EQUALLY SECRET
This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.
Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste and Cecelle.
WARNING This fic contains HBP Spoilers. Enter at own risk if you haven't read HBP.
When Hermione saw Harry in a huddle with Ron at breakfast the next day, she knew Professor Dumbledore must have told him something important and no doubt she'd be hearing about it at break. Strange to think that while she'd been fighting off Professor Snape's Legilimency Harry had been closeted with the headmaster in an almost equally secret training session, probably examining old memories in the headmaster's Pensieve like last time. Pity she couldn't have borrowed it for the night to keep her most embarrassing experiences private.
Snape hadn't said anything about her ripping a page from a Hogwarts library book. Not to her, at any rate. She was a little nervous of going within reach of Madam Pince though because, even with their bargain not to tell each other's secrets, she wasn't quite sure she could depend on his silence. He was so tricky, he'd probably worked out how to get round that agreement before he'd offered it.
Harry caught her eye then and she nodded. Of course, she'd join him after class and hear his news. Only, whatever he wanted her to help him with this time, she hoped it would be more sensible than following a dream he knew Voldemort had sent him. She wondered idly when the headmaster would organise more Occlumency lessons for Harry. The dreams might have stopped temporarily but Harry was still open to Voldemort's penetration, though perhaps the Dark wizard would be less obvious about it next time around.
After class, Hermione quietly followed Harry out to the deserted snowy courtyard. No one was likely to come out and overhear them in this weather. She shivered and drew her coat closely around her with chilled fingers. Horcruxes? She'd never even heard of them.
Harry's obvious surprise irked her. Why did he expect her to know everything just because she liked reading? She didn't read about Dark magic, of course, and Horcruxes must be really advanced Dark magic for Voldemort to have wanted the information so much. No wonder Slughorn was trying so hard to cover his tracks. Getting anything out of him would be a ticklish task.
"Ron reckons I should just hang back after Potions this afternoon…" he told her. He what?
"Oh, well, if Won-Won thinks that, you'd better do it. After all, when has Won-Won's judgement ever been faulty?" she snapped. Oh, just let him botch it all up, if he was that silly! She'd be there waiting to fix things as usual and share whatever she had managed to find out when he could be bothered to ask.
Potions class that day only made her angrier with the pair of them. She'd expected that Golpalott's Third Law would stymie Harry – calculating antidotes for complex poisons wasn't something you could cheat on – but he'd still managed to come top, for no work at all this time. He'd slunk around his cauldron looking worried and lost, trying to copy Ernie's incantation – Huh! At least she knew non-verbal incantations well enough to stop either Harry or Ron from copying her like usual – and then just produced a bezoar! And Slughorn accepted it!
Not for the first time, she wished Professor Snape was still teaching Potions, even though he was by far the best DADA teacher they'd ever had. He wasn't as nice as Remus Lupin but he focused on dangers they might actually face, dark wizards rather than exotic dark creatures. He wouldn't have fallen for that lazy trick. He'd have given Harry the zero he deserved. Some poisons couldn't be cured by a bezoar, what if it had been one of those?
And what was up with the sixth year Potions textbook that the instructions were always subtly wrong? She'd never brewed a less than perfect Potion till this year. Why hadn't anyone written anything better in all the years Hogwarts classes had been using the same text? Perhaps Professor Snape had supplemented it with corrections when he taught? If only she knew any of the older students well enough to ask, but there were no Gryffindor seventh years studying Potions.
As she approached the library a few hours later, she was still fuming about Harry's cheating. That was probably why she didn't notice she was being trailed by Cormac McLaggen – big oaf that he was, that she could see coming for miles and had been avoiding almost without conscious effort for two days - until he grabbed her wrist from behind and pulled her to the wall. Breathing heavily, he scowled down at her, his wiry hair twitching around a face even larger and redder than usual. She screwed up her nose.
"Where've you been? Why'd you ditch me at Slug's party before Xmas?" he demanded. "Were you just leading me on?"
She wrenched her wrist free, rubbing it hard.
"Ow! Do that again and I'll hex your mouth to where the sun doesn't shine!" As if it wasn't there already, she thought bitterly as she reached for her wand.
He leaned in closer, pushing her against the wall. Ugh, pushy, grabby hands!
"Get off!" she snarled.
"Make me!"
"Ten points each from Gryffindor for canoodling in the halls," came a silky voice from behind McLaggen, who whirled around and paled at the tall black-clad figure looming over him. "And a detention with Filch, Mr McLaggen, for forcing your attentions where they seem to be unwanted. I'll be watching you in the future."
Snape's mouth sneered but his eyebrow was raised at Hermione. She blushed brightly and cursed her luck. Of all the people to come and rescue her – not that she'd needed rescuing, of course - did it have to be him? He'd never let her hear the end of this. Oh, help! She had Occlumency with him again tomorrow. She bit her lip and stared at the ground.
"If you prefer not to be molested, perhaps you should abandon the practice of leading people on," Snape advised as soon as her erstwhile date was out of earshot. "I hadn't thought you could look lower than your empty-headed sidekick whose temper matches his hair but it seems I was mistaken."
There was nothing she could say to that. Not to his face, anyway. Her hands clenched into fists.
"Yes, sir," she ground out.
He smirked and continued on his way. She stared resentfully after him. Why did he have to be so unrelentingly nasty and petty? How could someone so brilliant be so childish?
She worked her way through the regular library shelves without success. Then she moved to the Restricted Section and looked some more but it was no use. Glumly, she fingered her pass, which entitled her to access the Transfigurations and Charms books there, and wondered if she dared risk Madam Pince finding her in the Potions or Defence and Dark Arts sections instead. Somehow the pinched-face librarian seemed to be just over her shoulder every time she turned.
By the next night's training session, she'd come to a reluctant decision. Slughorn would be delighted to write her a pass – he was always ready to do favours for his Slug Club members – but with him there was always a price and who knew when and how he'd want to collect? There was only one other teacher she could ask for a pass for restricted DADA and Potions books, Professor Snape himself. Anyone else would just send her back to the two Slytherins. It was almost a pity Lockhart wasn't around for them to wheedle undeserved concessions out of him. It was the only thing he'd ever been good for.
Snape was predictably difficult about it. When was he ever not?
"Give a pass for borrowing valuable books to a vandal who rips pages out?" he sneered. She flushed and hung her head. "I am not so irresponsible."
"That was in second year," she muttered desperately, shrinking back in her chair. "I'd just realised Slytherin's monster was a basilisk and I needed proof to back me up."
"Do please explain why this necessitated destruction of school property." He leaned forward across his desk. " Perhaps the rest of the staff would also like to hear your no doubt excellent reasons."
She paled.
"No! Please, sir, you promised -"
"You trust my promises, do you?"
"I've always trusted you!" The words almost strangled her. She was guiltily aware of the times she'd chosen to disregard his instructions, the twice that she'd hexed him. Fortunately he attacked from a different angle.
"For no good reason. It seems you were born to be a follower. However, I told you last time to prepare a defence of my trustworthiness. Have you done so?" He waited for her nod. "If you do an adequate job I'll consider signing the pass. Under conditions."
She gulped.
"What conditions?"
"You will guarantee not to damage any book and you will record the title of every book you consult for me to look over. I'll know if you lie."
She bit her lip.
"But you might find out what I'm looking for if the word is in the title."
He scowled, exasperated.
"One of your secrets? Is it secret from the headmaster as well? No?" He pursed his lips. "Those books may be recorded separately and the list submitted to him instead. Satisfied? Then begin."
"I asked why you told me that you'd been spying for - for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, all along." Using the real name in front of Snape would be disastrous and nothing would induce her to call him "the Dark Lord", like a Death Eater. "And you told me to answer the question myself."
"Restating the obvious is not an answer, Miss Granger."
"No, sir." She took a deep breath. "If you were really his spy, you might have told me that as a bluff to make me think that it couldn't be true, because if you were disloyal to the headmaster you wouldn't tell me anything that would raise suspicion. But your whole personality raises suspicion all the time." Her eyes flickered apprehensively to his expressionless face. "So either you're innocent or you aren't afraid of raising suspicion because your secrets are too well-hidden."
"Or perhaps I simply enjoy fooling everyone by flaunting myself in plain view of the enemy."
"You could do, but that doesn't seem like you, sir. At any rate, not to me. That's more something Sirius Black might have done, if he was sneaky enough." The expected explosion didn't come. She gulped another deep breath. "I don't think you're that reckless or over-confident that you'd do that."
"You think you know me then? Yet how if everything you've seen to the contrary was a lie? How could you tell?"
Casting him a sideways glance, she licked her lips and primmed her mouth. Her heart was hammering and her breath short.
"I'm afraid you'll be angry if I say."
"If you don't, you'll have no chance at getting the pass," he pointed out.
"No, well, it's just that I've seen you angry – very angry -" She didn't dare look at him.
"The point, girl!"
"That is the point! When Sirius escaped you were too angry to be acting a part. That was real."
Black eyes flashed and black brows snapped together.
"There was no need to counterfeit. Black was my enemy from the day we met and to lose my revenge by a child's trick, to suspect my employer's complicity, was intolerable."
She bit her lip and tried again.
"You showed your Dark Mark to Fudge at the end of Fourth Year. You wouldn't have done that if you were a loyal Death Eater."
"What could be easier than to shock him into denial after my behaviour the previous year had already cast doubts on my sanity? Perhaps I'm merely more cunning than you know."
"I've never doubted your cunning, but you've saved us too many times to be on his side. You saved Harry in first year -"
He gave a short laugh, adding, "I could hardly have let someone kill him in front of my eyes without falling under suspicion."
"But there were other teachers there! No one was reversing the hex except for you. If they didn't rouse suspicion by not acting, why should you have?"
"Simple. I was the only Death Eater."
"You tried to stop Quirrell!" Her finger was stabbing at him. He shrugged.
"Because I didn't know what he was trying to do. Perhaps I wanted the Stone for myself."
"If you'd wanted it, you'd have got it!"
"Flattery, how very Slytherin!" he smirked.
"It isn't flattery! You had the whole year to work out the protections but there was only one person who tricked Hagrid into telling how to get Fluffy and it wasn't you!"
"Maybe Quirrell just got there first."
"Oh please!" she scoffed. "As if you couldn't have beaten Quirrell!"
Snape leaned back in his chair, surveying her under half-closed lids.
"I had no idea you admired me so much," he said in a deceptively mild voice.
Hermione flushed deep crimson.
"You know I don't – Well, I do but – but not like that – I mean -"
"Yes?" He was enjoying her discomfiture. She saw it in every line of his relaxed length.
The only thing to do was change the subject.
"What was the point of all that, sir? Do you want me to mistrust you?"
He steepled his fingers on the desk.
"Do you trust me more or less now than before?"
She thought about it and realised in surprise what the answer was.
"More."
One corner of his mouth curled.
"It was a method of manipulating your trust by playing Devil's Advocate. In forcing you to argue on my behalf, I tricked you into persuading yourself of my trustworthiness," he explained.
Hermione stared at him, her mouth opening and shutting as she tried to form a response.
"It was a trick?" she echoed.
"Do I need to repeat myself?"
"Why did you tell me then? Why didn't you just let me go on believing you?"
His smirk grew pitying.
"Why do you think?"
"I don't know what to believe." He'd told her he was going to teach her to think? Was that what he'd been doing?
"Believe what you will."
"What do you believe in, sir?" She was determined to get a straight answer at least once tonight.
His face was still and sombre. His lightless eyes met hers steadily.
"Nothing."
She couldn't look away. His eyes were as deep and dark as tunnels in an abandoned coal mine.
"Nothing? But then why do you fight?"
His lips compressed. For a moment, she thought he wasn't going to answer.
"Because I must. I tangled myself in and neither side will let me just leave. I have to fight on one side or another."
"If you don't believe in our cause, why do you fight with us?" How do I know you do fight with us?
"I don't fight with you; I fight for you."
Swallowing hurt and her eyes were beginning to burn from staring. Still she searched his.
"You're with me now."
"Don't deceive yourself, Miss Granger. We are in the same room and we fight on the same side, but I am not with you and I never will be."
He released her gaze and she slumped with relief. She stared around the room, ringed by glass jars that glinted as they caught the light. It was as shadowy and shifting as its owner.
"But you still didn't answer me," she said. "Why fight for us if you don't believe we're right?"
"Because I found I couldn't fight on a side that kills babies and tortures children."
Her sideways glance expressed her doubt without words.
"Ten points off Gryffindor, Miss Granger, for disrespect to a teacher," he snarled. "I know very well what you're thinking. If you're too childish to see the difference between biting comments and biting out chunks of flesh -"
She had to stop him saying. She didn't want to hear.
"I'm sorry, Professor. Please don't tell me any more. My nightmares are bad enough without knowing what they'll do to me if they catch me."
She gulped at the sudden thought that he must know exactly what they'd do – and he had only his wits to keep him uncaught. He could never drop his guard. Even now, he must have an excuse prepared for his master for every word of this conversation. A cold frisson travelled down her back at the thought of living like that. He was unfazed.
"Amazing. A form of knowledge you don't wish to acquire? Knowledge is power, Miss Granger. I thought that was your credo."
A/N A couple of lines of dialogue are lifted from HBP ch 18, "Birthday Surprises".