LOST PERSPECTIVE 5

READ MY MIND

By Bellegeste

Author's Note:

Sorry if you got chapter 8 twice. That's technology for you!

This is an OPTIONAL ending. OK, I know I said chapter 8 was the final chapter. However, a few of you (and you know who you are - thank you) have taken the trouble to e-mail me and accuse me of wimping out of writing a proper ending. Fair enough.

So, if you'd rather have your own ideas about what happens to Hermione and Snape, don't read this chapter. If you're looking for something approaching 'closure', then read on!

Chapter 9: POSTSCRIPT

Slowly Snape raised his head. His gaze rested on the pale, earnest face staring up at him, but he avoided the eyes - the intense, imploring eyes. He was shocked - by the passion in her voice, by the firmness of her grip on his shoulders, by the familiarity with which she breathed his name, by the words and all they implied: the intimacy of the invitation. He couldn't have been more shocked if she had stripped naked and offered herself to him there, on the grass…

But she was Muggle-born - she couldn't realise how Legilimens could probe the deepest 'Closetland' of her being. Naïve child - she probably thought it was like one of those crude, Muggle lie-detecting devices: a pencil trace of the peaks and troughs of her finer feeling. She was standing there like some sacrificial virgin, exposing a white, softly pulsing throat to the fangs of a vampire… Didn't she understand that with his mind, if he so chose, he could invade her secret soul, that he could lay her bare, penetrate her innermost thoughts? That he would know her utterly? Was she prepared for that?

"Do it," she whispered.

He felt his blood quicken.

With an abrupt, angry shrug he broke away from her arms, away from temptation, and stepped back.

"Don't be absurd!" he snarled. "What are you trying to do - get me arrested? Has Harry put you up to this? Is it all part of his little joke? Unauthorised Legilimens? That's a chargeable offence. Whatever game you're playing, I want no part of it. If nothing more, Miss Granger, I expected respect from you."

He had spoken harshly, intentionally so, to discourage her. If the idea of being the subject of some obscure in-joke between this girl and his son was an insult, the thought that she might actually be sincere was even more alarming. Or was this an ingenuous, extravagant, Gryffindor gesture, impetuous and exaggerated? 'See how honest I am! I have nothing to hide!' Was he reading too much into it? Looking for a darker motivation, when all there was to find was simple generosity? How was he to interpret her request? There was a great deal at stake here. He was loath to fall for a ruse. What if he had misread the signals…?

Snape looked at Hermione more searchingly. She had always been outspoken, but never brazen, not immodest. This was something different - unwise, misguided, but in all probability genuine.

When he had noticed her trudging up the hillside, he had assumed that somewhere in her wake, Harry would be toiling behind her, that they had come together to cajole him into forgiveness, and he, Snape, had resolved to be intractable. Now he reconsidered. Harry had sent her to do his grovelling for him; at least she had the decency to make the effort. He could be civil.

"Go back to the house, Miss Granger."

She stood planted before him, unwavering. But for the wind scraping roughly at her hair, and her occasional involuntary shiver in the icy night air, she didn't move a muscle. She stared back at him, boldly assertive.

"I'm not your student now - you can't just dismiss me! And if you think I've followed you all this way - traipsed right up here in the dark, through this bug-infested jungle… through this…" she hunted for the word, "…this lethal zoo you call a garden…" She stopped to pluck off a large Brazilian Huntsman spider which had crawled up as far as her lapel, dropping it to the ground with a slight shudder. No shrieking hysterics, he noted. She shook out her hand with a little frown, raised her middle finger to her lips, sucked it quickly.

"Have you been bitten?" Snape moved anxiously towards her. He didn't have any antidotes with him. The undertone of urgency in his voice was unmistakeable. Hermione grinned.

"Just a nip. They always try it on, don't they? I hate those 'Hunters'. It's alright - I've done the Anti-Biting Charm. I've been living in the bush for five months, don't forget - it's almost second nature now, whenever I go outside."

Was she laughing at him?

"It's just as well. It would have been inconvenient for me to carry you all the way back." He hardly knew what he was saying; the thought of losing her to an untimely drop of venom had set adrenalin racing in his veins.

"So you're not my Willoughby1, then?"

"Your what?"

Was she teasing him?

"Never mind. What was I saying? Oh yes - if you think I've come up here just for you to lecture me about respectRespect? If I don't respect you then I don't know who does. You've no idea how many times I stuck up for you at school when the rest of the class was ripping you - times when you weren't exactly setting a shining example as far as 'respect' goes… Isn't that respect? And what about when I tried to help Harry - when he first found out about - you know…? Would I have done that, if I didn't respect you? Even that time when you nearly wrecked everything, when we'd caught Peter Pettigrew - that time with Sirius - I knew you were wrong, but I still respected you. I tried to explain to you…"

"As I recall, Miss Granger, you shot me with Expelliarmus and then left me unconscious in the grounds with a ravening werewolf on the loose," he retorted dryly. "Our definition of 'respect' would seem to differ."

"Alright then. Why did I ask Professor Dumbledore for a transfer to Beauxbatons?" she demanded, feisty in her self-defence.

"When?" Snape was unaware of this; Dumbledore had never mentioned it. Hermione's voice dropped and softened.

"In Year six - my Year six - it was just after… after Eamon bit you… But then you went and resigned!"

The subject of 'respect' had been subbed, and an altogether more delicate issue was brought into play.

"But you remained at Hogwarts," Snape said, steadying himself against an incontrovertible fact, while subjecting the events of the past two years to a dizzying reappraisal.

"There was no point in my leaving, once you had resigned," Hermione admitted. That was the closest she had ever come to telling him how she felt. Snape narrowed his eyes, trying to read her expression more clearly in the moonlight. Was she saying that her studious indifference had been a pretence? …her intrepid independence a defence? …that what he'd taken for abhorrence, had been masking the pain of a love-sick girl with a broken heart?

He looked at her – small, chilled and windswept, but with fiery dignity intact, and he felt a powerful urge to envelop her in the warm folds of his cloak and draw her to him, to crush her against his chest and hold her there for ever.

"It's just as well I did resign, judging from this evening's intemperate outburst," he said, deliberately cruel, shunning the impulse towards sentimentality. No point in raking up the past, however beguiling.

"Severus, why? Why are you doing this?" she exclaimed. "People always say you're heartless, but…"

"Believe it!" he snapped.

"No, I don't believe it! I won't! People say a lot of things. People say you're still in league with Voldemort, and that you've been double-crossing Professor Dumbledore all these years - do I believe that? No, of course I don't. Harry used to say that you were trying to poison Remus! Do you think I believed him? There are all sorts of horrible rumours about you - they say you murdered both your parents and buried them inside Snape Manor, which is why you've kept it locked up ever since… They say you used to try out dangerous new potions on your house elf, and it's left him brutally maimed and disfigured! People will say anything! Harry still says you'd rather he'd never found out you were his father - and I don't believe that for one minute! And, if you try to say that you don't care about me… I won't believe you either!"

How was it that suddenly he was under scrutiny? Wasn't he supposed to be investigating her thoughts? There was a woman's logic at work here, and it unnerved him. What should he say to her? 'You know I care'? Evidently she knew it already. Dragon's blood! It hadn't taken long for young Malfoy to piece the clues together; Harry had eventually figured it out. Did everybody know? Did he have to say it out loud?

"Melodrama doesn't suit you," he snubbed her coolly, untruthfully. Roused to anger, flushed and impassioned, she was more than attractive. "Tell me this, Miss Granger, why should I use Legilimens? What is suddenly so ineffable that you can't simply say it? You were articulate enough when you were describing the plight of the desert nomads… Why this belated reticence? It's a pity you did not display a similar restraint at dinner instead of engaging in that lewd badinage…"

"I don't love the Tuaregs - or Harry," she muttered, letting the wind snatch the comment and toss it into the night before Snape could catch it. Then she faced him. "Do you have to have a reason? Isn't the fact that I'm asking you reason enough? Would I do this without a reason? It's… it's the only way I can get you to listen to me - you only ever hear what you want… But this way… Just do it. See as much as you want. I want you to understand. I trust you."

"Trust me? You shouldn't. If there's one thing I'd hoped you'd learned from my classes it is that nothing should be taken on trust. How can you trust me?" When he barely trusted himself. "Do you know how Harry - your friend, Harry - was conceived?" The entire wizarding world knew. He was a marked man. He forced the brutal facts like a wedge between them.

"I know! And I DON'T CARE! You can't spend your whole life atoning for one mistake!"

She would care, he thought bitterly, if she had been the one pushed up against a wall with his arm across her throat… She'd hate and despise him. Like Lily had. But Lily had forgiven him. Women were, he reflected, inconsistent and inexplicably resilient. You foolish child - you wouldn't trust me if you knew what I was thinking now, at this minute.

"Read my mind, Severus," she repeated. She took his hand in her own cold, trembling fingers. A surge of hope coursed through him; he was surprised at how much, how very much he wanted her to kiss his hand; he wanted to feel the warmth of her breath on his skin. But she held it with a kind of reverential awe, like some grail, as though, having accomplished her quest she was scared to sully the icon. Yet she seemed to be drawing strength from that meagre contact, firming a resolve, composing herself.

"I'm old enough to take responsibility for this decision," she said evenly. "And to live with the consequences. Don't think that you are in any way taking advantage of me. I want this. I am asking you to do it. I'm not being whimsical, and I'm not upset or hysterical."

It was a while since he had performed Legilimens on anyone other than Harry - and even that was a couple of years ago now. It was a standard interrogation tactic - the key lay in the unexpected attack, before the subject had a chance to block his thoughts or focus on diversionary memories. He couldn't remember an occasion when he had not cracked into a mind by force; he had never worked on a willing volunteer.

"Very well." He began to stride down the hillside, pulling her along with him. She scrambled behind him, apprehensive now, vulnerable, only too conscious of his strength, feeling that she had perhaps been complacent in her trust.

"W- where are we going?" she stammered.

"Out of the wind. It's too cold up there on the plateau. I can't concentrate if you're shivering. We could return to the cottage."

"No!" If they went back inside, she'd never have the nerve to go through with it. Whatever passed between them out here, in the anonymity of the night, would be unobserved, secret and… deniable.

He dragged her towards the lake where a knot of hazel bushes had grown together, thickly intertwined, their bent stems folded into one another, pleached2 into a natural windbreak.

"Here. If you're sure. If you insist." Why should he refuse? For honour's sake? He was no longer her tutor. He was not her guardian - moral or mental. He was under no obligation to her whatsoever. If she were determined, he would go through with it. He couldn't pretend he wasn't curious. He could skim the last few hours, get to grips with that ridiculous argument at dinner time, and leave it at that.

"Very well. Miss Granger - look at me. Open your eyes. Blink..."

The tears affected him strangely. He watched two glistening drops squeeze from her eyelids, and how she smeared them away angrily with the flat of her hand. Mind magic itself was straightforward enough; the fear lay in the acceptance and surrender, the complicity, the unequivocal trust… He was afraid too.

He would make it as clinical a proceeding as possible.

"One, two, three… Legilimens!"

Snape was standing on the threshold of her consciousness. It would be a filing cabinet of organised thoughts, an efficiently catalogued library of her experiences, boxed and labelled. He had ransacked tidy minds like that in the past. He would step into a well-dusted antechamber of accumulated information, as disciplined as one of those Dutch Muggle paintings – a masterpiece of formality, order and perfect perspective.

He moved forwards. And there they were, as he had anticipated, a neat stack of detailed memories laid out for his perusal, sensibly positioned and displayed. Full marks for presentation, Miss Granger. As he drew closer, however, he could tell that the complex piles formed a structure less stable than it at first appeared. The logical arrangement was as fragile and finely balanced as a house of cards and, as he discovered, just as precarious. He'd barely turned his attention to the most recent recollections when the whole delicate construction wobbled.

Beside him he heard Hermione gasp, aware of his presence amongst her thoughts - nothing can ever adequately prepare you for the first experience of mind-magic. But it was too late for regrets.

A moment of doubt, and the brave façade of her composure collapsed and came crashing down, images tipped and emptied in a muddled heap, ideas fluttering randomly to the floor. The shuffled clippings of her life - out-takes, deleted scenes, torn fragments - lay scattered about his feet like the elements of a living album. Precious dreams, lovingly trimmed, strewn side by side with ragged scraps of existence, layer upon layer, overlapping, face-up, face-down…

Kneeling, Snape began to sift through the pictures: there were faces he recognised and strangers; familiar settings and distant, unknown locations; students, staff, Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, a house in a leafy suburb, a goats' hair tent… snow and sand; bleak Highland crags and the rocky infinity of barren desert…

There was Granger herself, her NEWTs certificate in hand - Snape sensed a glow of success, achievement, elation and… vindication? Then a frisson, a chill - was it terror? He was looking at images of an enraged troll, the reflection of a monstrous reptile, a purple spell searing from a Death Eater's wand… She had suffered, more than he realised. Distressed, he pushed those aside, rifling through to find something more recent. There she was again, in tribal robes this time, a gaggle of half-naked, unwashed native children grinning shyly up at her; Granger again, addressing a delegation of elders, confidently, persuasively; Granger yet again, alone by the ashes of a dying campfire, hugging her knees, rocking, and crying softly in the dark…

A pack of memories. One by one Snape turned over the revealing cards. It was like a game of Exploding Snap. Turn, turn, turn…Snap! Turn, turn…Snap! Turn…Snap! Snap! …Snape! He touched them tentatively now, not knowing when the next shock would come, awaiting an explosion. Amongst the images one card turned up with uncanny regularity. Snap! Snape!... A recurring motif: himself.

His own face in close-up or in long shot; his features: his nose, an eyebrow… he identified his own hand writing in red ink… It was him there at High Table with Dumbledore; he was there in the Dungeon correcting Longbottom (belittling? No, he wouldn't say he belittled Longbottom), advising Harry (undermining? Is that how she saw it? Was that how Harry saw it?), admonishing Granger herself (offensively rude, sarcastic and hurtful? Surely not!)… He was at the staffroom door, offering to fetch Flitwick… (When was that? Why would she remember such a trifling incident?)He was on a broomstick, refereeing Quidditch; now he was a spectator… his robes were on fire… (how did she know about that?) He was duelling with Lockhart… Lockhart? There was a batch of pictures of him. Hmm. Back to Snape… There he was, slammed against the shack wall, a trail of blood marking his downward collapse to unconsciousness… now he was in the hospital wing, unbuttoning his cuff, rolling up his sleeve… there he was again, being inscrutably unhelpful in Umbridge's study…

Profoundly uncomfortable yet fascinated, Snape succumbed to the addictive lure of Hermione's thoughts. He caught the prevailing mood of wariness, unease and a grudging respect, borne of fear. Is this what she had wanted him to see? That she had maintained a critical, mental dossier of his activities at Hogwarts?

…he was holding a squirming Dranda cub at arms' length… he was in the Potions lab, covered in ash and potion, sneezing; still in the lab, he was talking to Harry and then striding angrily towards Granger, his eyes smarting… He was lying down - he looked sick - his arm was bandaged… Compared with the earlier images, the atmosphere had softened; where was the judgemental antagonism? Was that sympathy? Empathy? Snape scrutinised the memory. His arm was bandaged… …and someone - Hermione - was gently cradling him, holding him, he had his head on her shoulder…? He knew he'd been delirious that day, but that wasn't how he remembered it

Now he was in a room he didn't recognise - and he was standing behind Granger as she put the finishing touches to an essay… he was bending down, leaning close over her shoulder, pointing out something in the text, his hair was brushing her cheek… But he had never set foot in the Gryffindor Common Room!

Almost dreading what he might see, Snape glanced at the next few thoughts, picked up at random. They were very recent - from dinner time that evening; he remembered the conversation: the Nundu claw, the dragons… the picture seemed to be zooming in to a close-up, focussing on his mouth, his lips… Now there were only two people: Hermione was discussing him with Harry…

Snap!

"Hermione, I can't do this!" Snape cried, wrenching himself away. Fending off the subjective onslaught of her imagination, he turned to the darkness, unwilling to show her his face.

She nodded, made a tiny gulping noise, unable to speak. Tears were streaming down her cheeks unchecked.

Snape had seen enough; he understood more than enough.

In that moment he felt simultaneously blessed and bereft.

Gun-metal grey, polished by the occasional moonlight, the lake was still, its sheen pitted with the round, target-shaped ripples of unseen, sub-aquatic snipers, picking off surface swimmers. Staring out over the dark waters, Snape saw only love and loss.

After a while Hermione joined him. They stood, not touching, and together they contemplated the vast, un-travelled future.

"Well?" she asked eventually.

What did she want from him? Nothing messy, he understood that well enough - no emotional scenes, no demands, no stipulations; and she would make none. She didn't want his advice - she had already made up her mind. She had been ridge-walking on that decision for a while, the slightest pressure might have tipped her towards him, but now she was making her own descent and, it seemed, heading away.

What she needed was his approval, his reassurance that she had made the right decision. She needed him to ratify it and be OK. He understood, and he would do what she wanted. He respected her independence. He didn't have to like it.

"I have never," he commented heroically, "been in your Common Room. Nor have I ridden a pack-horse in Bandiagara…"

She smiled sadly.

"Yes, you have. I'm afraid you have. You've been with me everywhere," she said. "For two years."

"And now you're going back to Africa." He made himself say it calmly. It was a verbal agreement; her unconditional manumission. She needed the freedom to explore, to experiment and experience the world, unfettered. She was too young to be shackled by commitment.

By wizard standards they were both still young…

X X X

And I think that really is the end of this story!

Which ending do you prefer?

1 Willoughby. In Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Willoughby carries the injured Marianne to safety.

2 Pleached – hedge-laying term denoting the inter-weaving of branches.