Of all of her years spent at Hogwarts, Saturnine Snape kept very few photographs. Her love for positive images transferred onto photographic paper had not abated, but many other things caught her interest.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, wondrous place that it was, burst with magic from floor to ceiling. Even the stairs moved whimsically, and when she spoke to the people filling the painted portraits on the walls, they answered her. Everywhere Saturnine looked and went, there was something new to discover.
The professors unrolled one marvellous discovery after the other, almost—but not quite—quenching her thirst for knowledge. And the library… Oh, dear Merlin, Circe and Morgana, the Hogwarts' library was a marvel. It was Saturnine's favourite place on earth. If she were to die of old age down one of its long meandering aisles, she would die happy.
This sanctuary of the recorded word wasn't at all like the cramped basement room in Cokeworth, where you couldn't find anything printed past the seventies. No, the bewitched library was enormous. Tens of thousands of books rested on thousands of shelves along hundreds of narrow rows. Memoires, encyclopedias, literature—a random arrangement of 26 letters flowing, stuck or rolled around in one's mouth or head.
Here, students were free to read whichever books they wanted, whenever they felt like it. There were plush chairs where one could sit—surrounded by leather-bound volumes on all sides—to read in the appeasing silence that only libraries afforded. Saturnine liked that place so much that she could have moved in permanently. And if the young librarian, Miss Pince, didn't shoo her out each night at curfew, she might have.
Saturnine had never dreamed she would become so passionate—addicted, even. But it felt as if an empty space within her had been waiting to be filled for years. She couldn't put that feeling into words, couldn't quite comprehend what was happening. But she realised she had been feeling miserable since Severus had left for Hogwarts three years prior. She had hoped that accompanying him to Scotland, at last, would have filled the gap. But their renewed proximity wasn't enough to dispel the darkness that had taken residence within her heart.
She feared what that meant. Could it be the herald of darker times to come?
Afraid. Lonely. Saturnine lost herself within her cherished volumes instead. She thrived on anticipation and feasted on their knowledge like a voracious creature that nothing could satiate.
Within the library's sanctum, centuries-old tomes quenched her fears; their knowledge captured her interest and held her spellbound. Saturnine was cognitively and viscerally fascinated by the wordsmiths' philosophies and arguments. Her porous mind ate them up like a sponge plunged into water. Her literary abduction was swift and absolute and left her transformed; her senses heightened. New memories imprinted themselves so strongly against the sides of her mind; they felt as if they were her own. New insight and knowledge gained without even undergoing any meaningful engagement with another human being.
Saturnine's passion became a tangible force. And she yielded to it, allowing herself to be pulled into a world so strong, its imprint on her psyche would be everlasting. Her thoughts held captive; her body no longer hers to control.
The pull of the written word was greater than Professor Flitwick's spells and more potent than Professor Slughorn's potions. The lure of the Imaginarium devoured her whole, soothing her soul, even though it clawed at her body. And she embraced both feelings with open arms, needing their duality. She was searching for pain and comfort in equal measure—neither could be left out.
While an eagerness to learn had replaced her fondness for photographs, Saturnine knew of another student who hadn't succumbed to the draw of the printed word quite like she had.
A young Hufflepuff girl, Helena McMillan, went nowhere without her trusted, bewitched camera. She was tall, with short blond hair and hazel eyes, and one year younger than Saturnine. The two struck up a conversation one day, and Helena told the Ravenclaw girl all about her ambition to work for the Daily Prophet. Of course, she wouldn't be writing articles for them. She would bring in photographs to liven up the newspaper's pages.
A professional photographer, it appeared, needed substantial practice. So, the girl never parted from her faithful camera. She was always on the lookout for something interesting to capture. Wherever the young badger went, a purple cloud of magical smoke soon followed when she pressed the small button near the all-seeing lens.
Saturnine knew Helena had taken photographs of her, and she was near-certain that she had also caught her elusive brother on film. Between one book and the next, she promised herself she would, one day, ask the Hufflepuff girl if she could have copies.
Sadly, it would be decades before she would get around to doing it.
