (Except Lily. Damn Lily! What had Lily got that she didn't?) Had she ever really been serious, or was it just another intellectual challenge? What would she have done if he had called her bluff? If he had responded… caught her in his arms… kissed her? Run a mile probably! Something about its sheer impossibility made it safe: appealing in the abstract; alarming in actuality, in its implications…
But now, since that awakening, he was no longer an idealised, emotional enigma; she couldn't intellectualise any more about a meeting of minds, or about having artistic interests in common. The reality was far less rarified: she had held him and she had wanted him - and she had known that it was wrong.
Hermione hadn't seriously thought about him in that way before - duh! How old am I? Am I naïve, or what? She squirmed. Her romantic dream still had more to do with Platonic friendship and courtly convention than earthy passion. It wasn't that she was a prude, she simply had not allowed herself to go there… Not when she was thinking about Snape. It was too dangerous, too adult. It made her fling with Victor Krum seem like a kiddies' party charade.
Up until then she'd been playing make-believe, stroking the pretence and leaning blissfully back into the arms of a chaste infatuation. But now everything had changed; she'd woken up. Suddenly her mind was alive with real desires, so intense, so explicit that they frightened her. She hadn't expected to feel like this; it had taken her completely by surprise; she should have seen it coming, but she'd thought - oh, so innocently - that she would be able to compartmentalise her emotions. And she had thought, if she were being honest, that in any relationship with Snape she would have been the one who was calling the shots, physically at least. It wasn't supposed to happen this way…
She felt like the archetypal Eve, seduced by temptation. It was thrilling and exciting and forbidden and, she kept telling herself severely, it was all in her head. Nothing had happened and nothing ever would. It felt wrong, very wrong indeed.
She had had to leave Snape Cottage, and now she would have to leave Hogwarts too. Maybe Dumbledore could arrange for her to transfer to Beauxbatons - al least she already had a smattering of the language. One thing was certain, there was absolutely no way she could remain in this school, attending his Potions classes… She could imagine the ordeal of seeing him in the dungeons every day, hearing that smooth but crisply articulated voice, watching the decisive, precise movement of his hand as he flicked his wand at the blackboard… the way his cloak slid back from his arm as he stretched up… the white, sharp definition of his wrist-bone…the flare of his nostrils as he inhaled the steam rising from a cauldron…the thin, tight, upward curl at the corner of his mouth that preceded each sardonic rejoinder…and, when he was concentrating or tired, the way he slid his fingers through his hair, massaging his temples… She could not bear to be there, feeling as she did now, knowing that she could never touch him, or be near him, never give him any indication as to how she felt. It was impossible. She didn't think she could endure it for a day, let alone the next five terms…
As the library door closed with a chesty 'clunk' behind them, Hermione broke into the overdue apology:
"Look, Harry, I know I shouldn't have gone off like that. I'm sorry, OK? I'm sorry. I just couldn't… it… it didn't seem… How is he anyway? Sn - your father? Is he alright now? Is he better?" Somehow she didn't want to say his name out loud in front of Harry.
"You've got a fucking nerve!" Harry was already striding away; Hermione had to scurry to keep up with him. She hadn't expected him to be quite so angry. Put out, maybe, judgemental, but not so aggressive. After all, she had tried to do the right thing by leaving before the situation got too awkward.
"Harry! Slow down! Do we have to go outside? It's freezing. Or, if we do, can't it wait - preferably until the summer?" He didn't smile. "Can't we talk about it here?"
"Here?" He chucked out the kind of supercilious sneer that would have been worthy of Malfoy. "Here? Well, if you're sure… If you don't mind all the portraits and Peeves and Nick and the Baron and probably Mrs Norris too, and the whole bloody school, for all I care, hearing that you and my - "
"Alright!" He was right - you never knew who'd be listening in the castle. How many times in the past had they narrowly missed being caught by Filch, appearing out of nowhere in an apparently empty corridor; or sneaked around a corner, only to come face to face with Snape on night patrol - her insides fluttered at the thought.
They were on the side of the school that looked out over the Quidditch pitches. Harry shouldered open the door that he'd used so many times on his way to and from matches and stormed out, letting the door swing back into Hermione's face. The November afternoon was colourless and with a dank chill in the air, sharpened by a slicing wind. Above the Stands, already with the floodlights blazing, dark figures swooped and wheeled. At this distance it was difficult to make out individuals, their team robes damply indistinguishable. From their manoeuvres it appeared to be a defensive game: Gryffindor was struggling.
For a moment the game claimed him and Harry stopped, eyes flicking from player to player, following their moves with a pained expression. Just then Slytherin scored, and a roar went up in the stands. Snatches of the Slytherin victory anthem, updated with a new verse sung to 'Yankee Doodle', were blown to them on the breeze:
"Get back in your biscuit tin, Ginger, Ginger!
Get back in your biscuit tin, Ginger, Ginger-Nut!
Weasley is our King…! Weasley is our king…!"
Ron had evidently lost Gryffindor the match. He would be sulking for the rest of the day now. Shaking his head, and with a hissing intake of breath, Harry turned his attention back to Hermione.
"What the fuck did you think you were doing?" he demanded viciously. "What did you do? What did you say to him, for Merlin's sake? You little bitch! I hope you've got something to say for yourself. This had better be good? Well?" His face was brutal with anger, hurt and disappointment. Hermione felt a stab of concern for her friend, but at the same time she shrank from him; like this he was ugly, alarming.
"What's happened?"
"What's happened?" he repeated, scoffing. "As if you had to ask! You tell me! You didn't waste much time! What was it - bribery? Emotional blackmail? What? It's sick. It's snide, that's what it is. Oh Merlin! Don't tell me. I don't want to know. It's disgusting. I don't even want to think about it!" He thrust his hands into his pockets and turned his back, leaving Hermione perplexed and, for the moment at least, more anxious than indignant.
"What's he done? What's he said?" she asked, her voice tremulous.
"Oh, so you're worried now, are you? Too damn right! Said? About you, you mean? What should he say? Nothing. He's said nothing. He's too sodding honourable to say anything. No, he's only bloody talking about resigning, that's what!"
"Resigning!"
"Leaving Hogwarts. Now, straightaway, 'with immediate effect' is how he phrased it."
"But he can't!" A sad, strangled mewl escaped her and she gulped back the urge to wail out loud and fell instinctively silent, like a lost tiger cub, abandoned in the jungle. It was one thing for her to make a grand gesture and talk about changing schools, but, if Snape resigned, the situation would be totally out of her control. She might never see him again. Wasn't that supposed to be what she wanted? Oh hell!
Perhaps he had read her mind after all. Her torrid, over-dramatised, adolescent soap-opera of a mind. And he had been shocked, sickened. So much so that he had to resign? Surely not. Professor Snape would be able to quash a teenage crush with a single, soul-shrivelling glance. He didn't have to resign. Was it the scandal, then? Was he afraid that his professional standing would be irreparably compromised? What did he think she was going to do - broadcast it? Go to the Daily Prophet?
For the sake of appearances, she tried to resuscitate the old Hermione Granger and respond accordingly:
"But what about our NEWTs? He can't leave us in the lurch! Who's going to teach us the syllabus? We can't go on having Pomfrey and Sprout for the next two years. We'll know so much about Herbs and Healing Potions we'll all have to become Medi-witches!"
Harry raked her with a hostile, unsympathetic glare.
"Is that all you care about? Your bloody exams? Passing NEWTs? Is that what this is really about - sucking up to him for the sake of your grades? That is so pathetic! You don't give a damn about him! And there he is, giving up his career and the protection of Dumbledore, everything he's ever worked for. All because of you!"
"Did he say that?" Beneath her anxiety, Hermione couldn't help but detect a pulse of hope, secretly flattered.
"He didn't have to. Isn't it obvious? Why else would he leave?"
"I don't know, but it's not because of me. He's been awfully fed-up lately - what about all that business with Ravenclaw? And Eamon. He's not exactly rational right now. He's not been well, Harry. Perhaps he is cracking up. Perhaps it's some kind of a mid-life crisis. How should I know? Perhaps he just needs to get away for a bit, thinks it's time for a change. Nothing's been going on, Harry, I swear. Do you really think I'd be stupid enough to tell him? Harry, he has absolutely no idea how I feel… how I felt."
Harry glared at her accusingly, but her shocked innocence had awakened doubts. Had he mis-read the situation? Snape hadn't referred to Hermione at all. He hadn't even commented on her departure. Harry had thought that, in itself, to be suspicious. Snape had entered the kitchen in the morning, to all intents and purposes recovered from the Viper bite, any residual pain or discomfort henceforth unmentionable, and in a single glance he had absorbed Hermione's absence. Harry had made some lame excuse about homework, or something, and Snape had nodded. The subject was closed. But he had seemed distracted, he'd toyed with his coffee and then left the room abruptly. Seconds later, Harry had heard the front door slam.
He could guess where Snape had gone. To the plateau on the hill overlooking the valley and Snape Manor. That place exerted an inexplicable, unseen force on Snape: he sensed a kind of negative empathy with the landscape, drawing solace from its windswept solitude. He went there when he needed to think, to be alone, to duel with the 'dark dragon'.
Harry knew better than to follow him. When Snape returned some time later that morning, Harry had eyed him acutely, analysing his father's tired, cold, pale face for signs of guilt, anger, grief, love - for the giveaway traces of tears even. But Snape's emotions were solidly petrified behind a mask of neutrality, and Harry had to draw his own conclusions.
End of chapter. Next Chapter : SNAPE:DUMBLEDORE. Will Dumbledore accept Snape's resignation? And how exactly does Snape feel about all this?
