ohh Chapter 6. Things start to get interesting now.

Chapter 6: Snape's Memory

In the week before Christmas Ron found that his homework was being given out by the bucket load(especially in potions, they had to remember how to make a bucket full of cleaning solution). He spent almost all his free time trying to get it done, and he never saw Hermione anymore. If she had finished her homework she would be found in the library looking up Elda Lukin. Ron was still cross with her for ignoring him on that night a few weeks ago, and he was getting even madder because she was still ignoring him and putting her Elda research first. Harry seemed to be doing a lot of Elda research too, but at least he still talked to Ron when he could and even told him what he had found, which was always nothing, but they carried on trying just the same.

The day before the Christmas holidays there was a buzz of excitement in the air. Even the 6th years with their piles of homework couldn't fail to be exited. Harry had obviously put his name down to stay for the holidays and Ron and Hermione had joined him, partly to find out more about Elda Lukin as neither Harry nor Ron were having much luck in finding anything about her. Hermione was keeping very secret and wouldn't tell them if she had found anything or not. Ron was moaning about this fact to Harry during the lunch hour when Hermione came bursting in to the Great Hall and ran strait up to them. She stopped and leant against the table to catch her breath. Ron and Harry waited patiently too hear what she had to say. Ron hoped it mite be an apology for the way she had been treating him recently but he knew it wouldn't be.

"I've found something out about Elda that is important! I need to show you two alone."

Harry and Ron hurriedly cleared their plates and followed Hermione out of the great hall. She led them into the library and directed them toward a table littered with parchment. She sat on one of the chairs around the table and signalled for them to do the same, then she buried herself in the masses of parchment and started muttering to herself. Ron gave Harry a quizzical look and Harry returned it. Apparently he was as clueless as Ron. Hermione continued to sift through the parchment and the two lads sat their patiently waiting until she came back to the real world.

"Ah ha! Right, erm, yes…… there we go." Hermione put down the parchment she was holding into a neat pile on the table. "Now here is the stuff I have managed to find out about Elda Lukin, so far."

"Wow Hermione, that's loads of stuff. Where did you get it all from?"

"That is none of your business Ronald Weasley."

"Tch, fine"

"As I was saying, this is what I've got so far. I think what I will do is tell you the main things I've found out and let you have a look in more detail if you want to. Ok so I started by finding out about her at Hogwarts, and as we already know she was in Slytherin and was a prefect then head girl. I have also found out that she was very good in all her subjects but especially in potions and she had a great interest in the dark arts."

"Oooh! She sounds like Snape!" Ron exclaimed

"She does doesn't she." Harry agreed. "I wonder if they knew each other at school because we know that they know each other from somewhere."

Hermione gave them both an annoyingly knowing look, the superior one she gave them when she knew something they didn't. "Well I also found out that she joined a Defence Against the Dark Arts club that was run by Snape's Slytherin gang, Snape included."

Harry started sniggering.

"What Harry?" Hermione questioned, she may have thought he was laughing at her.

"Nothing, nothing." He managed to say in-between his suppressed laughter. "What does Elda look like? Did you manage to find that out?"

"Actually I did." Hermione shuffled through the many pieces of parchment in front of her and produced a photo of a smiling young lady. She had short, spiky electric blue hair with white tips. Her eyes were deep brown pools, like gateways to her soul. Ron could see now that these were the eyes that belonged to Midnight, the eyes in which he managed to see so much human emotion. In this picture you could see that she was wearing Hogwarts robes with the Slytherin snake on it and above that was a shiny prefect badge.

Harry's laughter increased in both volume and hysteria. He could hardly breath to speak when Hermione asked him what was so funny. "Elda, she, haha, Snape, during, heh, Occlumency I saw, hehehe, I saw Snape, in one of his memories, ogling at a girl near him and she looked exactly like the girl in that picture! Haha, Snape had a crush on Elda!" Harry then burst into a fresh set of giggles and could say no more.

Ron looked down at the picture of Elda. He could now see why Midnight had a white tip on her tail, it was from the white tips on Elda's spiky hair. As he gazed at this picture he tried to see what Snape might have seen in her and the longer he looked the more he seemed to be drawn into her eyes. Her large chestnut brown eyes were like magnets to his own and he couldn't help but gaze into them. She gazed back and then she gave him a smile that made him melt. There was defiantly something quite hypnotising about her appearance and Ron only managed to brake free of her intent stare when Harry's giggles had died down and Hermione had started talking again. He looked up at Hermione and managed to focus his mind on hearing what she had to say.

"The most interesting thing I managed to find out was that Elda," she leant towards them and lowered her voice to an almost inaudible whisper. "Elda was put on trial for being one of V-V-Voldemort's closest Death Eaters!"

Ron gasped. Harry stopped showing any form of amusement on his face from before and looked deadly serious. "If she was one of Voldemort's closest Death Eaters why; one, have we never heard of her before and two, is she not in Azkaban?"

"She was cleared, by Dumbledore." Hermione said simply.

"Just like Snape." Ron added.

The three friends sat in silent thought. Ron looked at Elda's picture again, careful not to get draw in by her amazing eyes. How could such a lovely young lady turn out to be so much like that slime ball Snape? He just couldn't see it, but then again he didn't know her at all. All he had was this picture of her, and who was to say this picture hadn't got a spell on it to make her look more beautiful or innocent. But what if she did look like this? What if she was really this hypnotising? How could she use her looks to her advantage, she could have persuaded Dumbledore to clear her name, or managed to get Lupin to let her into the school as his "companion". What if she was still working for You-Know-Who and was plotting to kill Harry? It would not be the first time a Death Eater had gotten into the school with the intention of taking Harry to their master.

The bell signalling the end of lunch and the start of their last lessons shattered Ron's thoughts.

**********

Ron glanced over at Hermione who was doing her homework next to him in the Gryffindor common room. They were the last two people sitting there. This was because they were waiting for Harry to come back from his Occlumency session with Snape. Hermione looked up and her eyes locked with Ron's. Hermione's eyes were a hazel brown and Ron could gaze into these eyes for all eternity, but they just weren't as amazing as Elda's were. Obviously he would prefer to be spellbound by Hermione (and he often was) because she was the one he loved more than anything else but he just couldn't get the image of Elda's hypnotising picture out of his mind. He still couldn't decide why she looked so amazing and settled for the fact it must have been a spell. They had found out that she was very clever and probably very capable of all sorts of image enhancing spells.

He felt Hermione's soft, comforting touch on his hand. He looked up and smiled at her. She smiled back and she leant towards him, closing her eyes. Ron leant forward to and anticipated the touch of her warm lips on his, but that feeling never came. Hermione had become distracted and was looking toward the portrait hole in which a very worried Harry was standing, panting as if he had run a long distance very fast.

"Harry, what happened?" Hermione asked him as he crossed the room and collapsed on one of the comfy chairs around the fireplace. Ron and Hermione went over to join him, sitting on the sofa next to him and waited for his breath to come back. When Harry felt he could talk easily again he looked up at both of them and gave them a look that said he had seen something that he really didn't want to have seen, let alone re-live it by telling them, but he felt he had to.

"Something happened in Snape's office during Occlumency. I broke into his memories, like I have done before a few times. I saw him looking at Elda when I broke into one of his memories and usually they last for a split second with a few scattered images. But just now, just now I saw something he really didn't want me to see. He was so angry when he realised what I had seen I just bolted." Harry put his head in his hands.

"What did you see Harry?" Hermione asked him. "How was this memory different?"

"Well, like I said the memories are usually just snippets and last for a few seconds but this memory…. It was a lot smoother." He paused as if he was trying to find the right words to describe the difference to this memory. "It was like watching a TV show."

"What's a TV?" Ron asked.

"Ok. Let me put it differently, it was like actually living a moment in time. It wasn't splintered or just a few moments it was one long flowing memory. Does that make any sense?"

"Yes Harry, I can see what you are getting at. This memory was in real time as though it was really happening there and then, it wasn't tampered with just a real memory."

"Yeah, kind of."

"So what was this memory off? Was it off Snape having some sort of fantasy about Elda?" Ron shuddered at the thought. "That would be seriously traumatising, or even worse him actually doing something with her!" Ron mock vomited into his hands but Harry didn't laugh, he just shook his head.

"No Ron this is serious. Please I need you to just listen and not to interrupt, you have to hear what I have to say." Ron and Hermione nodded and Harry started telling them about what he had seen.

"I found myself in a circle of hooded figures all standing in what looked like a deserted field in the dead of night. They were all looking at the 4 figures in the middle of the circle. I looked too. I saw two large figures holding up a smaller one in between them. On of the larger figures forced the sleeve of the smaller persons robes up past the elbow on their left arm, then it was pushed roughly so that their arm faced the forth figure, who was standing a few meters away. Then the forth figure spoke in a high, cruel voice. 'You have proved your loyalty on all levels and now I will give you my gift that will fully make you one of us.' A woman's voice then muttered 'thank you my lord.'  The forth figure then took his wand out of his robes with his long pale fingers. He pointed it at the arm that was facing him and roared and incantation. There was an ear-piercing scream that made my blood churn. The arm now had the dark mark imprinted onto it. A long white finger touched this mark and it went jet-black. The same pale hand pulled up another hooded figures left armed robes to reveal another jet-black dark mark. Then the cold voice said 'Rise my child and great your new family.' The middle figure rose and as she did her hood fell off. She looked over at me and I saw a young lady with big brown eyes and short, spiky, electric blue hair with white tips grinning from ear to ear as the circle applauded her. Then Snape cut me off from this memory and as soon as I had realised what I had seen I ran."

Ron and Hermione sat there silently waiting for a sign that they were allowed to talk.

"This, this girl that I saw, I am sure it was Elda Lukin. And the thing that was happening, the ceremony, I think it was inducing her as a-a-a Death Eater!"

Hermione spoke. "So, Elda was a Death Eater and obviously so was Snape. That's interesting."  

---So people, what do you think? Working out how to write the memory gave me a lot of grief. So, review! Please!---