HOLD THE SPOON
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 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.
Hermione trudged with heavy steps to the dungeons, lips pursed and teeth set. Three and a half days ago, Harry had rushed off from the first Apparition lesson, Ron in tow, and she'd since discovered that it had to do with his ridiculous obsession to prove that Malfoy was a junior Death Eater. Apparently he'd had a new "brainwave" to track Malfoy's movements on the Marauder's Map. He kept ducking into alcoves and bathrooms or behind statues to pull it out and search repeatedly throughout the day.
His furtive disappearances had been too obvious to miss, so yesterday she'd buttonholed him on the way to lunch and dragged an explanation out of him. At first, she'd been inclined to shrug. Let him have his fun, only this time maybe he'd have the sense to take reinforcements before trying another eavesdropping expedition. She hoped the broken nose from the train last September had at least taught him that much.
It was only as she'd put her Ancient Runes book on her bedside table and burrowed under the covers to drown out her roommates' whispers and giggles last night that she'd suddenly gasped and sat up with a jerk. If he kept checking the map throughout the evenings as well as between classes, she could be in trouble. Big trouble. Darn! And it was all so unnecessary.
She'd been worrying it over all day. She couldn't not tell Professor Snape, but if she did tell he'd probably learn more about Harry's current activities and plans than she was willing for him to know. She rubbed her fingertips across her ridged forehead hard enough to hurt and huffed her displeasure. Ruddy great prat! Why did he have to make everything so hard?
Then she stopped in her tracks, slack-jawed and staring. Was that Harry or Snape she was thinking about?
"Professor, I'm afraid we may have a problem," she began, as soon as she'd closed the door behind her.
Snape was sitting at his desk, marking third year essays. He was always marking third years on Tuesdays, followed by fourth years, then sixth years. On Thursdays, he was usually marking first years and seventh years. She'd never previously thought about how much work he somehow got through in a week though a moment's calculation of the number of essays she'd handed in to him since first year would have yielded an amazing sum.
"Spit it out, girl!" he said, without looking up.
"You remember Harry's Marauder's Map that shows where everyone is? The one you saw on Professor Lupin's desk that night you came to rescue us in the Shrieking Shack?" She crossed all the fingers of both hands that he wouldn't blow up at the reminder.
"Vividly," he snapped. "Barty Crouch found it very useful the following year."
"Yes, sir." She'd forgotten he had to have known that; he'd been the one to dose the disguised Death Eater with Veritaserum after his Polyjuice had worn off. Harry had told her and Ron everything in the train going home. "Ever since the Apparition lesson on Saturday, he's begun checking it several times a day."
"Why?"
"I can't tell you. One of those secrets you promised not to look at too closely." She was careful to keep her eyes averted.
"I promised to avoid your secrets, not his."
"Harry's secrets are my secrets!"
He smirked down at the 'T" he was scrawling on a red-slashed essay.
"As you wish."
Her heart skipped a beat.
"You saw, didn't you?" she breathed.
"Not enough to concern you. Only that it has something to do with Draco." He snorted. "When doesn't it? I suppose he's as convinced that Draco poisoned Miss Bell as he was four years ago that Draco was the Heir of Slytherin. "
"It isn't funny, sir. I'm not sure I should keep up with these sessions if you're catching my stray thoughts. I won't let myself be used to betray Harry." Even without that, Harry would be very angry if he discovered what she was doing, despite that it was Order work. He'd see any unforced contact with Snape as a betrayal.
Her teacher rested his quill and unbent his neck to watch her.
"The headmaster requested these sessions. Do you suspect him of using you to betray your friend?"
"N-no, not intentionally." Of course Professor Dumbledore was trustworthy, but even the wisest person can make a mistake.
"Then it's myself you don't trust?" he asked calmly.
That wasn't what she meant either. What did she mean? She couldn't quite voice it, only that his quick understanding was making her uneasy.
"I do trust you about most things. Only when it's about Harry -"
"It's always about Mr Potter. The Chosen Boy, the Boy-Who-Lived, the one in the prophecy." He shrugged. "It's been 'about him', as you say, since before he was born. So I ask again. Do you trust me?" Returning to his marking, he added snidely, "You've told me several times that you do. Will you now prove yourself a liar?"
She took too long to formulate an answer.
"You're right not to trust me, of course," he added. The third year essays were finished. He straightened the stack and placed it in his desk before pulling the next stack towards him."You know I broke faith with my master. Can an oath-breaker ever be trusted again?"
"It depends why he broke it. If he was told to do wrong he had to disobey and if most of what he was told to do was wrong he had to leave." She glanced at his bent dark head and away. Somehow it was easier to answer in the third person, as if they were talking about some unknown stranger instead of the man in front of her.
"You don't know why he broke it. You can only guess. How can you trust a liar to tell you the truth?"
"You're not a liar!" she burst out passionately. "Why are you trying to make me think that you are?"
Black malicious eyes glinted at her from between two wings of black greasy hair.
"I'm gaining your trust by playing on your sympathy, of course. Why else?"
She bit her lip. He just seemed able to dance her into total confusion far too often. And the worst of it was that it was working. The more he confessed his trickery, the less tricky he seemed.
"I do believe you're on our side in the war, sir, even if you've always been against us in school matters. And I haven't forgotten that you promised not to use these sessions to get my friends in trouble."
She jumped in her seat at his next words.
"I promised you nothing of the kind. You need to listen more carefully. You asked me that, but I distracted you with other points. I agreed only that we wouldn't seek to pry into each other's secrets or discuss them with others." He pushed his marking aside and put down his quill to regard her over steepled fingers. "Perhaps you were relying on the headmaster to protect you from my Slytherin cunning?"
"But -"
"As it happens, you were correct to rely on him and therefore I'm willing to renegotiate. In return for your continued attendance, I undertake not to use any information I might glean from you in the course of these sessions to the disadvantage of your friends or family or yourself. Neither in nor out of Hogwarts, neither privately nor publicly, neither now nor in the future. It's a very generous offer. Do you accept?"
She glanced at him sideways through narrowed eyes.
"Why do I feel that there's another hidden catch?" she muttered.
"Perhaps you're learning to be a little more careful. What do you think it might be?"
After a pause for thought, she produced, "It's still not specific enough. You haven't defined who's included in friends or family, how closely acquainted or related they have to be for you to keep silent about them."
"Anything else?"
Under that cold stare it was hard to think at all.
"Oh! You didn't specify how many sessions I have to attend or whether missing a session invalidates your promise."
"Anything else?" he pressed.
She stared around the room for inspiration and found none.
"I don't think so. But what if I'm wrong?"
"Then you are fortunate that the headmaster was before you. He negotiated an agreement on your behalf before we called you in."
"So you've been playing with me again!" she huffed, conscious nevertheless of a feeling of relief.
"No, Miss Granger, I've been teaching you again. As for Potter, I see no problem. He isn't trying to catch you out so if he does see us he'll merely ask you for an explanation. I'm sure he'll have no difficulty believing that I've given you a term's worth of detention and you're surely capable of explaining why you didn't mention it till now. We've wasted enough time on this. We'll start with Occlumency again."
He stood up and walked around the desk to confront her. She stood up slowly.
"Wait! Sir, was there anything else?"
He gave her a pitying look.
"Of course, there was." He looked her up and down, smirking. It was one of his favourite intimidation techniques that familiarity had still not accustomed her to withstand. "You still don't see it? And you supposedly the cleverest witch of your age!" He gave an ostentatious sigh as she quietly seethed. "I promised not to use the information I discovered and I had already promised not to discuss your secrets with others. But neither of those precludes my passing them on without discussion for someone else to use."
She gasped. That sneak! But had he been too clever for himself?
"But we promised the same to each other. Does that mean I'm not prevented from passing on your secrets to other people?"
Apparently not. He was giving her the same look he always used to give Harry's cauldron.
"Do I look a fool to you? I required your utmost discretion at all times. That's sufficiently all-encompassing that it leaves you no loopholes to betray me."
The lesson didn't get any better. She still couldn't block his Legilimency. After he'd watched her in rapid succession throw up over her first grade teacher, prance around a stage in a home-made mouse costume, hide boomslang skin under her robes, sob into a pillow in a Gryffindor-curtained bed, tie the strings on a skimpy bikini and humiliate herself in a dozen other ways, he took off the spell to berate her incompetence.
At first she listened in scowling silence, but when he began to compare her unfavourably to Neville her patience wore out.
"I know I'm not making any progress, sir!" she snarled. "But did you ever stop to think that maybe the problem is not with me?" As the words left her mouth, her face froze with horror. Her fists clenched and unclenched as she fought not to turn tail and run.
"Would you like to repeat that in plain English?"
His voice was dangerously soft as he loomed over her, long pale fingers clenched around his wand. She gulped. Grovel-time, but she had too much self-respect so she settled for a less abject apology.
"I'm sorry, sir, but - but do you have to teach by attacking all the time? Maybe I'd do better if you switched to a more cooperative style."
The silence was terrible. She couldn't look at his face, but at least his feet weren't coming any closer and his wand hand was still by his side, not lifted to hex. Then his robes swirled as he moved away.
"Sit, Miss Granger."
She sat, pocketing her wand and twisting her hands in her lap. He was already sitting behind his desk and picking up the quill to grade the rest of the fourth year parchments. She waited as he dipped it in red ink and resumed correcting. She guiltily hoped he'd take out his fury on the hapless fourth years and not on her.
"A more cooperative style," he sneered after starting on the second parchment, "would be unsuitable. Legilimency is, by definition, an attack on the mind. Repelling it can only be taught through practice and the more forceful my attack, the more it prompts you to defend. The first step – for you, the hardest – is to recognise that the voice in your mind is not your voice and to mobilise your faculties to oppose it. It's the same with Imperio. Only when your mind realises it's under attack can it actively defend."
Her fingers tightened on the thumb of her other hand and her free thumb moved in rhythmic comforting strokes from knuckle to wrist. Her voice was subdued.
"That makes sense, I suppose, sir. But does it have to be taught in that order? If that will be the hardest skill for me to learn, mightn't it be better to turn the usual sequence upside down and teach me passive defence first?" And then my thoughts wouldn't get loud enough for you to overhear.
"How do you propose to do that?"
She couldn't believe how calm he sounded. She'd have been less unnerved if he'd yelled. At least, she wouldn't have been waiting for the sting in the tail.
"I don't know, sir. You're the teacher." Her thumb was starting to throb. The circulation was cut off.
He shot her a glance under scowling brows and she looked down. Silly to hurt herself with such a tight hold, she noticed and promptly changed hands.
"Indeed. Yet if you dare to challenge the teacher you'd better have an excellent argument prepared."
She hurried to disclaim.
"I wasn't challenging you, sir. Well, not intentionally, anyway. It was just a sudden idea."
"Which you need to develop a lot further before you bring it up again," he said coldly.
"That's exactly what I meant, sir. If you had a more cooperative style we could develop it together."
About to dip his quill again, he paused and gave her a long steady look that she couldn't quite return.
"But you would learn a lot less. I'm not here to spoon-feed you."
"I always thought that's what you were doing in Potions, sir," she ventured. The most annoying thing about relying on someone else to hold the spoon was that their pace was always a bit off, too fast or too slow, and the spoon never held the right amount of food even if it came from the right bowl. "You didn't let me ask questions, till eventually I just stopped asking."
He scrawled an 'A' with three decisive strokes and picked up another parchment.
"Asking questions is not thinking for yourself," he pointed out. "It's the lazy way of avoiding thinking. If you really wanted to think for yourself, you'd research and experiment on your own first. Risky - but then, can anything be riskier than thinking for oneself?"
Her head came up. She glowered at him.He didn't look up from his marking.
"I did. You never gave me a chance to explain."
"My obligation was to teach the class, not to give you private tuition. Allowing you to go off on a tangent of your own interest would only have distracted the other students from attending to the set material. The best proof of the potential for wasting time is this conversation. We were discussing Occlumency, if you recall."
A straight stroke and a curved one; she couldn't see if it was 'P' or 'D' but he underlined it three times.
"Yes, sir." She took a deep breath. "You let me get off the topic. Why?"
"I'd have thought a witch of your alleged capabilities would not have needed that explained to her. Because Occlumency is not the only lesson I'm teaching, of course."
"Yes, sir."He was trying to antagonise her into giving up but she wouldn't let him.
" Now, to return to your question about passive Occlumency. Normally one maintains a slight shield that automatically strengthens in case of attack. However, since you still can't recognise an attack you'd need to maintain a stronger shield and it's too draining to do that for long periods. There are two other ways to shield yourself but you are capable of neither."
Her fists clenched and she bit hard on the inside of her cheek. If she made him angry he might not tell her.
"What are they?" she asked, when she could trust her voice.
He smirked at her.
"I'd have thought they were obvious. Not to think. Or not to care."