Chapter 15
She'd left without awaiting his dismissal. His eyes had softened after he'd asked his rhetorical, poisonous question, and Hermione had felt herself flush with the shame of knowing that, without meaning or wanting to, or even understanding what she'd done, she'd given him the benefit of the doubt yet again. She'd turned her back on him and strode from his office with as much dignity as she'd had left.
She returned to the Room of Requirement, said a quick goodnight to Lavender, who'd kept it open for her. Upon retiring to her little bedchamber, Hermione sat down and thought things over carefully, feeling that although Snape had shown her a few pieces of the puzzle between them that night, there must be more to the overall picture that she couldn't see. So much more that he has to hide it, she thought to herself, pacing her tiny chamber. She thought of the memory she'd seen that night, of the dark young boy Snape had been, of the shouting and violence she'd heard in the background. He can't hide everything… not if that memory is still in place. So he has to be selective about what he puts in the Pensieve. He can't just remove every sensitive memory he has. Hermione smiled grimly to herself. Well, the game might be far from fair, the picture far from clear, but at least now she knew how that game was rigged, and that there was more to the picture to be found.
And so it was decided: if he wanted to continue pushing deeper into her psyche, she would push right back into his, and see what she could behold.
She did not get far that first time, nor the second time, but recently she'd caught glimpses of Snape's deep past by using the inversion technique whenever she got the chance: Images of a young boy with greasy hair; flashes of fights between a hook-nosed woman and a tall man with angry, forbidding eyes; envy-infused memories of watching a dark-haired young man parade around Hogwarts (Harry's father! Hermione had realised). He ejected her quickly from these parts of his mind, and Hermione discovered that her forays into Legilimency inversion came with the massive risk of leaving herself open to deeper attacks in return. That meant that his tempting vulnerability when he was deepest in her own memories cut both ways. It was a dangerous game they played, pushing at each other's psyches, discovering deep-seated truths about one another painfully, horribly. He knew what the children in primary school had called her. He saw the horrifying day she'd discovered Slytherin's monster. He knew what her Boggart was. He saw the tears she cried over her endless fights with Harry and Ron over the years. In return, she knew the sad, lonely boy he had been. She saw the abuse his father dealt his mother. She saw his loneliness at Hogwarts. And, once, she glimpsed what might have been his induction to the Death Eaters, where she'd felt an overwhelming wash of shame rise up in him, before he'd quickly turned the tables and plunged back into her. Week by week as the snow built around the castle, as winter seized Hogwarts in its icy grip, each lesson showed her new sides to him, and it all added up to a man who became more puzzling with each revelation, and whom Hermione longed to put together, piece by piece, until he became clearer.
Hermione was completing the last part of her meditation ritual before that week's lesson, when the door to her little space in the Room of Requirement burst open. Ginny ran inside, wild-eyed.
"'Mione, hurry up! They've taken him in the dungeons!"
Hermione felt herself prick all over with fear. Her first thought was – impossibly – Harry. But no, it can't be. She shut off the yammering panic in her mind, and engaged her Mind's Eye quickly. She needed to be calm for this, whatever it was, and there was plenty of calm left over from the ritual she used before her meetings with Snape.
"Slow down, Ginny. Who taken whom to the dungeons?"
"Neville. He did something – I don't know what – in the halls I think, after dinner. And Amycus Carrow dragged him down to the dungeons while Alecto stopped anyone else following. I think he was protecting some first-year Gryffindors he'd been seeing to the Common Room. Gods, Hermione, we have to do something!"
Hermione took a deep breath to calm down once more, to tamp down the panic rising in her chest. She glanced up at the clock above her bed – 8:45.
"Who else knows about this?" she asked.
"No one, I came to you first. Come on, Hermione. Let's rally the DA."
"No," Hermione said, already moving, snatching up her wand.
Ginny glared at her and immediately opened her mouth, doubtless to give Hermione what-for.
"I'm going to send Professor McGonagall a Patronus. She'll know how to deal with this. I don't want any more students involved. Now shut up," she snapped as Ginny drew in a quick breath, "so I can get the full message right the first time."
Hermione had to delve deep for a happy memory – the first time Ron and Harry had sat down beside her in the Great Hall during first year, just after they'd rescued her from the troll – and when the otter appeared, it was as bright and energetic as always. She gave it the message, and it whisked away. Not one minute passed before McGonagall's cat Patronus arrived back.
"I am on my way to the dungeons," it said.
"I have to go now or I'll be late for Snape," Hermione said, pulling on a sweater and side-stepping Ginny. "Professor McGonagall knows I've got to meet him now, so she'll send her next Patronus to you as my second, Ginny." She continued in an undertone, mostly to herself, "And I'll have words with Snape about this, make no mistake. Discipline indeed."
"What good will that do?"
Hermione bit her lip in frustration with herself. She hadn't meant to tell anyone about Snape's interference on behalf of student discipline throughout the year and she'd almost given it away.
"I'm not sure, but I don't think he'll let the Carrows continue with this. You'll notice that you, Neville and Luna were spared torture after your idiocy with the sword of Gryffindor."
That did it – Hermione's reference to Ginny's betrayal earlier that year silenced the redhead, who nodded balefully to Hermione before she ran from the room, verging on late now.
She raced to the Gargoyle Corridor, and nearly shouted the password, "King Crimson!" and ran to the top of the spiralling staircase. She didn't knock.
"Professor – I need you to –" She cut herself off. The office was empty. She spun around, searching for the dark man.
"Professor Snape left to attend to an emergency in the dungeons," said a calm voice from above. Hermione turned to see the bright blue eyes of Dumbledore's painting twinkling at her. "He asked that you remain here for the time being."
"No," Hermione said, feeling herself reddening with anger. "I can't just stay here! I have to go and help Neville."
Not for the first time, Hermione turned her back on the protesting portraits and marched to the office door. It didn't open. Sighing in frustration, she cast Alohomora. It had no effect. She ran through every other unlocking charm she knew. Finally she turned back to the portraits, her hair crackling with blue sparks.
"He locked me in here?"
"He seemed to feel some unease the last time you refused his orders to remain in this office," said Dumbledore. "He has sealed it for the time being."
"Oh, he has, has he?"
Hermione proceeded to blast the door. She tried a Reductor Curse, followed by a severing charm, a fire hex, and every other destructive spell she could think of. After a few minutes she stood before the closed door, panting and frustrated.
"And now you've exhausted yourself you'll have nothing left to fight him with," said a snide voice behind her. "Perhaps that has been his master plan all along. It was quite clever of him, really – Gryffindors are so predictable, nay, Albus?"
Hermione squashed down the panic that Phineas's declaration sent running through her. He was right: she had dealt with the crisis in the dungeons by delegating to Professor McGonagall, and now her priority had to be the lesson coming her way. If she was too weakened or emotional to defend herself…
She sat down in her usual seat before the desk, hitched up and crossed her legs, and concentrated on illuminating and purifying each of her chakras in turn. As she did, she felt the tension leaving her shoulders. She finished that exercise and moved on to gently activating and surveying her Mind's Eye. It looked good – less organized than when she'd first constructed it, but the messiness served to hide a great deal. She checked the Intercision blade, the disconnects between her emotions and her memories, the complex circuitry she'd woven within her mind. It was all there, though a little shaky, reflecting the exhaustion she still felt at her earlier emotional and magical outburst.
"Miss Granger," a deep voice said, somewhere close to her.
She retained the calm, but she couldn't help but flinch at his sudden presence. She opened her eyes. He sat across from her, the same as always. The portraits behind him were empty; the furniture pushed up against the walls. She couldn't say how long she'd sat there, nor how long he'd been with her, and part of her was flustered that she hadn't noticed him. She didn't wait for him to speak.
"How is Neville?" she demanded. "Did Professor McGonagall – "
He held up a hand and she cut herself off. It was then that she saw his face, and shrank back inwardly from the anger there. She had grown used to him after all of these weekly sessions together, where he'd been as close to agreeable as she'd ever seen him despite the combative nature of their psychic exchanges, but now his expression sparked something small and frightened in her chest. She thought of her parents, of Harry and Ron, of the DA, of all the things this man held over her. When he spoke, his voice was low, and dangerous.
"Do we or do we not have an agreement in place regarding how your lieutenants behave within this school?"
"Yes," she answered immediately. "But I need to know, please, is Neville –"
"Longbottom, along with three of the first years who witnessed his altercation with Professor Carrow, is in the hospital wing and will likely remain there well into the weekend."
"Wait – what?"
"It seems that your brave friend engaged Professor Carrow after the latter used a minor stinging hex to hurry one of the first years down the corridor. Tell me, is needless duelling with professors the modus operandi you have imposed in your leadership role as Head Girl, or is it more an 'every man for himself' praxis?"
His voice didn't rise during the little speech, but Hermione found herself cowed nonetheless. Is this true? What on earth was Neville thinking? I've got to – she shook herself and focused on Snape once more. Neville was not just her lieutenant, as Snape insisted on calling him – he was a friend. And she would defend him.
"I don't think Neville would act in any way that would further endanger other students –"
"You don't, do you? Perhaps an eye-witness account will modify your thinking." Snape stood and turned away from Hermione. "Phineas!"
Hermione stood too, and nodded to the sharp little man when he appeared in the picture frame a moment later.
"You hissed, Headmaster?"
"Tell Miss Granger precisely what you witnessed in the third-floor corridor earlier this evening."
Phineas Nigellus turned to Hermione and, for once, he didn't sound snide; he delivered his summary of the events in a neutral, almost bored tone. It was precisely as Snape had said, down to the unnecessary but harmless stinging hex, and Neville beginning the fight.
"Thank you, Phineas," Snape said. "That will be all."
The portrait was empty again when Snape turned back to Hermione. Standing close together as they were, he had the advantage of height, but she didn't particularly feel like sitting back down, or like backing down in any other way. Any calm she'd felt had drained away while she listened to Phineas Nigellus's account of the incident, and instead she felt the incandescent rage building from her gut once more. When she looked at Snape, she was met with equal anger, but she refused to be unnerved. So what if he was angry? She had plenty of fury of her own.
"So what is your modus operandi, Professor?" she spat. "What do you propose we do when we witness casual violence against our peers? Roll over and let it happen? Participate in the injustice? That's your job."
His nostrils flared, and his glinting eyes turned flat. She saw the warning, and disregarded it.
"Or," she continued acerbically, "maybe you'd like for us all to subscribe to the idea that unjustified, spontaneous petty violence is something to ignore. Oh but wait – you, our illustrious Headmaster, are a perpetrator not only of unjustified and spontaneous petty violence, but also of outright murder, torture and God only knows what else."
She stood before him, panting from saying it all in two short breaths. But her back was straight, her eyes were bright, and she could feel the righteousness pumping through her veins. She took a step closer to him, so that they stood almost chest-to-chest in front of his desk. He didn't look away.
"So is that what you want?" She couldn't seem to stop. "A school full of junior Death Eaters? A breeding ground for indifference at best and cruelty at worst? Fuck you, Snape. You are full of shit if you think I'm going to teach my people to be anything like you."
When he took a breath to speak, his rising chest almost touched hers. She felt his breath wash over her, and was surprised to smell mint.
"If you are quite through extemporizing so eloquently your views on my person," he said in the same quiet voice he'd used earlier, "I have a lesson to teach you this evening."
Hermione felt it like a gut-punch. She'd gone too far, she realised suddenly, not just in her hateful speech to him, but in letting her emotions completely override the situation. She felt raw and open as the righteous anger drained and the previous exhaustion redoubled; she'd always unconsciously used her magic when she was in a temper, and this time had been no different. She was utterly unprepared to face the man who now regarded her with an unpleasant, knowing smile. Fuck…
"I – I don't know if I can – " she stopped herself, taking a long step back from Snape. "I think I had better deal with the student situation this evening before everyone goes to bed. I'd like to –"
"After I assisted them, Professor McGonagall and Professor Sprout took the situation in hand." His smile grew. "You are – as it were – mine for the evening."
Hermione felt her knees shaking. Oh God… after everything I've said… She had to get out of this.
"You… you're taking advantage of a situation you deliberately created," she said, trying to muster some of the strength she'd used months before when she'd lied to him. Then, she'd drawn on an endless well of confidence, necessity, and courage. Now… now she had nothing. "I can't be expected to take a – a lesson from you when I'm clearly not at my best – "
"Perhaps that is the lesson, Granger," he said, closing the distance between them once more. "I will give you one minute to compose yourself before I begin."
"Alone – I need time alone to – "
"No. You chose your ground when you began this. You will keep your ground, and –" he allowed himself a soft, nasty chuckle, "you will attempt to hold it."
A/N: Uh oh...