A/N 1: Psst... remember that warning I issued at the beginning of this piece? The one about the adult themes? Yep, just thought I'd bring that up again here.

Chapter 16

Hermione didn't argue further. Instead, she closed her eyes, blocking him out so that she could once more look at her Mind's Eye. What she found was not reassuring: everything had been coloured heavily by her emotional outburst. She worked immediately to bleed the tension from the interface, trying to tuck it away, but one minute would not – could never – be enough to deal with all of this –

"Time's up," Snape said, and she opened her eyes to see his wand pointing at her face. She raised her own only a second before he said the incantation.

His attack was brutal. Although Hermione attempted to control it as he drove through her psyche, he quickly overrode her by using her remaining anger to jump from memory to memory. Eventually, she led him to memories of Harry. No! She plunged him abruptly into memories of her childhood instead, ones that featured her frustration with her parents, her teachers, the fellow students who mocked her, but Snape slid through these and back to more recent memories, and the one he landed on made Hermione gasp aloud.

Both hearing and feeling her distress, he hurtled deeper to view the memory properly. Hermione tried desperately to find an opening, a weakness in his assault – if I could only invert this, there has to be a way to – but his psychic grip on her was so firm that it hurt. It was after that horrible night in the Department of Mysteries at the end of her fifth year; she stood listening to Ron trying and failing to comfort Harry. The anger inside her was deep, but she knew it was misdirected. When Harry fled the Common Room, she left as well.

No, God, he can't watch this.

Sensing her dread, Snape clung to the memory with a force she'd never felt before. His presence in her mind was overwhelming, something huge and dark, and Hermione felt herself panic when she realised that all these weeks, all these months, he'd been holding back. He kept his hold on her now, and she felt her psyche faltering with the pain of invasion, a feeling so similar to her imprisonment at the Ministry, to the Dementors' endless torture, that she felt herself crying, nearly sobbing as Snape kept his psychic grip on her.

Hermione watched in horror as her memory-self mounted the stairs to her empty dormitory. There, she warded the door before turning to look in the mirror. Quickly, she took off her pullover and stood in her camisole to stare at the scar marring her chest. Tears ran down her face, tears of the deepest anger she had ever felt, of humiliation and despair and hatred. The scar was a raised, twisted purple line that started at her left collarbone, crossed her sternum and disappeared into the white camisole. She could see the mutilation on her right side through the camisole; even now she couldn't wear a bra, and the fabric did little to hide it. She knew what came next. She knew that she slipped the straps of the camisole down, and looked for the first time at what the scar did beneath the undergarment, at how it twisted down over her ribs and cut her right breast into two disproportionate pieces of flesh.

Oh, God.

She felt Snape withdrawing quickly as the memory-Hermione slipped the straps down. He was about to start looking for other memories, she was sure of it – what else would he do? – and Hermione shuddered to think of what he would find linked to this one. She did the only thing she could think of, the only thing she'd held herself back from doing in their fervent battles during these lessons. She drew back her hand and, aiming carefully through the haze of Legilimency, slapped him hard across the face.

The attack ended at once, but Snape caught her wrist when she made to hit him again. Hermione tried to wrench her arm from his grasp, but he held her tightly. She couldn't look him in the eye anymore, couldn't even bear to look at his face. Not after what he'd just seen. No one except Madam Pomfrey had seen the scar. No one knew what Hermione looked like… beneath.

She tried to stop crying, and failed. He had seen some sensitive memories before tonight, certainly, but none of the ones that she had truly needed to keep hidden. He'd been aggressive before tonight as well, but this had been different – this had been deeply invasive, almost vicious. Using that brutish force, he'd found and held one of the darkest emotions she had ever felt – that blend of rage and anguish at being disfigured in what had turned out to be a pointless, catastrophic fight – and now it overcame her once more. Hermione felt her Mind's Eye desert her, felt herself failing in her effort to remain present. She wanted to succumb, to fall to the floor as she'd done months before, when he'd examined her Mind's Eye for the first time, when he'd found the depth of her weakness and brokenness.

Instead, she wrenched at her wrist, pulling with bruising force. I have to get away from him. He has to let me go. But Snape held her fast the same way he'd held her mind, the same way he held her within the larger war raging around them. He used his grip to bring her closer to him, and Hermione felt a noxious mixture of panic and yearning as she pressed her hand to his chest, to the black wool encasing every inch of him from the hidden nape of his neck to the heels of his dragonhide boots. But she didn't push him away as she wanted to; instead, she balanced against him. She could do nothing else.

"I did not intend to see that," the dark man said gently.

And she felt a pulse of his magic course from his hand into her arm, giving her some of that dusky energy she'd felt running through him every other time they'd happened to touch. She tried to block it off, tried to summon the will to push him away.

"Let go of me," she whispered, still unable to look at him.

"No," he answered, and her eyes flew to his face. He stood close, his head slightly bowed so that he could catch her gaze. Her hand was stark white against the fabric covering his collarbone. Hermione met his eyes and saw something like compassion there. Something almost like an apology. "It will be worse for you if I do. Let me help –"

"Get off," she said with a ferocity she didn't feel. And she sent some of the little that remained of her own magic into him, hoping to burn him, to make him release her.

Even that small expenditure of energy was too much. Hermione felt herself shaking with an overload of exhaustion and misery. She was fading, falling into a pit that opened wide in her mind to receive her. She'd been down there before... with the Dementors...

Snape frowned at her, and she felt his other hand at her waist, steadying her again. He brought her even closer, as though he intended to wrap her in his arms, and Hermione knew it would be a snake's grip, a strangling hold that would take more from her than she could possibly give. She pushed against him.

"Easy," he whispered to her as she swayed. "I am here. You will not fall. You will return to yourself."

She felt herself almost giving way, her eyes still overflowing, her mind still faltering. She wanted to give in - to him. That was the underlying, perverse reality here. Hermione wanted to lean against him, wrap herself in him, let him…

"Easy," he said again. "I've got you."

"I hate you," she whispered, as her hand curled up over his hard, solid shoulder, bringing him even nearer, his grip on her other wrist tightening as their disquieting embrace intensified.

Snape continued to send waves of his dark magic through Hermione, continued to watch her as her shaking slowed, as her mind cleared, as the pain he'd found bled away. Hermione didn't know how long they stood like that, how long she balanced against him in both body and mind, but he broke the silence first.

"I intended for you to learn one lesson this evening, Granger," he said calmly, "but it seems that I will have to teach you two."

"I hate you," Hermione said, louder than before. It was a lie. Despite the fact that it was he who had triggered her near-collapse, she could not mean what she said. Not when he'd held her like that, giving her his energy and support while she put herself back together. But I wouldn't have had to do that if he hadn't broken me apart. With a surge of strength, she pushed herself away from him, and Snape let go of her waist. And now that she stood on her own, she said it again, hoping to mean it this time: "I hate you, I hate you."

"We already knew that," he said, still maddeningly calm, and still holding her wrist. "What you have learned this evening is that performing Occlumency under the influence of unchecked emotional turmoil is nearly impossible. You will also learn – " he gestured with his free hand to the bright mark she'd left on his cheek– "why you should never engage physically with a Legilimens unless you are aware of the consequences of such an action, and unless you are prepared for a different level of confrontation entirely."

Despite everything, Hermione felt curiosity pricking at her. She overrode it, choosing to confront him instead.

"How could – how could you look at that memory?" she demanded, shame curling in her gut. "When I – when you saw that I…"

He continued to meet her eyes, but she had trouble doing the same. He knows. He's seen…

"I did not know what I was watching until…" he faltered, seemed at a loss for words, and started again, "I was unaware of the… intimacy of the memory until I had seen almost the entire thing. I will never, of course, look at it again."

"We should…" Hermione swiped at her swollen eyes with her free hand, "we should have a system – some sort of signal to tell one another…" she trailed off.

"Would that we could use such an arrangement, Granger, but you already know why it would not work." He gave her a moment to finish composing herself, before changing the subject, "Do you feel my magical signature?"

Hermione nodded, looking down at where they were still joined. His magic was cool yet comforting, dark yet rich.

"I will perform the spell on you now, while maintaining this physical connection – "

She tried to wrench away from him yet again, needing to get away – he's going to go right back in… he's going to see so much more – he's going to –

"Please do not be alarmed." His other hand appeared before her eyes and tilted her chin so that she met his gaze again. That sincerity, the dark eyes warmer than she'd ever seen them. She tried – so hard – not to take comfort from this eye contact, from his magic meeting hers, from him. She failed, feeling herself leaning slightly towards him. His hand left her face and moved to her shoulder, a warm weight, supporting her slightly. He went on, "I will simply be accessing your Mind's Eye. You may present me with whatever memory you would like so that you may feel the effect of touch on this process. It will not be painful, and it may help to finish grounding you. You may then override the connection and reverse the spell to observe the process from the Legilimency side. We are no longer attacking and defending. This is merely an exercise."

"Okay," she said, breathless. "Okay."

"Prepare a memory now. Tell me when you're ready."

It took a moment longer than she would have liked, but she selected a completely neutral memory of walking through the countryside in Kent the previous summer.

"Ready."

"Legilimens."

A/N 2: Thank you for all reviews, as always. Please to review more. Now.